Looping the Hen

Online games work almost exactly the same way, even if the window-dressing is more intricate. Let’s presume you start as a lowly knight. Your goal is to acquire the best imaginable armor and weapons (like individual properties in Monopoly; like Baltic vs. Boardwalk, some are better than others) and the prettiest horse (sets of properties) and a castle (houses and hotels). That is greatly simplified and I am stretching with the metaphor, but there it is.

Just as in Monopoly, the overriding motivations for each player are all in MMOG’s as well. While little Johnny might play to win and stomp on his little sister Sara; Sara’s motivation might be to neatly line up her houses on the colored lines, not really worried whether she wins or loses. Mom and Dad play to socialize and spend time with their kids.

The equivalents in World of Warcraft and Eve Online would then be power gamers (Johnny), paper-doll players (Sara), and social players (Mom and Dad). They all play the same game, but each has an overall motivational component that it indivisible from the game; once that motivation (or motivations) dissipates, they will eventually lose interest in whatever game they are playing. The best MMOG’s are very good at pushing these buttons and maintaining or shifting these emotional drivers, in a suspiciously Pavlovian fashion.

So how does our new knight begin to acquire these things? Well, he generally starts small, killing rats (for fun, easy reading about a number MMOG’s, including Eve, check out the appropriately named KillTenRats), or goblins, or other not-very-challenging or interesting critters. Each kill grants the player a few Experience Points as well as a tiny bit of treasure, like cash, fur or bones. I’m not exactly sure where these rats get silver, but it’s best we not worry too much about suspension of disbelief at this point.

When the knight finally gets enough Experience Points by slaying the many rodents terrorizing innocent civilians, he ‘levels up’, or ‘dings’. This means the character becomes a little stronger, gets a few more hit points (how much damage he can take before he dies), and often means he can carry a bigger weapon. With all the fur and money he collects, he can go to the local merchant, or another player, and trade for or buy a stronger weapon.

This acquisition of better weapons and armor is one of the focal points of the game for many players. Of course, for those who want to nitpick, this is a much-simplified version. There are other things players can do to get Exp (Experience Points) and cash, such as going on quests, crafting items (creating in-game items such as clothing) and trading. However, the over-arching goals all typically involve increasing a player’s power (either physical or social) in the game.

Based on the conventions of one of the original Granddaddies of all MMOG’s, Everquest, most fantasy-based MMOG’s allow players to gain between 50 and 70 levels, or ‘dings’. Sound time-consuming? It is, and this leads me to the point this very long post. In the beginning of a characters life, it might take only 30 minutes to Ding, but the higher one goes, the longer it takes. Going from level 39 to 40 might take 2 weeks of playing 2 hours a day. (No ‘get a life’ comments please!)

Due to the way these games are structured, that often means much of the content (read: fun) is specific for higher-level characters. There is even a term for the often tedious, repetitive leveling of a low-level character: Grinding. Yes, it’s often as boring and obnoxious as it sounds.

Now, let’s imagine two scenarios: the first, a father who likes to play this game with his son when he can. However, while the father is at work, the son is Grinding away, and after 3 weeks the son is level 25 while the father is stuck at level 10. Although sometimes this isn’t a problem, often a large level difference makes it hard on one or both players. The father will not be able to participate in more challenging quests, while the son, if he adventures with his father, will find things too easy.

In the 2nd scenario, instead of Grinding and leveling his character, the son decides to become a merchant and spends the extra time in 3 weeks making a ton of gold and buys the very best armor and weapons in the game. Although he is still technically level 10, due to the great equipment, he can take on challenges like average level 20 characters.

In either case, there is inequity between the father’s character and the son’s, but they still want to play together. So what is the solution? There are several. However, one that becomes more popular by the day is the father pulls out his credit card, spends $50 on Ebay, and buys a full suit of Zeutronium armor and weapons, which are as good as his son’s. The father meets the person he is buying from in-game, where the weapons and armor are transferred to his character.

Now, before any gamer purists have a puppy, I am not here to discuss the ethics of purchasing in-game items for cash. If there is any interest, I could do another similarly long post on that topic alone, but it is too much of a knee-jerk subject to work in here.

Anyhow, problem solved, and the father and son set off happily again, mowing down Orcs and Trolls like Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson.

So what makes Zeutronium armor worth $50? I am probably on the verge of losing some of you who still can’t fathom anything virtual having that much value. To simplify, let's convert the Zeutronium armor to what it really is: time.

The father is really paying $50 for time. Time to socialize and adventure and laugh with his kid. If the father wants to be at the same level and power of his son, he really only has a couple choices. He can play for 25 hours to get his character up to an appropriate level, or be a trader for 25 hours to make enough money in the actual game to match his son’s equipment. So, for $50, he has purchased 25 hours of someone else’s time.

At $2/hour, does this purchase seem so crazy? Let’s assume the father is an investment banker and makes $300,000 a year working 60 hours a week. He gets paid the equivalent of $100/hour. His time is then worth just that, $100/hour. He doesn’t have 25 hours just to get to his son’s level in-game, let alone the desire, so he pays someone else $2/hour for theirs.

Still doesn’t make sense? How about this then. He pays a maid $12/hour for 2 hours a day to clean his house so he doesn’t have to. He pays his CPA $125/hour so he doesn’t have to keep his own books. He pays the lawn guys $10/hour each. He pays the daycare people $75/day to take care of his infant daughter. He pays his auto detailer $35/hour. Many people regularly pay for other people’s time.

Could the father do all of those things? Sure he could, if he wanted to spend all his free time doing so. However, he places an inherent value on free time, and he would rather spend it socializing and slaying dragons with his son, and to him that time is worth much more than $2/hour.

For those who have never considered their free time as having monetary value, think about it a little. You are here reading this blog post instead of working a minimum wage job (well, some of you may be reading from work, but you know what I mean). So I would make the argument that your free time is worth at least $5.15 an hour. More likely more. I know that after my regular job, I could work part time doing various things for at least $10.00. As I choose not to, I have to assume I value my free time at more than that.

So it’s possible Zeutronium armor is actually a bargain!

Let’s look at another example. A 35-year old Purchasing Supervisor decides he wants to play with his friends an hour a night in one of these games. However, his friends are all 40th level. Gadzooks, it would take him 300 or more hours to get to 40th level, almost a year of his available play time. In this example, the value of the game is $0 if he can’t play with his friends, and he really wants to play with them. He takes out his credit card and buys a $400 41st level character. Again, many people are thinking this is pure craziness. Really? He just paid $1.33 an hour for someone else’s time. In my book, that’s a steal.

Now, we get to one of the more interesting aspects of all of this. The dad in the first example, being an investment banker, doesn’t throw money away easily. Due to his schedule, he soon finds himself behind the power curve again in a few weeks. Also, an in-game event during those weeks has made Zeutronium even more rare than it used to be, and thus more valuable. He manages to sell the original set of armor he bought for $60, making a profit of $10, and buys a new set of more powerful armor for $100.

In the best games, in-game items are consistently valuable. They are assets, just like a diamond ring or grandfather clock. It is true that often these items lose some of their value over time as a game becomes less popular or the population of the game becomes more powerful overall or when the designers of the game introduce new and even more powerful items. However, say the father only manages to get back $40 on his purchase of the Zeutronium armor. On the other hand, he got 10 hours of good time with his son before it lost its value. His total cost for that? $1/hour (($50-$40)/10 hours). Movies nowadays set us back $4/hour. Playing pool can cost $5/hour. An amusement park can be up to $10/hour.

Who wouldn’t (or doesn’t!) pay $1/hour for quality time with their children?

I haven’t even taken into account the actual entertainment value of the game itself. We have already determined that our free time has value. Does that not mean that the things we do during our free time have inherent value as well? Let’s say I purchase a new videogame for $40, and I play it for 20 hours before I complete it and put it on a shelf. That means the game provided me $2/hour entertainment. Again, in comparison to your average movie, not too bad.

Now let’s look at World of Warcraft. Not only do I have to pay $40 for the game, I also pay a $15.00 per month subscription fee. This is another one of those things that some people may scratch their heads over. Who on earth would pay a monthly fee for a game they’ve already bought? (Never mind those 6.6 million folks who do exactly that) Assuming someone plays the game 2 hours a day, the first month they bought the game they are paying around $.91 an hour for their entertainment. However, during the 2nd month they also play for 60 hours but only pay the $15 monthly fee. Their entertainment cost has suddenly dropped to a mere $.25/hour. Anyone else know someplace other than the local park you can go to for $.25/hour? Heck, at $3.00 per gallon gasoline, even that might cost more than a quarter per hour.

I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but next to my family and my honey, my free time is the most important thing in my life. $500 or $1000 is a lot of money in terms of pure dollars; however, when you equate it to how much time you are buying, the numbers don’t seem so out of line. Not counting food or other tangible purchases, my trip to Vancouver cost me $6.00/hour, even the time I was sleeping.

And my most brutal example? My skydiving experience cost me the equivalent of $3,600 an hour, and it was worth every penny. Many, and I would venture to say even most, already spend more money on a per hour basis for your entertainment than the person who paid me nearly $1700 for a character I put 3 years of my time into. (Try to figure out the per hour cost of this one!)

Personally, I think they got a steal.