Games

For a few different reasons I've been thinking about games, why I play them and what I enjoy. I suppose I pretty much have four big hobbies larping, gaming, M:tG and reading. Of them three are games you play, and all four will easily eat up several hours at a time. Now as a result of my tendency to read M:tG articles I've read a fair amount of game theory* some very specific, some much more general, as well as the odd article on game theory on the net when they've linked to (typically off forums relating to games I play). Specifically and as inspired by a few sources about the obsession with numbers, and in a related way completion.

The primary thing that got me thinking about this is a website (ThotMarket), which was the set up with the aim of becoming something like digg where by websites get ranked by popularity, except this was based on a stock market model. You created a thot for your website using your given starting virtual capital to allocate shares, as people buy shares in your thot (presumably because they have an interest in, or link to, your website) it increases in value and is displayed higher up with the lists. You then earn more money (to increase the number of share in your thot, make a new thot or buy shares in other thots) as a combination of interest on your cash reserves, dividends from shares you own, and dividends on sales of shares of thots you control. Your value as a total of the value of your thots and capital is displayed.

The thing is people have been playing it like a game, and more importantly gaming the system. When your 'score' is your net worth, and even successfully performing a hostile take over has been referred to 'levelling up'. It's entirely possible with clever choices to raise a thot from a value of $0.01 to $800 a share in a day, and once you have broken a certain capital value, the simple act of creating several thousand or several million $0.01 shares on a thot will guarantee an enormous return in investment. There are people with net worth's in the trillions, there is balancing force on the site where capital is taxed down to $1000000001, which merely results in people creating more thots to protect their capital (earning yet more money). There are unsurprisingly a fair amount of thots for websites like 'asdfgl' or 'www.' as people are literally gaming a website ranking page to create bigger numbers, while complaining about the enormous windfall taxes and the like.

The developers response on his blog:

"One guy was complaining about the unfairness of the ‘Massive Windfall Tax’ and how such a function defeated the whole purpose of the game. Presumably the purpose of the game is to make as much fake money as possible. This is absolutely fascinating to me because I had never thought of ThotMarket as a game. I wonder how many users see it that way. Is it a game? That’s kind of like asking ‘Is this painting really art?’ I’m sure there is no answer, it’s just something interesting to think about."

The responses to this on the forums I've seen, can be roughly summed up as 'Of course it is, you start with a small number and through actions can have a bigger one'. It's that fascination of generating big numbers that underpins so many games from bored school children playing calculator wars***** to almost all games up to a certain era having a score feature, to even all those RPG's where you can do thousands of damage to monsters with millions of hit points. Really what is levelling up after all than an increase in numbers.

Then there's completion the need to do everything, find everything, kill everything. I spent an hour and a half last night killing a monster will nearly 9 million hit points on FF12 (I've got back into actually playing it as a result of ailsa_chan), in terms of the gameplay mechanics I was able to do so while roughly holding a conversation with someone else. It was clear after about the first 5-10% that victory was inevitable it was merely a matter of time, so the boss health didn't matter. Why did it I do it? Completion. Did I enjoy it? I felt the pleasure of achievement yes. Yet it's big numbers are there purely because big numbers are clearly fun to a lot of people. Now in all fairness I've seen a lot of monsters in games, where the huge hit points matters, where the challenge is as much about endurance and consistently correct planning, and the difficulty corresponds to the duration you must survive, which is of course purely based on the enemy health.

So why completion, why big numbers, ultimately it's about competition, whether the competition is via an opponent, the game designer or the random number generator. A great deal of game theory deals with the motivations of people who play games about the demographics of players and what appeals. It's why people will endless repeat an activity for hours for a reward that has no consequences outside it's context, and rarely matter in comparison to everything else in the context too. ultimately numbers and completion are an easy system of measuring competition. Is it fun, well for me it is. I read somewhere (I forget where) that part of the enjoyment in games is the brain's desire to learn regardless of how inane the knowledge. So I sink my time into playing with large numbers, and so do millions of other people.

What's interesting though is that while we who game get enjoyment for succeeding at something challenging or besting someone else, the stories we tell aren't the ones where we say we achieved the huge score (with exceptions like the person who has the perfect score on Pacman with a single credit), but the silly or unexpected things we achieved along the way. Does it matter I won a game? No. Is the amusing story where I did something, by unusual strategy or by sheer random chance interesting? Well, yes, assuming the context has a meaning to you.

Hmm not sure I entirely knew where I was going with this, or even if I got there. Still making the journey was entertaining none the less, and ultimately entertainment is all this is about.

*Well it's generally theory, strategy, play stories and slang** because what else is there to discuss.

**Oh and magic slang is special even for a geek aligned hobby, thankfully I almost never use it: "Mise well, whirlwind slam the top decked bomb, bounce and play the 187 creature, then swing with it, the bomb and boomerang on a stick into the redzone to win."***

***"Luckily draw from the top of your deck a card capable of winning the game by itself, play it by not looking at it at all from when you draw it from your deck until you place it forceably on the table in a showy manoeuvre so you and your opponent both see what it is at the same time. Then resolve the ability on the card that returns a creature card to your hand so you can replay it to use the ability that happens on the returned card being played successfully (as defined by rule 187 in the comprehensive rules). Then attack your opponent in the usual way using the recently played game winning creature card, creature card with the comes into play ability and another creature with an ability that when the cost is paid replicates the effect of the card 'Boomerang'."

****Yes I'm being facetious, as I doubt you'd say all that in one go, even as slang.

*****1 + + 1 then hammer equals first to arbitrary value, last to tire wins.