When we look back at how gaming has developed, the path is quite phenomenal.  There’s an awful lot of writing in this area, both from fans and from those inside the industry.

The path of gaming development has lead to increased levels of interaction and immersion.  Online Gaming is no longer the gaming that the majority of people understand to be gaming.  Most people outside of the community still see it as single person, non-interactive consumption of Media.  A bit like watching TV or going to the movies. 

WoW (and other MMO’s) are no longer limited in this way.  Games have become communities.  They have all of the complexity of real life social structures.  This also introduces the element of persistence, which is when MMO’s branch fully away from traditional gaming.

The structure of reward and success is of course defined by the developers, but generally is the same in all games.  Pretty much what we see below.

This is every MMO

The very nature of MMO’s is to encourage huge investment in time to playing.  Why? 

Because of the bottom line (cash).  Game developers need to keep the attention of the hard-core gamer who is playing for 12 hours a day, in order that they continue to play their game, and pay their subscription, in order to keep driving revenues (these guys are the cash cows). 

Allowing your core consumer base to get bored and move elsewhere is not an option, considering the dollars (millions) that have been invested to produce the game.  You need to somehow keep them interested for as long as possible.

That’s why idiotic Daily Quests are introduced.  It increases grind time massively, with little overhead requirement for development.  Put the Cash Cows on the treadmill and leave them there for 6 months, becomes a great solution (unless you are the Cash Cow).

Look at general questing, raiding, dailies, it is all repetitive activity for the purpose of prolonging the playing time of the player base.

The main response I have encountered to this line of though is: “But life is just a grind too”.  All things you want to do in life that we would consider worthwhile require continued grind.  Want to be a better swimmer, grind the pool, want to be a better pianist, grind the piano.  I have struggled with this for a while, what makes one activity better than another?  Is it not just the same process in a different package?

The truth for me lies simply in how we feel about ourselves and the visible, tangible rewards that result.  If you grind swimming, in general you will feel better about yourself as you gain fitness.  The discipline will extend to other areas of your life and open up many other opportunities.  You will probably be feeling physically fit, sleeping well and be driven by worthy goals.

The issue with gaming is that once you have learnt the basics and you are into the grind, nothing that follows has any worth or value.  It also leads to generally negative feelings about yourself, is normally detrimental to any relationships you have outside of the game, encourages bad eating, bad sleep patterns, loss of activity balance, loss of perspective, leaching of time from other worthy activities and a general feeling over time that you have achieved nothing.

It has been said that happiness is “The continued progress towards worthy goals”.  This kind of happiness seems available in WoW where there is a direct relationship between effect (completing tasks) and reward (getting something for it).  It’s only so long this continues before you see that it is an artificial reward with little value, created by the developers as an additional time treadmill.  That item you just spent 4 months trying to get will mean nothing once the next expansion is launched etc.

In a world of absolutely unlimited possiblities, and the potential of humanity to apply and succeed in an infinite number of ways, the sinking of personal time into something that achieves nothing and wastes the life of a unique individual is trully a sad thing.