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I really don't think it's that simple; regardless of payment model the majority of developers want to produce a good, fun, entertaining game, and regardless of payment model the publishers/accountants/whoever can put the screws on for cash.

Buy the box for a one-off cost: who cares about the long-term as long as you make the sale? Cut the content down as much as possible, charge more for DLC or sequels (DLC might seem light a modern phenomena in its ubiquity, but we've always had data disks, expansions, "deluxe editions", sequels using practically identical game engines etc)

If it's a subscription you keep your hooks in the player, if that's through a fun experience then lovely, but it's not like there aren't a barrage of other psychological techniques (as per Nick Yee's seminal Virtual Skinner Box piece from 2003 for a start). Subs are also one size fits all, in most cases a good deal for someone with a load of time to sink in, terrible for someone who wants to dabble in a few different games.

As TFA says, "MTX is a valid business model". No doubt it *can* be used for "evil", quite possibly in more and different ways than one-off costs or subscriptions, but if done well and transparently (ha!) I have no issue with it.

This conversation seems to be cyclical. Let us remember that people play games for different reasons. We have Bartle Player Types and Nick Yee's player motivations to frame this conversation. Some people like ultra-realism, some don't. Different strokes for different folks. I'm a casual TF2 player, where I aim bazooka rockets at my feet so I can jump higher. I guess realism isn't that important to me. I'm also a text-based gamer, and I enjoy playing muds and mushes.

They aren't hardly catering to ADHD kids.

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001365.php ( Average age of WoW player = 28.3 )

Also available at Nick Yee's site in case someone's server gets /.ed. http://www.nickyee.com/pubs/Johnson%20et%20al%20-%20Gangs%20(2009).pdf

Whether or not physicists will come to valid scientific or academic conclusions on soft arts (sociology, psychology), or whether the conclusions of this study are valid, at least one of the authors is recognizable as someone with quite a bit of credibility in a nascent field. He is a contributing author at http://terranova.blogs.com/ where many Virtual academics reside (e.g., Edward Castranova and Richard Bartle, who are contributing to legal and sociological aspects of Virtual Worlds) and he created and maintained a (now hibernating) website, The Daedalus Project ( http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/ ) , which explored the sociology of MMORPGs.

Check his bio at http://www.nickyee.com/ I'd say he's worth listening to, at least WRT virtual groups. And maybe so are some of the other contributors.

Whether or not physicists will come to valid scientific or academic conclusions on soft arts (sociology, psychology), or whether the conclusions of this study are valid, at least one of the authors is recognizable as someone with quite a bit of credibility in a nascent field. He is a contributing author at http://terranova.blogs.com/ where many Virtual academics reside (e.g., Edward Castranova and Richard Bartle, who are contributing to legal and sociological aspects of Virtual Worlds) and he created and maintained a (now hibernating) website, The Daedalus Project ( http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/ ) , which explored the sociology of MMORPGs.

Check his bio at http://www.nickyee.com/ I'd say he's worth listening to, at least WRT virtual groups. And maybe so are some of the other contributors.

The conclusion that this article makes are not really new. Nick Yee did similar studies on MMOG addiction with EverQuest many years ago. These were the studies that I could find:

The Norrathian Scrolls: The Virtual Skinner Box

Ariadne: Understanding Game Addiction

The conclusion that this article makes are not really new. Nick Yee did similar studies on MMOG addiction with EverQuest many years ago. These were the studies that I could find:

The Norrathian Scrolls: The Virtual Skinner Box

Ariadne: Understanding Game Addiction

prove they fit a bell curve.

From "The Daedalus Project"
by Nick Yee
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000758.php

Is WoW not a game???

Of course it is.

How can a casual WoW player NOT be a casual gamer?

Just because a hardcare WoW player isn't necessarily a hardcore gamer, does not imply the opposite, and I never said as such. However, since you brought it up, it's possible for a casual player in a particular game to NOT be a casual gamer if the game is on the extreme side of needing dedication (Which WoW isn't), or if WoW isn't the only game they play.

What other game (if you want the best gear) FORCES you to spend MONTHS raiding 3 nights a week to get the best gear? How is that casual friendly??

Everquest, Linage, Linage 2, Everquest 2, Dark Ages of Camelot, even City of Heroes did when it started, Ultima Online, Neverwinter Nights, etc etc etc

My WoW guild was raiding 3 nights a week, as I said, I played between 15-18 hours a week with them, that covers all 3 raids we did a week. Guild members were only required to attend 2 of the 3, many did, and many were in the games best gear when the latest expansion came out (Full tier 6 or better). So it's quite possible, as I experienced it first hand.

---

Lastly, it is apparent that you are getting confused and trying to discuss casual WoW play, hardcore WoW gamers, casual gamers, and hardcore gamers, and mixing and matching them in places as if they are interchangable, and they aren't. Any further discussion, I suggest you stick to what the article describes. WoW is by far the most casual friendly MMO on the market (that has any reasonable player base), and arguably the least hardcore player/gamer friendly of the popular MMOs.

"Casual friendly" does not mean you can max out everything in the game with little time investment. It means that you can quite literally log in, play for 15-30 minutes at a time, anytime you want, and be productive doing so. No commitment to log in at any particular time is necessary, nor the need to stay logged in for long periods of time. Yes, if you want raid gear, you have to commit to the length of the raid, which is anywhere from an hour to 3 hours, typically. And yes, in WoW, you can get gear that was close to the best you can get with a very minimal amount of time spent per week through the arena (an hour a week). Getting better gear than that is possible, but to get "raid worthy" doesn't require more than a few hours a week. Remember, this is the game where a guild went from having NO characters at all (they all started new characters) to killing the hardest end boss in the game (at the time, Illidan) in under two weeks. All in gear much worse than a full arena set.

And that brings me back to my point. WoW does not require the same amount of dedication as many of the prior MMOs did. You can play casually (5-20 hours per week) and still get to the point where you are raiding if you want. You CAN see everything in the game in under two weeks, which simply isn't/wasn't possible in older MMOs, so it's easier to get into the game and be productive. It's easier to max out your character as well. The most you can raid for is 15-20 hours a week if you aren't wiping. WoW is a dumbed down, simplified MMO for the masses that requires less dedication than MMOs have previously.

Research shows that over 25% of MMORPG players play for less than 10 hours per week. Sounds fairly casual to me.

Nick Yee
http://www.nickyee.com/ I came across this guy's work about six years ago when I took part in a survey on.... MMO addiction. I'm surprised no-one seems to have mentioned him so far.

Awesome description...reminds me of the essay on how Everquest (and really all MMOs) are nothing but giant virtual Skinner Boxes. A great read--enjoy.

Disclaimers: I'm an online game developer, but I don't speak for Blizzard, etc.

I'm sure Blizzard has hired psychologists to figure out the optimal effort:reward ratio to keep people playing as long as possible.

I'm sure they don't, because it would be stupid. A joke that online game devs tell is that our perfect customer subscribes to our game but never plays; that way we get all the revenue and none of the cost. Someone spending many, many hours in our game is actually a cost, and drives up the likelihood of them needing customer service (the expensive part of running an online game). So, there's less benefit to getting people hopelessly addicted to our games.

The thing that does keep people playing our games is the one thing we're talking about here: socialization. It's the social obligations that people feel to the other players in the game that usually keep them playing long term. Honestly, the game gets a bit old after a while; it's the people that keep it interesting.

If you're interested in some real research on this, take a look at Nick Yee's site on MMO research.

The the average WoW male is 28.3, and 32.5 for females, according to these WoW stats,

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001365.php

And Night-Elf hunters are the most common race and class combo, in case you're wondering about in-game demographics.

Over 35 players are a decent percentage I would venture to guess...

Men are 3-5 times more likely than women to gender-bend in MMORPGs. The demographic that is most likely to gender-bend are men over the age of 25. We know that 85% of MMORPG players are male, so if you do the math, at any given moment, half of all female avatars are actually being played by men.

Men are 3-5 times more likely than women to gender-bend in MMORPGs. The demographic that is most likely to gender-bend are men over the age of 25. We know that 85% of MMORPG players are male, so if you do the math, at any given moment, half of all female avatars are actually being played by men.

Men are 3-5 times more likely than women to gender-bend in MMORPGs. The demographic that is most likely to gender-bend are men over the age of 25. We know that 85% of MMORPG players are male, so if you do the math, at any given moment, half of all female avatars are actually being played by men.

You'd most likely be wrong. MMOs have a higher average age than their chat interfaces might lead people to believe.

Here is a link with more info: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000194.ph p and unfortunately it's not WoW specific, but you can find some interesting stuff on that website.

Any kind of Obsessive behaviour is going to have negative results. It doesn't matter if you play online games, or watch TV for 20 hours a day.
Does the same apply if you play nintendo all day?
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_addiction. html
Maybe downloading too much music would do the same?

According to the actual article referred to by the Nature summary (but to which they decided apparently not to include a link), the researchers measured the IPD by dint of users actually pressing keys to control the character. It wasn't calculated by actual distance in pixels, but rather the players' intentions as measurable by keyboard controls.

Nick Yee, Jeremy N Bailenson, Mark Urbanek, Francis Chang, Dan Merget, The Unbearable Likeness of Being Digital: The Persistence of Nonverbal Social Norms in Online Virtual Environments.

(Given that the whole article is about a particular paper, they should have given a proper citation, or at least told us what the title of the paper was.)

My summary of their findings: on average, female characters stand closer to female characters than male characters stand to male characters. Distance between male-female pairs has larger variability than distance between same-gender pairs. This is the same as what happens in real life.

Are you defined by what you think of yourself or how others perceive you? Do you really think because you died with a gross income in your life of 10 million dollars, you will be remembered more than someone that only made $500,000 through their entire life? Are you going to have a book written about it? And even if you did, does that make a difference now, if you would be dead when it is written?

I could be spending my time helping less fortunate people, or maybe working on an Open Source program that would benefit thousands of people. I may receive praise for such things, but what does this really do?

I think it's really a matter of what you want to do with your life. Do you care that in 20 years, you can look back and be like "Wow, I designed this amazing program that filled a need for 100,000 people." You will have this memory to satisfy yourself. You will be able to tell stories and brag about doing something "productive" for society.

Or, in 20 years, you can look back at the time when you played only video games. You can remember you had fun doing it, but did not accomplish anything with your life. You will have the memories of those games still, and the fun that you can while playing them.

Though it's not the same thing, I played one MMO for 12 months pretty hard-core. I stopped playing that game about 3 years ago. I can look back at the time I see some things where it hurt my social life. But at the same time, there were parts of the game that really provided pure fun and entertainment. You could say I get a warm-fuzzy thinking about the events and things that went on it the game. Not so much the facets of the game, but the people I interacted with in the game.

Some people feel that they have to help others, and do things beneficial to society, so they can be defined by society as being a productive member. And the only way they can satisfy themselves is to think that what they've done with their lives has made a difference (no matter if it really did or not).

Just because you think something is wrong, doesn't mean it is. Even if laws say that something is wrong, doesn't mean it is. I feel that psychology hasn't fully caught up with the concepts of MMOs, so they tend to be compared to drugs or other bad addictions.

Some work has been done to study the MMO trend, but it will be years before we can really know the effects it has on the world. It will be interesting to see how research projects like The Daedalus Project pan out over the coming years.

That 40% number was ripped from the daedalus project . I also doubt it's accurate since people who fill out that survey or seek help are more likely to be addicted then those who don't.

MMO addiction is nothing like a Gambling addiction. In MMO addiction you may have issues of identifying with your character, but you don't have the same harmful financial damage that a gambling addiction will cause.

Quitting MMO's is fairly easy, or at least it was for me. I just deleted WoW, and that was it. I still keep in touch with my guild via their website, which was really my only reason for playing twards the end, along with e-fame.

The Paladin thing doesn't work. All the power players will gravitate to Paladin, since it's the most powerful at the highest level, regardless if it takes longer to get there.

A recent survey showed that over 50% of all female World of Warcraft characters were played by male players. Who exactly is supposed to be fearing whom?

I agree completely. The psychology questions tended to be pretty retarded as well.
I find the studies done at the Daedalus Project more interesting. Yes most of the surveys deal with World of Warcraft, but they given interesting insight into who plays what character for what reason.

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

Lots of gaming habit info.

Haha. Well, I'm part of a large clan of female players, and a lot of us play WoW; also, I know many many other women who play, far out of proportion to (say) the number I encounter on Halo 2. Check out the Daedalus Project for facts'n'figures...

Here's a link to a phsychologist who's making his living on studying people who play MMORPG's.

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

I've filled out his surveys for 4 or 5 years.

At the site you may find many tools for characterizing your personality type and how it relates to the alternate reality of the games. As well as analysis of how MMORPG's have affected people en masse.

I present this essay that does a great job explaining how every single MMORPG out there today (they use EQ as an example, but it applies to all) is one big virtual Skinner Box. Once that idea sinks in a bit, it does kinda kill the fun of all MMORPGs for you because you see exactly what buttons they're pushing, and exactly how it is drawing you in and how ultimately there IS NO FRIGGIN POINT!

That is why I find myself now playing FPS almost exclusively. It relies on skill rather than walking up to critter A, hitting attack, and waiting.

Wake me when they actually make an MMORPG that you actually have to PLAY, and please don't say WoW, its just as guilty as the rest, its just pretty and more polished.

See The Virtual Skinner Box, an essay on Everquest (but really about MMOGs in general) written from a behaviorist perspective.

--grendel drago

To me, the most interesting tidbits in this article are about women in gaming, and the implication that their influence on design will bring about new styles of gameplay. There's some interesting literature out there about how women play games:

Killing Like a Girl (PDF)
The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of Everquest (PDF)

I get the impression that this is one area where independent studios really have a chance to innovate. But given how conservative we can be, maybe the larger studios will figure it out first.
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Epidemic Groove - Our casual/action/real-time strategy hybrid about curing a worldwide epidemic by constructing nanomechanical defenses. You know, the usual stuff.

This isn't going to legitimize IGE, this is going to put them out of business, once Sony gets rolling with this.

Quite true. Obviously, no 3rd-party seller of in-game resources can survive being undercut by the system administrators, who can accomplish the equivalent of MONTHS of gil-farming with a single command-line.

However, although the short-term effect may seem beneficial, I've always thought that the legitimized (or merely widespread) sale of in-game items would hasten the collapse of any typical MMORPG. This seems to be a desparation move by SOE, whose EQ2 project has been eclipsed by WoW anyhow.

My thesis is that MMORPGs provide a substantial amount of their entertainment in the same way casino gambling does: the players' victories and rewards are quite arbitrarily handed out by the operators, but the cold-blooded arithmetic is hidden behind a screen of glamour and fun. Expose the honest real-dollars cost of an activity to the player, and they'll flee to a more fantastical game.

If a slot machine has a sign on it that each 10 minutes of play loses an average of $2.85, few people will enjoy pulling the lever.
If level 60 epic flame-armor has a "Buy Now" hyperlink which costs $14.31, few people will find it fun to camp a dragon every 3 hours hoping he drops one more of the pieces.

Basic psychological principles: addiction can best be sustained if the game gives out rewards unpredictably. Game items are valued more because it was hard to know when they'd appear. Putting a blatant dollar-sign on the items is the ultimate form of predictabilty. The virtual Skinner box falls apart. When the mystique is gone, the players will be too.

PS. The Economist magazine agrees with my prediction, although the article isn't posted for nonsubscriber online reading.

"Researchers from the University of Oklahoma recently found that two-thirds of school fights were instigated by regular video game players, but in the study of 607 students only four fights were started by children who had never played such games."

The article doesn't say how many of the total number of kids played video games. If 95 % did, then their two-thirds statistic isn't very meaningful.

Also, what if violent video games served as an outlet for aggression, actually helping to prevent violence?

Finally, a correlation doesn't imply causality. Do video games turn people violent, or are violent people attracted to video games? Nick Yee wrote a great article on this. He gave the following example: Suppose you stood by the exit gate of Disneyworld and noticed that many of the people coming out were six years old. Would it be more reasonable to assume that Disneyland transforms people into six-year-olds, or that six-year-olds like going to Disneyland?

I agree with you..pretty much anything can be addictive, especially if it is enjoyable. I think what is new here is that we are finding that MMORPGs are especially addictive because they are in fact designed to be. Again, that is nothing new - smoking was designed to be addictive by the tabbaco industry, casions are designed to keep you gambling, etc. The newsworhtyness in the article is just pointing out that the trend in videogames is changing in that they are now being intentionally designed to be addictive.

On a side note, I played WoW for about 2 months. At first I played about 5-10 hours per week. A month later I was playing 30+ hours a week, and I really started noticing a decline in work performance and personal life balance. I realized I was falling into the addiction trap, so I canceled my account. Anyone can do that - you just have to be a little self-aware, and understand the danger.

I found TFA's a little weak on content, so here are some way more interesting ones:

JiveMagazine
Understanding MMO Addiction

I think the near future of Star Trek lies with the MMORPG that's supposedly in development. You can see from http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000891.ph p that gamers spend less time watching TV than other people and honestly if I wasn't playing an MMO game so much I would probably still make some attempt to watch star trek.

So they (Paramount) have an opportunity here to capture a lot of their old star trek audience and maybe make more money off us. If they (game developers) can find a way to make the game (or a portion of the game) episodic and involve actors in it, that would be extremely compelling for me. Personally I have no faith in star trek games, but you know. Prove me wrong, developers.

but regardless of that, which is more immature: a) playing an online game, or b) trolling instead engaging in rational discussion?

Am I really the only other person besides Nick Yee who cares about data-mining MMOG players?

The reason I found this interesting is because of the benefits the project gives to massive game designers. By participating in the survey, gamers clue designers into what we find most important in online massive games. For those folks who are into raiding, the difficulties in running a raid, pinned down and categorized, should allow future and current games to provide tools for raid organization. The social ramifications of bringing together such disperate people of class, race, and gender is fascinating to look at, too. I personally got a kick out of specific raid stories, regardless of their success or failure. The quantification of common experiences amongst gamers makes for good reading, sez I.

Am I really the only other person besides Nick Yee who cares about data-mining MMOG players?

The reason I found this interesting is because of the benefits the project gives to massive game designers. By participating in the survey, gamers clue designers into what we find most important in online massive games. For those folks who are into raiding, the difficulties in running a raid, pinned down and categorized, should allow future and current games to provide tools for raid organization. The social ramifications of bringing together such disperate people of class, race, and gender is fascinating to look at, too. I personally got a kick out of specific raid stories, regardless of their success or failure. The quantification of common experiences amongst gamers makes for good reading, sez I.

Am I really the only other person besides Nick Yee who cares about data-mining MMOG players?

The reason I found this interesting is because of the benefits the project gives to massive game designers. By participating in the survey, gamers clue designers into what we find most important in online massive games. For those folks who are into raiding, the difficulties in running a raid, pinned down and categorized, should allow future and current games to provide tools for raid organization. The social ramifications of bringing together such disperate people of class, race, and gender is fascinating to look at, too. I personally got a kick out of specific raid stories, regardless of their success or failure. The quantification of common experiences amongst gamers makes for good reading, sez I.

What about those people who play the opposite gender in online games?

By at least one account up to 56% of male players and up to 33% of female players play an opposite gender character. Do these avatars reflect their real-life persona in some way? I personally don't feel I'm anything like my EQ level 63 Female High-Elf Cleric. I simply played a female because of the social advantage gained in a game like EQ.
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Slim Cognito

Get your own FREE iPod and help me get mine at the same time.

If you're concerned about the legitimacy of the free iPod offer, check out this Wired magazine article.

Here you go... See "Ariadne" and the end of "Norrathian Scrolls".

You're right and wrong. First of all, according to the Daedalus Project, linked to above, about 40% of users consider themselves addicted. (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000818.p hp) The above number is the percentage of people whose primary reason for playing the game is addiction. So I would agree that addiction is a serious consideration for those who would play MMO's, and those who have little willpower (myself included) should strongly consider strictly restricting themselves, perhaps enlisting outside help if necessary.

However, I don't see anything wrong with a desire to experience what you've created. If you built a house, wouldn't you want to live in it? Same thing here. If you "build" a character, you're going to want to "live in" it. It's not narcissism, which is what you make it out to be.

Given the amount of time an average MMO player plays a month the subscription cost is fairly minimal.

For a "casual" MMO player playing 5 hours a week, the cost to them is less than $0.70/hour. I recently read in a MMO survey that an average player spends around 20 hours per week playing their MMO of choice. So for those players its literally pennies per hour.

The Daedalus Project is an excellent source of information on this subject.