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When Work is a Game
Ever willing to explore the hidey-holes of thought, the Terra Nova blog has a discussion up this week talking about play as production. IE: What makes people willing to engage in 'productive play', like the crafting mini-games of Star Wars Galaxies or A Tale in the Desert? They also touch on the more pragmatic 'productive play', gold farming. From the article: "The outsourcing of labor is another interesting trajectory. We know that people outsource, for instance, 'Adena farmers' in Lineage, low-wage workers who farm for game currency to sell on the 'black market.' This creates interesting class and even race tensions, such as the Lineage 2 scenario described at State of Play 2004 by Constance Steinkhueler. Here, Adena farmers typically took the roles of female elf warriors (primarily for farming efficiency reasons); as a result, this race/class in the game began experiencing racial slurs and attacks by players who associated it with Adena farming."
I think the distinction from my message still stands:
- If I'm doing it for fun, and I'm free to do it or not, and when to do it, then it's "play"
- If I'm doing it because someone made me do it, and doubly so if it has some deadlines and schedules I must meet, then it's "work"
The same distinction appeared in the lawsuit of the UO volunteers vs EA and Origin. If you give someone schedules and goals they must meet, and X hours per week that they _have_ to do that stuff, then it's no longer "play". It's "work."
I think the same applies here. Whether it's actually resulting in a finished physical product (e.g., my "crafting" potions actually controls some RL lab equipment), or it's game content (e.g., if the game lets you create new content for the other players), or it's "services" (e.g., acting like an unpaid support help-desk for confused newbies), or whatever, is in the end irrelevant. The question is whether I'm doing it for fun, whenever I want to, or not at all if I don't want to. If "yes", then it's "play", if "no", then it's "work".
I don't really see an ethical problem in either case:
- if it's purely kept at "play" level, I have no problem with whatever other benefits they get out of it. But then by definition they can't give me deadlines or goals to meet. This means that they're willing to take the risk that I'll not log on at all in one day, or maybe log on only to chat, or maybe I'll screw up every single crafted product today, e.g., by aborting it in mid-crafting or pressing the wrong buttons. (Which, if there's some actual machinery following my actions, will result in ruined products or materials for the company.) Or maybe I'll quit without notice and move to another game, and they can't give me an NDA or non-compete clause. To still qualify as "play", they're gonna have to accept those risks, and methinks they won't want to.
- if it's "work", then, well, I think the same applies as with any other job. They _can_ give me goals and schedules, but I'll negotiate an adequate salary for my work. Sure, liking my job is an important factor, and it will certainly get factored in my decision whether to take the job or not. (It got factored in taking my current programming job too, after all.) But in the end it's just a job interview. No more, no less.
The only ethical problem arises when a company tries to, well, basically lie to you. I see no need for euphemisms there. If they try to make it sound like "play", but have the expectations associated with "work", then it's simply put a fraud. And as EA and Origin found out, it might even be against the law too. If you expect "work" from someone, then you might have to pay them at least the minimum wage, and accept that they have the same legal rights as any other workers. (E.g., you might not be able to "ban" them without notice, starting immediately, unless you have a damn good legal ground for that.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Boil it down to the following:
1) Take an activity you really enjoy doing, and don't feel would become "tedious work" if you did it for substantial portions of each day.
2) Find a way to get paid for this. There is *always* a way to do this, however, it leads to 3:
3) What material goods/activities/services do you want? What will your standard of living cost?
If the amount you make from 2 is greated than the amount you need to be happy outside of work (3), you win! Begin your new happy life.
If it's not (which it usually isn't, unfortunately), you have to either find a way to increase your wages or decrease your cost of living. You alone can set that median point at which you're happy.
If you don't make enough money, the fun activity will still become tedious and eventually drive you to hate it, because you can't afford to do the things you want to do outside of work. Likewise, in a job you don't like, it would take substantially more money to allow you to find enough things you enjoy outside of work to make you happy. Sometimes, this is impossible (money can't buy happiness, etc)
So you're on the right track, think of it like a slider
*---------X----------------------*
With fun on the left, money on the right. As one increases, the other decreases (not always the case). It's generally easier to have fun in lower paying jobs (more people want them) than higher paying jobs, from my experience.
Either way, I hope you do find something where you can strike a balance and do a job that blurs the line for you.
IMO his argument is not as absurd as one might be inclined to think. He argues that there is something wrong with the way money was created (and still is) by banks simply lending money they do not have, and then having it paid back to them. In comtemporary terms we would summarize his argument by saying that money creation in western society is a supply-side economic process. Heinlein argues that this is inherently bad, and gives rise to the same problems that similar supply side policies produce. He argues that simply creating demand directly would have solved the economic issues of his day. More simply, it is not necessary to provide inducements to business, as long as you have DEMAND, the businesses will be alright anyway. He also responds to the critique that this policy would cause runaway inflation by arguing that the value of fiat money is really a measurement of the people's faith in the stability of the government. Germany in the 1920's had horrific runaway inflation because the people had no faith in the stability of the government at all. As paper money has really always been a guarantee that you will be able to procure value from the government with said paper. In the past, this meant that one could take one's paper money and redeem it for an appropriate amount of gold, silver, or other commodity. In Heinlein's society, this value was largely that one could pay taxes with it.