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Riding the Failure Cascade
An anonymous reader writes "The Escapist has up an article looking at a curve that represents the dissolution of large social groups, like online guilds. Called the Failure Cascade, it's essentially a way of examining the dissociation of members of an organization predicated on a culture of success. They primarily explore this phenomenon using descriptions of EVE corporate alliances. 'These are the two forces at work in [an] alliance's failure cascade: the individual and the guild ... This happens because the failure cascade is the inverse of a network effect. Websites like MySpace define their value by the people that use the service just as guilds define their quality by their members. As bad events cause players to leave or become inactive, the quality drop leads others to do the same in a spiral that rarely stabilizes, until no one is left.'"
Anyone here? Where did you all go?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The article could be summarised as so:
People leave guilds.
More people leave guilds.
No one is left in guild.
Guild dies.
I wonder if the RIAA and MPAA will figure out that DRM and huge lawsuits with huge awards simply results in a cascading decline of their products as customers become upset and leave.
The truth shall set you free!
I never thought I'd see a failure cascade, let alone create one!
I feel so topical and current! I just wrote the same thing about Microsoft, detailing the spiral pattern affecting the company's entire consumer product lineup, from Zune to Windows to Office to Xbox to WinCE/Windows Mobile. Will the last person left please turn off the lights?
Soviet Microsoft: How Resistance to Free Markets and Open Ideas Will the Unravel the Software Superpower
Somewhat ironically, one of the most financially successful capitalist companies of the 90s has positioned itself as a modern counterpart to the old communist Soviet Union. Microsoft's ideological contempt for and resistance to free markets and the open expression and propagation of fresh ideas and technologies is not only a close parallel of the old USSR, but also a clear reflection of why Microsoft is currently failing and why its troubles have only just begun. Here's a comprehensive look at why this is the case.
What happens when Republicans lose the White House in 2008? As a brand, Democrats didn't decline in popularity after their 2004 defeat (or after 2000). But Republicans did decline after their 2006 losses - though they'd started after their 2004 victories, and regained some shortly after the 2006 upsets. Maybe political parties act different.
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make install -not war
Mercenary Coalition: "If you cant play with us for 16 hours a day, you're kicked out." I played in eve for 3 years (since beta 6 for those keeping score) and went with the same group of people from failed corp to failed corp, alliances that rose and broke (the OLLDDD Stain Alliance, before the MC existed) and the into the MC which had its own people who left (TC), the problem is that its hard to draw a solid line between "hardcore" gaming for people who have the time to do so, and "casual" gaming for people who play when they have time to do so and want to do so. That being said, both mindsets usually collide at some point and the "hardcore" people go one way, and the "casuals" go the other. You keep seeing these splits as peoples lives/jobs/relationships change. Some group that is good for several years will all of the sudden change when for example, someone gets a new job, or a leader almost loses his family, or school. That being said, it will probably always keep happening. History repeats.
The 'culture of success' is no simple analogy, and can have adverse effects as well. There was a Weapons Factory clan that was founded on success at all costs (they went by the symbol "$"), and they managed to claw their way to the top (mostly through questionable and 'slight' game modifications that weren't exactly botting, but weren't exactly fair play, either - e.g. setting the client binds so that a normally silent cloaked spy player would have nice, loud footsteps to the defending player's ears... meaning they're much easier to locate. Just one of a mountain of examples).
This eventually killed off the entire MOD... folks didn't want to have to deal with outright cheaters (not bot-users, just cheaters), so the clans died off one by one, since most of them were only in it for the fun. Once the clans left, the cascade took down a lot of public servers with it (it didn't help that the Quake 3 MOD's main coder eventually became a member of that same clan, and actively implemented changes as suggested by same...) It had been bad enough that the shift from Quake 2 to Quake 3 had done quite a bit of damage to the MOD's player base, but the clan's modus operandi were eventually too much for the community - they still survive as a small shadow group, and occasionally play on a part-time server. Compared to the days when literally thousands of players could be found on hundreds of servers? Just a faint shadow.
Nowadays, most games are fairly cheat and bot-proof (I said fairly, not mostly or certainly). But the same dynamics are at play - a clan/guild/whatever that makes success their only goal will invariably attract the kinds of players you don't want on any server/world/etc, and tends to ruin the gameplay for everyone else while they're at it. While yes they do set themselves up for failure more readily than those who form just for fun, they also tend to start getting desperate when normal gameplay doesn't offer them the success they need to stay alive. This means they may start looking at 'alternatives' to try and keep the mojo going.
IMHO, the best organizations are those who simply do it for fun, and have a cadre of players who are really into the game. Again at the Weapons Factory example, the Quake2 version had a clan that were the friendliest and most respected guys in town... Population Control Incorporated (PCI). These guys had ISDN connections when the vast majority of players were on modems, but they always played fair, and the matches (at that time) were tightly regulated and fair. The funny thing is, this particular clan did it just for the fun of it. They'd go out of their way to mentor new players on a public server, and to make it fun for the whole pile playing (for instance, if more than one were playing on the same public server and it was full of unknowns or newbies, they'd automatically split themselves among the two teams). They were a stand-up group of people, and it showed in their playing style. It's still a pity they disbanded during the Quake 2/3 shift, but as they themselves said - they held the top slot for too long, many members got burned out from playing the game for literally years, and they pretty much came together and decided that it was time. Most stayed played on for fun (but never joined a clan again) in the Quake 2 version with the occasional fun meet-up matches, until the Q2 version of the MOD finally died a quiet death around 2002 or so... 3 years after Quake 3 came out.
I believe that all organizations begin, they (might) rise, and they (certainly) fall. Some do it short, some take awhile. Some end by mutual agreement. Most are benign, some are poisonous. A precious few even shift from one game to another together.
It's a complex dynamic in any organization, but I kinda like how TFA articulated at least one aspect of it...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The mathematical study of this process could be potentially quite interesting, analogous to the study of critical points and phase transitions in statistical physics. By systematically studying the rise and decline of stable structures in online communities like guilds it could give some insight into a real life version of psychohistory. Indeed, these online groups are microcosms for the real world, but where certain parameters could be controlled and studied. Unfortunately, this article has nothing to do with that and simply seems to be a personal lament about how sometimes online guilds fall apart. It is a bummer for many-a-gamer, but not exactly groundbreaking stuff here.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Or
Life, as shallow as you like.
Deleted
It wasn't a clan per se, but there was once a group of players I regularly hung out with when the ex was at work (I had no real responsibilities back then, and it beat hitting the bars with the buddies). Everyone would hit a Quake 2 WF server in the wee hours, hang out in observation mode, chat, and play... it was like hanging out with friends at a public pool - you blather on w/ each other a lot, and occasionally jump in the pool and goof off - with the added dimension of giving each other a ration of shit when they were playing and did something dumb (which we would all laugh our asses off at - including the one who goofed).
It wasn't about scores, or standings - most of us in there were fairly solid players who could easily hold our own on nearly any public server (lag permitting). It was about hanging out in something that was new and unfamiliar to most of us in there. It was about a female player (she lived in Utah) blurting poetry in rhythmic time to the goofball sounds that would come out of the screen. It was about telling dirty jokes to distract a flag runner while he was trying to hold off three pursuing defenders. It was about seeing who could stick a sentry gun in the most weird-assed place on a map (you could get them to 'stick' to ceilings if you knew how), or getting a flag without ever touching the ground (or flying - grapple only, please). It was about seeing who could make a flag run as the weakest character, with only that shitty no-damage blaster, and with no help doing it... and everyone (including the defending players) cheering like mad when someone pulled it off.
It's things like that you simply cannot fully analyze, but its things like that which are vital to making and keeping a coherent group of players involved and happy.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Okay, does anyone else think would be an awesome guild name?
I think Wikipedia is a prominent example of this. Assholes(deletionists) are driving away the people who made it great in the first place(content creators) with their elitism and petty power grabs. And now, Wikimedia is only able to achieve 1/4 of their fundraising goal because a lot of the content creators were probably money contributors as well.
Congratulations asshole deletionists. You may finally achieve the ultimate deletion-the entire encyclopedia.
Watch highly touted stocks when they hit a wall. A lot of stocks are bouyed by the push to love them and nothing else. Once the push stops, the bottom falls out.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
"An SAP implementation."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's interesting that in EvE, the most vulnerable alliances are the ones that are most democratic.
The article is a really horrible description of what happened. The goons launched a combination of raw propoganda as well as propoganda targetted to specific events. Defeats for the goons were absorbed and made part of the culture. Wins were beaten into the ground as a failing on the part of the enemy. An impressive spy and saboture network was fully exploited in terms of economic and military assistance, as well as in the propoganda.
"Failure Cascade" was a term coined by The Mittani, the leader of the Goon Intelligence Agency (GIA). It seems to apply mostly to the application of public opinion and propoganda to widen rifts and blame games within an enemy organization. If the logistics people make a mistake, any military victories are met with comments on the pointlessness of fighting when the territory-holding infrastructure won't hold. Same thing applies to military losses in the face of stout infrastructure. Pretty soon the fighters and logisticians are distrustful and burnt out, not trusting the others to do their jobs.
Enemy command structures are infiltrated and often the goon populace knows as much or more about internal workings as the rank and file members. After the fighters begin got get more confirmed leaks from their leadership on public boards than they do on private boards, a rift is formed and further exploited. At some point, these rifts become self sustaining -- a "failure cascade". It's not unrecoverable.
Democratic alliances are more vulnerable because there are more rifts. People bring up and participate and lose in the democratic process, causing a LOT of "I told you so"s and "If you'd only gone my way..." to exploit. An alliance with ideals presents a target for showing hypocracy within the leadership. The best defense seems to be playing in a largely amoral, berserker-don't-give-a-damn-about-loses style.
People just get tired of them and when a few most vocal persons leave or are kicked out everyone else leaves too. Woow.
The idea that membership will generally grow or decline in spurts is nothing new. While this subject could be grounds for an interesting analysis in the context of an MMO social organization and how it affects the community of a specific game, but when no specific examples are given with supporting data, why exactly would someone write an article, or more importantly, why would anyone want to read it? The Escapist has long suffered from filler articles, written by people who claim to be game designers, but in reality many of the contributors have only plotted out a D&D dungeon back on graph paper. This article is no exception. By reading the article, it's fairly clear the author is a member of this so-called "Great" organization, the Goon Fleet, and like most of the kids who bounce around in the Something Awful crowd, they seek attention without really justifying it. Come on Escapist, get some quality control. You need to fill a set amount of pages each week, but please avoid publishing articles that don't offer an interesting subject or conclusion.
In one case, the catalyst was the company being sold. In the other case, it was near-criminal behavior of a newly added team member.
I've seen this often in real life, going back as far as 21 years ago.
Personally, I'm a risk-taker, but not a long term responsible individual. My failures in business or projects have generally come from a lack of finding responsible people who can carry the long term needs after the risk I take starts earnings its rewards. I ran a succssful BBS 2 decades ago, and I saw many failures due to there being a risk taker who took off, leaving the responsible ones with no "leader."
I think the same is true in social groups, although maybe it isn't the factor of having a risk-taker, but having a natural leader who others look to for support even if it is purely "spiritual" in nature.
I run a not-for-profit that works with hundreds of churches, and I see the same thing. The leader leaves, retires, dies, whatever: the church falls apart. Recently a large client of mine went under after 25 years of being in business. The boss left, leaving his responsible managers but no leader/risk-taker.
There's nothing to see here. These are proven truths over millenia that have surfaced in every area of life: politics, businesses, faiths, even families. If there isn't a new leader to move the group in a direction away from complacency, the group will fail. Sometimes a responsible individual finds a natural tendency to lead/take new risks in new directions, but I'm not sure its a matter of nurturing those skills. I do believe firmly that there is a natural propensity to either being responsible, or being risky. A very rare few have both talents, although I personally have never met anyone like that. It's either one or the other, generally.
The majority, though, seem to have neither. They want to follow in hopes that some day they will lead, but in the end they're driven to neither. They follow long enough until it is obvious that they'll never lead (because they don't push to become an obvious leader/risk-taker), so they fall away from the project. In this case, though, I don't see many failures, because a natural leader has a tendency to attract others to the project. When that risk taker gets bored, runs out of money, or gets caught up in something else, the project fails.
Every project I've worked on that has failed has been my fault, and no one else's. Usually it boiled down to getting bored, but sometimes it was pure irresponsibility. Sometimes it was a lack of trusting another person to take over for me, at which point I put too much burden on the future leader, and they left. Life lessons.
Considering that I first heard the term "failure cascade" at least as early 1995, it seems unlikely that the term was first coined by someone playing a game that was introduced in 2003. I am pretty sure the term is older than that. The term is based on cascade failures of electrical systems which is a concept that goes back to at least 1965. I would guess that the term was first applied to organizations in the 1970's by one of the many management consultants or motivational speakers who made a name for themselves then.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
My VO guild is still alive. Probably. I haven't actually logged in for over six months...
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM