Baffled By the Obsession With Pretend-Business Games

theodp writes "Newsweek's Daniel Lyons confesses to being mystified by all the people tending to their virtual farms and virtual pets on Facebook. Even stranger, he says, is their willingness to spend real money to buy virtual products, like pretend guns and fertilizer, to gain advantage in these Web-based games. Pretend products are a serious business, estimated to grow to $1.6B next year, and have captured the attention of economists and academics who view the virtual economy as a lab for modeling behavior in the real world. Still, Lyons can't help but question whether the kind of people who spend hours online taking care of imaginary pets are representative of the rest of the population. 'The data might be "perfect" and "complete,"' says Lyons, 'but the world from which it's gathered is anything but that.'"

Comments

Business Games

[sopssa]

I was more surprised by the title, and then summary disappointed me with Farmville and other crap. Where have the actual business games gone? We had titles like Capitalism II, all the different kinds of tycoon, simulators... Where are those now?

Re:Business Games

[MattGWU]

Went to Second Life, for the most part! Can be Land Tycoon, Mall Tycoon, BDSM Gear Tycoon, whatever you want! You'll need a store, products, a marketing plan, heck, servers! A lot of the concerns and requirements of a real business are present in the SL enterprise, if on a smaller scale. For a 'business sim', it's pretty complete, and the money is real!

Bell Curve Appeal

[stewbacca]

These games appeal to the 50th percentile. More "serious" video games require more time investment and interest, which is out of the realm of possibility for most normal folks.

The same reason is why we have so many bland US and Japanese brand sedans, and unexciting light fixtures, and bland music, and beige computers (less, these days though). By definition, there are more people in the 50th percentile, thus we will always have woefully average stuff.

Re:Bell Curve Appeal

[thetoadwarrior]

That's false. Most people I know spend *way* more time on Farmville than I've spend on, for instance, Contra 4 or Dead Space.

I spend more time on casual games, like Sim Tower, than "hardcore" games. Casual people just tell themselves they spend less time on games because to say you spend loads of time on a game apparently makes you a dork and a loser

If only we could harness this in RL

[Junior J. Junior III]

I think this is an indicator that a lot of people would like to own/operate a business, and have an entrepreneurial spirit, but are too bogged by the realities of risk and especially legal burden to carry out their entrepreneurial instinct in real life. Imagine how many jobs we could create if people felt safe enough to be able to play these games in the real world.

Re:If only we could harness this in RL

[Bodhammer]

I don't play these games. As far as starting a business, I would love to own my own business. I'm more concerned about the governments (local, state, federal) and the IRS than I am about my competition and legal concerns. The progressives are hell-bent at destroying and redistributing wealth, they are dangerous, clueless, and evil.

Re:If only we could harness this in RL

[Crudely_Indecent]

My wife and daughters play these stupid games. Superpokepets and Farm[town|ville] consume hours of their day.

My daughters, not so much, but my wife thinks that all computer oriented activities are game-play. She doesn't regard what I do as "work" because the only activities she participates in on a computer are games, therefore all computer activities are games. I'll admit that a few times a year I'll indulge in a game of Civilization, but I'm a bit more focused on my work because I actually enjoy it.

Occasionally I'll remind her that only a few hours of my work on a computer pays our cell phone bill while a few hours of her playing games costs in electricity usage. The concept of computers being tools for business still escapes her, so I'm in the doghouse most of the time for "playing" on the computer.

Thankfully, she's obeyed my mandate that no actual money be spent on these games.

Re:If only we could harness this in RL

[Corporate Troll]

Obviously you never have to deal with complete computer illiterate people. My wife has a very hard time understanding what I do and that what I do in the day isn't the same as what I do on my computer in the evening. To her it ALL looks the same. Sure, I can tell her what I do, but essentially it becomes a phrase she tells people when they ask her what I do. It has no significance at all to her (and to most people, in fact).

Same with my mom (but it became better over the years). I distinctly remember, back in my teenage years (that's a very long time ago), that I showed her a sorting algorithm I invented (years later, I got to know it as "Bubble Sort" and that in fact it is horrible, but how would a young teen know?). Her reaction was in the lines of "You spent so many hours on the computer for /this/?". Utterly devastating for me, but I don't blame her. This simply isn't part of her world.

Even today, I see so many people of my generation, actively avoiding computers. My younger sisters generation is better and she had the big advantage of having computers around her for all the time she remembers, mainly because of me and my dad (who is a proto-geek). She's just 5 years younger, but it makes a difference.

So, yes, I can totally see people equating "playing computers" with "using computers". If that's the only problem the guy has with his wife, he's lucky. Believe me, I have many more problems with my wife... *sigh*

Re:If only we could harness this in RL

[Bodhammer]

I'm a liar for expressing my personal concerns? Wow... The progressive groupthink virus has struck here.

You convinced me with your cogent argument. I turned off FN and now I believe all government activity is benevolent and good. Thanks!

Proof please of the very little paperwork statement? You have no idea about what I might do or how I might do it. Before you shoot off your mouth about things you know nothing about and state it as fact you might want to do a little research. Do you know what is required to sell food? Give legal or financial advice? Handle chemicals involved in manufacturing? Produce hazardous waste? Provide any service that touch people from a hair salon to a hospital? Oh, and if I want to do it in multiple states, it doubles or triples.

If I started a business your type would be the kind demanding that I give you the job because it was your right and then you would complain about the lack of free, dolphin-safe, green, holistic massages in the ADA compliant chanting room.

If I wanted to start a business and have an employee, it would cost me on average $27.42 per hour.
The legally required compensation items average 8.2 percent of total compensation. Most companies have a lower profit margin than that pre-tax.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm

Let's assume my goal is to make $100,000/year. At a 5% profit margin I would need $2,000,000/yr of revenue. How much of my personal capital should I put up? How much should I borrow? What new regulations will come next year? Should I have US employees (at $27.42/hour * 2080 hours a year is $57,033) or buy from China and India and let them deal with the toxic waste from the manufacturing site while my IP is stolen? I plan to do something a little more complex than a porn site in mom's basement... Your business acumen and advice is welcome!

I also think it is interesting that the most vicious attacks here in this response thread were posted by ACs... It is always ad hominem attacks that generalize and mis-characterize. Civil discourse and rational discussion is dying, the end of true freedom is not far behind that and it is sad.

MMORPGS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Last night I got drunk.

In my stupor, I decided to play a Korean MMORPG that consumed about 4 years of my life. I went through a cached version of the fansite forums. 300 posts by myself. Did I really type like that?

At any rate, I fired up the client and connected to a private server. Instantly, I felt my right wrist seizing up a bit... as if it was anticipating the pain from the click-fest (I broke several LMBs playing this game). I remembered how much this game sucked. The game is just a glorified treadmill. Getting to maxlevel (110) doesn't net you any special reward. It was really pointless.

What does this have to do with the current topic? The Social. The social aspect is the only reason I played for so long. It could have been a korean mmo game, it could have been a farm simulation, it could have been an online poker site, it could have been a tower defense game. It didn't matter. It was always about the social. Thats the only reason I played that stupid game for so long.

And that's why a lot of people on the social networking sites play those socially networked games. Not because they are economic simulators, but because everyone else plays them and it's a way to pass the time. Nothing too deep from my pov.

achievement porn

[merreborn]

The people who play these games are, as a blogger recently put it, addicted to fake achievement. They want to fill the bar over and over again, level up, and unlock the next item.

It's really not that baffling. People like winning. The actual value of the "win" is often unimportant.

Stupidity

[DaMattster]

This is a shame that people have become so stupid as to purchase virtual pets and virtual things to get ahead in a role playing game. I have to say it, people need to get out more often. The fact that this has become a 1.6bn business is really, really sad. What ever happened to buying old cars and restoring them or going on bike rides or outdoor activites?

Re:Actually, I disagree

[ultranova]

1. The notions that adventure games disappeared because people are dumb, was false all the time. The adventure games market was actually a growing market when it got dumped by the publishers. There never was as much as a dip in sales, it went up each year... then nearly went extinct.

Adventure games went extinct because they are, to put it bluntly, a horrible game format. At each and every point of the game you're trying to guess how the adventure maker wants this puzzle to be solved. You (usually) can't use common sense, you (usually) can't use real-world problem-solving, you (never) can't use creativity; you simply have to guess what to do in order for the game to process.

Some of these new-fangled physics simulators might allow adventure games to become big again, but I suspect it'll take real strong AI that can model the results of unpredictable player actions in order to really happen. Then again, that shouldn't be more than a few years away...

But that's not the point

[Moraelin]

But that's not the point. People were buying them anyway, and buying more boxes each year. There was no point at which the buyers rejected them.

There was a point where the _publishers_ rejected them, because bang per buck another genre offered comparable sales for a lot less buck. But that's not nearly the same issue.

Basically blaming their supposed loss of popularity on anything (low IQ, bad format, gameplay, etc) before establishing if such a loss of popularity actually existed (and, again, check out Sierra's own statements: it didn't exist) is simply what's called "tooth fairy science." You know, the kind where you build a whole theory about the tooth fairy, and which teeth are in higher demand, and whatnot, before you have any support or evidence for the existence of a tooth fairy at all.