I was recently introduced to the brilliant game ProgressQuest which, along with Bartle’s observations of the online gaming world, is rich in applications for understanding the real world, which can in many ways be compared to a large game.
Perhaps, a designed game?
ProgressQuest is stupid in the MMORPG practice of “grinding” to get experience points, that is, engaging in unpleasant behavior (killing non-player monsters) to achieve another end, especially an increase in levels, wealth, special weapons.
Just stop me, whenever you get the point of this analogy
ProgressQuest requires very little interaction from the player. If it requires communication, communication is pointless. For example, you can choose an organization – it doesn’t matter.
In the game, which plays itself out (the spoof is on the autokill function that frees the player from going through the same repetitive motions of the mini-combat), you go out into the “killing fields”. Here you kill monster after monster (serving customer after customer, write report after report, make call after call, …) each time you collect a small prize (thing of the monster that drops (joint bonus, sales commission, brand resume or publication record).When you have enough rewards, you automatically go back to the city to sell them for a level up (job upgrade, …) or a special weapon (holiday, new car, … ).
I’ve played it for half an hour now. I can’t help but admit that it’s a strangely interesting—like watching TV—sequence. It is “exciting” to see what you will kill next or what kind of “level” you will go to or what “special weapon” you will be able to buy.
It’s like real life…
Bartleby divided online gamers into four categories: achievers, explorers, assassins, and social gamers.
In short…
- Winners play to earn points, prizes, levels, weapons, etc. (do in the world).
- Socializers play to communicate with other players.
- Explorers play to interact with the world, discovering new things.
- Assassins play for players, that is, to kill them.
ProgressQuest is a cheat for achievers. Winners care more about progressing in the program. Most people are successful, so most online games, computer games—and dare I say the real world—are designed with achievers in mind. You can get them to do anything (mostly, give their time in the real world, and/or their hard-earned money in the game world) by creating titles, small prizes, special items, things they can hold on to. the land of their achievements.
Try clicking on the link and playing it for a while. Now, let’s say you got $50,000 a year just to watch it or maybe it wasn’t completely automatic, but you had to press A to attack, and occasionally go back to town to turn loot and experience into status tokens, that is, do. something mentally unmotivated on autopilot. Can you take the job?
Have a red pill 
He swallowed hard.
What really interests me is that this beautiful piece of social engineering works so well. I’m an ‘Explorer’, which I think has allowed me to figure out how the game works and ‘hack’ it enough to get out the back door. I “retired”—looking for ways to spend my time that don’t involve “achieving” and “being all I can be” by collecting levels, gold, and trinkets.
To use Gervais’ analogy, Killers are Sociopaths, Achievers are Clueless, and Socializers … well, the analogy disappears—or at least I don’t see it anymore. In the gaming world, Killers often attract fans who look up to them. I somehow look up to the Killers (maybe because they kill the winners… muhahaha 
). In the real world, Killers work on Wall Street and in high-class offices. I see Socializers as Eloiburgers and Achievers as Morlocks. Explorers are “criminals”. Assassins can’t touch them, and other groups don’t care about them. They exist outside the system, because they have gone beyond it.
Here the system we know is a college degree followed by 40 years of 9-5 jobs followed by a retirement home. This system is part of the world. Fortunately, there is still much to explore. The tricky part, with the idea of early retirement, is how to evaluate it. Much of the world is built around achievement in the sense of accumulating experience points. Been there, done that; life is too short. The challenge, now, is to find a different quest.
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First posted 2010-08-13 22:04:27.
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