What government bailouts can teach us about World of Warcraft, part II
After the bailout package was rammed through Congress — against the wishes of both congressmen who I actually like — people were shocked and amazed that the executives of the companies that had just been handed a trillion dollars of our money threw a giant celebration.
Why is it a surprise to anyone that, when a system is put in place to establish incentives for failure, failure becomes glorified? In a sense, those people and those companies "won;" I mean, hey, they got a shitload of free money, right? So the incentive to succeed — or, more to the point here, not to fail — would be… what again? This is the exact same scenario that appeared when Blizzard first implemented rewards for the losing side in a battleground. All of a sudden the "powerlosing" strat became viable, and people who actually attempted to play the battleground and actually tried to win were consistently heckled by the others for "dragging the game out" instead of just losing as quickly as possible to facilitate the accumulation of rewards. In turn, Blizzard has added system upon complicated system in an attempt to encourage people to play the game instead of sitting at the Relief Hut and waiting for the horde to win — deserter debuffs for people who go AFK, a "kick vote" system like you may find on many FPS servers, and so forth. None of this has solved the problem, which I emphasise did not exist before incentives for losing were added to the game.
Perhaps if more government officials played World of Warcraft they’d understand.
Rewards… for losing? That’s pretty whacked. I mean, I’ve never played any of the *craft games, but it seems like the loser of a battle should come out only maybe having gained a better idea of what strategy he might use to win next time.
And hey, government officials playing WoW. How about presidential candidates? Send them off to the battlegrounds to fight it out. Sort of like the Thunderdome idea I’ve seen a couple of times.
Comment by Nyperold | 6 November 2008
Yeah, see, that’s what I figured too. But all the kids started whining about how hard it is to get their ubar l33t epixx when they can’t seem to win a match, and Blizzard obliged by giving handouts. And then immediately sprung up the plague of people taking advantage of the system. Just keep that in mind the next time Congress starts handing out your money to companies that went bankrupt.
As for presidential candidates playing WoW — hey, I’d gank Obama or McCain any day of the week. And I’d camp Hillary Clinton or Mike Huckabee like there’s no tomorrow.
Comment by Darien | 7 November 2008