trendpreneur

One of the coolest things I find about multiplayer gaming is emergent play — when players change the rules of the game, creating mods or even just rulesets that turn the tables on the developers’ vision. From zombie-rules to no scope, MMO achievement races and self-imposed hard-modes… when players are left alone long enough with a game, something tends to happen that makes you sit up and think.

I’m ashamed to admit I’ve not actually played Team Fortress 2 — I missed the boat when it first came out. But this player-created mod, “Prop Hunt”, is nothing short of awesome. One set of players spawns as ‘normal’ objects and attempts to ingratiate themselves with the scenery before the other team spawns and burns them all to death.

Cue hilariously-soundtracked video (Benny Hill wouldn’t go amiss) of people trying to burn down perfectly ordinary barrels, moving chairs and the occasional “Oh god, I’ve spawned as a frog…” moment. Almost makes me want to play the game, now.

I read an interesting post interviewing Chris Anderson, exponent of “Free” (as in beer) — one of today’s emergent business and social models. It’s an interesting topical conversation, what with Google butting heads with Microsoft over Chrome OS — ‘course, the idea of a free operating system competing with Windows is a crazy brand new innovation, innit.

It’s a move we’re all watching intently, of course. As Ben Parr outlines, this is all part of the Google Revenue Equation: the more time you spend on the web, the more Google benefits. Wave and Chrome OS are just feeding into that. This attitude to ‘free’ couldn’t be more different from the free-as-in-speech approach of the GPL and OSS activists, but do today’s Internet consumers actually care?

One of the points that grabbed me from the Anderson interview was right at the end:

…the games world is the most interesting laboratory for freemium right now, and I follow it more closely than any other industry.

Gaming’s been innovating with payment and subscription models, with delivery, with publicity, with ways to grab audience and ways to get people doing social things for yonks now. Create a social network or platform and sooner or later a killer game comes along, whether it’s throwing sheep at people or building a spy ring.

What I find fascinating is the emergence of a single type of game across Twitter, Facebook and the iPhone: if this is the future, I want out. There’s a standard formula for these games: pick a setting (Mafia, Spies, Pirates, Zombies, Vampires..), think of a few vaguely thematic quests, think of an excuse for people to fight each other, do quests, buy items to become more powerful, and (occasionally) feed a social aspect in: friends can be part of your spy ring, or mob, so the more friends you have playing the game the more powerful you become, etc.

These games are absorbing for a few minutes and fairly decently playable if you’ve got nothing else to do, because there’s a sense of constant improvement – yes, it’s basically a textual grind-based MMO that occasionally makes itself relevant by involving your friends. But with six among the top 25 free games, what’s interesting to me is how it all feeds back into this ‘free’ idea.

Why are these games free? They support themselves with ads and various point systems. Install apps from the same developer and get points, complete specific sponsor activities (sign up to spammy websites, for the most part) or exchange cold hard cash. The Spymaster guys are candid about revenue: high revenue per user, and doing fantastically against comparable products. Seems like when there’s an edge available over friends, there’s no shortage of players willing to pay, in money or time.

So how does this feed back into freemium? Ultimately, games work well with ad-supported systems, especially those which actively require you to do something like install a partner’s product, because the results feed straight back into the ingame reward system. People aren’t stupid, and if five minutes filling out a survey makes them a virtual millionaire, they’ll readily sign up.

But in the world of web apps, where there isn’t such an obvious kick-back, and where advertising rings are tacky, it’s doubtful the kind of model being used to great success with the clone army of text-based RPG/MMOs will ever take off. Certainly not in the enterprise world; some consumer web apps might make this work, for example, filling out partner surveys or advertising to have an ad-free Spotify for 24 hours.

In the end, it’s all about consumer effort vs reward. We have smart consumers. They understand things aren’t actually free to make, but they’re getting used to things being free to consume — and becoming blind to advertising on top of all this. The freemium users of today are often supported by the premium users, with the product itself acting as enticement to switch from one camp to the other; but what if the free users could support themselves, in much the same way these ad-supported gamers do?

There are many lessons to be learnt from taking part in the running of online organisations, and MMO guilds are no exception. Having participated at leadership level in both a professional FPS clan and a world-ranked WoW guild, I’ve noticed a lot of parallels between the two and plenty of lessons that reflect real-world situations perfectly. In the ‘MMO Manager’ series I’ll be looking at some of these situations and what we can learn from these virtual teams.

Selling through Interviews (Managing Expectations)

From Saturday job to the Cambridge milk-round, I’ve attended more interviews than I can count. They’re a two-way process: not only are you trying to predict whether the candidate would suit the job, the candidate is also assessing you in return. What impression do you want to give the candidate? Do you want them to walk away thinking that you’re their perfect employer, offering the perfect job? Do you want them to be excited about joining you for your own sake, rather than motivated by salary or location?

When it comes to MMO guild recruitment, especially at higher levels, selecting players is very much akin to recruiting employees. You’re asking people to commit to a certain amount of time – usually fixed hours – in return for rewards, to perform a particular task that they have experience doing, and to maintain set standards. However, players tend to have freedom of choice to some extent. If a guild really likes a player, but hasn’t convinced the player that they would find their perfect home, the guild’s offer of a place may not be accepted. (In a way this reminds me of the university selection process!)

One tactic I’ve seen used to great extent in my current World of Warcraft guild is to sell the guild through interviews with potential recruits, especially through asking key questions that reveal the guild’s self-image and goals. What I find somewhat amusing is that these questions are sometimes misrepresentative: the guild’s image of itself doesn’t quite match up to the reality. Recruits buy into the glamour of being a top-ranked guild, and only realise that it’s more or less the same as their old one once they join and are trapped for a month — disturbingly similar to jobs’ notice periods.

People don’t react well to overt sales pitches, especially if they think you are trying to curry favour. However, by working ’sales’ points into interview questions, you get to see if your interviewee has ethics and goals in line with yours, as well as emphasising the positives about your workplace and the role on offer. An example may be to ask a programmer if she enjoys hobby projects, and what she would do if given 20% of her ‘work’ time to play around with cool stuff using the company’s resources. For a lot of hackers this aspect of a job would be very welcome, and a major selling point; by asking directly about it you get to find out what the candidate is excited about, and whether the company would gain from this employee’s ‘hobby’ efforts.

Money’s important, especially in current times (trite, but true). So how do you make it go as far as possible?

One way is to get a free pass into a highly-regarded industry conference, and today’s tip is for anyone in gaming — or who wants to be. The Conference Associate program at GDC (the Game Developers Conference), for those accepted, is basically a free ticket loaded with extras. Having taken part for the 2008 conference, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Becoming a CA gets you instant membership into a warm, tight-knit ‘family’ of people from all sorts of backgrounds — students, developers, gamers, freelancers, and so on. Not only do you get to wear a brightly coloured t-shirt and feel important (contributing about 20 hours of mainly stewarding work to help the conference run smoothly), you get an all access pass, a great community and plenty of free lunches. Plus, there’s accommodation help so you get to make your first new friends from day one. It’s impossible to stay shy for long as a CA, and although it’s undoubtedly work you can avoid by paying the entry fee, it’s well worth it.

I’ve not seen similar programs for other conferences, and I wish there were more in existence. The networks created by these behind-the-scenes volunteers are as valuable as the money saved in the first place, and those wanting to travel to interesting events on a budget — burgeoning bloggers, startups, and the aforementioned students, at least — get a chance to make life easier for the organisers as well as benefit themselves. Still, if you’re interested in gaming, try the CA program — I’ll hopefully be doing so again next year.

[Flickr photo by Yuan-Ho Chlang.]

Update, November 2009: The CA program registration for 2010 is now open, apply before Jan 14th (applications sent later will be put on the reserve list if accepted). Hot tip straight from Tim and Ian: write a great application essay!