Welcome to the 1,171st edition of Loading...
Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and
commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.
The so-called marshmallow test was a simple psychological
metric to how well kids with more inclination defer gratification for
greater future rewards went on to fare later in life. Four year-olds
that that held off on eating a marshmallow for 20 long minutes got a
second marshmallow and, the study showed, went on to be better
adjusted, smarter students. How does the concept of deferred
gratification apply to MMOs? In today's Loading... The Marshmallow
Test, I'll argue that MMO designers could use the concept of deferred
gratification to change the level-up grind into something more
emotionally compelling.
The Pulse
You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the
result is the Ten Ton Pulse (
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/thepulse/" target="_blank">What
is The Pulse?).
Here's today's top 5 Pulse results:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/41"
target="_blank">World of Warcraft -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/860">Champions
Online - href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/254">Aion
- Dungeons
& Dragons Online -
EverQuest
2
Biggest movers this past week:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/39">Fallen
Earth (UP 2 to #9) -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/115">Dragon
Age Origins (down 2 to #14) -
EVE
Online (down 1 to #10)
MMO Releases
-
8/25
- CrimeCraft
(release date) - 9/1 -
Champions
Online (release date) - 9/9
- Dungeons
& Dragons Online Unlimited (release date) - 9/15
- Runes
of Magic "The Elven Prophecy" (expansion) - 9/22
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/177">Fallen
Earth (release date) - 9/22
- Aion
(release date)
Releases
Important
Dates
- 10/1 -
10/3 - href="http://fanfest.eveonline.com/">EVE Online FanFest - 10/23 - 10/24
- Hero-Con
Loading... Daily
One very simple way to measure a pre-schooler's inclination to defer
gratification for a greater reward was the so-called marshmallow test.
A four year-old is given a marshmallow and told that
if he or she can
just hold off on eating the marshmallow for 20 minutes, a second
marshmallow with no strings attached will be the prize. Besides being
one of the crueler schemes of the Stanford psych department, a group of
kids were given the test in the 1960s and, low and behold, those that
held out scored better on their SATs and were better adjusted and more
dependable in adolescence.
Simple as it way, it was a landmark experiment in child development and
education, and development specialists agree that there's a pretty
strong correlation between the ability to delay gratification and a
person's chances of success. That stands to reason: if you're playing
chess and can forego the quick satisfaction of capturing a bishop to
set up your opponent's queen for a takedown, you're more likely to win.
If you have good study habits and won't let yourself quit until you
thoroughly understand the material, you're more likely to pick up
something useful that leads to success in your career field.
MMOs teach a lot of patience, especially in an gaming age of casual
games and cheap thrills. Blizzard maintains, for example, that despite
any future expansions for WoW, the time to level cap will remain at its
current ~65 hours. Yet the time it takes to get yourself a full set of
top-tier armor runs into the hundreds of hours, and sooner or later all
your armor will be obsolete. The carrot might still be on the end of
the stick, but the stick has a way of growing like Pinochio's nose at a
press conference. That's a powerful argument for the game-hoppers -
think of the experiences in other games you're passing up by running
and rerunning the same endgame instances ad nauseum.
Deferring gratification means walking a fine line. Making players wait
too long for the goods means grinding down your potential audience down
to only the most hardcore, but give too many handouts too soon and
there's no reason for any overachiever to continue on. But
playing Mass Effect while waiting in queues last weekend convinced me
that MMOs can do more to make deferred gratification interesting and
fun, especially with story.
In Mass Effect, as in games like the KOTOR and Fable series before it,
you're often presented with two ways to handle the situation at hand.
One's the cheap and marginally evil way that promises shorter
completion and a nicer reward, another is the more ethical or legal way
that probably takes longer and promises little beyond rote quest
completion, some possible future benefits someday, and the adulation of
the good angel on your shoulder. Which decision path leads to
more success in the future may or may not be pre-determined, the fun is
the emotional attachment you develop with the decisions you make and
that lingering sense of "did I do the right thing?" - which is a fun
bit of philosophical woolgathering since there's no real life
consequences attached. You end up more engaged with the story because
you're constantly seeking validation or evidence to support your
decisions.
Whether that can work in an MMO setting is something I think we're all
hoping that SW:TOR will decide in the affirmative, and any game
designer will tell you that branching content is the nightmare that
keeps on giving. Still, for story to matter, choices have to matter,
and if (as in real life) taking the longer, ethical way around usually
pays off in an MMO, it could mean the difference between a painful
level-up grind and an emotionally-charged story driven experience.
Would players hit level cap in days if taking a longer, more
compellingly story-driven path eventually delivered them at level cap
with some of the best equipment in the game? Taking your time with the
content is still its own reward, but why couldn't MMO developers
incentivize a healthier, more interesting level-up approach, especially
when it makes business sense? Your thoughts welcome in the
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=46576">Loading...
forum.
Shayalyn's Epic Thread of
the Day
From our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6">Articles,
News & Events Discussion
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=46534">Gamers
Gone Wild - Are Women Objectified in MMOs?
Are women objectified in MMOGs? To answer that question, you might have
to take a look at the definition of "objectify:"
ob·jec·ti·fy
transitive verb
1 : to treat as an object or cause to have objective reality
2 : to give expression to (as an abstract notion, feeling, or ideal) in
a form that can be experienced by others
Are
women treated as objects, as definition 1 suggests? There's no shortage
of scantily clad virtual female forms in most MMOGs. Are women in MMOGs
used to give expression to something abstract in a
form that
can be experienced by others? Well, um...maybe.(Don't think on that too
hard.)
Perhaps
the bigger question is whether women mind being objectified in online
games. I know I don't have much of a problem living a virtual life as
some sexy, sassy avatar I've created--to me, it's fun to step into that
persona while kicking bad guy ass. But maybe I
style="font-style: italic;">should mind. You
tell me. Check out Medawky's
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74714">editorial
on the subject, and then
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=46534">comment
in this already busy thread.
==============================
Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread
"Yes, of course they are
objectified! Why? MMOs grew out of a culture aimed at the 16-30ish male
demographic. Be it comic books, fantasy (Heavy Metal any one?), or SF
(Heinlein?), all of these things had highly stylized females, with the
obvious focus on sexuality."
- Thansal
==============================
Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=32559">Tell
us!
4 new Ten Ton Hammer MMOG features today! 68
in
September! 1,020 in
2009!
Today's New MMO Coverage and Features
-
Exclusive
Everquest: Underfoot Screenshots - Pellucid
Grotto
Everquest has just released a new zone preview for its upcoming
expansion "Underfoot". The latest zone preview covers the Pellucid
Grotto and is home to the race known as the Crystalkin. The Crystalkin
are dedicated to bringing about Brell's vision from their home city of
Geodech. Along with the new area's lore, Sony has sent us two exclusive
screenshots of the Pellucid Grotto. -
Explore
EverQuest II: Shards of Destiny Through 19
Screenshots
EverQuest II: Shards of Destiny has launched, and even as we speak
players are heading into the new raid, adding new AAs to their
characters, and deleveling themselves. Ok, so de-leveling sounds KINDA'
counter productive to the untrained ear, but trust me, it rocks as it
will allow you to go back and do some of the content you missed while
leveling up, and there's a LOT of content in EQ2. -
The
Secret World - A Look at Secret Societies
The Secret World has let the secrets on their secret societies out, but
who are these shadow societies that operate in secret? While the three
societies of The Secret World may not all be real, each can be compared
to a real-world secret society from history. Some even believe these
societies operate in secret today and this week we're taking a look at
each one and who Funcom may have drawn their influence from. -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/co/guides/introtocurrency">Champions
Online : Currency Basics
Confused by those pie thingies at the bottom of your inventory screen?
Well, your friends here at Ten Ton Hammer are here to provide a basic
intro to currency in Champions Online. Well give you the information
you need to get a firm grasp on how currency works in CO.
Hottest Content:
- Ten
Ton Hammer's Aion Screenshot Contest - Aion
Launch Video - Aion
New Player Portal -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aion/guides/new/graphicsguide">Guide
to Aion Graphic Settings - Ten
Ton Hammer's Aion FAQ - Exclusive
Everquest: Underfoot Screenshots - Pellucid
Grotto - Champions
Online - First Impressions - Explore
EverQuest II: Shards of Destiny Through 19
Screenshots - The
Secret World - A Look at Secret Societies - Gamers
Gone Wild - Are Women Objectified in MMOGs?
Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer team
