Clickity Clique

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A clique is a group of insular people with not much concern with the outside.  A stereotypical clique is one that shuns anything outside of that group.  Everyone has either been in one or seen one in their life.  School is made up of cliques.  This is based on a primal need to belong and the instinct to fear something different.  I didn’t enjoy high school all that much.  Cliques were certainly a part of it but they were a bigger problem for me in primary school.  Our high school had a dress code, which gave a fair bit less power to the cliques – but there was certainly one particular group who rose to the top.  From what I’ve read about those members since then, none have actually gotten anywhere in life.  “4 touchdowns in a single game” syndrome I guess

When I was a teen, working in a grocery store, we had our own little clique or sorts.  We had a lot of fun and I’m sure people looked at us with a “what a weird bunch of folk”.  Insular I would say but not so much shunning of outsiders as to be honest, we were a bunch of outsiders ourselves.  You don’t work and associated yourself with co-workers in a grocery store if you’re cool right?  It was good times. It was social growth.

As an adult, I am certainly subject to cliques.  I have a group of friends, all extremely bright, and that intimidates most people trying to fit in.  If you have an ounce of self-doubt, I can assure you that you will feel it grow exponentially.  My wife loves to remind me of the first time she met the group as a whole during a party.  It was getting a bit late, we had a few drinks and we decided to play a drinking game, but a quiz-type based on numbers.  Most games would be something like “name 7 colors” or “name 5 sports with balls”.  Not this game.  The first question out of the gate was “name 7 countries that assisted in the invasion of Iraq”.  The odd thing was that there wasn’t much drinking done during that game.  We haven’t played it since.

The round-about point I’m trying to make here is that at a very basic level, cliques serve a useful social purpose.  They breed familiarity and comfort, allow like-minded people a place to share ideas and provide a foundational support structure for social endeavors.  It’s like an extended family if you will.  There is a tipping point however, where familiarity leads to isolation and near xenophobia.  Different is shunned rather than explored.  A lack of trust with the outside world starts to permeate every discussion, seeming to create conspiracy theories everywhere.

It’s easy to point out that type of clique from the outside but near impossible to do so from the inside.  From that perspective, everything seems like an attack and a relatively low sense of self-worth, combined with a need for acceptance can make even the most cheerful of people aggressive.  That’s the key if you think about it – people within the clique need a better sense of internal self-worth.  If they need someone else to tell them they are good and that’s the only positive stimulus, why in the world would they drop it?  Maybe Stuart Smalley had it right all along.

The Journey of Distance

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Warning – Introspection ahead.

As a father of two young children, girls in fact, I find it difficult to separate the real world from the one they live in.  There is a psychological “shelter” factor that comes into play, more instinctive than I would have thought previous to parenthood, that wants to keep these packages safe from harm.  I do realize that this is a temporary state as one day they will fly from the nest and it’s my responsibility (well my wife and I) to ensure they are properly equipped to survive.  This isn’t a new thought as I had pondered this exact statement for nearly the entire term for my first child and holding her within seconds of her birth.  What has set the idea home however is my second child.

There is a piece of a child that lives in a world of wonder.  That piece is akin to a flower and it requires all the love and attention you can provide it.  I will not lie and say this is easy, it isn’t.  As the child grows, it becomes more self-aware and by its very nature, more likely to self-harm with experimentation.  My eldest daughter knows of no fear and while I cringe at the things she does, I also have to sit back and be amazed at her freedom.  She has had scraped and bruises since before she could walk and each tumble was followed with a smile – as if you say “Did you see that?!  That was awesome”.  I have difficulty understanding how I can keep that sense of eternal awe within her – but I can relate to her.

My second child is still quite young but has since birth smiled for what seems every minute of every day.  She is much more emotional than her sister and leaves it out to bear.  If her sister is upset or loud, she starts to cry.  She needs a shoulder to snuggle upon.  It’s like watching a piece of tissue paper float in the wind and always, always with a smile.  I could have the worst day and to come home to that just makes me forget everything.  Now, my wife and I smile a fair amount.  It’s infectious really.  But I don’t think I can properly related to the concept of always smiling.  It almost makes you feel petty in that you can’t always find something to smile about.

To sum, as a Dad, I find it the most difficult to be at the right distance from my children.  I want them to grow up to be productive members of society, with a core set of values, as do most parents.  I also want them to learn about independence and self-worth and I that is not something you can teach, it must be experienced.  Finding that balance of hand holding and letting go is by far the most difficult journeys I have ever undertaken.  But I’m ready for the trip.

SWTOR Expansion

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Back to the gaming discussion.  This week, Star Wars launched it’s new mini-expansion.  5 levels, 1 planet, a new raid and 2 new gear levels.  Every day this week, they had a blog post covering the class changes that the expansion brought.  Given that I had 3 of the 4 archetypes (I don’t like warriors for some reason), I was curious as to the whole of the changes.

At the time the game came out, I wrote a guide for the Sith Inquisitor – since taken over by another author.  I also spent a lot of time building combat models for both that class and the Bounty Hunter – specifically the Powertech tank.  I’ve always been fascinated with numbers and this was simply a decent outlet.  Something new and mathy.

The hiccup here was that even in beta, the developers didn’t have a solid understanding of numeric balance, or perhaps they didn’t have time.  There were a few basic stats.  Power (increased base damage), critical chance, surge (critical damage), alacrity (speed) and accuracy.  Typically in any RPG game, each stat has a value in relation to the others, depending on your class.  In a well-balanced game, every stat has value, but it might have diminishing.  In a less-balanced game, stats will have caps, where points above that give nothing.  In very poorly balanced games, some stats are completely worthless and others are the only thing you should ever seek.

TOR had this latter problem.  Alacrity caused you to attack faster but it didn’t increase resource generation.  In PvP it had minimal value but in PvE it was actually a penalty.  Accuracy also had issues, where after a small amount, like the amount on a single piece of gear, you were capped.  This left power, crit and surge.  At the time, you couldn’t get any item with those combinations.  Some classes were stuck with a single stat.  The worst part was that this was flagged on the forums in the beta and during live, with tangible solutions.

Well, I left after 2 months so I didn’t get to see some of the changes that came along.  What I did read this week though was the fix for alacrity and accuracy.  They now work in a logical fashion and no longer cap or cause a penalty.  I have to wonder why it took nearly 18 months for this fix but it’s there now.  At the same time I do understand that their focus has not been on end-game balance as there really isn’t a need for it.  Maybe the next set of large changes will address that part of the game.  It seems that the game finally has a solid RPG foundation in terms of numbers.

Moral Development

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As a father to two young children, and having a personal passion for social psychology, I find the concept of morality (or social integration) fascinating.  Parallel to this, I find that the vocational schools live nearly entirely on this aspect.  Teachers, doctors, lawyers, religion – they all provide a particular value or input into society’s definition of morality.

There’s a simple test to show that morality, for a very long time, is defined by outside sources and not from the inside.  Ask a child if it’s OK to steal a loaf of bread to feed a hungry family and the majority will say no.  Same question to teenagers will have a split answer.  Young adults tend to say OK.  Older adults are going to be all over the place because their moral development may or may not have progressed.  The answer itself isn’t important so must as the justification.  Your personal experience and knowledge will directly impact that answer.

According to Kohlber’s stages of moral development, there are 6 stages that people may pass through.  The first two are focused on the individual and can be seen as being selfish.  We would typically associate this behavior with a child or youth trying to find their place in society. I do know a lot of adults that remain here.  This typically reflects the inability to show respect or compassion for others – a typical narcissistic behavior.

The next two are where conformity to the masses enters the picture and found in teens and many adults.  Society has expectations of performance and people measure themselves to it.  This is the main reason reality TV is so popular, since it gives people the feeling of moral superiority.  This is where politics and laws operate as they work at a fundamental level for society.  If effect, society is telling you what is or is not acceptable.  The majority of adults live in this space.

The final two are based on individual principles and the capability of finding individuality in society.  Rules change based on evolving needs – the core principle of democracy.  The highest form is more akin to empathy/compassion in understanding the other’s position.  Preventative measures, rehabilitation are key concepts where the previous tier focuses more on punishment.  I know of very few people that are at this level and by definition, it should be a small amount.

It’s an interesting challenge for a parent to guide a child along this path, especially if they never really exceeds the self-interest level.  I know I had to look outside my home to find progress.  I realize that I only have so much time with my kids and that the two groups of people my children will see more – their friends and their teachers – will need to be aligned with our goals.  The former I have some control over currently and hopefully we can provide enough guidance that when they get older, they pick “quality” friends.  The teacher portion though, that’s out of my control unless I change schools.  It does mean however, that I need to have a social contract with each teacher, so that we can all work jointly to provide not only an academic learning experience but also a social and moral one as well.

Social Core

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There’s an old saying that goes something like this.  If I have an apple and you have an apple and I give you my apple, you have two and I have none.  If I have an idea and you have an idea and I give you my idea, we both have two.  For a long time this basically was a separation between the tangible and not but in today’s world, I have a bank full of intangible swords and there is an infinite supply (or near enough) of digital books.  In that train of thought, what you really are exchanging are concepts or frameworks.

This translates well into games so that two people who play the exact same game, the exact same way come out with different results.  You might come out of Tomb Raider antsy from the fighting or wondering about the next step.  What you are given is not necessarily what you actually receive, or interpret to receive.

If we move back a few years in the MMO space, when the time and social requirements were much more stringent the game didn’t provide you content as much as the people consuming the content provided it.  In my UO days, you could spend hours just sitting in the guild castle, talking with friends, working on some skills, maybe bring in a dragon to fight.  In contrast, today’s game is a wham-bam thank you ma’am affair of instant everything.

We’ve been down this road before but gaming is a reflection of the times and as the average “core gamer” age (~30) increases, it is extremely evident that they have less and less time to play.  Today’s younger gamers have thousands of venues to compete for their attention – Twitter, Facebook, all the Internet, Netflix, smartphones, tablets.  When I was younger, I had to leave the house to see friends. As a quick aside, Keen mentioned recently that he’s finishing up grad school this week (congrats!).  That would make him 22-24ish.  His experience in UO would have made him around 6-8 years of age.  It’s safe to say that UO had a different impact at that age than when I was playing (16-18) – especially from a social perspective.

For example, my largest gripe with SWTOR wasn’t that the game had bad ideas, just that they were poorly implemented from a social/time perspective   You were rarely able to find the social aspect while leveling (due to having a companion, very heavy instancing, low difficulty and no tools) and it stuck out like a sore thumb at max level when you 100% needed a social framework.  The time aspect was inversely proportionate to the fun factor.  You spent more time waiting around (again, with no social) for the fun to start – or even to get to the fun.  Sadly, the necessary game updates came 6+ months after launch and 90% of the playerbase had left by that point (they went from 211 servers to 23 in 6 months, now 20).  I firmly believe that the single most important reason Rift is not yet F2P is because of the social/time aspect being a core concept of game design.

Now TESO and Wildstar are both coming in with some new concepts to a genre that was originally founded on the social aspect.  I’ve heard aspects from Wildstar as to how the social portion is going to be important, in a non-combat way, but next to nothing from TESO.  I have my fingers crossed that both can maintain that core concept, with a little tweaking, in order to make either successful in the long term.  I mean, I don’t log in to kill the big bad guy for the 30th time, I log in to talk to my friends for the 300th time.

Fun Tax

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Would you pay 10$ to skip 10 hours of repetitive content?  Would you pay 5$ to acquire enough skill points to use that amazing sword?  Free to Play games are betting you value their items more than your time.  It’s the basis of the market and at a simplistic level, it’s quite accurate.  The problem is that we long-time gamers don’t play game so much for the reward as much as the journey.  I didn’t beat BioShock to see the last bad guy (there isn’t one), I played it to be engrossed in the story.

Games today don’t always follow that mentality.  Some are designed for instant (or partially delayed) gratification.  A harsh slog, through horribly produced content in order to see the really good stuff.  Any game that says “get through the first couple hours and then it’s great” is a poorly designed game.  The intro to FF13 or Kingdom Hearts 2 spring to mind.  EQ2 when it launched was like this.  Games that provide random drops in order to progress (most F2P city builders, like FarmVille) are built around the concept of the result and not the journey.  Rightly so, people will buy their way to the fun part.

Then you might get a game like SWTOR, where the good stuff is actually the journey and not the end result.  Perhaps the journey gets long in the tooth on the 3rd or 4th attempt and then the company can make money.  That could be convenience items or costumes.  Some might sell new journeys.

While I disagree with Jacob’s assessment of the F2P market going through some sort of apocalypse in 3-5 years time (I’m more inline with Wilhelm on this one), I do see some rather drastic changes to the core concepts.  The idea of a “fun tax” seems to be the current model, where you need to pay to have fun.  Game following this model are likely to be doomed (or closed as Playfish) as you can get more fun, for less money on a mobile platform.  The concept of a “fun bonus” is more likely to succeed.  Think of it as a trial of an awesome game, like demos of old.  “Oh, I get 20 hours of great gameplay for 20$?  And you want an extra 5$ for 5 more hours?  That’s reasonable.”  The kicker here is that the content has to be of the same quality or better.  WoW expansions sell on this.  Skyrim was 50/50.

There is certainly a lot of money to be made in the F2P model (or the buy to play model).  You just have to figure out how to make people want to give you money rather than need to give you money.  That is, if you want long-term success.  I mean, there’s a reason the 3 card monte guy isn’t sitting at the same street corner for more than a hour.

Social Psychology

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Taking a break from your regularly scheduled (and often missed) gaming blurbs, I wanted to expand a bit on the concepts of psychology and how it works with social interactions.  Granted, you could spend your entire life talking about just one part of the topic and I can do little justice in my tiny blog, but consider this an experiment in wall pasting.

Preamble.  I am a people watcher.  Introverted overachiever, never really had to work hard to get through in life, not much I’ve ever had a whole lot in common with the, ahem, common person up until I reached the adult workforce.  I mentioned this in a previous post a while back but I don’t really remember being a child and worry free, nor was there ever an “aha!” moment of adulthood.  It just sort of was always there.  The adult workforce is very similar to school, in terms of skill sets.  The difference is experience and wisdom.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet the right people at the right time to move ahead at a rather quick pace.  I get to work with incredibly smart people on a daily basis.  I like the challenge.

So if you’ve read that you’ve likely come to some very basic conclusions about me.  If you read between the lines, you’ve likely applied certain psychological templates to me as well.  This is good.

For most people, when they meet someone new, they come to some quick judgment if they “like or don’t like” the other.  Most attribute this to a gut feeling.  Quite right!  This gut feeling is a personal metric system we use to gauge relationships, and the likely return on investment.  Or more plainly, we ask ourselves “is this person worth my time?”.  While we’re teens, we are learning to set a baseline for this metric and it will continue to be tweaked until the day we drop.  By the time you’re in the 20s, you’ll have a pretty solid baseline for all future relations.  Here’s the tricky part, the health of that baseline is impacted by psychology.

Your personal experience is the largest factor.  A single child is looking for something different than a child of 5 just as a broken home is going to provide a different mindset than one that is not.  Maybe your baseline is simply “will this person give me attention” or “will this person provide good discussion”.  If you’re a person of eternal optimism, then you’re likely not going to get a healthy relationship with a pessimist.

While everyone goes through a period of triage in their social circle, it’s important to realize that you can build new criteria over time.  This is more or less a testing phase, where you find a particular item you might not be interested in but give it a shot to see what comes of it.  With practice, you get better at handling that type of personality and you can try it more and more often.  You diversify your social abilities so that you have a different toolset for people that have type A personalities and those that have type B.  Along the way, in order to get better at this diversification, you learn more about those personalities and their driving forces.  “Why does that person need to please everyone?”, “why are they an adrenaline junkie?”, “why are they always smiling?”

I said earlier that I liked watching people.  Without meeting someone, I tend to find the common traits of character that they provide.  So for example the other day I saw a lady walking down the street.  Power skirt, 5 inch heels, ankle bracelet, no wedding band, blouse and jacket, straight shoulder length hair and a few other features.  So while I might not be 100% correct, based on my experience and location (world customs differ, naturally), I could deduce that she worked with people, was a middle-aged divorcee with at least 2 kids in their teens, a heavy smoker, a francophone, in need of attention and likely to respond positively to a flirtatious conversation.

To continue on the thought, it’s not that I like or dislike the person at this point; it simply gives me a reference point as to how I could start a conversation.  I’m not going to start with a story about a sports team but a chat about a night at the bar is probably going to work.  I do it so often now that I don’t even think about it.  It makes meeting new people a whole lot of fun since I don’t ever feel like I have nothing to say.

There really isn’t much of a closing statement here just that the concept of social interaction is factored by thousands of small and big factors and that our brains are able to take all of that data and within a few seconds, determine if we like or don’t like someone.  While we call it a “gut” reaction, it’s really one of the most complex decisions you’ll ever make without realizing you’re making it.

One day I’ll talk about how this social model works in cyberspace, where you lose 90% of the social cues due to not having a visual.

Less is More

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March sale estimates are out and they paint an interesting picture.  Both GoW games sold poorly while the more mid-stream, quality games, sold well.

God of War sold 360,000 (down from 1.1 million for the last game) and Gears of War sold 425,000 (down from 3 million for the last game).  Both had rather poor reviews of the same rehashed combat, lack of story and general “same-ness”.  Essentially, they were expansions priced as full priced games.

In contrast, Tomb Raider sold 696,000 copies and Bioshock sold 665,000.  2 years ago, if you told me that Tomb Raider would sell more than God of War and Gears of War combined, I would have called you crazy.  Today, we’re a few thousand copies away from that being fact.

I look at this with optimism.  People are getting tired of the franchise cycle and this bodes really well for gaming as a whole.  The days of just re-skinning the same game every year are hopefully dying, or at least making developers think twice about charging full price. (*cough* EA Sports *cough*).

My fingers are crossed that the gaming community as a whole keeps on this path of rewarding quality games and shunning the crud.  That way we can get more amazing games, as we’ve been rather blessed with so far these past few months.

Interplay Sale

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If you’re older than 25, you likely played the heck out of Interplay games.  I’m sure I put in a few hundred hours into both Fallout games.  Stonekeep, Lionheart, JAGG and Freespace also took up a huge chunk of time.  Some poor management decisions in the early 2000s meant the end of that company but it doesn’t mean you can’t still find the games.

GoG.com is having a 50% sale on most Interplay games.  There are at least 5 games in that list that I’ll be getting.  I have no idea when I’ll be playing them mind you, but having them in the back pocket for when my internet craps out (all day yesterday) is a solid investment.

For those that are a bit younger and might not have had the chance to play these games, at the very least you should try out Fallout 2.  Every sandbox-RPG built in the last 10 years owes that game.