Opinion: Virtually Occupied

[In an article first published in the December issue of Game Developer magazine, the publication's own Brandon Sheffield reflects on the ongoing Occupy protests, and picks out several examples of online games that saw similar group-led movements.] On November 2, I stood at the front of a group of thousands of people, as Occupy Oakland shut down the port in Oakland, California, the fifth-largest in the nation. People across the world are upset about the economy right now, and when they get upset, they can take that anger to the streets. Shutting down the port was a massive show of human power, against those who dictate our economy. This is precisely what happens in in-game protests, as well. The EVE Exodus EVE Online developer CCP launched a virtual item store in June, and its rollout was much maligned by EVE users. Nothing was priced reasonably, and some cost over $60 in real world currency. Players felt as though EVE was moving further away from a skill-based game, and more toward a pay-for-play model, wherein the rich players would rule over the poor, due to having better equipment. They also decried several subtle gameplay changes that changed the the user experience. Upset fans clogged major cities, disrupting the entire game's economy, since EVE is run on a single instance where everyone plays together. This was, in effect, a massive Occupy-style protest. CCP has an elected board of player representatives, which it is supposed to consult on all major decisions. This time around, the representatives were ignored, and players caught wind of the store's impending launch through leaked memos. At the time, CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson was confident in his approach, stating in an internal memo that "Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say." This is sometimes the correct tactic, but your players are your lifeblood in an MMO, and without them you have no game, and no income. If players start to think that you're operating far more in your own interests than in theirs, you are going to lose their confidence. EVE's virtual items had little perceived relevance to the game world, but cost an arm and a leg. Since that incident, a CCP source reported to Massively.com that four months later, EVE had lost 8 percent of its account volume. In the Occupy movement, one of the major statements these encampments make is, "if you do not fix your system, we will attempt to live outside it." These folks have moved further off the grid, and are moving their money to credit unions instead of large banks. In MMOs, this is analogous to rage-quitting. To slightly pervert William Congreve's famous quote for the game world, "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a warrior scorned." If people didn't love the things they felt were changing for the worse, they wouldn't get so upset. In the real and virtual spaces, they're fighting for what they love. Don’t Hate The Player… Monetization isn’t the only issue fans get up in arms about. In World of Warcraft in 2005, warriors felt their class had been "nerfed" in an update. To protest, they took Ironforge Bridge on the Argent server, and removed their clothes en masse. GMs began kicking any warrior in the region from the game, but players just came back with new level one warriors, in such great numbers that GMs announced that anyone doing so would potentially have their account canceled. But were those warriors really doing anything wrong? They were upset, and they were congregating -- but why shouldn’t they? The GMs were shutting down a peaceful protest because it was inconvenient. This is a similar pattern to many of the arrests at Occupy protests, which you can look up online; someone is standing around holding a sign or camera, and out of nowhere they get shot with a rubber bullet, or teargassed. In July 2006, nationalistic players of NetEase's The Fantasy of the Journey West noticed a red sun on the back wall of a government office that looked suspiciously like the Japanese Imperial flag. This flag was used during the Sino-Japanese war, and the famous Nanking massacre. The flag is in use to some degree today, but to players this was like hanging the Dixie flag in a predominantly African American neighborhood. Word spread rapidly, and players flooded the office, as well as the bridge outside, and anywhere nearby. Avatars and text were impossible to distinguish from each other as players voiced their outrage. NetEase didn’t budge from its position, and banned players left and right. Though racially-fueled sentiments are never a good idea, some extra cultural sensitivity could have been applied here. The Bigger Picture There's a lot that games can learn from real-world social movements. Economists have applied their knowledge to MMOs, so why not social psychologists and political analysts? In the real world, the Occupy protests hope to persist until government action is taken to regulate banks and promote jobs. In games, protest goals tend to be remarkably similar -- players want to feel as though they’re being treated with fairness. If you make decisions in your games that offer little benefit to the player, they will revolt. The best way to avoid this is prevention, though it is difficult to predict player response. A good yardstick for monetization might be for a designer to think, "would I be happy to pay for this, if this weren’t my game?" Once the damage to player confidence is done, it can be hard to undo. Players invest so much of their lives and money into MMOs that at a certain point it becomes our duty as game makers to serve their interests as well as, or even above our own. There are ways to make money and please your players, and that's what EVE is trying to return to now. As Petursson admitted in a public apology, "Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted. As hubris set in, I became less inclined to listen to pleas for caution." Fans left the game as a result. There's an even greater issue with games that obfuscate monetization, and target a less tech-savvy crowd. Business persons who have no interest in games are making big bucks off first-time players. While there's not enough space to cover this subject, it may be a matter of time before these players realize what’s going on and revolt, as has happened across the world with the Occupy movement. In that case, developers had better take a close look at these real-world protests as they develop and come to conclusions, and figure out how to apply those lessons in their games.