[zach]

Having worked at Blizzard until recently, I think my response to this rhetorical question is predictable.

But help me understand a little better. I don't see designing more compelling gameplay as being a markedly different goal than more compelling musicianship, more compelling novel-writing or more compelling filmmaking. What's your perspective?

[Aetius]

I was talking about this just yesterday with a game developer friend. I was trying to explain to him how I viewed your former employer as being too successful.

I said Blizzard was Too Successful in that WoW achieves profitability to the detriment of fiendish players, many of whom waste untold hours of what would otherwise be productive time. He, being an almost pure libertarian, disagreed with all too familiar logic: "it's not my fault they get addicted", etc.

I then asked him if he would sell drugs, and he responded that he already had. So, regardless of perspective, it is pretty easy to see where these arguments lead; that is, down the slippery slope and out to the extremes as one tries to justify their position.

[zach]

These arguments tend to go down two roads -- one that I disagree with and one that I actually agree with.

The Too Successful argument is really a difficult one to draw out moral content from. There have existed people who lose themselves in games (among other things) to the detriment of their "real life" from way back. Forgive me for dredging this up:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YswmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K...

So that's the question that has to be answered -- if there have been 500 billion hours of WoW played (just my random guess) in the last five years and 500 million hours of Rubik's Cube played in the 80's, is Ernö Rubik also equivalent to a drug dealer, just in smaller proportions? Finally, maybe WoW is keeping guys from even less productive internet addictions, like, say, editing TV Tropes.

So I think I need to understand the moral line drawn in the too-successful argument. Because otherwise I just see WoW as the current bête noire analogous to any other popular diversion, like video arcades were 20 or 30 years ago. Is there a substantive difference, or is it merely quantitative?

Now the argument that does resound with me, as well as most game designers I know, is that designers are making gameplay that basically abuses the player without enhancing their experience of the game.

Some people have pointed at the simplicity of the gameplay in WoW (i.e. questing is too easy) and said that it's abusive to make simple gameplay compelling. I personally find this bizarre. Abusive gameplay is an area where I hold Valve, Blizzard, PopCap and others fairly blameless. That's not entirely surprising for one reason: their customers pay for the game. A fine player experience is what they hope will create more customers.

With many social gaming experiences, players have come to expect abuse, which is a crying shame. That they will be tantalized, guilted, used to spam their friends, inconvenienced and annoyed. Is any of that core to the game itself? No, the proof being that in most cases if you pay, it goes away. It's beyond just breaching the editorial wall -- the lame way that marketing is integrated into gameplay is what makes pro game designers howl with disgust.

P.S. Anyone interested in investing in a startup that breaks social gaming out of these shackles, please email.