There is an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" where Charlie, a character who never gets any success in life (a janitor living in a dump of an apartment, gets rejected by his love interest constantly, abused by his friends, etc) gets really engrossed in an online videogame. He becomes really good at it, and exclaims "I'm thriving! I never get to thrive, and I want to be the guy who thrives for once! It's like when I'm doing good in the game, I'm doing good in real life!"
It feels like there's an interesting insight there - if you're near the bottom of ladder in life (in an area with few/no jobs, have a hard time making friends, have no money for activities, etc), positive feedback loops can be few and far between, and it is very hard to get a feel for whether you're actually making progress or not. Work hard in life, and maybe you can reap some rewards years and years later, or maybe not (working at Walmart 20 years won't make you wealthy, or a respected Walmart executive). But work hard in a videogame for a few weeks or months, and you can have very concrete evidence of your progress. It's not hard to see why people would prefer investing hours in the latter then.
Maybe that's where the appeal of the army lies for some. The very clear hierarchy means you know exactly where you fit, and what the path to the next rung of the ladder is - something that is true in very few other organizations.
Video games also provide a quality sorely lacking in real life. They try very hard to prevent cheating, because if there's too much cheating, or too much inequality between players, no one will play.
Exactly, that's why runescape and world of warcraft have adopted the marxist game mechanic of automatically redistributing all resources and exp between all players at the end of every day.
That's funny that to you "turning off cheating" somehow becomes fully automated communism.
If I were a kid and there was some game where my one of my peers always won because their parents let them spend literally hundreds of dollars on advanced gear that would cost me months of gameplay hours, I wouldn't want to play it. The game's updates and design would probably drift towards rpping off that kid's parents instead of maximzing fun. For some people, this is already real life for them.
In WoW, if my peer has a rare sword, it's not because his mom bought it.
Warcraft is nearly a pure meritocracy. I might not have very much when I start, but there is a clear path that I can take to level up. In short, Warcraft is fair.
It is exactly that dynamic of actually being predictably rewarded for hard work that people are finding in these games.
Redistribution schemes may seem just but they are very seldom anything approaching fair. Its no surprise that they almost never appear in any game mechanics.
Not long ago, a 43-year-old Wonder Bread deliveryman named John Dugger logged on to eBay and, as people sometimes do these days, bought himself a house. Not a shabby one, either. Nine rooms, three stories, rooftop patio, walls of solid stonework – it wasn't quite a castle, but it put to shame the modest redbrick ranch house Dugger came home to every weeknight after a long day stocking the supermarket shelves of Stillwater, Oklahoma. Excellent location, too; nestled at the foot of a quiet coastal hillside, the house was just a hike away from a quaint seaside village and a quick commute from two bustling cosmopolitan cities. It was perfect, in short, except for one detail: The house was imaginary.
It feels like there's an interesting insight there - if you're near the bottom of ladder in life (in an area with few/no jobs, have a hard time making friends, have no money for activities, etc), positive feedback loops can be few and far between, and it is very hard to get a feel for whether you're actually making progress or not. Work hard in life, and maybe you can reap some rewards years and years later, or maybe not (working at Walmart 20 years won't make you wealthy, or a respected Walmart executive). But work hard in a videogame for a few weeks or months, and you can have very concrete evidence of your progress. It's not hard to see why people would prefer investing hours in the latter then.
Maybe that's where the appeal of the army lies for some. The very clear hierarchy means you know exactly where you fit, and what the path to the next rung of the ladder is - something that is true in very few other organizations.