World of Warcraft: Ultimate excess of a consumerist society?

Nytehauq · 2006-11-28T19:55:05

An interesting thought dawned on me while I was considering the merits (or lack thereof) of the gameplay of World of Warcraft, which is, as most of you should know, the most popular MMORPG ever. Alot of people tend to make the fallacy equating financial success with merit: WoW is an example of a "good" game with "good" gameplay because it is popular. I present an alternative theory: World of Warcraft is popular because it capitalizes on the excesses of a consumerist and materialist society in the U.S. and mass-mentality in regions like China. It is an affable game, easy to get into, and provides a very simple reward mechanism: do things to get things that make you more "powerful," without any thought put towards the merits of the things you do: the ultimate point is to get "things," not to do things. To use a fairly inappropriate analogy: human sexuality experts often suggest concentrating on the experience of sex instead of the "reward" of orgasm. So, what is a game like WoW? An empty orgasmic experience; a destination with no journey, a false reward with false effort put in. It is an undeniably alluring method of garnering playerbase, especially in a society that focues almost exclusively on material reward. Guilds replace corporations, raids replace business and production industry, the elite and aristocratic have the power and control and the majority refuse or are unable to invest enough to achieve the material rewards they expect to want, only failing to realize the cyclical nature of the product: Everyone's trying to get all this cool gear and "stuff," only to try and get the cooler gear and "stuff" the next time around ad-infinitum. Seven and a half million people buy into it: why? Because people like pretty things and "getting" stuff. World of Warcraft is successful for the same reasons as pulp movies and cheap made for TV specials, save for the fact that World of Warcraft is relatively of a higher production quality than most of its competition in the MMORPG market, yet, when compared to the larger video-game market, is as poor in that department as the next MMO title. So, the purpose of this rant? Don't try and emulate World of Warcraft in your design. There will be many immitators, they will all inevitably fail. Yet, not only is imitation futile: it's bad. World of Warcraft is not a GOOD game. It is an ends-based illusion of efficacy and accomplishment. If you want to do something worthwhile, design a game worth playing for the gameplay, not for the reward at the end of the tunnel, and figure it how to market it to the world we live in. Make it an MMO for all it matters, just don't let possible good design corrupt into piles of immitative and shallow nonsense.