A salami slicing exploit is a computer crime technique premised on stealing lots of little bits of value (e.g. rounding down in financial transactions) that is hard to detect. Clay Shirkey once argued this to be a false analogy when used to justify micropayment systems (September 2003, Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content). Those "salami slices" don't turn out to be as thin as they would first appear. His argument revolved around
what Nick Szabo calls mental transaction costs, the energy required to decide whether something is worth buying or not, regardless of price.
For example, Clay suggested, that the mental transaction costs may actually rise as the cost of each slice of salami decreases, e.g.:
It's easy to think a newspaper is worth a dollar, but is each article worth half a penny? Is each word worth a thousandth of a penny? A newspaper... Would you pay 25 cents to view a VR panorama of the Matterhorn? Are Powerpoint slides on "Ten reasons why now is a great time to start a company?" worth a dime? (and if so, would each individual reason be worth a penny?)
The specific aim of Clay's essay is mostly off-topic here. It was directed at a specific system (BitPass) and hence became easily controversial. However, the core argument feels relevant: slice things too narrowly and people begin to ponder the thickness of those slices and it gets in the way.
Skip forward to this year: City of Heroes (CoH) appears to be on adrenalin, e.g. nearing (if not surpassing) 200k subscribers in a few short months. CoH feels like an important milestone in a trend in the MMORPG space towards "lighter play" directed towards casual gamers. E.g. it features a streamlined design that can get players quickly into teams and doing "short and sharp" missions: quick fun sandwiched between the kids and Jay Leno.
On the one hand, this view of casual play empowers the individual to be able to more finely control their time involvement. Yet perhaps streamlining play come at the expense of the group. By whittling away at those inefficient but social transactions (travel somewhere, advertise, getting organized, managing loot distribution/negotiation, "OMG! you can't leave now, we just got here!", etc) are we salami slicing socialization from the team? How much is a social gesture worth - and will its absence impact the group experience in ways far greater than its tiny moment?
