Indebted

I started to play Animal Crossing: Wild World with my 5 y/o son the other day, and was struck by the initial game mechanic. After rolling his toon we were informed that we could go and hang out in his house, which seemed like a deeply cool thing. (Aside: one of the things that I've (oddly) missed in WoW and CoH is owning real estate, but that topic is for another day).

Anyway...we went to his house only to be informed by the Chief Running Raccoon of Capitalism, aka Tom Nook, that we owed him some ungodly number of bells (the local currency) for the house. This was a wonderful "teachable moment" for me to explain to my son about mezzanine debt structures, junk bond financing, and the enforcability of oral contracts based on part performance. (He naturally asked about the validity of this contract given the Statute of Frauds requirements of formalities for a contract involving land and the reality of his consent in this case; but quickly answered his own question on the basis of standard conflict of laws principles).

Anyway...(again)...this got me thinking about the game mechanic of debt within virtual worlds, especially as a motivator of behavior that is, frankly, pathological. In WoW, a guildie is currently engaged in grinding faction with Timbermaw, and he has been doing this pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. He jokes about it, of course, and is very aware of the pointlessness of what he is doing. But why is he prepared to do this? It's not the rewards at the end of this, since even though it involves some rawking plans and armor and the like, they're not that good. It's certainly not that the experience of faction-grinding is pleasant. At best one becomes used to the pain of doing it. It might be the sense of completing a difficult task, but that seems to be a weak explanation. There are lots of difficult tasks spread throughout the world, and most of them are interesting; why would my guildie grind faction to the exclusion of hitting BRD or Temple or WSG if it were just about completion of a hard task?

It seems to me (as I'm embarking on my own faction-grinding nightmare with the Thorium Brotherhood) that this is not about the rewards in finishing this Sisyphean task, so much as once you accept the call you have a large debt that you have to pay to the grunting bearmen or those accursed dark iron dorfs. In watching my son respond to the obligation of owing 19,800 bells to the Shopkeeper of Darkness, I was struck that the notion of duty inherent in debt seems to be one of the more significant motivators of behavior in these worlds. I think that part of this is deeply held human response to social obligations, even social obligations to humanoid-like Raccoons of Ultimate Evil like Tom Nook. I suspect that this it linked to Ted's observations about the economy of virtual worlds being an economy of fun. It's just that here the fun is generated by reciprocal obligations that are compelling even though they are--as in the case of faction-grinding or bell-grinding--utterly stupid.

Anyway...(for the last time)...I can't spend any more time musing on this. Gotta go get some bells and some incendosaur scales. Anyone know if IGE carry these?