Holiday Reading

Want some reading over the holidays?

I'm a bit late with this, because of Typepad's recent problems, but take a look at the term papers for Aaron Delwiche's Games for the Web course at Trinity university. They're almost all refreshing and insightful, and if I didn't tell you they were written by undergraduates you might have had a hard time figuring it out from the content - it's of a very high standard. Not all of them are formal enough to put in .pdfs, but even some of those that aren't make some interesting observations.

If you're into the social science side of virtual world research, check them out.

Richard

Comments

[searaptor]

1.

I had the pleasure of reading several of these when I stumbled across them a few weeks ago. Excellent writing and interesting topics. Sounds like a really neat class. Makes me jealous that I didn't have anything like this available where I went to college. ;)

[Brian 'Psychochild' Green]

2.

Most of the topics of these papers were covered years ago on MUD-Dev. ;)

I'm sure they're interesting, but I just read the paper "Customer Service in Massively Multiplayer Games" and it really didn't cover much new ground. Yes, companies can seek to retain players by providing good customer service; however, most online RPG players will play the game despite "terrible" customer service.

For example, the paper talks about how WoW specifically has poor customer service and relies on automated replies. However, this terrible customer service certainly hasn't hurt them in any meaningful way. They have astounding numbers and mind-boggling retention rates. It's hard to muster the argument that they could be retaining more customers when they're already doing a phenomenal job retaining customers with their current policies.

Customer service may be important, and all customers like the feeling of the company caring about their concerns. However, the reality of the situation is that Blizzard is a company with the goal of being profitable. It makes almost no sense for them to spend money with very little possible return on investment. I could run through some numbers here, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

It comes down to this: until the situation is bad enough for players to stop playing the game nothing will change. The author of the paper admits herself that only one of the respondents to her questionnaire actually quit over the unsatisfactory customer service incident they experienced. Of course, one could also take the position that if the incident wasn't worth quitting over, how "unsatisfactory" was the experience, really? I suspect people find most customer service to be adequate, but would really prefer it to be superb. So, they are unsatisfied due to disappointment rather than truly terrible service in most cases.

Perhaps the other papers are more insightful, but this one left me with the impression of someone that hadn't investigated all aspects of the situation.

My thoughts,

[Richard Bartle]

3.

Psychochild>Most of the topics of these papers were covered years ago on MUD-Dev.

But of course! If MUD-DEV's archives were back on line, I'm sure they'd have been name-checked, too.

What impressed me most about this set of papers is that I've read things below this standard in conference proceedings. Aaron's either lucky to have this bunch or they're lucky to have him, or both.

The customer service anomaly is interesting. If there's very personal customer service, such as occurs in the Iron Realms games, then that really will boost a game's retention rate. However, it's very expensive to scale up. Basically, if you were to rate customer service in virtual worlds from "none" to "personal", anything between "miserable" and "pretty good" has an almost indiscernable difference. Thus, developers go with "miserable" because they're just throwing away money if they try to improve it. The fact that almost everyone else also has miserable customer service only compounds matters.

On a different topic, one thing I'd like to see with future papers concerns gender studies. We haven't yet seen a proper comparison between all four possibile player/character gender characterisations: male playing male; male playing female; female playing male; female playing female. It could explain whether the oft-cited "other players give more stuff to female characters" observation occurs because players play female characters differently or because female characters are perceived differently by other players.

Richard

[SeaRaptor]

4.

On a different topic, one thing I'd like to see with future papers concerns gender studies. We haven't yet seen a proper comparison between all four possibile player/character gender characterisations: male playing male; male playing female; female playing male; female playing female. It could explain whether the oft-cited "other players give more stuff to female characters" observation occurs because players play female characters differently or because female characters are perceived differently by other players.

The paper on sexism in World of Warcraft was the one I enjoyed most on the site. It's a topic that you never really see discussed, but everyone seems to accept as a given in the male-dominated online gaming world. Putting some research, thought, and quantifiable data with it made for a good read.

And yes, the quality of all of them was outstanding, even if the topics had been covered in other proceedings elsewhere.

[Matt Mihaly]

5.

Richard wrote:

The customer service anomaly is interesting. If there's very personal customer service, such as occurs in the Iron Realms games, then that really will boost a game's retention rate. However, it's very expensive to scale up.

Good customer service is definitely a retention-enabler and we consistently get compliments from players on our customer service. Having said that, there is always the problem of expectations. Once players get used to the level of customer service we provide, some of them escalate their expectations and get upset that we're not providing even better customer service, forgetting the abysmal service they'd get in most other virtual worlds. Overall, it's certainly a positive, but it's not an untainted positive.

--matt

[Brian 'Psychochild' Green]

6.

To clarify, I'm not saying that great customer service can't help. However, WoW in particular has had amazing growth and retention while having a level of customer service the paper's author had described as poor. This leads me to believe there are other factors more important than customer service in attracting and retaining customers.

Have fun,

[Matt Mihaly]

7.

I think the standard response to that would be to say, snarkily, "Well, if they can get 5 million customers with bad service, imagine how where they'd be with good customer service"....but it's just too hard to argue with 5 million customers isn't it?

--matt

[Matt Mihaly]

8.

Omit the 'how' from that previous post of mine.

This phenomenon is played out in other service/products as well. McDonalds' service sucks. I mean, I'm not even greeted upon entering the restaurant. They do a heck of a lot more business then Chez Tasty down the street, where they even wipe your mouth for you. Chez Tasty does ok though, by targeting an audience that appreciates quality service.

Good service isn't that important to most virtual world players, but it IS important to some people, and while it's almost never going to be the determining factor in attracting and retaining customers, it helps. Would WoW have a lot more players if they improved their CS? Like you say, I doubt it. The CS isn't why WoW's players are there.

--matt

[Brian 'Psychochild' Green]

9.

"Good service isn't that important to most virtual world players, but it IS important to some people...."

Say it with me: Hooray for niches! :)

Have fun,