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Jun 13, 2011

Comments

1.

Cool piece, Ren. I, too, have been wondering how to deal with this play-as-work phenomenon and how it fits into the standard labor/leisure paradigm, though my analysis as an economist is decidedly not Marxist in nature. But you've put an interesting spin on the question by pointing out that multiplayer gamers provide a service both to each other and to the game company.

One rather hand-wavy way to deal with this conundrum is to propose that the $14.99/mo is already discounted according to my own contribution to other players' enjoyment, and therefore to the company's profit. That is, but for the fact that I am enhancing the game for others, I would be charged, say, $15.50/mo instead. Perhaps in this alternative world, the company uses the extra revenues to hire people to play with me. Once the population reaches a critical mass, however, the 'paid extras' are no longer necessary. Consider that free trials get people to pay for the game, but also simply get a lot of people playing at once. In other words, companies take an initial hit in hopes of recouping the loss later on.

But I think its harder to come up with a suitable, standard economic answer to the question of why people engage in the tasks necessary to produce, say, Auctioneer or wowwiki, or to lead a raiding guild. Why do people labor to play? Lately I've been playing with the American Time Use Survey published by the BLS to ask whether certain classes of truly leisurely activities - whether watching television or throwing frisbee or painting or whatever - lead to people having higher incomes. It stretches the bounds of reason to suggest that, say, planting a garden is done for the purpose of gaining higher income in the future (and there is an enormous practical problem of establishing the direction of causation). Nevertheless, it would be nice to start teasing out some kind of explanation in economics of what leisure really is and why people engage in it, because up to this point it has received very little scrutiny.

2.

In one of his Van Rijn stories Poul Anderson defined games as "work you don't have to do". I always thought that was very nicely put.

3.

Isaac > Perhaps in this alternative world, the company uses the extra revenues to hire people to play with me. Once the population reaches a critical mass, however, the 'paid extras' are no longer necessary. Consider that free trials get people to pay for the game, but also simply get a lot of people playing at once. In other words, companies take an initial hit in hopes of recouping the loss later on.

One point I meant to make in the more whimsical section that seemed to drop out during editing was the proposition that at a certain critical point companies should pay guild leaders as the lifetime in-direct value of a guild leader is so high that it’s worth the small margin to keep them.

In a sense companies to pay to get players, they just don’t pay the players they pay other companies. In the more ‘casual’ market and more and more in the freemium market metrics such as Customer Acquisition cost vs Life Time Value become much more important.


> But I think its harder to come up with a suitable, standard economic answer to the question of why people engage in the tasks necessary to produce, say, Auctioneer or wowwiki, or to lead a raiding guild. Why do people labor to play?

Is this ‘the problem of altruism’ or something different?

I'm always a bit suspect of economics as from a non-economist point of view it seems to have problems like this, which suggests to me it’s models have the wrong motivation set.

Is this a psychological question? Maybe people create wiki pages etc because they enjoy it - they like to see the fruits of their labour, as an added bonus other people get to use their stuff, which is nice, and may reflect on them positively.

> Nevertheless, it would be nice to start teasing out some kind of explanation in economics of what leisure really is and why people engage in it, because up to this point it has received very little scrutiny.

That’s interesting. Is it because it’s fundamentally too challenging? Is there an economics world view that the world does not fit into?

Perhaps the fact that a lot of our leisure is conducted in a space where it can be defined and counted is a great help for economists etc as we have much better data than we did for gardening or other pursuits you mention.

Also there was a recent study about productivity and how time off makes people more productive (and I think creative). So if we wanted to draw a line between work and leisure then maybe it’s any form of leisure at a first analysis – I guess this must have been done, I’m soo not an economist.

4.

Ren > Is this ‘the problem of altruism’ or something different?

Well, I think that depends on your views on what altruism actually is. From the evolutionary

psychologist's perspective, it seems as if all altruism comes down to a question of how it benefits the purveyor of altruistic acts. Similarly, (mainstream) economists usually understand altruism as a quid pro quo : What I do benefits others as what others do benefits me.

> Maybe people create wiki pages etc because they enjoy it - they like to see the fruits of their labour, as an added bonus other people get to use their stuff, which is nice, and may reflect on them positively.

I'd say this is a correct description, but I don't think it escapes utility analysis. If, relative to its costs, an action brings me more pleasure than all alternative actions, then I will take that action. So if formatting and distributing information and the appreciation of my work by others makes me happier than any alternative action, and if the cost of doing so is small enough, then why wouldn't I write wiki articles? Any economic analysis of individual action is based on a highly formalized utilitarianism, which is fundamentally a psychological theory of human motivations.

The leisure/labor paradigm leads to some obvious problems. As Gary Becker pointed out in a classic paper in 1965, we don't simply consume leisure as if it were a pill. We also expend time on it. To me, this sounds an awful lot like leisure itself is something that we are laboring at. So how does one escape the conclusion that leisure is not just a mislabeled form of labor?

As for why the area is untouched, it could be that labor economists see their job as one of explaining the micro-level causes of the economic fortunes and failures of the individual person or of individual markets. Research in this area is of great interest to policy-makers, and I think much of the value of economists to society derives from their highly formalized system of theoretical and empirical tools, because it allows them to give straight answers to straight questions. But our usual assumption about government is that it seeks to improve social welfare. So, if people are better off with 'more' leisure or are more productive with 'more' leisure, then you should encourage it, right? So it is with that idea in mind that I want to pursue the question more vigorously. What is leisure, how does it create value, and then how can it be manipulated to improve welfare?

5.

Isaac,
Thx for the reference, I'll read the paper.

Isaac Knowles > To me, this sounds an awful lot like leisure itself is something that we are laboring at. So how does one escape the conclusion that leisure is not just a mislabeled form of labor?

My lack of understanding of how terms are used in Economics makes it hard for me to say something useful here. I guess the issue comes down to what the terms connote on your field, I'm not sure why leisure cannot be a form of labour that has as specific set of intentions and intended outcomes, functionally it can be exactly the same as labour in many respects, functional descriptions are often lacking.

I certainly support your urge to research this more. In the policy circles that I hang out in it does seem that notions of leisure are no the proper subject of a policy debate - so I can see why this area has been overlooked by parts of the academy that see it as part of their role to influence the debate.

6.

Is this not another instance of a particular kind of issue that suffers from its vulnerability to subjective personal interpretation? If I enjoy doing it, it's leisure. You can call it whatever you want; it's not your reality I'm experiencing. In that case you need to make me understand why your interpretation matters or should matter to me, i.e., so what?

My own interest in the subject of playbour or whatever you want to call it, is that we can't seem to achieve it in the workplace. But, to the extent it functions AS leisure time for the playbour worker, it may be absolutely impossible by definition to have the same phenom. arise at work (although, isn't this what actors are always saying when they accept their Academy Award? "I'm so lucky I get to work at something I enjoy doing so much." Yah bro, I'm jelly.)

7.

http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.4.1601

That's an article just published in the American Economic Review discussing the importance of group size to willingness to contribute to public goods. In this case, its a natural experiment using Chinese Wikipedia contributions around a particular time period in which the government blocked access to the site. They find that when the block goes into effect, the amount of contributions from unlocked individuals falls precipitously. Contributes to evidence that what really drives people is amount of enjoyment others get from their work. More deeply, it means that the quantity of usage of the resource I produce matters for how much I am willing to produce.

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