The economy of small eggs

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I highlight the fact that the economy in massively multiplayer online role-playing games works the same way as the economy in the real world. Observing these virtual environments can result in a better understanding of economy in the real world.

Due to lack of time to prepare this finding of the week, this article is a very short one. I just want to highlight an already well known fact: massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft and Runes of Magic do have dynamics that are almost analog to real world dynamics.

These game worlds do have the same economical principles as our real world. The factors of rarity and demand for a good are dictating the price for it. This becomes very obvious by observing the price development of certain goods under the aspect of being influenced by special events in the game world. Most of these goods are materials needed for crafting new items.

One good example for the event-driven price development is the price of small eggs in World of Warcraft. Small eggs are ingredients for several cooking recipes, that are mostly interesting while training the cooking skill. The resulting meals don’t have a good use for players at the highest character level. Eating food is mostly used for regaining health, mana or getting a buff of usefull stats. Small egg based food doesn’t provide high level players with a noticeable buff and even doesn’t restore much health anymore. Considering this, small eggs can be seen as useless in the current game and thus the price of them is pretty low.
However, during the christmas event in World of Warcraft, players are able to cook gingerbread cookies. These cookies are also needed to solve a quest during this event. One of the two ingredients of gingerbread cookies are small eggs. At this point, almost every player has a need for these small eggs. Around this event the price of the eggs rises significantly. Suddenly small eggs are a rare good and the demand is very high. However this high price period only lasts as long as the event is available in the game. As soon as the christmas event is over, the price of small eggs drops again until the next christmas season begins.

Another example is the price development of materials gathered in the hardest raid instances of the game. Almost every new content patch adds new crafting recipes to the game that require a special material mostly obtained in the freshly released instance. The new craftable equipment is in most cases an upgrade for the majority of the players and thus the demand for the new good is very high.
However, as soon as a new content is released, the price for the good drops because the new equipment is suddenly out-of-date. The event of a new content patch has changed the demand for the trading good and thus has a noticeable impact on the price development.

Observing the economy of MMORPGs is a good way to understand the basic principles of economy. The market reacts strongly to new events and thus becomes predictable.

Creative thinking with space goo!

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I cover the new gameplay elements of Kerbal Space Program added to the game this week. Now players are able to do science and unlock new technologies.

As I was writing this week’s article, Squad, the developers of Kerbal Space Program[1] (KSP), announced the release of a huge game update on october 16th. Version 0.22 added one major feature to the gameplay of KSP: science! I’ve already mentioned a lot how educative the space simulation is[2], so I decided to postpone my planned article this week and do a short coverage over the newest version of the game instead.

Kerbal Space Program isn’t just a sandbox game anymore. The new version of the game added the option to decide between two modes: sandbox and career. The sandbox mode works as before and is mostly unchanged. The career mode however relies mainly on the second new feature I’ve already mentioned: science!

In career mode, the player starts with only a few rocket parts available and thus can only assemble simple space crafts. To unlock all the other parts, the player has to do some science, earn science points and finally spend these points in a tech-tree. This is also helpful for new players of the game, because they aren’t overwhelmed by the huge amount of different rocket parts anymore. Now, new players gain new parts as their skill level, experience and knowledge rise.

Tech-tree

Doing science is pretty simple compared to Take on Mars[3][4]. At the beginning, the player can only give some orders to their astronauts to do some reports. This can be done while sitting in the capsule or during an extra-vehicular activity (EVA). These reports are rewarded with some science points when they are transmitted back to the space center or when the astronaut returns back home to the planets surface. Over time, the player unlocks additional science tools that allow to do different experiments. The results are also rewarded with science points when they’re transmitted to the space center or brought back to the planets surface.

EVA – Doing science!

Transmitting data isn’t as good as returning home from space with these scientific results. The player has to face a loss of data (and thus science points) if the results are just transmitted back home. However, this can be still useful, if the player needs the science points or the space craft is somewhere stuck and can’t return anymore.

Even if doing science isn’t more than just pressing a button, it still has educative and creative aspects. The solar system now consists of several different biomes. Each biome has different conditions and thus each experiment can have different results. After doing an experiment in low Kerbin orbit, the player can start to think about what will happen, if the experiment is done in a high Kerbin orbit. What if the experiment is done on another celestial body? What if … ?
Suddenly the player starts thinking creatively almost like a real researcher: „What will happen if I … ?“

Scientific results of a mission

To wrap things up, the science and tech-tree update has added some goals to the game. Each game is still unique because the approaches of building a spacecraft are endless, but new players now have some aims and can try to achieve them without feeling lost in the humongous world and vastness of space.
The combination of science and different biomes allows players to think in a creative way and to ask some „research questions“. This is also supported by the openess of the game. There aren’t missions like „Land on the Mun and bring a surface sample back home“. Instead, players have to define these missions themselves and finally try to achieve them (and thus learn about space exploration in this process).

Gaming and lifelong learning

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I present my idea of increasing the motivation for a lifelong learning by playing games that allow two different approaches the same time: a more casual and entertaining approach and a more efficient approach that requires in-depth knowledge about the presented topic.

This idea is mostly based on my own observations by playing games like Kerbal Space Program (KSP)[1]. One major goal in todays educational science is increasing the motivation for a lifelong learning. I think that by playing such simulation games, people can get interested in learning more about the presented topic. Of course, at this point of the idea, it only includes specific knowledge about a certain topic, but a more wider approach could work as well.

The game itself hasn’t to be designed to present a clear learning goal. The core part of the game should have an entertaining purpose. Playing the game still requires the player to learn the control functions and to interpret the information presented over the user interface. As I’ve already pointed out by explaining the gameplay of KSP[2], the user learns a lot important facts about the presented topic just by playing the game. If these facts are based on real world facts, then the user learns even more than just playing and understanding the game: the game-based knowledge can be directly transferred to the real world.

My own idea to increase the lifelong learning starts at the point when the player has learnt most of the game functions and feels free to explore the environment with great confident. At this point, the game should allow two different approaches. On the one side, the game has to remain entertaining. Players have to be able to complete their goals just by playing the game for fun. On the other side, the game should offer a more efficient and elegant approach, if the player has a deeper knowledge about the specific topic.

These both approaches can increase the motivation for a lifelong learning. The game at its own is entertaining and motivates users to play it. They can complete the whole game on their own by experimenting or doing things inefficiently. However, if the presented topic has enough parallels to the real world and the players are hooked up by the easy and entertaining approach, they can start to gather more knowledge about the presented topic. By accumulating more knowledge, new approaches to play the game come to their minds and they get excited by doing things in a more efficient way. Over time, users are motivated for a lifelong learning to increase their own skills in the particular game.

To make things more clear, I like to explain my idea using KSP. The space program simulation allows players to explore a solar system by executing interplanetary missions. In order to land on a different planet, the space craft has to change the sphere of influence (soi). To leave the soi of the home planet Kerbin, a certain amount of energy is needed.
At this point, two options are available. The inefficient but still entertaining way is doing the whole burn in one go. The space craft will need a bit more fuel, but be in most cases able to leave the soi of Kerbin.
The more scientific way, that on the other hand requires a deeper knowledge about rocket science, is getting advantage of the Oberth effect[3]. Players who are aware of this mechanic are able to do more efficient flights to different worlds. In order to benefit from real world parallels players are encouraged to engage oneself in learning new facts.

Obviously, this lifelong learning by gaming concept needs to be improved, but the idea can increase the motivation for a lifelong learning. The major disadvantage might be the need for real world parallels that are mostly common in simulation games. However, tycoon games could rely on real world business concepts, historical rts games could require additional knowledge about the time presented in the game.

To wrap things up, I think that games like KSP can increase the motivation for a lifelong learning by presenting a real world topic in an entertaining way. By allowing players on the one side to just have fun and on the other side to apply additional knowledge they can benefit from, players might get interested in learning new things about the topic to improve their gameplay. Due to the fact that the freshly gained insights are real world knowledge, players improve their general knowledge the same time just by playing a game.

Let’s explore the Mars

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I take a closer look at the scientific simulation game Take on Mars. Players can discover the red planet almost the same way as NASA does and thus develop a deeper understanding of space science.

I’ve already presented Take on Mars several weeks ago[1]. Now, I gathered some first hand experience by playing it. In contrast to NASA’s Mars program, the player fortunately hasn’t to deal with financial problems and a shutdown[2]. Additionally, the player hasn’t to deal with short launch windows to be able to reach the red planet in an efficient way[3].

The role of the player begins with the landing on Mars and the exploration of it using landers and rovers. The rovers are landed on Mars as in the real world: small rovers survive the landing with huge airbags[4] and bigger rovers even need the help of a sky crane[5]. Finally, the player is in control of the rover’s function on the surface of the planet. The player can conduct scientific experience by solving different research mssions.

A rover similiar to Curiosity.

In the current version of the game (it’s still in the early access phase), most of the experiments are taking photographs of the martian landscape or analyzing rocks, sand or the atmosphere. For this purpose, the user can take advantage of scientific tools also used in the real Mars program like the Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS)[6]. The small rovers at the beginning of the game do have only a few tools that don’t need any manipulation. The APXS device only needs to be placed close to the desired target to allow the player to conduct an analysis of it.
More complex rovers are equiped with a robotic arm and a robotic „hand“[7]. The user now has also controls for each component of the rover. The player needs to drive close to the desired target and switch to the robotic arm controls. After some precise manipulation of the arm and the hand, the scientific tool is placed at the target and the player can start the analytic process. After a certain amount of time, the player gets the results of the analysis.

Analyzing.

I don’t have any experience in controlling a real Mars rover, but playing the game feels quite real. It’s a complicated process of using a robotic arm and hand to finally analyse a small rock. Playing the game brings the science of Mars exploration closer to the players. The difficulty of the game ramps up very slowly and introduces new players in a fun way to the complex work of exploring a distant world. Additionally, the tools and rovers look and work quite similiar as the real world ones and are thus creating a realistic envirionment. However, the player has the luxury of playing a game: there’s no communication delay and the experiments are taking less time than in real world.

Players who get hooked up by the game develop a deeper understanding of the difficult work of NASA’s scientists and might also start looking up additional information about the Mars program. Maybe some of them will start a career in the field of space exploration. The game helps to bring science closer to the public and helps to explain how complex the work is.

Youtube channels as a marketing opportunity

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I present the upcoming trend of pitching indie games to famous youtubers. By getting the attention of one famous youtuber who starts playing the game, the indie game developer can get the attention of several thousand other players the same time.

I’ve already discussed a bit the indie game development[1], youtubers who create lets play videos (LPs)[2] and the way how ecobusiness works[3]. Today, I like to combine these topics and discuss a marketing opportunity for indie game developers: taking advantage of successful youtubers to introduce the own game to a wide audience.

Indie game developers do have the problem that they need to do everything on their own. This also includes drawing attention of possible players who will buy their product. They can’t rely on the marketing campaigns of their publishers. Additionally, they even don’t have the money for huge marketing campaigns to introduce their games.

Successful youtubers on the other hand easily do have the attention of more than 100.000 followers[4]. In most cases, these followers like the same kind of games as the youtubers themselves. If a let’s play series covers interesting and fun gameplay, viewers might get interested and start playing the game, too.

Considering this, getting the attention of youtubers can lead to a successful introduction of the game to a broad audience. However, this is a time consuming activity, but it’s an ideal way of presenting the own game to the target audience. Additionally, youtubers are interested in making LP’s of new games and trying to advice interested indie game designers how they can approach youtubers[5].
Naturally sending e-mails to every possible youtuber won’t work at all. Indie game developers should do some research about the youtubers and be sure that the player might be interested in playing the own game[6]. If a developer pitches an adventure game to a player who mostly prefers to play simulations, the player would probably never play the game. Furthermore, the followers of this youtuber do have almost the same preferences as the youtuber and thus won’t be interested in a game that doesn’t match their interests.

If an indie game developer approaches a matching youtuber and the player starts playing and liking the game, both sides can greatly benefit from this. Youtubers need interesting content to keep their audience active. By getting new content by playing a freshly developed indie game, the youtuber can entertain his audience and get even more followers.
The indie game developer on the other hand suddenly reaches thousands of people who might get interested in the game and finally buy it. It’s consuming some time to find the appropriate youtube channel, but it can pay off by having somebody who presents the game to a wide audience for free.

Youtubers make revenue by being in the youtube partner program. The more views a user gets, the more revenue he can make. By getting access to interesting and new content, the youtuber can draw the attention of his viewers and thus make more money.
The indie game developer makes revenue by selling his game, but players can’t buy a game they’re not aware of. By getting in contact with a youtuber, the youtuber gets new content and the indie game gets the attention of the viewers. This symbiosis is successful for both sides: it’s a win-win situation.

Gamification archaeology

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I’m really excited since I found out, that I was taking advantage of gamification before the term has even existed. It’s fascinating becoming aware of being an „innovator“ in a technology life cycle.

I moved some files to my NAS as I discovered some old files from my work for a computer game community site over a decade ago. One of the key features of this website were the forums. Players were able to discuss everything related to the game and a huge community was evolving around the forum. Additionally, it had some reward features to keep users active over a long period of time.

The system was realized in a relative simple way: the forum had the features of displaying the posting count and the avatar of the users enabled. Users weren’t allowed to upload an own avatar picture. Instead, the avatar was linked to the amount of postings the user had made. Frequent, good or helpful posters on the forums should be rewarded with more rare avatars that also help to build up a higher reputation and indicate the contributions of this user to others.

Naturally, the hunt for special avatars also caused one main issues: the users tried to exploit the process of accumulating a high count of postings by „spamming“. To reduce the spam, moderaters sometimes had to delete the postings made by the user in question or even reduce the posting count by a noticeable amount.

Apart from the spam issue, the reward system worked perfectly and motivated a lot of users to be active on the forums over a long period of time. The system used some core features of recent gamification concepts.
The posting counter was immediately giving feedback to the contributions of the user: everytime a new posting was made, the counter increased by one. Users could instantly follow their progress by looking at their short profile information. Additionally, the avatars rewarded for frequent posting created some long term goals for the users, keeping them active over a long period of time.

Nowadays, gamification systems are rewarding users with badges, experience points and achievements. These reward mechanisms are almost the same as over a decade ago in the forums. The whole concept has remained the same. Users get instant feedback to their actions and are rewarded with special awards for long term goals.

The term „gamification“ can be traced back to 2004, but it wasn’t popular used until 2010[1]. However, even without being aware of the term, the main concept was already used in 2000 and before. It’s fascinating to become aware of the fact that I was taking advantage of gamification before the term even existed. It’s even more exciting that I was using it from the very beginning and nowadays trying to research the benefits of it.

And then I needed a rescue mission

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I’ll discuss the attractiveness of open world games. Players of such games experience a personal and unique story. Every moment is different and players can behave as they like without any constraints.

I’ve already discussed a lot the topic of real emotions evoked by virtual environments[1][2]. Most emotional experiences are coming from the story the players are experiencing during their journey through the game. Typically, the story is predetermined and every player will experience the same story arch. Some games, like the Mass Effect[3] series, do have a non lineary story, allowing the players to experience different endings based on their decisions during their playthrough. This allows the players to experience different things in the same game so that every playthrough seems to be unique. However, even the different endings are predetermined to a certain degree. At some point, the story will be the same, if players have done the same decisions.

In contrast to these story based games, sandbox games like Kerbal Space Program (KSP)[4] or open world survival games like DayZ[5] don’t have any predetermined story. The players are left alone with a gigantic world they can explore and use to create their own unique story. Experiencing an unique story can be very intense for the player, because it’s a spontaneous development no one has expected.

Without a clearly defined goal, but with almost endless possibilities of interacting with the world, players start to explore the environment on their own and automatically write their own story in this process. Obviously, key situations like running out of gas in the middle of ghost town full of deadly zombies in DayZ or stranding on the Mün in KSP happens to almost every player. However, the reasons for these situations are in most cases different and the actions the players take to solve the situations are different, too.

This openess allows every player to experience an unique situation every time they play the game. Players are even more proud of their achievements or results. The broad variety of different approaches and different outcomes distinguishes every achievement from each other. Players can tell their stories to other players who will listen with a great interest[6]. Players are aware of the boundaries of the virtual environment and have made their own experiences. These experiences allow each player to understand the stories and to appreciate the achievements of others. Additionally, players don’t know in advance how the story will end, becauso nothing is predetermined. (Well, based on my own observations, some rocket designs in KSP are predetermined to crash …) Hearing from the experiences of other can also evoke new ideas that need to be tried out in that particular game–a new story begins.

Landed on the roof of the vehicle assembly building

To wrap things up, surprise is another great emotion caused by computer games, that keeps gamers playing. Open world games have always the potential of surprising their players with different outcomes. The different results finally lead to different stories the players are experiencing. Hearing the story of others can evoke own ideas of new personal in-game goals.
In the end, open world games without a story might be more colorful than games with a predetermined story. The success of these open world games might be caused by this special feature of allowing players to experience their own stories.

Early access

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I’ll present the concept of selling an early access to alpha version of video games that are currently under development. This concept allows indie game developers to finance their development process and gather useful feedback for their future developments.

Independent video games (indie games) are becoming more and more a well known and successful part in the whole area of video games. Indie games are created by only a few developers that aren’t supported by computer game publishers. Indie games are distributed over the internet and often focus on innovation.

Although indie game developers are very flexible, they do have a major issue: they lack of the financial support from publishers. Releasing the game when it’s finished doesn’t work all the time. To compensate the lack of a publisher, indie game developers came up with an interesting idea. They’re selling access to alpha versions of their games[1].

Computer game players who are interested in the concept of the game or who believe in the developers can buy an access to the game and experience it right away. For that pupose, indie game developers do have different options they can choose from to sell the early access versions of their product.
On the one hand, they can ramp up the price over time. The very first version of the game can be very cheap. After a bunch of new developments, the developers begin to increase the price. This reflects a bit the completeness of the game. The first playable version might have only a few features whereas a later version might be almost a fully functional game.
On the other hand, developers can sell different early access packets[2]. The cheapest packet only grants access to the game. The next package also includes some special benefits. Users now can choose between the packages and decide how much they’re likely to pay for that particular game.

The early access concept is a great deal for both, delevopers and gamers. Developers can already make revenue during the delevopement of their game. Additionally, they get a lot of feedback from their players. This, in return, allows the developers to increase the quality and functionality of their game.
The players on the other side get access to the game and can play it right away without a long waiting period until the game is finally released. Additionally, they’ll recieve all upcoming updates (and the release version of the game) for free. They’ve bought the game already during the development of it and are thus supporting the developers.

From the point of view of a gamer, this concept also increases the playtime of the game. Every new version of the game can be different and behave almost like a completely new game. Additionally, they aren’t overwhelmed by the complexity of the game. A release version of a game can offer a lot of different options to play it and players need to decide what they like to do at first. Playing a game over the time of its developement allows players to experience new functions as they’re implemented.

Does the playstyle influence the personality?

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I’ll discuss a potential connection between the personality of the player and his playstyle. Additionally, I think about how the playstyle might influence the personality of the player.

On the one hand, computer game players can choose their fate: they can use the difficulty level that suits them best. Additionally, they can try to succeed in special challenges that are requiring even more precise gameplay. Sometimes these challenges are even separated into easymodes and hardmodes.

Players who are going for the highest challenges are constantly training their endurance in hard work and resistance against failures. After finally reaching their goals, they feel more rewarded because they’re aware of the hard work behind their achievement. Over time they can start having the same engagement in the real world. They’re conditioned to work hard and are aware of the intrinsic reward when they finally reach their goals. They will continue their work until they’ve exhausted the challenge.

However, the difficulty of the game content can’t be a measure of hard work. Difficulty levels do also help lesser skilled players to successfully play the game. In this case, an easymode might be still a great achievement for a computer game player who isn’t as skilled as other players. This lesser skilled player still can put a lot of effort into the game to finally reach the own goals. Considering this, it’s more important how much effort does a player put into his goals to finally achieve them.

On the other hand, the connection between playstyle and personality can also be seen from an opposite direction. Players who are ambitious in the real world will also be ambitious in a game world. Their personality drives them to successfully complete the highest challenges and to complete most of the game under the hardest circumstances.

In contrast to these ambitious players, players with a „normal“ personality might not be as interested in achieving the highest goals and thus they aren’t putting as much effort into their goals. They might be satisfied if they reach a certain level without putting too much effort into it. They won’t try over and over again to succeed at a special challenge. Instead they choose a lower difficulty level and continue the game.

Some „normal“ players however might get interested in trying something new after their first playthrough. They start a new game on the next difficulty level. At first, they might be frustrated but shortly after they’ve a first success, they’ll start to gain more confidence. They realize that putting some effort into their goals will pay off. Finally the playstyle starts to influence the personality of the player…

In conclusion both approaches might be correct. The personality mostly gives a general direction how game players will approach their game. However, computer games do have good mechanics to reward their players. If they try hard enough, they will be rewarded. This environment is a good training area to gain more confidence that the own hard work will pay off.