winning is part of the fun

Supposedly it's all "gaming constructs." Put another way, it's about introducing elements particular to the measurable and competitive online gaming world(s). Indices of this nature have been around for ages (friends list size, number of comments under a blog post, thumbs up-down ratings of nearly everything) but people are now talking about and, at least on playfoursquare, utilizing achievements and leaderboards. And I can't stop thinking about guilds, and how their absence feels critical to the success of implementing these newer constructs.

The foursquare leaderboard makes for an excellent example. A leaderboard is essentially a high score list, individuals (or guilds, when they exist) ranked by whatever point system is available. Foursquare is a mobile application slash website where points are awarded for "checking in" to a location. I send a text message to the system with my location ("@ Coffee Xpress") and in return receive one or more points (first-time checkins are awarded more points than subsequent visits, checkins during "work hours" are awarded fewer points than checkins at night, etc). Each week a leaderboard is posted, ranking foursquare players by how many points they've accrued.

Here's a fundamental truth: no one very much enjoys playing a game that's impossible to win. A quick glance at the foursquare leaderboard tells me that there is no possible way I am ever going to amass as many points as the current top ten people because I am simply not going to check in to that many places ever. Theoretically, I could game the system (check in to false places), but I wasn't even that pyscho when it came to WoW. I could also radically alter my life and start heading out to places simply to checkin. This is neither economically viable nor physically appealing. I like sleep.

This is partly where achievements come into play -- both in foursquare and in other games. Lapsing back to a WoW example, none of my toons will ever hit the top gear ranks because I simply do not raid enough nor do I much like the kinds of players who do. I have, however, acquired ("unlocked" in the parlance) a number of oddball achievements (c.f., Mr Pinchy for starters) which I'm mildly proud of. I've said before that there are many ways to excel at WoW despite being no way to win. So maybe I won't ever hit the leaderboard on foursquare, but perhaps someday I will unlock the taco truck achievement and a certain amount of win-like satisfaction from doing so.

The thing is, leaderboards and achievements of this type based on the individual are necessarily limited in nature. An individual player can only do so much. Clump a bunch of individuals together in a guild and they can collectively accomplish far more. This is more than the "many hands make light work" cliche, which is no less true for being so trite. A player partakes of the success of the guild and to one extent or another the guild's success is experienced as an individual success. Maybe my resto druid may not be the best pvp arena player or the best pve geared on the server, but she could easily join one of the top five guilds. If I cared enough about being a Top X sort of winner, I could get my competitive fix by joining a leading guild.

Guilds are far from being the solution to taking a mediocre player into the realm of top ten. It's clear in a foursquare world, the creation of guilds would shuffle player ranks around a bit, but because of the real life nature of the game it's more likely that extremely social people would bond together into even more powerful point-earning juggernauts. One rarely checks in alone and it doesn't take an anthropology degree to guess that many foursquare guilds would be comprised of real life friends. Friendship groups tend to have median ages. Only a truly crazy guild of forty-somethings would be able to unseat even the most casual twenty-something guild if the only thing being measured were frequency of checkins. No team can be in the top ten if the players are all in the bottom thousand. Few if any sports exist where one extremely talented player can carry the rest of the team.

However, as soon as the game introduces measures of success that go beyond pure point systems (which, less be honest, is the easiest to code and therefore the most commonly encountered) the power of guilds begins to shine. Imagine benchmarks for geographic distribution in a game like foursquare. I could probably come up with a kick ass guild instantly covering every continent except Africa (presuming foursquare was set up globally, which it isn't). It's also more than probable I could put together a solid winner for Massive Coffee Consumption or Ethnic Restaurant Aficionados. A few years ago when every I know worked in Silicon Valley it would have been amusing to compete for Mastery of The Valley. People could clump into guilds for cultural events, political protests, mountain bikers, dog walkers, yoga junkies. Maybe a given group rarely eats out but they could collectively pwn the art gallery scene.

This concept cuts back to why a guild is not like a friends list. Some of my friends are likely to make it to the top of a straight point-driven leaderboard, but realistically most won't. Furthermore, my friends have widely scattered interests and I can't begin to imagine a single measurable achievement we could accomplish if we banded together. And that's fantastic from a real life perspective. I like the disparity and the breadth that this brings to my life. However, breadth doesn't win, excellence does. Without the ability to pick some attainable aspect of a game at which to excel, the game becomes frustrating, boring and unplayed.