Please burn your cross on a different virtual lawn

Until this morning I had never heard of Mr. Zhan Ye, or of GameVision which is, apparently, the company of which he is president. Let me state that my opinions on his game design are not based on his nationality, nor is race.  Rather they are engendered by the direction in which he thinks western game developers and publishers should take free to play games.

Let’s start by citing two articles over at one of my favorite web sites, Gamasutra:

 The Designer’s Notebook: Selling Hate and Humiliation by Ernest Adams

VGS 09: Game Designers – Everything You Know Is Wrong by Christian Nutt

When Ernest Adams gives his summation of free to play games in the article cited above, he has hit the nail on the head. Here it is:

“Free-to-play is a comparatively new business model for us. Free-to-play (F2P for short) means “sort of free.” The game is free if you have a lot of time, but if you want to advance at anything other than a glacial pace, you have to put money in, and that enables you to get ahead faster. Paying money also gives you an advantage over those players who don’t pay.” – Ernest Adams

That’s the crux of the issue isn’t it? In Western society we are raised (well most of us anyway) being taught the principles of fairness. Those of us in the United States were born in a country that, while still struggling to live up the standard, is based on the very principle that “all men are created equal” (yes I know that while the founding fathers may have espoused that they didn’t exactly live that).   If Mr. Zahn Ye is to believed, it is this very belief in fairness that results in the failure of Western game designers to make a success out of the free to play business model:

 “The goal is to create a highly dynamic community, in which a lot of conflicts, dramas, love, and hate can happen. If it helps to create the tension — the conflicts, the dramas — fairness can be sacrificed. If we believe that a game world is a reflection of the real world, then the concept of fairness in the game should not be taken for granted.” – Zhan Ye, President of Game Vision

In fact game design of free 2 play games is something that has come up in many of the recent No Prisoners, No Mercy show in connection the recent, and now a bit controversial game, Allods Online.  The crux of the issue being a game designed to make it necessary for players to spend copious amounts of money in the cash shop, rather than entice them to do so.

Now I will be the first to not only admit, but support that a game has to be paid for. If the profit margin where the line in the profit and loss statement that reads “net profit before depreciation” doesn’t meet or exceed the cost of the game then it won’t stay open very long.  Still, there is a great deal of difference between designing a game that requires a player spend money to stay in the game (such as the “perfume” sold in the Allods online shop that is necessary to rid the player of a 2 hour death penalty/debuff) and one that makes them want to spend money in the cash shop.

“The most successful F2P games (monetization-wise) in China all give their paying customers HUGE advantages. In the beginning, rich people kill poor people all the time. Balancing is a big issue. Chinese game designers tried different innovative methods over the course of last several years.” – Zhan Ye, President of Game Vision

Ernest Adams points out, and rightly so, that “It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him to create a game in which people simply can’t kill each other at all — a problem Ultima Online solved years ago when they broke the world into PvP and non-PvP shards.” The solution presented by Mr. Ye, as the article by author Adams points out, is as follows:

“Let rich people organize family clans, hire poor people, lead them to fight with other clans, and reward them. Think about who those rich people are in the real world — business owners and factory owners. They manage and lead hundreds of people in the real world and are used to the leadership role. In the F2P world, they still want that feeling. We just offer them that in the game, naturally.”  – Zhan Ye, President of Game Vision

Perhaps the crux of the issue at this point is the game mechanics that have been traditionally used by Western game designers to encourage players to stay in the game.  It is perhaps indicative of western thought patterns that one of the most successful concepts of end game design is to appeal to greed, or as Richard Garriott called World of Warcraft’s end game “a system of inventory management.”  Rather than then being the “harbinger of failure” that he portrayed it as, an appeal to the greed of western gamers has worked, and tremendously so.

But it is a giant leap from “one upping” the neighbors and putting them in chains while you beat them in to submission and press gang them in to your virtual army.  Yet it appears this is one of the directions that Mr. Ye would have Western game designers take our games in his attempt to “enlighten” them.  Here is how, according to the article by Mr. Adams, Mr. Ye defends his position:

“Zhan Ye defends all this in his lecture by likening it to Las Vegas. He points out that gambling takes advantage of a human weakness, but gambling never goes out of fashion; the Chinese free-to-play games take advantage of another human weakness — the desire to dominate other people — and that will never go out of fashion either.” – Ernest Adams

Part of the problem seems to be that games that allow one player to “dominate” another – games which we call “player versus player” are in the minority in Western markets.  At best most game designers stick them in as an afterthought saying “oh yes we should have pvp as well”.  Few companies have been able to duplicate the “wild west” setting that CCP and Eve Online has managed to so successfully create.  While being able to dominate another player may be fun those few players who are able to run roughshod over their counterparts, it is hardly incentive for the downtrodden player to continue playing the game.

The failing of Mr. Ye, is that while he may indeed have a handle on the market in free to play games in other countries, he seems to have a tenuous grasp on the Western market at best.  Mr. Ye is, in short, hoping to create an atmosphere of hatred and contempt between players. He is hoping to stratify virtual worlds into the “haves” and “have not’s”, all the while encouraging the “have not’s” to get used to the subservient position in which he hopes to cast them.

If nothing else, Mr. Ye demonstrates his complete lack of understanding of the very nature of the principles upon which the United States was based when he says the following:

“…the desire to dominate other people — and that will never go out of fashion either.”  – Zhan Ye, President of Game Vision

If Mr. Ye’s contention that in order for the free 2 play business model to succeed in the West, games must be designed to encourage hate, humiliation, and domination then likely the business model really will be a failure in places like the United States. In the end, there is a world of difference between breeding contempt and creating an atmosphere of competition. I can envision the Olympics as managed on the Zhan Ye theory of design…fencing would be done with Howitzer Cannons instead of fencing foils, and the losing team would be forced into servitude in the victors household. If that is the direction he hopes to take gaming, while I can’t speak for any other gamers but the No Prisoners, No Mercy staff, let me send Mr. Zhan Ye, President of Game Vision a clear message:

Go burn a cross on someone else’s virtual lawn.