Change

January 17, 2006 on 10:41 am | In Life

I have long felt MMORPGs were good training for dealings in the real world, depending on how one plays them. Both involve dealing with people you don't know very well, managing their personalities, bringing those with seldomly concurrent interests together for common purposes, and doing so within a specific timetable of achievement. The difference between an MMORPG and the real world workplace is that one can hide behind anonymity in the former, and probably isn't getting paid very well if at all. The latter requires that whole physiology of physical presence, for the most part.

But included in both is the concept of change, and how to manage it.

Some rather big happenings at work lately. The company isn't small, so it takes a certain threshold before change is noticed by everyone at the same time. Reorgs can do that, particularly in a place with many offices around the world.

I consider myself an agent for change. I'm sure I'd carry a political distinction if I cared enough to label myself. Basically I'm just not someone who's going to agree with a solution only because it's how it's always been done. There are those occasions where doing something because it's always been done is a good thing (like staying to your side of the road, or keeping your cold cuts refrigerated between use). But I only consider that viable when there's a clear benefit to doing so and not just because someone else doesn't want to exercise some brain power.

I take a long view on things, both in this genre and in my life. I love these games, but even at my peak of enjoyment, a fundamental shift in them doesn't bother me as much as it seems it does others (ie, SWG NGE). This genre is, has, and always will be fluid. Getting used to something is getting complacent about it, becoming less prepared for change. Sure a few RMTers have to rethink how they exploit the system, or maybe someone who's previously been the Master of Everything isn't anymore, but both are transient.

I consider life itself a bit like that. I'm on the tail end of what some consider the Gamer Generation. Our outlook on life is very different from the prior generations, particularly in the business world. There's a lot of detail in that book, but the part that stuck out most to me is one I've carried with me since leaving High School for College:

We are our own masters.

People make excuses. Whether in game or in life, there's always some person or event to blame for something or another. Specifically in MMORPGs, there's such stuff:

• Condemning twinking or powerleveling because someone else can now achieve goals slightly faster or while looking better.
• Condemning RMTing because it enables others to bypass systems in a game they personally don't find fun.
• Marginalizing entire strata of player styles because they're not uber enough to like the upper 0.1% of the nuts who live and breath endgame PvP for 6 hours a night.
• Someone openly berating fans of a game they themselves never played, or didn't like.

Some say these actions are part of a culture of anonymity, people confident in their stealth presence to spew whatever nonsense comes to them. I don't think that goes far enough. Rather, I think it's because these people don't like change.

People learn something and master it. At that point, they either move on to something new or try to maintain their position as a master (or both). The people who want to continue their mastery become ultra conservative about the game, preferring things the way they area and that's it. Any minor change requires they rethink what they've mastered and how. Exit Statements, those eulogies people write when they leave an MMORPG, are born of this. These people don't like a specific change, or change at all, and decide other people care enough about their disinterest in adapting.

Real life is like that too. Not a day goes by where there's not someone in the hallway complaining about something. Management, payroll, vendors, processes, weather, whatever, all sorts of things that person has nothing to do with yet which keeps them up at night. What bothers me about this isn't their complaints about stuff they can't change though, it's about the stuff they can.

Everyone's empowered, if they're confident in themselves. It's nice to feel all warm and cozy in a job or a game, but the reality is that nobody has complete and absolute control over their position. Everyone from the CEO on down to the players have events that will force them towards change.

It's not easy. Make no mistake about that. It took me years to get to a point where I can love a game but leave it the moment it's no longer fun. I wrote my eulogies, sold my stuff, deleted my characters, all that typical "I am done, hear me roar!" stuff. But years later, I just quietly hit the Cancel button and move on.

For the most part it's because I don't think anyone cares that much. Fans of a game may know me well enough to say goodbye, but my leaving does not impact the fun they're having. Non-fans of a game don't care enough about the game to know who's coming or going anyway. And the in-betweens, the fence-sitters not sure if they want to stay or go shouldn't be relying on the actions of others to help them decide anyway.

Life isn't much different either. I've got a job I love in a company I could retire from if it's still around and I'm duly rewarded for my efforts. But I only control so much of my position there. Someone six pay grades above me could close a division because it's good for the company, and I'd be gone. So all I can do in the time I have is learn, execute, and support. That's partly just basic professionalism, but it's also personality. Both of those are trans-job, things built into a character that exists outside of a single office.

I don't know if I came to this place in my psyche because of MMORPGs or because of real world experience. I find it completely fascinating though that at this point I can no longer tell the difference