Celebrim
Legend
So its probably not a big secret that one of the attractions of gaming is that through a game you recieve the illusion of having accomplished something. Whether its Bejewelled Blitz, WoW, Settlers of Cataan, or D&D one of the reasons people play games is for the immediate affirmation of success and accomplishment which in real life generally occurs alot less often and requires alot more effort.
On the whole, I don't think any one here is going to assert that the illusion of accomplishment is in and of itself a bad thing.
However, well before I had any theories about games in general or had read anyone elses theories about games, I had made an assessment that the sort of player most likely to be disruptive at the table and most likely to engage in poor sportsmanship was a class of gamer that I dubbed 'ego gamers'. The ego gamer had invested a large portion of his self-esteem in his ability to achieve success in a game. Or to put it in other terms, for the 'ego gamer' the payoff in the game was almost entirely achieving the illusion of success. For these players, socializing with friends, telling or experiencing a story, mental exploration, or simply the social permission to goof off, play, and be silly that is generally withheld from anyone above 16 unless they are drinking were essentially unimportant. Unless the game provided a regular illusion of success, the 'ego gamer' was discontent and anything that hindered the 'ego gamer' from this goal was hateful. In effect, the 'ego gamer' had taken that regular dose of affirmation that all gamers get when they 'win', found it good indeed, and become a 'affirmation junkey'.
The reason that this tended to become a problem is that the ego gamers I encountered generally defined a successful game as one where they defeated every obstacle put in front of them with as little effort as possible. Any temporary setback (like a fight they were losing), any momentary failure (like a run of bad dice), or any obstacle the DM placed in front of them (like an encounter requiring something other than a straight foward tactic), tended to be met with confusion, dismay, and often outright anger. To avoid these emotions and get back to the fix they crave, the 'ego gamer' generally starts resorting to out of game solutions to the problem. That is, if the dice aren't going there way, then they start cheating. If there current tactics are failing, they resort to either bargaining with the DM or arguing with him. Thus, the ego gamer was particularly prone to becoming 'power gamers', 'rules lawyers', or the more familiar terms I later heard to describe specific instances of what I considered the root behavior.
Now, before this gets much further, let me say that my intention is not to flame 'ego gamers' as purveyors of badwrongfun. We could equally note that the guy who plays because he recieves social permission to goof off can be disruptive by taking that emotional stimulus too far, or that the DM whose sole reason to play is to tell a story is likely to find himself frustrated when the story being created isn't as cool as the one he envisioned before he started and that this leads to all sorts of anti-social behavior as well. It's certainly not my intention to say that 'ego gamers' are worse sorts of gamers than 'roleplayers', who can be just as annoying. Think the the amateur thespians who get off solely on creating wierd, dysfunctional characters with all sorts of emotional baggage, and unusual accents and mannerisms and then insisting that the games role-play revolve around their characters emotional state despite the wishes of the rest of the table. Nor is it necessarily my claim that 'ego gamers' are 'bad roleplayers', as I've met several who - especially when they think an advantage can be achieved by doing it - are some of the best RPers I've ever had the pleasure of sharing a table with. And, many of them become masters of tactics, dungeoneering, and the system as well.
But, still, I am saying that if your sole investment in the game is recieving an immediate reward and affirmation of your awesomeness, it can lead to table conflict, and - to put it in the most charitable way I can - a game that I just don't enjoy either running or playing. As a referee with players like that at the table, I feel used, as if the only reason for my existance was to say "Yes, oh, yes, baby" to the player with as much enthusiasm as I could muster to whatever they said or did. As a player at the table with other players like that, I feel as if the game is a simplistic exercise in dice rolling with a basic structure that works counter to the goal of recieving an affirmation of meaningful success. That is, I don't believe you can win in a game; I don't believe RPGs are competive; you can't meaningfully keep score in most games; I believe all success ultimately comes at the grace of the DM, and I find the measure of the character's success a very poor measurement of my own even for a game. If I wanted the thrill of victory, I'd play something where competiveness was built in, luck was minimized, and obstacles could only be overcome by increasing my personal skill (however trivial that 'skill' might actually be) rather than by increasing arbitrary numbers on the playing peice.
I bring all of this up not because I'm having alot of problems 'in real life' that make me think I've totally misjudged what players think is fun, but because there are increasing divergence in the online community and hints of divergence in the design community over how the potential problem of the 'ego gamer' needs to be addressed. It hasn't been placed in those terms beofre, and I'm not sure that anyone is going to want to place the problem in those terms (perhaps someone could suggest a term that sounds less derogatory), but after participating in scores of threads over the last few years where to me it seemed like that was the underlying issue and what was being discussed was only a special case or proxy argument, I wanted to put it in those terms and see what happened.
There seems to be a rather sizable block of players and designers who believe that addressing the needs of the 'ego gamer' needs to be the overriding concern in game mastery and even game design. That is, the trend in thinking about RPGs seems to be more toward making a system and encouraging game masters to run it in a way that the players recieve a regular and uninterrupted dose of reinforcing affirmation of thier awesomeness. The trend seems to me to be toward ensuring a regular heavy dose of the illusion of success, either to reward existing players or to addict new players. It's my contention (look out, thesis coming) that contrary to the good intentions of the designers, running the game to this end or designing the system to this end (counterintuitively) chases more players from the game than it draws in and ultimately is not satisfying to even the 'ego gamers'.
On the whole, I don't think any one here is going to assert that the illusion of accomplishment is in and of itself a bad thing.
However, well before I had any theories about games in general or had read anyone elses theories about games, I had made an assessment that the sort of player most likely to be disruptive at the table and most likely to engage in poor sportsmanship was a class of gamer that I dubbed 'ego gamers'. The ego gamer had invested a large portion of his self-esteem in his ability to achieve success in a game. Or to put it in other terms, for the 'ego gamer' the payoff in the game was almost entirely achieving the illusion of success. For these players, socializing with friends, telling or experiencing a story, mental exploration, or simply the social permission to goof off, play, and be silly that is generally withheld from anyone above 16 unless they are drinking were essentially unimportant. Unless the game provided a regular illusion of success, the 'ego gamer' was discontent and anything that hindered the 'ego gamer' from this goal was hateful. In effect, the 'ego gamer' had taken that regular dose of affirmation that all gamers get when they 'win', found it good indeed, and become a 'affirmation junkey'.
The reason that this tended to become a problem is that the ego gamers I encountered generally defined a successful game as one where they defeated every obstacle put in front of them with as little effort as possible. Any temporary setback (like a fight they were losing), any momentary failure (like a run of bad dice), or any obstacle the DM placed in front of them (like an encounter requiring something other than a straight foward tactic), tended to be met with confusion, dismay, and often outright anger. To avoid these emotions and get back to the fix they crave, the 'ego gamer' generally starts resorting to out of game solutions to the problem. That is, if the dice aren't going there way, then they start cheating. If there current tactics are failing, they resort to either bargaining with the DM or arguing with him. Thus, the ego gamer was particularly prone to becoming 'power gamers', 'rules lawyers', or the more familiar terms I later heard to describe specific instances of what I considered the root behavior.
Now, before this gets much further, let me say that my intention is not to flame 'ego gamers' as purveyors of badwrongfun. We could equally note that the guy who plays because he recieves social permission to goof off can be disruptive by taking that emotional stimulus too far, or that the DM whose sole reason to play is to tell a story is likely to find himself frustrated when the story being created isn't as cool as the one he envisioned before he started and that this leads to all sorts of anti-social behavior as well. It's certainly not my intention to say that 'ego gamers' are worse sorts of gamers than 'roleplayers', who can be just as annoying. Think the the amateur thespians who get off solely on creating wierd, dysfunctional characters with all sorts of emotional baggage, and unusual accents and mannerisms and then insisting that the games role-play revolve around their characters emotional state despite the wishes of the rest of the table. Nor is it necessarily my claim that 'ego gamers' are 'bad roleplayers', as I've met several who - especially when they think an advantage can be achieved by doing it - are some of the best RPers I've ever had the pleasure of sharing a table with. And, many of them become masters of tactics, dungeoneering, and the system as well.
But, still, I am saying that if your sole investment in the game is recieving an immediate reward and affirmation of your awesomeness, it can lead to table conflict, and - to put it in the most charitable way I can - a game that I just don't enjoy either running or playing. As a referee with players like that at the table, I feel used, as if the only reason for my existance was to say "Yes, oh, yes, baby" to the player with as much enthusiasm as I could muster to whatever they said or did. As a player at the table with other players like that, I feel as if the game is a simplistic exercise in dice rolling with a basic structure that works counter to the goal of recieving an affirmation of meaningful success. That is, I don't believe you can win in a game; I don't believe RPGs are competive; you can't meaningfully keep score in most games; I believe all success ultimately comes at the grace of the DM, and I find the measure of the character's success a very poor measurement of my own even for a game. If I wanted the thrill of victory, I'd play something where competiveness was built in, luck was minimized, and obstacles could only be overcome by increasing my personal skill (however trivial that 'skill' might actually be) rather than by increasing arbitrary numbers on the playing peice.
I bring all of this up not because I'm having alot of problems 'in real life' that make me think I've totally misjudged what players think is fun, but because there are increasing divergence in the online community and hints of divergence in the design community over how the potential problem of the 'ego gamer' needs to be addressed. It hasn't been placed in those terms beofre, and I'm not sure that anyone is going to want to place the problem in those terms (perhaps someone could suggest a term that sounds less derogatory), but after participating in scores of threads over the last few years where to me it seemed like that was the underlying issue and what was being discussed was only a special case or proxy argument, I wanted to put it in those terms and see what happened.
There seems to be a rather sizable block of players and designers who believe that addressing the needs of the 'ego gamer' needs to be the overriding concern in game mastery and even game design. That is, the trend in thinking about RPGs seems to be more toward making a system and encouraging game masters to run it in a way that the players recieve a regular and uninterrupted dose of reinforcing affirmation of thier awesomeness. The trend seems to me to be toward ensuring a regular heavy dose of the illusion of success, either to reward existing players or to addict new players. It's my contention (look out, thesis coming) that contrary to the good intentions of the designers, running the game to this end or designing the system to this end (counterintuitively) chases more players from the game than it draws in and ultimately is not satisfying to even the 'ego gamers'.
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