Aug 10
26
Social Media Games
When gaming and social media collide, the ramifications can be amazing. Or terrifying. As game-lord Blizzard found out, the masses love and hate the theory, but in the end in any arena where ego can be built or bruised, those playing with real names are the first at risk.
Simple clashes of personality, mis-communication, or a difference of opinion on ethical matters can create great friction. When groups are involved, even more so. Those with influence can turn the tables and create traction without significant effort, and the end result is a game that turns into a nightmare.
Empire Avenue was billed as a place where you could take stock of your social media wealth by assigning value to it. You could buy and sell stock in your friends, with the ultimate goal of conglomerating content, and ranking players (social media users) with a stock price, and wealth.
The system was used as we anticipated in early beta cycles. Players used the system in it’s gaming context, seeking wealth and a place on the leader-boards because that’s the best way to get exposure to your feeds, blogs, twitter-stream, and messages.
That gaming, in an unregulated (or lightly-regulated) system permitted users who saw the opportunity for exposure to exploit the system (is it a game?) to get visibility. That irked a number of folks, some justified, some unjustified.
Formations of user groups akin to guilds placed power players in visible groups. That was and is unnerving for some users. Some exploitative plays may have been made by small groups of two or three, but a spotlight was cast on anyone associating with these power players.
Insinuations of wrongdoing – with some basis in fact, though without a breach of terms created cause for a witch-hunt. While there may have been initial transgressions either real or perceived, the weaknesses in the buy-sell system permitted abuse (and by abuse I mean permitted, but frowned upon) and the ability to unduly impact share price and stock value. If of course the system is about social media networking and influence, and not a game.
For a system with it’s sights set on displaying social value within a game context, the game controls behaviour – not social media ‘value’. What was billed as buying and selling your friends became buying and selling faceless and nameless accounts for profit.
This ‘game’ aspect coupled with the influx of thousands of new users brought a large group of players to the table with little value in a social media context, but great smarts with respect to making the system bend to their desire. For most this was a short trip to the top of the leader-boards.
After 3 months, I’m a 40$ stock. For a large number of ‘players’ 3 days can produce 60$ stocks with no content, and limited social engagement. How? Many of these are hollow buy-sell accounts with hundreds of investors, and no content. These are the real manipulators of the market.
Now take those real people, content drivers, sharers and social media users with a bent for gaming – who have used the system given to them to get to the leader-boards or for some – the top. Anyone who felt done-wrong had blogs and supposition to place blame on a dark-hat group of 11. Nearly all of the 11 are real people, with real blogs, real businesses, and real reputations.
Because of (pick any one or more) ego, greed, jealousy, wit, mirth, analysis, game strategy, a bad stomach, or any of a hundred other reasons, many of the users saw one group as the instigator. The nexus of all that was evil on the Avenue. Every time their stock was liquidated, it was the 11. Every time their price fell, it must have been the 11. But the system didn’t discriminate – a sell is a sell – and they are not reported by name.
Unless someone had timed screen shots of buys, and timed shots of sells to validate ‘shareholders then’ against ‘shareholders now’ there would be no guarantee of identification.
Worse – even if the share sell was legitimately one of the 11 (we have some wealth and therefore own a lot of shares) without direct questions and answers subjective thinking came up with the reason for a sell.
Couple the frustrating drops to a persons stock value (ego) with a scapegoat and you’ve got a recipe for out-of-game mudslinging. But is it out of game?
As a social media aggregator, on Empire Avenue the users blogs, twitter, facebook and other feeds propagate the system. An angry remark on twitter is posted to the Avenue. Is it in game, or out of game?
Once twitter became a venue for discord – the game became real. Allegations of cheating, ‘cartel’ behaviour and ethics left the arena of game, and entered the tools that we use on a daily basis to work, network, and earn.
A frustrating day on the Avenue became a public humiliation in a twitter stream, or blog. More frustrating in that social media followers who are unfamiliar with Empire Avenue could misconstrue statements relating to the game as relating to real business or persona. What started as a frustration in ‘game’ play suddenly has the ability to directly impact our work and daily life. For many casual social media users, their investment online is limited for others though it is as important as the office we walk into every day.
Many of us who started on the Avenue as a means to tie social streams together, find now that anonymity is the only way to play the game, giving up the social value. Those who may have started on the Avenue with a desire to be anonymous have through an attempt to play the game exposed themselves. In a rare but notable segment players have created completely ‘Empire Avenue’ personas – including their personality, blogs, and twitter streams. The nature of social media is that to gain any personal value beyond ego by sharing yourself you must choose to share genuinely. To play a game like empire avenue, we must accept that some players will not stomach the frustration and ‘hurt’ from in-game activity and will allow it to spill out into the streets of real life.
So – what are the implications to use of social media? When you don’t have a game in the way, social media is a powerful tool. Like face to face relationships, we don’t all agree on things but we rarely shout obscenities at each other. Differences of opinion become speaking points and discussions arise. In rare cases, those differences may require severance of these connections, but for the most part – we’re civil. Unless of course we aren’t genuine. When you combine a game where status is a figurehead of the ecosystem, and success requires a social and psychological investment, prepare to get slammed publicly if you step on a few people while climbing to the top.
From the beginning, I’ve played the game of Empire Avenue as myself. I’ve not done anything out of character, nor jumped on a bandwagon to take anyone out of the game. I’ve played with integrity. I can say that and feel good about it. I know full well that many will take issue with that. They will claim that I was belligerent, cruel, and vicious, and that due to my associations I was mean, targeted for profit, sold out of spite, attempted to trigger crashes, and so on and so on and so on.
I can say with conviction, even when I had been blocked, lumped into mystical groups of hated elite and called rude and ignorant – I still didn’t sell to harm, or organize such things despite the insistence of others that I must have been doing so.
I’ve had fun at others expense, yes. I’ve been defensive when I believe that someone is being unreasonable, or has been unnecessarily harsh in game, or in the real world. I have always acted with an eye to the potential impact to their lives. I’ve never insulted someone’s skills, claimed that they were unprofessional, that they weren’t trustworthy or otherwise sought to belittle ones character (“elitist douchebag”?), though I have done so at their caricatures. I’ve poked fun at mythical creatures, sought out canned meat products made from them, and used them to express humour. Some of that has been taken in stride, some has been taken as a personal attack. Sadly, some have invested so much in their virtual persona, that attacks on the persona are considered personal.
When it comes to social media, even those who produce content online behind a veil of anonymity may have value, but does their caricature have the same responsibility to the truth? To integrity? I would suggest no. When the face of a person in the social sphere exists only in the context of the game, who’s existence is fundamentally a construction of the game or the internet in general – are they real?
When you can google a players name find their employer, see pictures of their children and see who they interact with on a daily basis, are they different from a construction? From the ‘fake’ game players whose online persona has no ties to real life? For these constructs, no matter the investment made to create them, they have no risks associated with starting battles. They merely take a few bruises to their digital ego. Those they attack however, take it in their credibility, career associations, and the value of their very name.
can you people just drop it?
Use the site to enjoy networking with others and finding new content
@EvolveTom via Twitter (EA PR Guy)
We’d love to Tom, but we’re so buried in buy and sell notices, stock price alterations, leaderboards, buy-me messages and ‘game’ statistics, that content doesn’t exist – not when you are required to jockey for position just to be seen.
Some say that to withdraw from a game when being bullied is giving up and that it equates to lying down and accepting the assertions. I disagree. When pushed to the point where every word, every plea for sanity, every request to just think about what accusations, assertions and inventions are being spread results in venom and personal attacks in the real world, rather than the ‘game’ world – then I’d rather part company, because the very attempt to bring sanity to a discussion is met with the face of an anonymous player who isn’t accountable to anyone but their online persona.
I’ve tried to defend myself, my actions and my associations. I’ve not tried to make excuses for others. But I also tire of trying to teach people to think for themselves before placing blame. To do their own investigations, and make their own decisions before acting.
Social media and ego are tough enough to manage. When you mix that combination with a leader-board and significant time investment in a game – accountability and integrity blur into transactions. On a scale, from complete constructs of game to heavily invested social media users there is a wide range of accountability. At any point on that scale there is a level of willingness to accept risk and integrity.
For many of us, it’s apparent that we are in an environment where our competitors (this is a game isn’t it – or is it?) do not share our definitions of tolerable interaction. As a result we must either reduce our interaction or create distance from our real life social media investments to protect ourselves. Hardly the environment that Empire Avenue was supposed to foster.
