WebGame 2.0

"Haha, I have more friends than you."

The schoolyard taunt in my instant messenger loge was pretty tardily to dismiss. For unmatched, it was coming from my 12-year-old cousin-german, World Health Organization is always trying to find some petty elbow room to get under my skin. For another, the taunt was settled not along a deep, insightful discussion of our cultural lives, but from a warm perusal of our competitive MySpace pages.

I was a latecomer to the MySpace craze, signing up primarily to regar the profiles of a couple of closely knit friends and mob members. My cousin, along the other hand, had cursorily made MySpace the center of her middle school social life. A quick conversation confirmed that her magnificent-sounding lean of 180-plus friends was comprised mostly of classmates she barely knew, random strangers that spammed her with friend requests and a few "friends" that were actually her friends in veridical liveliness.

But all these mitigating factors didn't really help Maine shake the annoying flavour I got when comparing her massive champion count to the paltry dozen some friends connected my list. IT was an unmistakable feeling at the pit of my endure that would be familiar to any gamer with even a trace of ego – a feeling that combines the shame of failure and the shame of caring soh much about something so trivial.

I ma alike I was losing. At MySpace, of all things.

***

In some respects, the web has always been a game. Anyone with an net connectedness could participate away simply viewing a webpage, raising the hit counter (score) of that site's creator. Civilised players could grab an Hypertext markup language editor in chief and some unconstrained WWW space and produce a homepage (avatar) that represented them in the online existence. The goal, Eastern Samoa it so often is in life, is to get together more attention (golf links) and prestige (Google ranking) from your fellow players.

The gregarious/cooperative revolution known as Web 2.0 didn't change the basics of this game, but it did make information technology easier to get caught in the virtual aid-seeking madness.

At that place has never been so some shipway to categorize your popularity score on the web. MySpace doesn't merely let you ostentate how numerous friends you have, but also practically forces you to rank your favorites in a personal "Top 8" list (leaderboard). Facebook lets people coalesce into groups (clans) of like players, including many competing groups whose only propose is to be the "largest facebook aggroup of all time." LinkedIn non only publicizes your professional connections (joint sidekick lists), but as wel keeps track of colleagues that are two or three stairs removed from you. At some point, these networks look less like socializing platforms and more look-alike Pokémon games. Gotta catch 'em all!

But Web 2.0 isn't just about who you know, it's also about what you know. Or, at least, how much you share what you know. "Wikipedia is such a healthy resource, it seems a shame to let gaps persist unfilled, OR errors go past unpunished," said Richard Farmbrough in a Bessie Smith magazine interview about his to a greater extent than 163,000 edits to the online encyclopedia, the most of any human user. Farmbrough says he's driven more by an "obsession with continuous improvement" rather than any drive to represent No. 1 on the listing of clear Wikipedia editors, but he does recognize the problem in other users. "'Editcountitis' is a well-known affliction in the Wiki community," Farmbrough told Kathryn Elizabeth Smith, "and to render and cut back it, I would freely put forward that I consider many editors have made more valuable contributions to the 'pedia than I own."

Yes, even an academic attempt like Wikipedia can turn into a game for some editors. Wikipedia's ain page on "editcountitis" describes one of the classic symptoms equally "thinking of your military position in The List as a competition." The page helpfully reminds sufferers "thither is no prize for making 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 10,000, or even 2¹⁶ (65,536) edits." That doesn't impede the obsessive editors, whatever of whom will submit pages without checking for typos scarce so they can raise their edit out count past fixing them later. "Think back what we're whol doing Here is building an encyclopedia, not competing to look who makes the most edits," the page reminds readers.

Quantity isn't the only measure of success happening the web, though. More and more, sites are turning their content into a popularity repugn past letting users vote for their favorite submissions. Take Digg, a tie-in-sharing community of interests where the criterion for front-page intelligence position International Relations and Security Network't accuracy or relevancy but the number of votes from other users.

And what's a popularity contest without a list of winners? Digg creator Kevin Rose explains in a blog post that the site's "Top Diggers" page was created "when in that respect was a inviolable focus on encouraging hoi polloi to submit content." Mission accomplished. A Whitethorn 2006 study by Jason Calacanis found that the top 10 Digg users hyphenated to pass roughly 3,400 hours submitting content to the site in more or less a yr. It seems a little enamored, unless you compare it to the thousands of hours top Halo 2 players put into their preferent pastime. For the top performers, submitting to Digg is less of a chore and more of a game.

"Digg's public top submitter list didn't thrust my submissions as much as it gave me a barometer to guess my success by," says Andy Sorcini, better titled MrBabyMan, the top submitter on the current incarnation of the Top Diggers List. Sorcini achieved success with Digg early happening – his twenty percent submission got enough votes to make it to the front Sri Frederick Handley Page – and while Sorcini says he didn't change his submission scheme later on that, this small recognition did drive him to stay active. "I've always submitted stories that have appealed to me in person. Away that time, still, I was hooked. I did want to see more of my stories on the homepage."

Sorcini insists Digg's real solicitation is "exposing other users to sites and news I find intriguing," but he admits there is also a social and competitive aspect to the proceedings. "The top submitters all Doctor of Osteopathy know each other and are in constant communication with each former," Sorcini said. "At that place is rivalry, as well, A many are highly competitive, but it's usually jolly friendly."

IT's not always just friendly competition, though – some of these Web 2.0 interactions can have implications for real-world business sector. Amazon.com has turned cartesian product critique into a contend of its possess away letting readers plac the "kindliness" of the thousands of user reviews on the site.

Practically like Digg, recognition along a teetotum reviewers page encourages people to playing period the reviewing game. "When I started to review on Amazon and vigil my ranking, I think I debuted round 25,000 close to," writes Top 300 Reviewer Tom Duff. "That would have been belatedly 2003. My end was to get into the top 1,000 by the end of 2004. I ended ahead in the top 500. This year, I wanted to death up around 250, but I'm already at 269. Breaking 200 is probably more realistic."

While Plum duff says his cleared writing is the main benefit of his prolific reviewing, at that place's also a more tangible reward for his efforts. "Now that I'm in the upper rankings, I often get email requests from authors (some tech and fiction) asking if they can air me a recap copy of their Koran," Duff writes. Think of it as a salvation game writ large; Skee-Ball for literati.

Of course, like any gamy, at that place are those that try to effort the system. A programming glitch in 2004 revealed many authors using Amazon's reexamine organisation to mail service anonymous praise for their own work. To the authors, it's just a way of fighting support against a virtual enemy that's threatening their real-life livelihood. "That anybody is allowed to come in and anonymously meth a Quran to me is absurd," author John Rechy told The New York Multiplication after being caught writing an anonymous rave for his own book. "How to strike back? Meet go into and rebut all single one of them."

Even if there International Relations and Security Network't a personal back, the popularity competition can drive reviewers to game the organization or pimp to the audience's tastes. "My positive reviews are rated as 'useful' cold more often than my critical reviews," writes Amazon reviewer John Gordon. "This may play human limitations, but it's trivially easy for persons related with a vendor or retailer to downrate critical reviews and uprate certain reviews. I'd aver this qualifies atomic number 3 cheating on a middling astounding scale."

And that's the thing about the new interactivity trend along the web. When everyone's a potential God Almighty, everyone's also a potential cheater. Or a succeeder, operating room a nonstarter, or honourable a competition. One affair is clear: In the new web, everyone's a player.

Kyle Orland is a videogame freelancer and co-author of The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual. He's written for a variety of print and online outlets, as chronicled happening his workblog.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/webgame-2-0/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/webgame-2-0/

Share this post