Left 4 Dead
Key Ideas Addressed:
Being a co-operative game, the goal of the game is for each player to work in concert towards the goal (this being surviving until the end of the level). As such, the game appears to be an example of a "Petri dish". The game is a test chamber for the mechanics it uses and how people interact with them, like many multiplayer games. And for future games in a similar genre it will be used as a standard for creating a co-op shooter, mostly due to observations that can be made simply watching players play the game.
However, the game is not an experiment in the same capacity as the "common pool" problem. Quite the opposite, in fact. Players are appropriated ammunition unsparingly, health powerups in accordance with need (rather than scarcity). At the end of the day, the amount of damage a greedy teammate can do is severely limited by the design. As a result the game cannot be a real experiment into human negativity, as it cripples the impulse (scaling friendly fire so that you cannot outright kill a teammate) and provides a secondary outlet (versus mode allows you to play as either the survivors or the special infected, giving you a chance to "grief" and be rewarded). And unlike the law of a country, the rules of the game are nigh impossible to work around without cracking the game's framework.
Valve software, though, uses the game to collect vast amounts of data. Both to improve the game, to gather information to marketing and to provide improvements to future games. The PC version of Left 4 Dead is installed through Steam, which serves as both a digital distribution platform and a stat-tracking program. The program records playtimes, time spent in any single area, number of enemies killed on average, etc. As a result, Valve acquires a tremendous amount of data for use on many of their projects. While not social science, per se, it does provide an experimental platform focused on design.
(Like with Borderlands, I'm running a console version. So the images are provided by google.)
Pictured on the left: The "Witch," a special infected that lies dormant, crying until a player character alerts her by shining a flashlight on her, firing a gun near her or even staring at her for too long. When active, she sprints, shrieking at the one who disturbed her and pounces on them, resulting a near-instant kill. The philosophy around the other special infected is similar in their applications, each requiring proper handling and teamwork (in the case of the Witch, turning off your goddamn flashlights, you know who you are) to defeat. They are clear hallmarks of Valve's expertise in design because they allow players to only harm their team so much, while oftentimes jeopardizing themselves (harming the team indirectly).
When a player's health is reduced to zero, they are "downed". While on their back they may freely fire their sidearms at infected, but cannot move and slowly bleed out and still take damage from attacking infected. Other teammates can save you by clearing away the nearby living dead and helping you up (reviving you with a limited amount of health). Though this idea is not new in co-operative games, it's not tinkered with much for the sake of innovation. Rather than creating an entirely new system, they appropriate a mechanic similar to others, because Valve has learned from the examples of other developers and the way their games function during online play.
- Virtual worlds serve as a "petri dish" for studying social interaction.
- The common pool idea: Every man for himself even if it is not beneficial in the long run.
- Virtual worlds can very easily aggregate tremendous amounts of valuable quantitative data.
Being a co-operative game, the goal of the game is for each player to work in concert towards the goal (this being surviving until the end of the level). As such, the game appears to be an example of a "Petri dish". The game is a test chamber for the mechanics it uses and how people interact with them, like many multiplayer games. And for future games in a similar genre it will be used as a standard for creating a co-op shooter, mostly due to observations that can be made simply watching players play the game.
However, the game is not an experiment in the same capacity as the "common pool" problem. Quite the opposite, in fact. Players are appropriated ammunition unsparingly, health powerups in accordance with need (rather than scarcity). At the end of the day, the amount of damage a greedy teammate can do is severely limited by the design. As a result the game cannot be a real experiment into human negativity, as it cripples the impulse (scaling friendly fire so that you cannot outright kill a teammate) and provides a secondary outlet (versus mode allows you to play as either the survivors or the special infected, giving you a chance to "grief" and be rewarded). And unlike the law of a country, the rules of the game are nigh impossible to work around without cracking the game's framework.
Valve software, though, uses the game to collect vast amounts of data. Both to improve the game, to gather information to marketing and to provide improvements to future games. The PC version of Left 4 Dead is installed through Steam, which serves as both a digital distribution platform and a stat-tracking program. The program records playtimes, time spent in any single area, number of enemies killed on average, etc. As a result, Valve acquires a tremendous amount of data for use on many of their projects. While not social science, per se, it does provide an experimental platform focused on design.
(Like with Borderlands, I'm running a console version. So the images are provided by google.)
Pictured on the left: The "Witch," a special infected that lies dormant, crying until a player character alerts her by shining a flashlight on her, firing a gun near her or even staring at her for too long. When active, she sprints, shrieking at the one who disturbed her and pounces on them, resulting a near-instant kill. The philosophy around the other special infected is similar in their applications, each requiring proper handling and teamwork (in the case of the Witch, turning off your goddamn flashlights, you know who you are) to defeat. They are clear hallmarks of Valve's expertise in design because they allow players to only harm their team so much, while oftentimes jeopardizing themselves (harming the team indirectly).
When a player's health is reduced to zero, they are "downed". While on their back they may freely fire their sidearms at infected, but cannot move and slowly bleed out and still take damage from attacking infected. Other teammates can save you by clearing away the nearby living dead and helping you up (reviving you with a limited amount of health). Though this idea is not new in co-operative games, it's not tinkered with much for the sake of innovation. Rather than creating an entirely new system, they appropriate a mechanic similar to others, because Valve has learned from the examples of other developers and the way their games function during online play.
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