In a previous post, I briefly touched upon a difference in perception between ‘hardcore’ games such as World of Warcraft and social games such as Farmville: the latter can be reconciled with being productive, the former can’t (the idea was coined by Timothy Burke in this blog post). It is interesting to talk a bit more about this work vs. play or real-life vs. game-life dynamic. This is probably the most important challenge I face in my research, working to apply game design to the design of organizations.

My early struggles with the subject focused on the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. But ultimately, that is not where the biggest divide is: there is a lot of extrinsic motivation in games as well as in work.

More fundamental seems to be the playful attitude and the magic circle that games induce. My research has shown that this can also be created in work settings, albeit in a very specific and sometimes fragile manner. Getting back to the difference in perception between Farmville and World of Warcraft, it may come down to just this. There is no doubt that most players take leave of their “real lives” when they enter the magic circle of Azeroth, sometimes perhaps to a worrying extent. I don’t think the same is true for Farmville. It seems to be an instrument for killing time in between your day-to-day activities, while staying very much inside your real-life social circles. There is probably not much of a magic circle to speak of with Farmville, or at least it is one that is extremely permeable.

In a sense, I guess that the Farmville model more closely resembles the way we can apply games to work settings. But there is much to be improved there, such as getting beyond the just-add-points paradigm, creating a little game, big game dynamic (extending the things that happen during the playful moments to the broader context) and crafting an elegant set of rules that allow for emergent behavior.

More on this later.

Blizzard (publisher of World of Warcraft) has caused a huge uproar within their community by announcing that users will need to start using the Real ID system for posts on their forums. This means they will have to use their real-life first and last name. The idea behind this move (in Blizzard’s words) is to get rid of flame wars, trolling and other unpleasantness in the forums (see the original announcement here, followed by one of the longest comment threads in history). Some (mostly outside the WoW community) have welcomed the change and at first glance it seems to be in line with a move away from pseudonyms that I posted about earlier. But there is a fundamental difference, that Randy Farmer is quick to point out: World of Warcraft is a game! A game which very much extends to these forums. As Randy puts it: people will get pissed at each other for stolen kills, breaking alliances, and the price of components – and they want to – no, they need to – have a safe place to express this, to play.

This controversy is also shedding some light upon a fundamental difference between WoW and Facebook games like Farmville, as pointed out by Timothy Burke on Terra Nova: the latter are seen as compatible with productive work and with mainstream sociality, so we don’t mind having our real-life identities connected to them.

It will be interesting to see if Blizzard will go through with this, but at least we can thank them for having sparked a fascinating debate.