Shmula has an interesting analysis of the meta-social-aggregator digg, analysing it as a game. From the article:
snip
In digg, players are the voters; the voters have n options; and, where non-paid voters are concerned, reputation is the over-riding incentive for voting a story (top-digger status, etc.)
By this analysis, when we digg something, the practice is very similar to what role players engage in when they role their dice, what online gamers do when they choose guild members and/or objectives, and what eBayers do when they buy and sell their wares. When we use digg, we're playing a social game.
The post assesses the online service within the constructs of Game Theory, a line of thought usually invoked in economic contexts, but put to good use here when considering social software. The author summarises:
Digg is the online version of The Urn Game [which he explains]. What I see are power users, typically the first movers, wherein a vote is casted [sic] by one of the top diggers, and then a flood of comformity [sic] follows -- that is, voters follow the first movers, typically the power users, and ignore their own rational feelings about the article being dugg and vote anyway, following the power user's vote. At a wholesale level, this creates an information cascade, such that the Nth vote conveys no more information than the first 2 votes. [...] Digg is a system that allows the power users to swing the behavior of an entire group.
But as others point out, if digg is a game, that means people can game the system. Indeed, that seems to be what's happening, and thus shmula's (and the data cloud surrounding his) post. It happens with other services too, like Google.
Surely it also applies to computer games. What we do when we play through designer-developed or user-developed goal systems is game the games. We try and figure out how we can exploit them using our knowledge, skills and connections in order to win. Sometimes we do it twice to see if we can win again.
In the case of online games - and even services like Xbox Live - an extra element comes into play - the human being. Can shmula's analysis go some way in explaining the fierce competitiveness of power gamers in massively multiplayer online role playing games (see TL Taylor's work on power gamers for more information)? Can it help explain why people use bots to level up through the system in order to gain access to the later parts of the game with less grind/work? Even more relevant, what happens when reputation becomes the currency in games?
via patternhunter
