Christianity says that all sins can be traced back to one of the original seven: greed, wrath, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Can one of these deadly sins bless a game with a long, healthy life?
Although troublesome for humans, greed may play a key role in keeping an FPS in players’ hearts, minds, and disc trays (and in turn, keeping publishers’ pockets full). In his stand-up act Complains and Grievances, George Carlin sheds some light on this topic while he creates an abridged version of the Ten Commandments:
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. This one is just plain fuckin’ stupid. Coveting your neighbor’s goods is what keeps the economy going! Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and you wanna get one too! Coveting creates jobs, so leave it alone.
And therein lies the answer as to why it’s so easy for some of us to keep coming back to games like Halo Reach and Black Ops.
Greed.
Achievement points and trophies are one incentive that publishers give us to continue playing their games. But what do you do once you’ve already downloaded the DLC for Halo Reach and have 1250 G? As Carlin explained, greed keeps the economy going. So when you have nothing else to give your players, why not create your own currency? Developers who aim to build and maintain a thriving online community have been incorporating this into their practice. In-game currency is now becoming the norm in multiplayer games.
Experience points and in-game currency such as cR and CoD Points (for Reach and Black Ops, respectively) have given you that “one more match” feeling that seems to shave hours off of your day. Perhaps borrowed from the intoxicating lure of World of Warcraft, FPS games now reward players with their own version of experience points and loot for their own accomplishments. Suddenly, you don’t mind losing as much as long as you, yourself, did fine.
If you get rewarded for almost everything you do, why stop after a loss? This low-risk/high-reward model has done a lot to maintain interest between map pack releases and other DLC.
“Mini-achievements” (or trophies, if you’re of that ilk) can also be found in these games. Daily Challenges and Contracts are found in both Reach and Black Ops, respectively. These “in-game achievements” have players complete certain tasks in exchange for a bonus sum of experience points or cash. These are nice raises for someone who has been grinding out minimum wage (about 3000 cR/15 minutes in Big Team Battle or 1000 cR/8 minutes in Team Slayer) for a gaming session.
So what exactly does the dedicated FPS fan get for all his or her grinding? Fake stuff. Well, not fake in the existential sense because these rewards — helmets, armor, guns, and perks — do exist. I mean fake in the Fight Club sense. People who play the game for fun are enlightened and devoid of any need of “tangible” rewards. They’re not miles deep into the paper trail. These people are free of the paper chains that bind the rest of us.
But then again, they don’t know what it’s like to feel intimidating because you’ve got Security armor (complete with Emile’s knife). They don’t know how delightful it is to sit in the pre-game lobby and hear, “uh oh, this guy’s prestiged eight times already. We’re gonna lose,” only to realize that they’re talking about you. It’s that bling that we want, that prestige emblem or that piece of armor that we hope catches their eye because other peoples’ envy builds on pride, and this creates more greed.
They don’t know. They’re not greedy; they’re normal.
I’ll admit that I’m currently caught up in this quagmire of greed. I’ve uploaded about four clips of myself performing an Overkill on the enemy team to my file share (one of them, an Extermination). No downloads; no one cares. Meanwhile, it’s the beginning of March, and I have yet to touch Dead Space 2. It’s been sitting on my coffee table for the past few weeks.
Worth it? Probably not. But guess who will be downloading the Defiant Map Pack on the 15th? This guy. The cycle continues, and I’m waiting for something to break it. To this day, I rue the time I first saw someone wearing Emile’s skull helmet, because that’s when I said, “Hey. I want that.”
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