Leadership in social games

The fun thing about online games is it's a social experience. The problem with social gameplay is it requires leadership. You need someone to lead the raid or call the strategy for beating the other team. And you need leadership in the long term, someone to run the guild and see to the social organization.

Leading is tough. You're no longer just pushing the game buttons. You're talking to people, making strategic decisions, bearing the responsibility. And the folks you're leading are there to play a game, not follow orders, so there's not much discipline. It's a pretty chaotic environment and very few people want to try to lead; fewer still are good at it.

I'm surprised online games don't do more to reward and encourage leadership. In the real world leaders get paid more, or own the enterprise, or at least get respect for their efforts. I can't think of a single online game where the reward for leadership is more than some sense of self-satisfaction.

Good leadership is rare in online games, but when it's present it makes all the difference. In Tier 3 on my server Order has been totally demoralized. Destruction has dominated everything for two+ weeks and any time Order has tried to fight back they quickly get thumped down. But when one side dominates everyone loses. There's no long term reward for controlling the map, only for fighting, but with one side so far down no one wants to fight.

Until two nights ago. When a leader showed up on the Order side out of nowhere and took charge. He started small, taking over a few Battlefield Objectives, rallying the troops. When he had enough people following him he led the group to take a keep. Then he said "we are going to defend this keep" and spent his own gold to reinforce it. And now Order has held that keep for most of the last two days. We're still on the ropes, we can't really break out because Destruction still fields larger numbers. But our leader keeps launching new attacks with actual strategy and tactics and for an hour or two we're doing great, winning fights. There's active RvR again, some actual fun.

He's a good leader. He communicates well, he stays positive, he gives others credit. And he tends to win. So here's the thing: he's so good, I suspect he's a Mythic employee. Some customer service rep, or maybe engineer who likes playing the game. I've got no evidence for this, it's just a feeling. He understands the game strategy very well, and he's so confident that he can lead the random folks who turn up that it feels like it's coming from some position of hidden authority. 

And why not? Wouldn't it be great if the guy who has made Warhammer fun for me again was a Mythic employee? Why not have some people playing the game get compensated in some way for making it fun for other players? Full time employees are expensive, so that might not be cost-effective. But why not have good guild leaders get free subscriptions to the game? Or give strong raid leaders extra loot, or at least some vanity titles or items that reward good leaders for their effort?

Comments

[Andrew]

"So here's the thing: he's so good, I suspect he's a Mythic employee."

I dunno.... that's an odd suspicion in my eyes. You basically described Vak at the height of QSS. When he logged on he gave the entire guild focus by the sheer force of his presence, and led us into all sorts of fun, challenging, and exciting endeavors.

[Flyv]

Yeah, you're right, I have no evidence that he works for Mythic. Just the first time I've encountered a leader that good in Warhammer. You're also right about Vakfaroosh's leadership skills, particularly during gameplay and combined with Aliina's guild management. They did a fantastic job leading our guild and made the game a lot of fun.

Really what I'm saying is game companies should be supporting that leadership. It's hard and not enough people want to do it.

[Andrew]

Yes; I agree with the sentiment that good leadership should be rewarded... but that's sticky, isn't it? The second you attach a developer-created in-game reward for leadership people will try to min-max it, or obtain it when they are not actually cut out for the job of being a leader.

In the case of WoW, a good raider leader is rewarded with preferential loot awards (whether or not we consciously did it, it happened in QSS, and happens in other guilds/pugs). They are always rewarded with social status. And of course, efficient raids are usually a result of their effort; so they don't end up stuck in sub-optimal groups if they excel.

[Revaan]

Most of the rewards (including loot rewards) of leadership are social, since it serves a largely social function. After all, just because someone has the "leader" tag doesn't necessarily mean they're the ones calling strategy on Vent during a raid, or running the guild, or even doing anything more than targeting mobs in the order the rest of the raid should kill them in. Since guild runs are often organized outside the confines of the game, the reward systems are done that way too (i.e. loot council, DKP systems, etc.). Programtically determining who the "leader" was is very hard, unless you force player-defined roles into game-defined roles, and that's assuming the game defines roles well enough to model all possible raid organizations. The "fairest" solution (from a development perspective) is to let players determine any in-game rewards for leadership.

[Frostbeard]

Even if he's not a Mythic employee, I agree some sort of reward would be in order? .
How hard would it be for the game to track who the leaders of these groups are?
What type of system should this be?

If he spent money to reinforce the keep then he should get something for keeping it right?

Since I don't follow the game I don't know if there is any in-game way for this information to be captured and used, but it seems to me like there should be a hook in the game like this. And would probably promote the RvR combat that they are probably looking for.

[Flyv]

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. I agree that identifying a leader post-hoc and rewarding them, particularly with in-game loot, would be a mess. And the moment you reward something in-game people will definitely try to min/max it. How about if MMO companies simply paid some people to come into the game and make it more fun for people? Step in and lead an RvR team, or organize some public quests, or run a raid? I believe some MMOs used to do front-line support this way, elevating players to customer service reps if they were helpful. (Another precedent: cruise companies give single men free cruise fare in exchange for them dancing with single women every night. For real.)

Having employees / CSRs lead things could lead to problems too. I think they'd have to be anonymous, otherwise you quickly get to ugly criticism and feelings of entitlement. Also such a program might undercut natural leadership from normal players. Why step up if you think it's the game company's job to do it? I dunno, maybe it's a bad idea. Just in every game I've played leadership has been a problem. It'd be nice to have some solution other than "let's hope some egomaniacs nominate themselves".

Last night sucked for Order again. Crushed in T3, and no one online to lead us out of the mess. I logged off and did other things.

[Andrew]

Ah - what you are describing is kind of analogous to the low level "Immortals" found on some MUDs. This rank was often reserved for players who were not quite admin level, but were elevated above the common player and had the ability to do things like run city invasions, world events, trivia contests for prizes, and what-not. These Immortals could often give direction to an otherwise bored player population.

[Flyv]

Just to update my little T3 Warhammer story.. The leader who was our salvation has proven himself to be an immensely egotistical jerk. With some reason; he is a good leader. But he's also gotta be the only one in charge, with some unpleasant public discussion and him usurping other people when he logs in. So I guess he's an egomaniacal self-nominated leader rather than a Mythic employee :-P