Towards a More Efficient Workflow (Assignment 2)
After playing YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates, the term “corporate pirate” acquires an entirely new meaning, as the game mechanics and social dynamics of this virtual world seem to replicate the workings of high-stakes corporate finance.
The world of Puzzle Pirates is populated by various player-based “flags” who comprise the governments that control the various islands that make up the game world. These islands contain businesses run by the flag, and whose defense and extension of power are advanced by various Pirate crews who pledge allegiance to the flag. While a good portion of the gold (“pieces of eight”) entering the game world can be obtained by battling NPC brigands, the true profits to be had come from the defeat of an opposing flag’s crews and the invasion of its islands (a hostile takeover, so to speak.) And that is where the corporate model comes in. (Aside: My roommate has informed me that there have been player-owned businesses that have literally been the target of hostile takeovers in the actual corporate sense of the word, making the metaphor a little too literal…)
The profit centers of a flag’s operation come from the warships. A warship can attack brigands, raid other pirates, and blockade other islands, and a fully loaded war frigate can generate a tidy sum for its crew and flag. But to operate a warship requires a sizable investment – first the warship must be constructed at shipyards (abstracted via a sliding-block puzzle game), and it must be stocked with cannonballs and rum for the crew (created via other puzzles). And when afloat, the largest warships require 70 or more people to properly operate. To function effectively, pirate crews demand efficiency – if the bilge pumpers mess up their puzzles, suddenly those pirates at the sail find it harder to generate movement points, which makes it difficult for the navigator to outmaneuver enemy ships, which means the ship takes more damage, which makes life harder for the carpenters, which decreases the rate at which the bilgers can pump, and quite soon this negative feedback loop ends with 2000 hours of game-labor and 25 dollars in real-world money sinking to Davy Jones’ Locker.
With the incentive for effectiveness this high, the social norms of the game world reflect the constant strive for efficiency, matching the metaphor of the game mechanic. Much like how the users of OnLive Traveler adopted the norm of facing those who are speaking even when the abstracted world doesn’t necessarily demand it, the pirate crews become run like corporations, striving for maximum profits. Pirates who are promoted to the upper echelons get the power of the purse, and are able to captain ships (thus in a sense directing investment). On pirate crews, swordfighting or drinking on a ship (personal competition games which benefit individuals but don’t help the ship) is a kickable offense, much like workplace rules about restricting internet and e-mail usage to discourage inefficiency. On my first attempt to “job” [game term] for a player-run ship, I was rejected, most likely because by credentials for the various crew positions were insufficient, while those who have played the game well enough and long enough to specialize in various positions become hired guns who are sought out during blockades. Games like Spades and Hearts which are there “just for fun” accentuate the break-room atmosphere of the island inns, where pirates congregate between “jobs”.
The fact that the highest “end-game” content does not include quests as in other MMOs but singularly focuses on the drive to maximize the output of various profit centers operating with a finite, scarce set of resources, to the point when it becomes viable to take such centers by force, is again reflective of the quasi-corporate dynamic that exists in Puzzle Pirates.
(As an aside, I found Puzzle Pirates seemed to offer great possibilities that other MMOs have ignored or failed to realize properly – an alternative to the RPG loot-based grind/level model used by most MMOs, an alternative to those same MMOs’ predilection with the Tolkien-inspired medieval fantasy milieu, a persistent world which is concretely affected by player actions, and a totally player-based economy in which all player-usable items in the game world are crafted, bought, and sold by other players. More games should take chances like Three Rings Design.)