The Trickledown Theory
The “Trickledown Theory,” also called the “Contraposition to the Vocal Minority Theory… Theory,” is fairly simple: The mood and opinions of the vocal minority can have widespread impact on those of the voiceless majority.
The “Vocal Minority Theory,” as I understand it, goes something like this: The thoughts and opinions of a small but outspoken segment of a population are of little concern, as they are not accurately representative of the majority.
Oftentimes when I or someone else brings up the concerns of a group of community members (whether its in an official capacity or simply in casual conversation), the immediate rebuttal is that they are the “vocal minority.” There’s no cause for concern or necessarily validity to their arguments, because they are the few who feel the way they do.
I agree with this to a certain extent–when there are one or two people passionately in opposition (or concord) on a particular subject, there is no cause for concern. However, there are many times in which the vocal minority happens to be a few dozen or even a few hundred people. When compared to the population of a relatively successful online game, their opinions are no big deal, right? That’s where I disagree with most people.
It just so happens that many of the members of an online gaming community who fall into the vocal minority category also fall into another rather important one: influential community members. These players like to talk–they like to be heard, and they are sometimes armchair lawyers (they won’t give up hurling their opinions at you until you agree with them).
While those who make up the vocal minority aren’t always guild leaders or even officers, they sometimes have a wide social network both inside and outside the game. Eventually, the opinions of these few can become the accepted opinions of a larger portion of the community. That larger portion of the community spreads the opinion to other members of the community, and it ultimately can become part of the canon of a game.
I’ve observed whole classes in games be deemed “useless” by the majority of a community because of constant preaching by members of the vocal minority. Classes that were, surprisingly enough, not at all useless and potentially more powerful than many others. It’s the power of opinion and social programming.
Keeping the vocal minority happy should always be a concern if you want your game’s general populous to remain so. Should you bend to their will and implement exactly what they demand? Probably not, but you should take their opinions into consideration and act accordingly.
If you still don’t understand the Trickledown Theory, please feel free to comment and I can elaborate more on the subject. Coming up sometime soon: a related theory! I like to call it the Big Bang Theory of Nerfing, which discusses social dynamics and the grand scheme impact a minor change can have in a game.
The Trickledown Theory
Thought provoking post.
The Vocal Minority Theory is a classic example of logical fallacy inthe form ‘if A then B, B therefore A’. Your Trickledown Theory highlights the point that A could have a true or false value and therefore needs to be looked at on it’s merits before a decision is made.
Anything else is dogma.
Trouble is, it can be extremely hard work seperating those players from the usual greedy, insane forum-bottomfeeders.
I’ve been over this before – where there are conflicting opinions on a set of forums, it’s almost impossible to figure out who to listen to. A simple metric might be “If one group can spell and the other can’t, they are more likely to actually be able to think instead of merely whine”.
But the more you favour any group, the larger and more demanding and more retarded it will become.
See also – Jedi.
How can you ever keep the vocal minority happy though? If you actually found a way to please them and thus, quiet them down, a new vocal minority who is unhappy will step up. It is a never ending cycle.
Right now, I definitly consider myself part of the vocal minority in regards to Everquest 2. If I were to be appeased, and therefore shut up, you would anger a completely new crowd to speak out against what you have done that either directly, or indirectly affected them and their chosen way of playing the game.
I definitly agree that public opinion is often formed just through the words and ramblings of a few outspoken people. However, it seems that for every person swayed to the vocal minority’s opinion, another person is swayed away from it.
You can never please everybody. I think the real trick is in keeping the silent majority silent.
Cael said: But the more you favour any group, the larger and more demanding and more retarded it will become.
See also – Jedi.
I agree for the most part. But what really exacerbates the problem though is the massive follow-on nerfing of that group (Jedi) to once again bring their class abilities in line with the rest of the game. Spoiled children will always cry for more. They will howl with indignant outrage when it’s all taken away. Both the initial favourtism and the later nerfing are a huge disservice to your playerbase.
Is it “Vocal Minority Theory”? Or “Vocal Minority Syndrome”?
Discussing the “Trickledown Theory” (a counterposition to the Vocal Minority Theory) Ryan Schwayder at The Nerfbat says: Keeping the vocal minority happy should always be a concern if you want your game’s general populous to remain so. Should you bend to their will and implement exactly what they demand? Probably not, but you should take their opinions into
Now you’re just making excuses for the state of enchanters in EQ2.
=p
There’s two dangerous assumptions that can be made concerning the vocal minority. The first of these dangerous assumptions is that they are right. The second is that they are wrong.
Lots of times the vocal minority will operate in a short-sighted mode and/or self centered mode. An example of this is the people who complained that it was far too hard to get a Jedi in SWG. When requirements were relaxed and becoming a Jedi was not nearly as much of an achievement the complaint was that there were too many Jedi or that Jedi were being nerfed. A lot of the time it wasn’t the same person making the complaint, but it was still the same community.
Of course from a game design standpoint such results were foreseeable. You can’t make a class that is stronger than the other classes yet easy to get or most everyone will play that class. The easier you make it to get the class the more that class has to be in line with the others.
Players by and large, however, are driven by their own wants and desires. They only need to please themselves. Game designers need to please the community.
On the other hand automatically dismissing the vocal minority is just as serious an error. They are the customers and they are expressing dissatisfaction with something. Games are suppose to be enjoyable and something is effecting they enjoyment of a segment of the population. What’s more, not every member of the vocal minority is a member of the ‘me first’ crowd. Sometimes some of them will recognize what they perceive as a problem to the long term health of the game.
In the end the vocal minority is just data. It might be good data or it might be bad, but until it’s analyzed we won’t know.
not just stealths, but runs and hides…
lol, very interesting and well put article.
Perhaps a little clarification on who is an “influential member of the community” needs to be made. Is gaining that “special” title on the EQ2 forums, for instance, indicative of being an influential member of the community? Vast numbers of people I know visit the forums on an extremely casual basis. I’m one of only a few I know who actually read them regularly (too much free time at work, what can I say). I’d bet most MMO’s are the same. So I would say no to that.
On the other hand, if the “influential member of the community” runs something like a class-oriented website to which community members frequently turn when in search of information, and to which other community websites often link, and then uses this website to constantly broadcast their viewpoint…..yes, I would term them “influential.” That is the kind of person I rather thought was being referred to.
What I was surprised to hear is the complete dismissal of the vocal minority as being representative of the silent majority. Is that because of the size of the minority? Dev dismissal of the issue itself as being important? I can tell you that I’m very vocal in spurts on the EQ2 forums over the long-standing issues with the very few armor textures we’re offered and the sometimes interesting tint jobs they cover them up with. Yes, I’m part of the -sometimes- vocal minority. And on the boards, it does seem like a fairly small minority.
But that issue is a CONSTANT background rumble in my guild, and most of them are not the type to turn down armor because of looks. Last night, our raid leader looked at my rather mediocre (for a raider) nearly full set of legendary crafted and asked me rather wistfully what it was. Because it *drum roll* MATCHED. I just stared at him. He has armor I would kill for, but if he takes his robe off (thank god he’s a mage) he does resemble Bobo the Clown. I had not guessed how deeply this distressed him, though.
I would rate him, along with the rest of my guild, as the silent majority. They might not have the time or inclination to create rambling posts on the EQ2 forums (guilty!), but they spend plenty of time talking about some of these issues in game. And they frequently agree with those rabid vocal minority posters. Like on the clothing topic. No Bobo the Clown. Please let me match. I want to look like I didn’t dress in the dark!
I know the difficulty is in discerning a true minority opinion from the representative rumblings of the masses. But sometimes that’s exactly what your vocal minority is. A representative sampling of the silent majority, seething in their armor, leet or otherwise, and feeling like Bobo the Clown. How do you figure out when the vocal few really do represent the silent many? I guess I’d be rich and working for MMO’s (or presidential candidates) if I knew that one.
Definition: An influential member of the community: Someone whose thoughts and opinions impact and can even sway those of numerous others.
That can mean popular people on the forums, players who run websites, or someone who has a large social network in the game.
You would be surprised about some of the people who I would term as “influential.” In many cases, it’s not a guild leader, or even a guild officer. It’s the people who have 50 “friends” on their list. The people who dozens or even hundreds of people send tells to for help and advice. They’re often just a random member of a random guild on a random server, but they have great influence over how people feel about the game.
How do you determine when the vocal minority represents the silent majority? Well, when their arguments are well thought out, they back up their claims with evidence, and many others agree with them, that’s one way. The best way?
Play your damn game! I often learn more hanging out, playing, and watching the popular chat channels in the game than I do spending time on the forums or reading websites. There’s no substitute for playing your own game if you want to make good decisions and get a feel for what the silent majority is thinking.
“Play your damn game! I often learn more hanging out, playing, and watching the popular chat channels in the game than I do spending time on the forums or reading websites”
And make your job easier? Come on now Ryan!
I think posts on a forum are a poor way to find out what the player base thinks.
But I question whether you really want to know what players think or not. You do not act like you really are interested in player opinion or what the majority of the players want.
If you truly were interested in player views on a topic you should run a poll ( and I don’t mean those silly ones on the website that only readers of the website see). I mean one that has to be answered at Login.
Remember how in EQ1 they used to run polls that came up when you logged in? Well if you really want to get a feel for the player base you should try running polls that appear when a player logins. Then you would have a fair chance of sampling player opinion. Right now you have none !!
If you listen only to the vocal forum trawlers, you are getting a very distorted viewpoint, unlikely representative of common opinion. This is like going to a mall and only surveying the people wearing green shirts. It’s mostly useless.
You need to go out and get the opinions in a more scientific manner, as others suggested. Login polls that everyone completes for example. However, hopefully you’re smart enough to poll your growth market though: People who don’t yet play your game!
This is starting to get off-topic. I’m not talking about who we should listen to or where, just that influential members of the community can… influence… other members of the community. If they are negative, that negativity can rub off. If they are happy, that happiness can rub off.
As I pointed out in my previous comment, influential members of the community are not limited to members of a game’s forums. Most of them aren’t even on the forums at all, because they spend most of their time in the game.
For what it’s worth, I agree that it’s not just the forum folk who we need to pay attention to. Many of them are definitely worth listening to, but that’s not necessarily the place to go if you want to know what people are thinking. The problem is, how do you figure out what people are thinking?
Polls are well and good, but a majority of the time you know the answer to your poll before you put it up. You present a limited set of options to players, which makes it much easier to predict the result (you can almost lead them to the result you’re looking for).
Can you simply drop in a text box and ask for feedback? Sure, but it’s impossible to read it all. Most games have a /feedback function, but it is hard to get a really good impression of what players are thinking even that way.
Okay, now I’m diverting from the point of the article. Players influence other players, and the more influential the player, the more important it is to attempt to keep them in good spirits.
is this a good time to ask for shared bank slots for exiles?
the rather small amount of time i have gotten to speak face to face with a game developer (lol eqii devs are the only ones i’ve ever met) they all had one thing in common…they play their game…
they play it right alongside subscribers, and i believe oftentimes unbeknownst to those subscribers as to their actual identity…
to me this is an excellent way to see how others enjoy or dislike certain aspects of gameplay…
kind of like taking a picture…alot of times the best photographs are unrehearsed and snapped live…they show the true emotion of the moment. someone posing for a photo often lacks that humanity and is seemingly contrived (because due to the pose, it somewhat is)
the trick to getting the true feedback imo, is to get it on the sly perhaps, if possible…moniter certain guild chat channels for a set of key words…or a certain factional level channel that may have some change recently implemented…agn, using a keyword search of sorts…
some people do troll the forums, certainly not all threads there are at all constructive, and often the ones that are degenerate into mudslings…
some of us are actually there to suggest things we actually think might make the game better, to share ideas, to explore avenues of possibility thru discussion…this we must do while dodging and dealing with the aforementioned slinging going on around and upon us…often many decent rational and clever ideas are diverted due to childishness.
note : just because a forum poster posts an idea doesn’t mean if unrefuted ad nausium the idea will be implemented, sometimes if left alone that idea (unusable in current form) will evolve into something possibly quite wanted by a large portion of players…some things take time to hash out..many ideas are so pounded upon at times they have nearly no chance of being thought about and reconsidered…and redefined in terms.
at times the forum seems a bit of “king of the mountain” and thru flaming and the like, people try and knock down those they tend to percieve as being on top etc…which of course is not really what the forums are for.
i believe i have also now gone off topic…
influential players : with any power granted or gained through whatever means comes the responsibility of weilding said power, in a manner pleasing those agents whom have vested the power within the powerful.
In this case of influential players the power has been given them by those they influence, those that read or listen to what they have to say and allow themselves swayed…the responsibility of a person finding themselves in this position imo is akin to a state representitive in a way.
in government the state rep has a certain district of people they represent that have interests specific to their part of the world, and the representitive, being given the power by these people must weild said power in a way pleasing those people, or they will take that power away.
Long Live the Leaf.
Ryan, you are correct that Polls can be framed in such a way as to give the desired result. Politicians do that all the time.
But there are reputable polling organization that make a point of asking the questions in a more neutral way. The art is all in framing the questions and if you are serious about polling you would want professional help in framing the questions. One piece of advice — always leave the options for the person to select “Don’t care one way or the other” and “Don’t know enough”.
Keeping the player base happy is very difficult and is fraught with danger for the designer since the demographics of MMO’s players is much broader and wider than it used to be. Meaning relatively small subsets of players want a variety of different things to keep the subset happy. If you make the wrong design decision it can come back to bite you. Game design costs money so you have a limitation as to how much you can do. And for today’s game to succeed there really has to be a wide variety of things for various demographics groups to do. But you need to find a way to do them economically.
I don’t know if there are professional magazines out there which discuss the design of MMO’s as they related to player base demographics and where you get the best return for dollars invested. And here I don’t mean “how to design X” — I mean the design at the marketing and management level.
Feedback in EQ2 is rather useless ( sorry abou that) but people mostly use it as a complaint function, a step 2 in filing a bug report. I have the feeling you expect something more from Feedback than how the players currently use it. I will use Feedback to comment on game changes if I am actually involved in testing them on the Test server– as I see its purpose there. I don’t believe it has any purpose except as part of a bug report on the live servers.
Perhaps you need to focus more on the Test Server design and structure if you want to get better feedback. I see a problem with the way the test server is currently set up — since only people with a lot of time to spend can develop a character on test and probably many don’t play on Live but make test their permanent server. Personally I think that is a bad idea, since you are getting more of a “fanboi” on the test server now, as oppose to a good subset of all players.
Also I think involving a wide spectrum of players in the “thinking” stage would help avoid some catastrophes and implementing changes that everyone “hates” — too much of that and people get unhappy, leave and take their friends with.
Regardless of what people say to the contrary, everyone knows Brad McQuaid was forced out of EQ1 Design. He took uncompromising stands such “no melee binding, no easy travel(use wizards and Druids), death must sting, no fix for Hell levels etc. — well he left and Voila – all of a sudden the game had all those things in it which Brad had sworn he would never implement. I do think that some of Brad’s design cost them players especially when new games arrived on the market.
I am really long winded – sorry about that!!
The vocal ones…
“What the customer wants is better products for free,” – Dilbert
No, that isn’t an argument using an advertising-based business model in online games. In the Dilbert comic strip, the PHB claims they are going to start listening to the customer, and…
I read your blog Psychochild and the first thing I noticed was the heavy emphasis on the point of view of PvP. I do not believe that PvP and PvE can exist side by side with the same ruleset — I think WoW has made that very clear when you realize how many changed they implement for PvP that have dire repercussions for PvE. Remember PvE players do NOT want PvP in their environment – they want it isolated on a separate server with its own ruleset. I think that much that is written in your blog is relevant only to PvP type games which you apparently admire.
There are plenty of good sociology studies out on social networks, demographics and how they have changed how we interact with people. Some of this is applicable to games — some is not. Some of it is quite interesting and really is something more designers and developers should read as it might help them perceive better what the player base wants.
I think most MMO’s are designed on the principals of game play which were valid 30 years ago when pen and paper roll playing and D&D were in their hayday. That was a different society with different norms than today. Part of the problems in MMO design is that they somehow believe that what worked 30 years ago in Pencil and Paper will work today in an online game.
I disagree with your view that designers are conservative, but I say that rather they are wedded to an outmoded model like D&D. You may choose to define this as conservatism, I don’t. There has been a tendancy from the earlies RPG computer games right up to today to have fairly linear games played by a group of adventurers which must end in some major battle between the Forces of Good ( the group of adventurers) with the “Forces of Evil” and their Boss. That model needs to be broken for good!!
I don’t think that construct is valid today for the wide variety of demographics now playing MMO’s. There are many diverse groups of players ( I don’t mean this in the guild or grouping sense) who come from many different countries — they all bring a different perspective to the game and want different things from the game which are not easily distinguished by posts on a board. The loud-mouthed guild leader always get attentions and is “petted” and adored by designers and developers as they believe this person speaks for a lot of people just because he inserts himself/herself into every major post — actually he/she does not speak for a large number of customers and herein comes the first trap for developers and designers.
You are correct in saying that many people who will leave a game over a design changes are never counted — they don’t post, they say very little, they just leave. I left WoW over a design change — I didn’t even reply to their E-MAIL asking me why I left, I saw their game vision and I did not like the course they were set on, canceled my account and I was gone.
What developers need is someway to find out why the silent player just ups and quits — and usually refuses to answer the exit survey. They don’t answer the exit survey as they see it an exercise in futility — something that won’t change the higher ups minds or influence the direction the game is taking.
It is the lack of dialogue between players and management/designers that often creates the frustration ending in a cancelled account. And this lack of dialogue comes about as no-one is sure whome they should be listening too. A better testing environment would be very helpful in rectifying this and right now EQ2 testing environment does not serve them well.
As a hint, AgeofLegends, you might try replying on my own blog instead of this one.
Anyway: Yes, I like PvP. No, I don’t think every game needs it; not every game I’ve worked on or consulted for has been PvP-focused (but many have). Yes, game designers actually are conservative because if they try anything radical, it’s their ass on the line. They tend to copy existing because it’s easier to make excuses. “Well, orcs riding wolves worked in WoW! I don’t know why our game failed…. Certainly nothing I did!”
Take care,
im not at all a game development proffessional, so i imagine, if someone is, they have a lot to lose, and can understand the above statement…
however, and no offense to you psychochild, if this is the pervasive attitude in the industry, will it not eventually stagnate?
to cite a general developmental axiom in the eqii system, greater risks beget greater rewards.
again, all to easy to say by someone with absolutely nothing to lose.