In a post last night, I was talking about Hive being an MMPORG, a game in a world that is open to interact with and build upon in many ways. It is of course more than Minecraft however, as the effects it can have on our real-life is far more profound, other than just being a time sink that sucks down our opportunity to do other things.
While a lot of people don't look at entertainment in this way, I think there always has to be an ROI of some kind on what we do, a reward that motivates us to want to keep doing it. Now, this reward doesn't have to be monetary at all, it could be the reward of relaxation or the reward of tighter muscles after a workout, or looser muscles after a massage. It could also be the reward of opportunity, such as developing skills that support a career or building connections for a stronger relationship.
When it comes to entertainment, I get the sense that a lot of people sit down and go through the motions of what they have at least previously enjoyed, yet haven't paid attention to the reduction in ROI. Unlike a normal investment where the more in, the higher the return, time and effort into a lot of entertainment activity suffers heavily from the law of diminishing returns. Watch enough TV, they all start to be the same. Play enough games, they become boring faster. Even having a lot of sex gets boring, I know, I have tried.
So what happens is that in order to keep it entertaining, it has to keep evolving to include new "value streams" even if those streams are dangerous, harmful or leading in a direction where a person doesn't actually want to go. It is the desire for a higher high that keeps driving the ramp up, with the irony being that with each new high, it takes more investment to increase it again, meaning that the ROI keeps decreasing.
I think that it is part of the reason that many people are not able to invest themselves into something long term, as while there is the initial excitement return of the buy-in, the commitment to keep it in is difficult, especially when there is always the potential for another investment to give a higher ROI. The FOMO in itself is a type of return, a reaction to the conditions of the game, as it brings to the fore a decision, do I hold, do I sell, do I buy, do I exit completely?
What I like about Hive is that while there are plenty of the same features that arise like this, there are also other elements that can be focused on without having to ever "get out" of the game. For example, while the markets are pumping, a player can spend time and effort considering the financials and when the bear arrives, a player can spend more time building connections through social interaction. The thing with this is that because it is an ecosystem, one affects the other in various ways too, making for a complex array of pathways and potential outcomes.
On top of this, the entire ecosystem is in a constant state of flux, where the conditions are always changing, the field of play expanding in one direction and contracting in another, people are coming and going, a new large player buys-in and shifts the flow of the pool, another sells-out and shifts it again.
But, much like an MMPORG, we each have a character, or multiple characters to play with and we can spend our time building one up to boost its stats, or attempt to have many ongoing simultaneously. In my opinion, the path of the highest ROI is about building a single character that interacts with the world well, but of course this comes with risk too, as the character has to also evolve with the changing landscape in a way that is suitable for the ecosystem.
Adaption is a skill and is probably more about having a bundle of skills or the potential to learn more skills, that being a standalone skill itself. This means that adaption with a changing environment requires broad experience, as well as the sensitivity to identify the need for change and the direction in which to change. From a character perspective, this can be a challenge as while there is the benefits of consistency, pigeonholing is a risk.
But, Hive also has a potential safety measure to aid the evolution of a character through ownership of stake. Stake gives wiggle room, as pivoting doesn't mean starting from zero. There is also the social network effect benefits of having a single character that can aid in the shifting of direction also, as if a character has been able to build up significant social capital, change in direction is easier. It is much like having a professional social network in real life for a career change, as they can aid in connecting to new networks and possibilities.
But, there is risks for the character too, as even if the person behind it is anonymous, the character isn't, so that changes in direction that go too heavily against the developed norms of the social circle, can be met with a lot of negativity. For example, when a person who has built a character around their content and then gets caught plagiarizing - it is hard to come back from and no matter what is done, it might be unrecoverable, as it breaks the social trust built and empties the social capital account.
At the start of the game, people tend to choose their character on Hive based on how they found the place or, who they met in their early days. Once heading along that path, it can be difficult to shift from it, as momentum and habit combine to normalize it and create an identity from it. Change is possible of course, but it is far harder to move from negative to positive, than from positive to negative through behavior. The positive takes time to build, the negative can be an instantaneous reaction.
For example, when people who have built their character and gotten support from their content start posting short-form nonsense constantly, support can drop away very fast. It is not that there is anything particularly wrong with the short-form content, but when it goes against the nature of the trusted character, other players lose trust in it, as the thing that attracted them will appear degraded. Once lost, it is almost impossible to get that support back, because people have made a conscious decision to remove it and putting it back means that they were "wrong" - and no one likes to be that.
Character development is important in my opinion and not just on Hive. In the real world of opportunity, it is the same thing, where strong characters get attention, skilled characters get work, good characters get social capital. Just like the attributes of an RPG character, we are each a makeup of different skills and traits that are on a spectrum of suitability for conditions. While we might be perfect for this, we are terrible for that and depending on the environment we find ourselves, determines the impact it has on our experience.
The beautiful thing about the Hive game is that if we are able to identify our strengths, we can probably find a place where we can happily play the game, even if it isn't a perfect fit. With the expansion of the ecosystem, suitability increases and niche skills and interests are able to be leveraged to greater effect. We can see that over time, general blogging has shifted to a more focused style, as well as people who weren't interested in general blogging themselves have been able to move to other areas of the ecosystem, like gaming or a niche topic like finance.
This move decentralizes the ecosystem socially, not just economically or technologically, adding more layers of complexity to the environment, which allows for a greater range of diversity, as there are more "gaps" created in the space to build into. Eventually, the gaps get narrower and more specialized, but they will be filled by highly interested and skilled players in that field, making the ecosystem robust and highly valuable, as well as stable.
As I have said before, the potential of Hive is to become like the internet itself, where the infrastructure supports all kinds of activities and experiences, all kinds of characters. However, the difference is that each player is an invested owner of some kind in the system, with direct influence over their role, as well as the freedom to choose their direction, without it necessarily being tied to who they have been told they are.
The game of Hive is the creation of a new world where we get to build our characters and affect the direction of the evolution of everything that is to come - depending on where we turn our attention, spend our time and invest our resources. The ROI is up to us.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
