Forum
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
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ProxyCheater wrote
at 4:48 PM, Sunday November 9, 2008 EST
In light of the recent hand wringing about kdice culture and player behavior, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out a classic article on the subject, for anyone who cares enough and has a long enough attention span.
An excerpt: 'What matters is, a group designed this and then was unable, in the context they'd set up, partly a technical and partly a social context, to save it from this attack from within. And attack from within is what matters...Now, this story has been written many times. It's actually frustrating to see how many times it's been written. You'd hope that at some point that someone would write it down, and they often do, but what then doesn't happen is other people don't read it. ' It's a long article, and it's old, but I think it's relevant, and it offers some suggestions about how to manage undesirable group behavior issues in a social software context. For what it's worth: http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html |
Replies 1 - 6 of 6
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cleverusername wrote
at 5:22 PM, Sunday November 9, 2008 EST interesting article.... but.... this is a stupid dice game not facebook.
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JDizzle787 wrote
at 6:54 PM, Sunday November 9, 2008 EST I am not cleverusername
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rifty wrote
at 7:06 PM, Sunday November 9, 2008 EST "Now, this story has been written many times. It's actually frustrating to see how many times it's been written. You'd hope that at some point that someone would write it down, and they often do, but what then doesn't happen is other people don't read it"
snigger.. Is the rest of the article as hilarious as this? |
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cleverusername wrote
at 9:10 PM, Sunday November 9, 2008 EST it's just some geek sharing his half arsed thoughts. for instance, the groups that the psychologist Bion discusses are groups of neurotics. the author just assumes that group dynamics of a psychotherapy group are the dynamics of any group.
Still applies to kdice of course ;-), just maybe not any group. Anyway, as I said before, kdice isn't important enough to warrant indepth analysis of it as a social phenomenon. It's just a bastardisation of other games with the word "social" tacked on it because it has a chat window and to make it seem oh so web 2.0 |
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ProxyCheater wrote
at 8:22 AM, Monday November 10, 2008 EST While kdice is different than facebook or wikipedia in the sense that it isn't focused around user-generated content, it is still a very social game.
If you think the chat box is simply tacked on to the game to make it Web 2.0, you're missing a core component of the game. Ask any of the top players if the chat box is important. It's also clear that Ryan designed the game to be social - in addition to the chat, everything from persistent names to friend lists to walls and reviews are meant to create community. |
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canuckster wrote
at 8:36 AM, Monday November 10, 2008 EST It depends on how much Ryan want's the game to grow.
I play this game for fun, but I don't think this site will have the staying power for new users over the long term, simply because of the groups. A new user is not going to want to stay if he feels it is impossible to get to the next level because of pga's and what not. There has to be an illusion of being able to win it all to have staying power on new members. This will never happen, IMO, if there isn't a change in the behaviour of the way the game is played. There are many steps to do this without removing the social aspect of the game, such as random table placement instead of chosen. K-dice has a ton of potential, but it will never be big if the current trends continue. |
