Editorial

There’s a game called “Team Fortress 2” – and if you’re not familiar with it, imagine a Norman Rockwell painting superimposed on secret mercenary forces with outrageous personalities by the Pixar team that worked on “The Incredibles,” set the whole thing in the mid-1960s, and create a gameplay mechanic where you introduce teamwork and strategy into a first-person shooter. I really like it, simply because it combines the two things I love the most; absurdist humor and interesting applications of networking technology.

Last weekend, Valve, the makers of “Team Fortress 2” unleashed a new system where players would randomly receive bonus gifts like better weapons or silly hats. This system of “item drops” was controversial with longtime players, who were used to the old system, where the “unlocks” were acquired through performing in-game tasks of various difficulty (or absurdity) called “Achievements.”

Achievements, in a video game context, are like points – for example, you earn an achievement in Team Fortress 2 if your Russian defector heavy-weapons guy (Codename: “Heavy”) pushes your team’s cart in the game past 50 checkpoints, he gets an achievement called “Pushkin the cart” – if he, on the other hand, prevents the enemy’s cart from going past 25 checkpoints, he gets a different achievement called “Stalin the Kart.”

Yes, it’s very pun-heavy.

One of the reasons behind the new system, theoretically, is that it makes “Team Fortress 2” more like a MMORPG. (Think “World of Warcraft.”) WoW is addicting – in fact, game developer Jeff Vogel calls it “addiction-based game development,” in an article about World of Warcraft.

And then, there is that strange, visceral feeling of accomplishment obtained from character building and earning rewards. It is a strange phenomenon, best seen in massively multiplayer RPGs. These games are based on repetition - killing the same monsters, fighting through the same raids, doing PvP on the same battlegrounds, gathering and crafting the same recipes.

And, in return, players get little rewards. Statistics go up. Experience bars fill. You push a lever and a reward pellet comes out. There is the feeling that something has been accomplished, a sensation that is amazingly addictive. In EverQuest, when I gained a level or got a really good item, the feeling of achievement was palpable. For me, it was an actual, physical sensation. I kept playing because it gave me the satisfaction of achieving something, even when, of course, I wasn't. And this is what I mean by addiction-based game design.

So, I was thinking – how do you get network engineers, who have boring jobs (oh, sure, you and I find it more interesting than most people do, but even so, a lot of the job is routine maintenance,) to enjoy work even during the downtime? How do you compare your network performance savvy with your peers? NetworkRockstarChallenge.com is one way, but that only tests specific, memorized bits of network trivia.

We thought about this – and we think we’ve come up with a solution. We’re seriously thinking about implementing Network Rockstar Achievements; that is, we’ll come up with a list of moderate, difficult, and insane network administration tasks; you tell us how solved the problem in order to achieve them, and we’ll give you “unlocks” – little prizes from our goodie bin.

Plus, you know, the bragging rights.

But before we set out on this path, we’re kind of interested in gauging interest in such a system – if nobody would really be interested, we’d like to know before we start spinning our wheels on how to implement the complex system. And if you’ve got ideas for Achievements or Unlocks you’d like to see, I’d really like to see them.

We’ve got a comment section below, but if you’d like, you can also e-mail me directly at brian.boyko@netqos.com.

Meantime, I’m going to sign out for the day – I really want my Heavy to earn the “Marxman” achievement – I’m so close!