The Proteus Paradox by Nick Yee

inadvertently lead to tedious management roles. The deeper irony is that these guild leaders are paying around fifteen dollars a month for the “pleasure” of working a second job.
    I’ve focused on guild leaders so far, but for a guild to function well and succeed in raids, everyone has to pitch in. In any given raid in
World of Warcraft,
ten or twenty-five people have all scheduled their lives to work on this one task for two to six hours every week. Since only a few pieces of usable loot drop, most of these players walk away from the raid with nothing but repair bills for their damaged armor. Given this net negative return and the social pressures of participating in raids once a player has joined a guild, many players in these situations also directly compare the game to work. The followingpair of player narratives shows that this comparison holds true for players of all ages.
    But by the time I was level 50, the game was too focused on the “grind” to 60—the game required 20–40 players in raids—and the elitism, and classism of the players, just made it no fun. You could not achieve anything without massive support of some player group, and if you were in such a group (guild, etc.), they expected the game to be a full-time job. It was a burnout. [
World of Warcraft,
male, 53] 6
    When we became the max level, we participated in raids and joined a high-end guild. The game became a job. It lost that feeling we originally played for the raw fun, questing and exploring new areas, advancing characters. We noticed the game wasn’t about that any more. It was only fueled by greedy intentions guild members possessed. [
World of Warcraft,
male, 18]
    We made computers to work for us, but video games have come to demand that we work for them. Whether it is manufacturing pharmaceuticals in
Star Wars Galaxies,
running a corporation in
EVE Online,
or managing a guild in
World of Warcraft,
game play can become a second job. In the player narratives in this chapter, gamers have described their play with words including “grind,” “pain,” “stressful,” “burnout,” “obedience,” and “discipline.” These are hardly the words we would expect from consumers paying to be entertained in an immersive fantasy world. This is a prime demonstration of the Proteus Paradox; the offline burdens we thought we could leave behind follow us into virtual worlds.
The Blurring of Work and Play
    In their book
Got Game,
John Beck and Mitchell Wade report survey data on the provocative differences between how gamers andnongamers think. They argue that gamers are more willing to take risks than nongamers because failure and repeated attempts are acceptable and expected in games. Beck and Wade argue that corporations will have to adapt to gamers, but perhaps not as much as they think. After all, the complexity and corporate metaphors turn modern online games into corporate-mentality training grounds. In online games, players manage, discipline, and overwork each other. It bears repeating that the average player spends twenty hours a week in an online game. And especially for younger gamers, these games may give them their first taste of being a cog in a large, structured organization that slowly burns them out. 7
    It’s depressing to see grueling work in video games, but I wonder if we should be outright alarmed that we’re now finding games in corporate work. The kind of adaptation that Beck and Wade foresaw is already happening. Jane McGonigal’s
Reality Is Broken
and Byron Reeves and Leighton Read’s
Total Engagement
are two recent books that champion the idea that games can improve engagement and empower workers, leading to increased autonomy and productivity. Both books also use online games as their pivot: If players can be motivated to accomplish complex tasks in
World of Warcraft
for free, can the same principles be applied to enhance corporate work