(Note: This is the second post in my series on the Metagame. The first post can be found here, and is recommended reading in order to understand some of the terms etc that I will use. It is intended to be light in nature, but prove an interesting point)

I read an article a while back on computer games, specifically RPGs (role playing games), and one of the terms caught my eyes: ricing. Ricing has often been described as a necessary evil by the game developers. However, what caught my fancy was the thought that this could exist outside computer games, and in real world games, like the education system.  Now, I didn’t have a lot of respect for the education system, to me, it was all very boring. However, after I read that article, I came to realize how efficient the education system is at doing what it is supposed to do. This article is takes a look at ricing in real world games, especially the education system.

Ricing/Grinding is an integral part of most computer games. It involves doing smaller, boring tasks again and again, so that you slowly gain experience. It is also one of the most hated parts of the entire gaming experience (an average ricing task in World of Warcraft would include something like: kill ten rats and skin them). However, it serves a very important function, it levels the playing field. In order to demonstrate how it works I will talk about two computer games for a little while, World of Warcraft and Quake III

Endgame Content refers to the actual desirable challenge that the player plays for. In computer games, it translates into a fight with the level boss. In real life, it might include exams and performance reviews.

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World of Wacraft

World of Warcraft - Orc Crest

World of Warcraft is the most popular computer game in the world today (11 million subscribers and counting). It is an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) by critically acclaimed game developers Blizzard, and is part of their Warcraft franchise. Those of you who play computer games would be well aware of what the game is about, so you can skip the next paragraph. For the rest, I’d advise you to read on.

Warcraft takes place on the fictional world of Azeroth (as well as a few other locations). It is primarily a fantasy based game, with elements of steampunk thrown in. The player controls a character from one of the ten races that are divided into two factions (Alliance: Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Nigt Elves, Dranei; The Horde: Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, Forsaken, Blood elves). A character is also given a class (warrior, priest, rogue etc), and not all races have access to all classes. Based on the race and class, a character will have a set of unique abilities and advantages. There is also a system of having a profession that will help you with your game (leatherworking, fishing etc). Player characters gain experience and gold by completing tasks. Gaining a certain amount of experience will help them learn stronger abilities, while gold helps with better equipment etc. For more in depth information, look up www.wowwiki.com

I joined up to be a warrior. No body mentioned this!

The most common way to make your character stronger is by doing mundane tasks. This includes hunting rats, fishing, being a courier etc. Even at higher levels, the common tasks are merely variations of these boring tasks (killing a certain number of enemies, delivering a set of instructions). The game difficulty scaling isn’t that steep, an easy task for level 1 will be just as easy for a level 1 player, as an easy task for level 50 is for a level 50 player. However, the players tend to spend the majority of their times doing these mundane tasks (ricing), and then a small percentage of their time doing what they would much rather be doing, ie tackling bosses and endgame content. This can best be explained by the Pareto Principle.

For the purpose of this article, I have taken the Pareto Principle to mean that (broadly) in any group, 80% of the population is responsible for 20% of the desirable attribute, while 20% of the population has 80% of the desirable attribute. Eg: 80% of the wealth (desirable attribute) is with 20% of the population. (Remember the definition, we’ll be using it again and again)

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle is seen in almost every, if not all, spheres of life. In the case of World of Warcraft, the principle goes like this:

80% time spent using “useless” tasks (ricing)
20% time spent using “interesting” tasks (endgame)

Now, the question that comes up is this: why do programmers and developers put in the grinding/ricing tasks if the players hate it so much? Are they egomaniacle self-obsessed scumbags who don’t care what the user thinks? Probably true, most of the times, but in this case, there is a certain beautiful logic to this. There is a very awesome presentation on the internet by Raph Koster that I would recommend all of you who are interested in games and game theory to check out here. Simply put, adding boring, repetitive tasks ensures that the game remains a level playing field. How does that even make sense, you might ask? Well, here is how:

The pareto principle states that for any game, 20% of the players will have 80% of the skill level and ability. That means the hand-eye coordination and tactical thinking of 20% of the individuals will be far greater than that of the remaining players. This loads the game heavily in the favour of these 20% players. This means that in an open competition, the 20% of the players will be far better than the 80%, and hence will have access to better gear and rewards, making them inherently stronger than the rest. This decreases the incentive for the 80% to play the game, as they know that they will be beaten because they have inferior skills. This is where ricing/grinding comes in. This ensures that there is a level playing field for the majority of the game, and that the rewards that the players get is a function of their time spent on the game, and not because of the inherent skill. Simply put, an average player now has a chance to have the same gear and experience as a pro by simply spending more time at the game, and can go into the endgame content knowing that he has the same quality of gear and experience as the pro players. This helps retain players by providing a level playing field, and ensures that developers can spend the majority of their time making the endgame skill based and the grinding stage non-skill based (at least in theory).

In essence: ricing/grinding helps remove any inequality based on skill for the majority of the game, thus giving less skilled players an equal opportunity at reaching endgame content as the pro players.

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Quake III (Randomness and Ricing)

Quake III - Arena

To say that Quake III is an awesome game would be an understatement. It is still wildly popular amongst gamers even though it was released a decade ago. One of the biggest reasons for its popularity is that its learning curve is simplicity itself. Simply put, you shoot everything that moves. It is quite difficult to be a pro Quake III player, but it is very easy to be a decent player. In Quake, there is no leveling and experience system, and the game revolves around the skill of the players. This might mean that higher skilled players will easily beat down the lower skilled players, and therefore, reduce their incentive to play. However, Quake, and all the other games like it, have a very interesting approach to grinding: adding randomness.

In Quake III, you have no control over where you spawn. You might spawn near a rocket launcher, and then take the battle to the enemy who is more skilled but only has a shotgun. Your enemy might spawn near a rail-gun, but his aiming isn’t that great, so you can take him out with a plasma rifle. The grinding stage of Quake is basically your character getting guns and items, and the fact that items are easily available and the skill requirement for getting an item is low (usually, only some basic jumping skills are required), that anyone can get a high class item by luck. Now, this does not necessarily negate skill. My strafing and backpedaling are horrible, and therefore I’m usually a favoured target in open rail gun centric arenas. However, I can use rockets pretty well, and that makes me dangerous in closed arenas.

REAL MEN USE ROCKETS

However, even while facing an experienced rail user in an open arena, I have managed to get a few wins simply by being in the right place at the right time. There is so much randomness in games like Quake III, that they can afford to compress the ricing stage into just getting a powerful gun, and hence, have effectively increased the amount of time spent in the endgame content (killing other players). Heck, one of the most powerful force multipliers for Quake III is the equipment you use, and anyone who has a 7 button mouse that allows you to select any gun at any time will have an advantage over a player that uses the mouse wheel to cycle through the available guns. It also means that winning is a combination of both luck and skill, such that it is possible for a lesser skilled player to kill a higher skilled player simply by being lucky. This makes it a more interesting and open-ended game, where a higher skilled player can not take anything for granted.

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The Education System

Just another brick in the wall

This brings us to an observation that I had about the education system. Its simply a huge ricing stage. All of us are made to go through tasks that seem boring and repetitive (study, write exam, pass, forget), and it usually has no bearing at all on the endgame content.

There are people who are inherently good at getting decent grades, while the rest might have to slog at it. Unlike ricing in computer games, however, here, you don’t have the luxury of unlimited time, and the tasks must be completed in a stipulated time. Other than that, it fits the model of ricing pretty well. The advantage that the students have is that there is a wide spectrum of subjects, and you can have good grades even if you manage to do above average in all, and that if you have a weakness in one subject, you usually have a strength in another subject that you can use to counter-balance your grades. Like World of Warcraft, the rewards are usually proportional to time spent, and a minimum investment of time and effort is required on the part of the students. Also, unlike Quake III, the randomness is only limited to the exams, and even then, it doesn’t have that much of an impact on the outcome. the system seeks to reward students who are at least average in all disciplines, and above average in some, and going by that, does a good job of it. The system is apathetic to those who are above average in one discipline and below average in others, as well as those who are below average in all disciplines that are featured, but are above average in some subjects that are not featured (eg: a student being bad at maths, english and science could be an awesome painter or dancer). This can help explain why being mediocre across the board might not be such a bad thing for a student whose goal is to just “get along”, and why some brilliant people have had issues with the education system (most notably Einstein), and why that can’t be used as an excuse by the rest of us.

If you understand the concept of ricing/grinding, you can see that it can be applied to a lot of other real world games as well, especially in conjunction with the Pareto Principle. For example, it is possible for senior leaders in political parties to gain an advantage simply by having spent a lot of time ricing (doing organizational work etc), without having any sort of political acumen or skill. It also can be used to explain why at the starting positions in an organization, people are usually given menial tasks that might have no bearing on the endgame (I know a lot of my friends with I-bank summers will agree with this). The trick to succeed with this is to try and understand the system, figure out what part of it is ricing and what part is the endgame content, and how you can make that work for you.

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Related posts:

1. Game and Metagame: Part 1… A game of Chess
2. Game and Metagame: Part 3… Force Multipliers, schoolyard fights, The Afghan war and the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae
3. India at World T20 – What went wrong?
4. Game Development Outsourcing in India
5. Losing the ‘Education’ edge