Catassing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Catassing (also referred to as "poopsocking") is the process of sequestering oneself at a computer and avoiding other day-to-day activities in favor of 'leveling up' in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) whose game design makes heavy use of level treadmills or their functional equivalents.[citation needed]
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[edit] Etymology
The term appears to have originated in a June 1, 2000 newspaper article called "The Surreal World" in which the author described a gamer who had become so addicted to Ultima Online that he had spent all his waking hours playing the game, dispensing with other activities competing for his time including personal hygiene and changing the cat's litter box. As a result, he and his entire apartment reportedly had the "pungency of cat urine", which he then called a "Den of Cat Ass and Murdered Time". [1] On June 2 the article was linked from Lum the Mad, a popular MMORPG commentary site at that time.
The use of the term "poopsocking" originated because of some players being forced to defacate into their own sock in order to avoid leaving their game to use the restroom.[citation needed]
[edit] Anti-Catassing
For a variety of reasons, MMOG designers occasionally attempt to reduce the amount of catassing among players of their games. It has proven to be very difficult to come up with successful game designs that reward continued play while discouraging catassing, resulting in controversy when experimental techniques are forced upon players.
Reasons why an MMOG might take steps to discourage catassing might include:
- Power gamers quickly outlevel their friends, making them unable to play together and inhibiting the ability of the player base to grow through word-of-mouth
- Power gamers may tie up valuable in-game locations for far longer than expected, damaging the play experience for the majority of users
- Power gamers tend to accumulate in-game negotiable rewards (i.e., items and money) disproportionately and more quickly than expected, affecting the in-game economy and again damaging the play experience for the majority of users
- Concerns about potential liability
- The fact that MMO servers bill by the month rather than by the hour, meaning they make far more profit off of casual gamers who tie up small amounts of server time. Heavier users take up more resources but do not pay a higher fee.[2]
[edit] Theory
Proposed countermeasures include:
- Steeply diminishing returns on advancement, aka "flattening the level curve", in which it takes longer and longer to obtain smaller and smaller incremental advances in power level. While this helps address the problem of power gamers being unable to play with their non-power-gaming friends, it instead seems to encourage catassing among the more obsessive players by requiring increasingly long stretches of marathon play in order to obtain meaningful advancement.
- "Soft caps", in which artificial limits are enforced on the maximum power attainable in some area. This can be difficult to balance: If the caps are too high they may have little impact, while if the caps are too low, players will reach them quickly, become bored, and may stop playing the game.
- Removing intersession advancement altogether. While this drastic step is unlikely to be taken by any current or future MMOG, this is the normal state of affairs for popular online first-person shooters including Counter-Strike and the original Quake.
[edit] Case studies
[edit] Ultima Online
One of the first attempts at limiting catassing was the "power hour" [3] in Ultima Online. With this mechanism, advancement slowed down if you played for more than one hour per day. This provoked outrage among some players, and the policy was eventually modified.
[edit] World of Warcraft
More recently, World of Warcraft has experimented with a "rest state" system in which time spent logged out while in town (or at an inn) would earn the player additional experience on later kills. Many have argued that since Blizzard games typically have a more mainstream appeal than other MMORPGs, the "rest state" was a way of appealing to people who wanted to play an MMORPG but specifically wanted to avoid "catassing".
[edit] EVE Online
The Eve Online MMORPG has all players advance at the same rate, whether logged in or not. Therefore, someone who plays the game constantly will gain skill points at the same rate as someone who hardly plays at all. However, given the degree to which success in the game is dependent upon financial holdings, many players still find it in their best interest to extend their play sessions to allow greater wealth accumulation.
[edit] Legal
In 2005, China announced new laws intended to combat online game addiction by requiring game companies to impose increasingly severe in-game penalties on players that play longer than three hours at a time. [4] It is unknown if any of the proposed laws were actually implemented.
