The Case for Design Restraint: Facebook Killed My Halfling Rogue
DLB presents a parable on popularity: lessons learned from the meltdown of the Dungeons and Dragons Facebook Application.
We talk a good game about restraint around here, often with regards to features or aesthetics. Restraint means to hold something back, to hold in those impulses for more, and eliminate excesses that might get in the way of user experience. But what about excessive customers?
It’s a problem we’d all like to have, right? But today, I’m going to pose a serious question: Are less customers better than more?
What started me thinking about this was my experience with the Dungeons & Dragons Facebook application. The game was minimalist, but addictive. So addictive, in fact, that the servers were slammed almost immediately.
All weekend long, my page requests kept coming back lost, but I persisted. It was annoying, but it didn’t keep me from leveling up my character. By Monday, the application had so much traffic that it was completely unresponsive and was taken offline.
When the servers recovered, the news came that the databases had crashed and everyone’s characters were lost. My halfling rogue was dead and no Resurrection spell could bring him back.
Now, I’ll put up with a lot for something that is free and fun, but after losing all my progress I decided I just didn’t want to play anymore. The spell was broken. They’d lost me for good.
The whole experience made me think. What should the developers have done? Most people would say they should have planned for the load from the start: more servers and more investment in code. I’m not so sure that would have been enough. In hindsight, yes, but in reality it’s very hard to estimate such things. Even when developers know something is going to be popular, capacity remains a problem.
What’s the solution? Being a less-is-better guy, I’d say it’s pretty simple: limit the number of users.
In practice, this means a population cap– perhaps admitting users by invitation only. I used to hate those policies because they’re exclusive (and I was usually on the outside), but now I see how they make sense. If you limit yourself to a certain number of users, it’s much easier to ensure they have the best experience possible. As capacity improves or traffic stabilizes, more users can be added. Eventually, you don’t need caps at all.
“But wait”, you say, “I can’t turn people away. Isn’t that bad for business?” Well, which is worse?: Do you lose more customers by being somewhat exclusive, or by failing to deliver?
If the experience inside is good, people will still line up, even if it’s exclusive. Some people will line up because it’s exclusive. If what you’re offering is not good, why should they line up at all?
Look at the effect of shortages on products like the Wii. Sure, it has some effect on sales, but they’re still extremely popular. Gmail had invites for a while—it didn’t stop me from wanting an address. I still want a FFFFOUND account. As the Marquis de Sade once said: “the best way to multiply one’s desires is to limit them”.
We’ve been taught that there is no such thing as scarcity with digital products, but maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to leave the concept behind. In the physical world, scarcity encourages restraint. Perhaps, in the digital world, we need to design artificial scarcity to do the same.
| Tagged with: | Dungeons and Dragons, Facebook, Games, Restraint, Scarcity, Slashdotted, User Experience |
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