VYTAUTO DIDŽIOJO UNIVERSITETAS SOCIALINIŲ MOKSLŲ FAKULTETAS SOCIOLOGIJOS KATEDRA
Rasa Šataitė
TARP VIRTUALAUS IR REALAUS: ETNOGRAFINIS MMORPGFENOMENO TYRIMAS BETWEEN REAL AND VIRTUAL: ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH OF MMORPG PHENOMENON
Magistro baigiamasis darbas
Socialinės antropologijos studijų programa, valstybinis kodas 621L60001 Sociologijos studijų kryptis
Vadovas: Doc. Dr. Victor de Munck ______
(Parašas) (Data) Apginta: SMF dekanas prof. dr. Jonas Ruškus ______(Parašas) (Data)
Kaunas, 2012 1
Summary
In the wake of recent discourses growing around metaphors like globalization and information age, information society, information and communication technologies move into cyber anthropology's focus. Although online games and online gaming communities are not new, the rising interest in online games and the number of people playing online games means that such games and the corresponding communities that seem to evolve out of then have potential to be fertile ground for social researchers. One particularly useful method is that of virtual ethnographies, or participant observation in the game itself. Through an ethnographical research of the Lord of the Rings Online and an online gaming community that has emerged within this game, this work attempts outline the process of virtual ethnography that combines emic and etic methods of data gathering adapted to the virtual context to provide a ‘true’ accounting of the social constructs inherent in the virtual world. Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are present for almost a decade now, but they have become significantly popular only over the past through years. During the past 6 years the MMORPG turned into a thriving cultural phenomenon with over 20 million people daily involved in various social interactions. MMORPGs provide a unique space for social interaction as players no longer share the same physical environment and the non-verbal communication in no longer available. In such games players also are no longer experiencing the intimacy of the environment, since the smells, touches, colors are no longer available. MMORPGs environment allow players to meet the characters from the whole world and the game remains no longer private since many different cultures now meet in public. The players now also face such issues as language barriers, time zone differences and many other issues. This work provides an ethnographical study of MMORPGs phenomenon as a cultural system with its own symbols, rules, norms, values, beliefs appropriate behaviors, goals, contexts, and status-power hierarchy through the exploration of cultural resources that the gaming community members not just create but also adapt and use within MMORPGs. Also anthropological characteristics of online gaming community are discussed revealing how MMORPGs create new mentalities changing the social structure. During the research I was following and describing the process by which individuals begin and become acculturated into the behavioral environment of MMORPGs as well as using the ethnographic-type descriptive data, I developed a hermeneutic analysis of MMORPGs cultural system that goes well beyond the game itself.
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Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to thank the people who made this thesis possible. I wish to thank:
My thesis advisor Victor de Munck, first of all, for encouraging me to continue my research on this topic. His inspiration and great efforts to explain things clearly and simply helped me a lot throughout my thesis- writing period. I really appreciate the hours spent reading my work, good advices and teaching. I would have been lost without him.
My educators Vytis Čiubrinskas and Kristina Šliavaitė for constructive critique and advises on how to improve my work.
Kestutis Samsonas for introducing me to my first MMORPG - the Lord of the Rings online and showed me the first steps within this mysterious place.
Atanas Mahoney for believing in me and accepting me as a community member.
Adam Dawes and Andy Redshaw for all the fun, jokes and conversations during my hours online.
My parents Edita Šatienė and Virgis Šatas and my siblings Ame, Rika and Martynas for a loving environment, for inspiration and support of my dreams.
And of course my dear friends Rasa Kuraitė, Martyna Vaitiekūnaitė who always were there for me.
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Table of Contents
Summary ...... 2 Acknowledgements ...... 3 Introduction ...... 5 1. Theoretical approaches on internet communication and online communities ...... 8 1.1 Cyber anthropology in its theoretical and historical contexts ...... 8 1.2 Introducing MMORPGs ...... 9 1.2.1 Evolution of MMORPG ...... 10 1.2.2 Social history of MMORPGs ...... 12 1.3 Previous research overview ...... 14 1.3.1 The virtual world – real world dichotomy ...... 14 1.4 Conceptual framework: Culture, Community and the Game ...... 17 1.4.1 Culture and Cognition ...... 17 1.4.2 Online communities: between the imaginary and real ...... 21 2. Methodological challenge ...... 24 2.1 Research object ...... 24 2.2 Virtual ethnography ...... 26 2.3 Methodology ...... 28 2.4 Ethical issues ...... 31 2.5 Entering the field ...... 32 3. Presentation of ethnographical data: the case of LotRO ...... 34 3.1 MMORPG as a cultural system ...... 35 3.1.1 Player demographics: age and gender at issue ...... 36 3.1.2 Player interaction: ways of communication and linguistics ...... 37 3.1.3 Adjusting in the game: rules and norms ...... 43 3.2. Online community: from kinship to European gaming Community ...... 45 3.2.1 Community structure and management ...... 47 3.2.2 Different types of guilds: goals and conflicts...... 48 3.2.3 Power relations, decision making and the burden of leadership ...... 51 3.3 Bridging the worlds: between the “real” and the “virtual” ...... 53 3.3.2 Crossing and social boundaries ...... 56 3.3.2 Friendships within and beyond the game ...... 57 Conclusions ...... 61 Appendixes ...... 64 Appendix 1 – Community membership application ...... 64 Appendix 2 – General Community rules ...... 65 Appendix 3 – Glossary of terms ...... 67 Bibliography ...... 68
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Introduction
In the wake of recent discourses growing around metaphors like globalization and information age, information society, information and communication technologies move into cyber anthropology's focus. Although online games and online gaming communities are not new, the rising interest in online games and the number of people playing online games means that such games and the corresponding communities that seem to evolve out of then have potential to be fertile ground for social researchers. One particularly useful method is that of virtual ethnographies, or participant observation in the game itself. Through an ethnographical research of the Lord of the Rings Online and an online gaming community that has emerged within this game, this work attempts outline the process of virtual ethnography that combines emic and etic methods of data gathering adapted to the virtual context to provide a ‘true’ accounting of the social constructs inherent in the virtual world. Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (further MMORPG) are present for almost a decade now, but they have become significantly popular only over the past through years. During the past 6 years the MMORPG turned into a thriving cultural phenomenon with over 20 million people daily involved in various social interactions. MMORPGs provide a unique space for social interaction as players no longer share the same physical environment and the non-verbal communication in no longer available. In such games players also are no longer experiencing the intimacy of the environment, since the smells, touches, colors are no longer available. MMORPGs environment allow players to meet the characters from the whole world and the game remains no longer private since many different cultures now meet in public. The players now also face such issues as language barriers, time zone differences and many other issues. Academic interest in MMORPGs studies has been growing for several years. Fields like economics, sociology, or psychology focus more on quantitative data and statistics. Anthropology on the other hand relies primarily on qualitative data collected through observations, participation in the daily lives and interviews. Ethnographic research is necessary to reveal players’ narratives that can be considered as a part of the whole cultural content that is produced inside the MMORPG. Narratives are a result of their activities, and are created by individuals who already carry a subjective content that shapes the narrative. Avatars or characters that players’ create cannot be left aside because often there is a story and an explanation for the choice. Previously done researches on MMORPG are related to social aspects in both micro (relationships among players, motivations, personal identities) and macro (wide range of social phenomena that occur on social formations, such as leadership, cohesion, social identity, conflicts, etc.) levels. According to J. Salazar
5 social scientists assume that MMORPGs are social spaces that not only allow, but even require sociability from the players, which is actually obvious for anyone who has ever tried playing it (Salazar, 2005: 2). This work provides an ethnographical study of MMORPGs phenomenon as a cultural system exploring of cultural resources that the gaming community members not just create but also adapt and use within MMORPGs. Also anthropological characteristics of online gaming community are discussed revealing how MMORPGs create new mentalities changing the social structure. During the research I was following and describing the process by which individuals begin and become acculturated into the behavioral environment of MMORPGs as well as using the ethnographic-type descriptive data, I developed a hermeneutic analysis of MMORPGs cultural system that goes well beyond the game itself. Within the first part of my work I introduce to the historical and social background of MMORPGs, discussing a suitable theoretical and conceptual framework to analyze this phenomenon in the context of cyber anthropology. I also provide a previous research overview introducing to the issue of virtual versus real dichotomy within the academic discourse. The second part of my work approaches methodological challenges that occur conducting a research in digital environment also discussing the adaption and modification of field research methods moving from traditional ethnographical research towards virtual ethnography. Finally, the last part of my work is dedicated to present the empirical data gathered during my research. Research purpose: [1] to understand MMORPG as a cultural system with its own symbols, rules, norms, values, beliefs, appropriate behaviors, goals, contexts, and status-power hierarchy; [2] to explore the cultural resources that the gaming community members not just create but also adapt and use within MMORPGs; [3] follow and describe the process by which individuals begin and become acculturated into the behavioral environment of MMORPGs. Objectives: [1] to define the anthropological characteristics of online gaming community; [2] revealing how MMORPGs create new mentalities changing the social structure; [3] using the ethnographic- type descriptive data, to develop a hermeneutic analysis of MMORPGs cultural system that goes well beyond the game itself; [2] as an extension of the previous point (number 3) to describe how the players (or sample of informants that represent this particular community) experience the game and how they operate to build a coherent cultural life-world. Research questions: [1] how is the online ethnographic community similar to and different form a “real” ethnographic community giving the fact that the internet transcends local, regional, national, ethical and social boundaries? [2] How are boundaries and cultural norms used or created in an entirely artificial realm where people do not even interact face-to-face and where “power” can be literally killed by the flip of
6 a switch? [3] What are the processes of individualization and collectivization contributing to players’ engagement and experiences of the game? Key words: MMORPG, cyber anthropology, online community, cyber culture, virtual ethnography, virtual worlds.
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1. Theoretical approaches on internet communication and online communities
As the title suggests, within this part of my work I will introduce cyber anthropology and will be discussing the MMORPGs phenomenon in its theoretical and historical contexts. This chapter also contains the introduction to MMORGs focusing not only on the evolution of online games but also on the social history of MMORPGs. In the third part of this chapter I provide a brief overview of previous researches on MMORPGs and introduce to the issue of dichotomy in the current academic discourse. Finally, in the last part of this chapter I am introducing to the key concepts of my field of study focusing firstly on culture and cognition in digital realms together with the discussion on the issue of online communities. When one considers studying communities the most important part is revealing the structure or the platform that holds that particular community. In this case, since there are no forms of geographical location or spatial organization, the MMORPG environment in which members communicate becomes one of the most important factors.
1.1 Cyber anthropology in its theoretical and historical contexts The term cyber anthropology was first mentioned by Gibson in 1984 deriving from the notion of cyberspace in his science fiction novel (Butka & Kremser, 2004). Today prefix cyber refers generally to computer and information technologies and how people interact with and through them. Since 1990s cyber anthropology has been used as a perspective of social and cultural anthropology that investigates internet as a new domain for ethnographic fieldwork. According to Escobar “As a new domain of anthropological practice, the study of cyber culture is particularly concerned with the cultural construction and reconstruction on which the new technologies are based and which they in turn help to shape” (Escobar, 1994). Ebsobar used the concept of cyber culture to analyze the fundamental transformations in the structure and meaning og modern society and culture due to computer information (Butka & Kremser, 2004). Today cyber anthropology or the anthropology of cyber space deals with technologies and how they are constructed and implemented in society and culture holding that the discipline of anthropology is well suited to describe the cultural change in terms of new emerging practices and transformations arising from technological developments (Escobar, 1994). Internet based social networks and online communities offer a rich social field for ethnographic investigation of internet users using their own codes of conduct and language. Scholars soon got interested in the diverse relationships between the social structures and cultural identities that are produced by computer-mediated communication. This also led to the methodological
8 extension of the classical concept of ethnographic fieldwork in order to include the emerging cyberspace as a new terrain for investigating new topics (Butka & Kremser, 2004). Within the anthropological discipline, the emphasis on how technology influences human life and the call for a new era and methodology of anthropology has raised profound criticism. One could argue that the analysis of the interplay between artificial constructs and the life-world has always been at the centre of ethnographic interest when it comes to understanding how people shape their surroundings and understand themselves in the mirror of the artifacts they produce (Kramer, 1988). Accordingly, the development of Cyber Anthropology has not lead to a new type of anthropology with the methodological and disciplinary impact, but has rather extended the field of application of already existing ethnographic methodologies (Sprondel, Breyer, & Wehrle, 2011). According to Hakken ethnography of cyberspace and cyber culture can help understanding the following issues: the basic characteristics of the entities carrying cyberspace; construction of self identities; construction of micro, meso and macro social relations; political and economic structures which cyberspace entities produce and reproduce and which constrain them (Hakken, 1999). Generally speaking in the wake of recent discourses growing around metaphors like globalization and information age, information society, information and communication technologies move into cyber anthropology's focus. The research spectrum reaches from using a personal computer as a typewriter to the emergence of social networks through the simple communication with colleagues and peers via Internet and the theory-based generation of new forms of representation for anthropological knowledge. The research contains socio-cultural anthropological observation, analysis and interpretation of the consequences of the internet based interactions between individuals or groups. In this sense internet is seen as field - an interactive space generated by computer mediated communication comprising national and transnational online-groups. Cyber anthropology is a fascinating field of study because the transfer of social structures from physical reality to the virtual realm is rather slow but continuous and social norms are still changing. From the perspective of the individual perception if virtual worlds would remain in the state of a game, this kind of research would seem insignificant, but the game and online community impact and influence to player’s life is significant. Cyber anthropologists focus on the change of the traditional social structures where identity becomes a more and more vague concept as the boundaries between the real and the virtual slowly dissolve, as do the ones separating the public from the private (Butka & Kremser, 2004).
1.2 Introducing MMORPGs The game industry is one of the most profitable and dynamic industries in entertainment which during the past few years even overcame the movie industry. Worldwide revenues for MMORPGs exceeded half a 9 billion dollars in 2005 and Western revenues exceeded US$1 billion in 2006 (Harding-Rolls, 2007). Some of the products rank among the most memorable and profitable pieces of popular culture in the last quarter- century, i.e., the famous plumber Mario game made twice as much money as all five Star Wars films combined (Borrow, 2003) and World of Warcraft, a popular MMORPG, has more than 10 million subscribers as of February 2012. It is also an industry that that survived technological upheaval, a rapidly changing consumer base, and a host of leaders marked as much for their personal excesses and luck as for their insight and technical brilliance. Although online games have achieved great heights of success in recent years, only a few realize how long the genre has existed prior to this explosion of popularity and that these online worlds have been around for nearly as long as the Internet itself. The main purpose of this chapter is to explore the evolution of online games, from the dawn of their invention all the way up to the massive 3D landscapes of modern times. Studying the history online games give us an idea as to how the first original games that were built were conceptualized (Gupta, 2009). The origins of the various types of online games which are responsible for the present enjoyment should be introduced so we could better understand the current processes that are currently going on in MMORPGs.
1.2.1 Evolution of MMORPG The history of massively multiplayer online games spans over thirty years and hundreds of massive multiplayer online games. The origin and influence on these games stems from MUDs, Dungeons and Dragons and earlier social games. It all began around the year 1969 when Rick Blomme introduced a PLATO service which was a two player game and one of the first time-sharing systems dedicated to experimenting with new ways to use computers for education. Eventually, around 1972, it was developed into a system that could host about 1,000 simultaneous users (Mulligan, 2002). Several more multi player games appeared on the PLATO service which later based on the same idea early MMORPGs such as Star Trek or Dungeons and Dragons were developed. In 1979 Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle began the development of the first working Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) and online gaming took a great leap forward in terms of interactivity with the advent of MUDs (Bartle, 1990; Lawrie, 2002). MUDs were quite simple text-based games, but the main difference was that a level of automation that had not previously been known was added. Players could now develop characters based on numerical attributes defining their character’s strength, intelligence and experience as well as choose one of the template roles (i.e. warrior, cleric, druid) but most importantly players were now able to group together to explore the sites and slay monsters. The game play revolved around a combination of interactive storytelling and players achievements seeking higher levels while gaining more and more in 10 game experience evaluated as points they got for the monster slay (Yee, 2006). However the most important thing was that MUDs allowed players to interact with each other in real time and this basically was the first step towards an online community (Russell, 2007). MUDs remained the most popular (if not the only) online gaming form for years and as the graphical and processing capabilities of the modern personal computer increased, and as accessibility to the Internet became widely available, it became possible to build MUDs with graphical front-ends which lead to the first attempts of graphical MMORPGs (Yee, 2006). The new games compared to the ones we have today had very primitive graphics however were still very attractive because that had not previously been possible (Russell, 2007). Legends of Kesmai and Neverwinter Nights (introduced in 1991) were first graphical games wherein players could adventure together in a world situated across a vast tile-based map. Interaction in real time became a norm rather than an advantage, more and more different gaming communities were formed which significantly increased the communication among players. The flow of information and quicker gratification helped these games to slowly overcome the popularity of their text-based predecessors (Lawrie, 2002; Mulligan, 2002; Russell, 2007). The rise of networks and games allowing social interaction is the most important factor in game industry which attracted consumers looking for new experiences and eager to pay for interactive technologies. It also expanded the consumer expanding the game market beyond the traditionally young male audience (Mulligan, 1998; Williams, 2004) and as of 1999, online games were played by nearly even numbers of men and women, and 63% were between the ages of 25 and 44 (Schwartz, 1999). Socially oriented game portals have also seen exponential growth in the past two years, including middle-aged and elderly players (Mulligan, 2002). Massively multiplayer online games really took off with the release of first commercial online games: Ultima Online in 1997 followed by EverQuest which showed up in 1999. Ultima Online was instrumental to the development of the MMORPG genre and the game is still running today, but its aging game engine and graphics may make it outdated compared to competitive, new massively multiplayer games (Gupta, 2009; Mulligan, 2002). EverQuest's basic model can be seen in the majority of current online games. Although different artistic styles are employed, most games utilize the same system of running players through months (or often, years) worth of work, with their characters gradually increasing in power and prestige as a result of their continued efforts in the online world (Russell, 2007). There was one major piece added to the game play in EverQuest that had a huge impact for future virtual social worlds – the game was developed in a way that required team or collaborative play in order for players to succeed. To advance in the game players had to form small teams and regularly play with the same team and they would advance as a unit reaching higher levels. This requirement for collaborative work created a game environment dependent on social networks
11 and these networks that were first created within the game expanded beyond the game play into online discussion forums and eventually into face-to-face conventions (Sanchez, 2009). New and more advanced graphics was not the only reason players moved to newer games. The first modern MMORPG to diverge from this highly demanding path is said to be World of Warcraft which launched in 2004. This game had not only better graphics and more user friendly control of the character, but also markets itself to casual gamers by offering them quicker advancement for less time required. World of Warcraft has swiftly become the most popular MMORPG on the market and the first game to remove EverQuest from its place at the top of the market (Williams, 2004; Russell, 2007). To sum up, there were three major developments from the use of MMORPGs that created a ripe environment for the rise of 3-D social virtual worlds. First of all, the emergence of residential broadband Internet connections and high-end personal computers created an entry point for everyone to enter virtual world environments. Secondly, the dependence on collaboration within MMORPGs was developed and that lead to the creation a strong social system. And finally, the players themselves supported and sustained the social systems outside of game play, usually through the web pages, forums and bulletin boards.
1.2.2 Social history of MMORPGs Aside from the technological development of online games it is also important to mention the social history of games which contains the confusion, tension and changing perceptions of games that have changed the understanding of their use over the past 20 years (Williams, 2004). The reaction to games is merely one example among a long string of new media technologies that on one hand have been seen as a way to add convenience to daily life, and spread egalitarian, democratic values in a kind of software that all classes and groups are equally eligible and empowered by the new technology (Williams, 2004; McLuhan, 1964), but on the other side the new media is considered to be morally corrupting, poisonous, to have created new stresses and inequalities that had not existed before (Neuman, 1991). Ruth Schwartz Cowan (1999) claims that in order to answer these questions we should focus on the consumption process and players as consumers because they are the ones who actually decide whether to adopt the technology or not, and in what form. When making their decisions, these consumers are not operating in a social vacuum and their choices are guided by large social forces and by the various roles they play in life. To understand the context of these choices, we have to understand the consumer’s place in a network of relationships that begin with the individual and expand out into the larger society through the family. But by focusing on the household and the family as Cowan suggests, we can gain insight into the roles consumers play as part of a family unit and how the use of game technology highlights issues of power, place and agency for each family member (Cowan, 1999). 12
Cowan’s perspective though stands in great contrast to political, business and even some of the academic discourses which tend to overcome an active and intelligent consumer. Academics typically started focusing on the things that new technologies do wrong and in early game studies the search for pathological profiles became the main agenda of most researches. It didn’t take long for the policy makers to realize that online games are nothing but evil that pulls in the teenagers and are even more addictive than TV (Gupta, 2009; Mulligan, 2002). Both online and video games where considered not only to be time consuming, but also the main source of teenage violence. Soon enough parents and school teachers have adapted this perspective and started blaming the gaming industry for troublesome teenagers’ behavior. A very significant players’ gender related tension also had a huge impact on social perception of games. Even though media and new technologies served as an instrument for women movement conservatives continued questioning the nontraditional women engagement in the use of technologies and new family types. As people started adopting many new devices into their daily lives not everyone considered them timesaving and empowering, rather greatly disrupting the traditional family life (Byerly, 1999). Scholars kept asking questions whether the games caused children to neglect more important activities. These hypotheses were tested repeatedly in the research, but the concerns were largely unwarranted. There was no link found between the game play and either school activities or peer involvement, and eventually a conclusion was made that children’s lives are not greatly altered for better or worse by owning a video game (Williams, 2004). As already mentioned before, together with the changes in game industry and the discovery of MUDs the game market expanded beyond the traditional teenage male audience. As first socially engaging games were completely text-based without a single image and the whole game play consisted of textual descriptions, these games were completely unattractive to young players. Unsurprisingly then the demography of players and their understanding of games were drastically at odds with the public perceptions and academic research agendas (Gupta, 2009; Griffiths, Davies, & Chappell, 2003). This issue has been brought into attention by some of the scholars who shifted their research focus from problematic issues to explanations about who, why and how much time they spend playing online games. The first findings were surprising and the portrait of a player as an “addict violent teen” soon vanished from the discourse. In fact most of the players have been found to be bright, outgoing, and competitive also having good knowledge of technologies. Studies of player motivations have found consistently that game play takes place for three reasons: for challenge; control; and for social interactions. It was also discovered that both men and women were driven by competition in their game play, although men found mastering the game to be more important than women did. Later studies also showed that the average age of MMORPGs’ players is 30 years, which completely destroyed the opinion that only teenagers participate in such games.
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1.3 Previous research overview Academic interest in MMORPGs studies has been growing for several years. According Greg Lastowka, in 2007 there were three times as many articles published as were in 2006 (Lastowka, 2008). Several research agendas have been proposed by scholars focusing on MMORPGs. In the early history of online and video games researchers, policy makers and parents have been concerned with the assumedly isolating and violence-inducing nature of the games (Williams, 2004). There are hundreds of academic and thousands of popular media articles and books that outlined varying models of addiction, i.e. The Addictive Personality by Craig Nakken (1996) or Robert West’s, Theory of Addiction (2006). Scholars kept asking questions whether the games caused children to neglect more important activities or if video/ online games are responsible for their children’s violent behavior. These hypotheses were tested repeatedly in the research, but the concerns were largely unwarranted. There was no link found between the game play and either school activities or peer involvement, and eventually a conclusion was made that children’s lives are not greatly altered for better or worse by owning a video game (Williams, Trouble In River City: The Social Life of Video Games, 2004). Even though some scholars still have their main focus on addiction others shifted their attention to social aspects in both micro (relationships among players, motivations, personal identities) and macro (wide range of social phenomena that occur on social formations, such as leadership, cohesion, social identity, conflicts, etc.) levels. Richard Bartle’s, Designing Virtual Worlds (2004), and The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold (2000) are just some of the research examples that were done trying to explain who, why and how much time they spend playing online games. According to J. Salazar today social scientists view MMORPGs as social spaces that not only allow, but even require sociability from the players, which is actually obvious for anyone who has ever tried playing it (Salazar, 2005). Scholars have examined the social interactions between players (Griffiths, Davies, & Chappell, 2003; Nickell, Ducheneaut, Yee, & Moore, 2006), the affordances of avatar-mediated interaction (Ducheneaut, Yee, Nickell, & Moore, 2007), and the social processes that take place between individuals, avatars, and the communities they play in (Taylor, 2006; Williams, Caplan, & Xiong, 2007) Bartle and Yee have mostly focused on the psychological aspects for player interactions and motivations (Bartle, 2004; Yee, 2009) meanwhile there were other scholars like Castronova who focused more on the economical aspects of the game (Castronova, 2005).
1.3.1 The virtual world – real world dichotomy Fields like economics, sociology, or psychology focus more on quantitative data and statistics. Anthropology on the other hand relies primarily on qualitative data collected through observations, participation in the daily lives and interviews. Historically, anthropologists were expected to travel to exotic 14 locations where they would live amongst different cultures for years, building rapport with the community and interviewing its members. Based on their experiences, they would gain a rich understanding for the culture in which they spent their time. The expectation was that through building an appreciation for the huge variety of ways in which humans organize themselves, we would learn more about ourselves and our society. Still there is a huge gap between the popular conceptions of gaming and actual practices that needs to be explored. One can easily get lost among all the literature available today about MMORPGs but most of the influential researches done up to day have one major problem in common. The problem with these research agendas and various other social games and networks related studies is that they are based on a dichotomous perspective comparing the real to the virtual (Lehdonvirta, 2010). Some common themes emerge from the dichotomous model and most popular one is the relationship between people and space. Scholars constantly attempt to draw boundaries between what is real and what is not. From my own research I understood that social networks and communities that emerged in games frequently extend beyond those boundaries moving to other platforms outside the game, i.e. community forums and even the physical spaces. For this reason within this research I focus not on the dichotomous separation of real and virtual worlds trying to figure out the interaction between them. Such a view is in contrast to the views prevalent in contemporary studies, which emphasize the boundaries, multiplicity, fluidity and even fragmentation of identities. The outcomes of my research made it clear that people who interact online do not draw a distinction between the real world and online world. In fact belonging to a certain gaming community and involvement in daily (weekly or monthly) activities constantly reminds that the place they are at and actions that they undertake are nothing but very real, even if people choose to communicate with one another in a different dimension while slaying dragons without face-to face contact. The conceptual dichotomy I am talking about can be found among players who use the terms “in- game” and “in-real-life” to draw a line between “the game” and “the rest of the world”. In more scholarly circles, this boundary is known as the “magic circle”. The concept is associated with Huizinga (1955), who defined the game as “free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner” (Lehdonvirta, 2010). According to Lin and Sun (2007), this view entails treating the game as “a world independent of the everyday real world”. The best play experience is achieved when the game is “insulated from or opposite to the utilitarian characteristics of the
15 physical world” (Lin & Sun, 2007). Many game researchers have since joined in the discussion to argue in support of or against the view (Lehdonvirta, 2008). Bray and Konsynski’s (2007) work as well as other discussions above suggest that the virtual world– real world dichotomy so prevalent in MMO scholarship can be broken down to a number of dimensions: (1) virtual space vs. real space; (2) population of a virtual world vs. real-world population; (3) virtual identity vs. real identity; (4) relationships in a virtual world vs. relationships in the real world; (5) virtual social structures vs. real-world social structures; (6) virtual economy vs. real economy; (7) virtual commodities vs. real commodities; (8) virtual law and politics vs. real law and politics. According to them, any study of a “virtual world” should take into account that the space the virtual world occupies may not be clearly defined; its population is indeterminate; its visitors’ identity is linked to the outside; for any social interaction it may only constitute part of the context; outside structures and practices condition behavior within it; its economy is open to outside influences; and its commodities may derive their value from references to the outside (Bray & Konsynski, 2007). Researches focusing on MMORPG player at the individual level leave out many essential elements due to the complex particularities of MMORPG’s. Such an approach was used widely by scholars building theories about players’ addiction to games. Players are portrayed as a mix of biological and technological beings and the problem with this approach is that it doesn’t bring into the picture the actual MMORPG experience, i.e. it doesn’t say anything about actual game playing issues, or the narrative aspects of MMORPG’s, nor does it explain how individuals inject sociability into their game playing. Neither do other traditional models of virtual identity suffice to encompass the wide arrange of elements that comprise the wholeness of the MMORPG, such as the individual players’ interaction with the community through the game play, the hardware and software restrictions, the players’ own subjective psychological content (wishes, feelings, expectations) that pre-exists the MMORPG, same as the cultural constructions and the exchange of personal symbolic content (Lastowka, 2008; Lehdonvirta, 2010; Ducheneaut, Yee, Nickell, & Moore, 2007). Lehdonvirta suggests that the first step towards a better model is to ungroup the technological platform from the user groups and their culture. This means stepping back and re-evaluating the relevant boundaries of the phenomenon under scrutiny. The point is not to give up on boundaries altogether and let the research turn into mist, but to avoid drawing artificial ones based on technical distinctions alone (unless it is the technology that one is researching) (Lehdonvirta, 2008). Ethnographic research therefore is necessary to reveal players’ narratives that can be considered as a part of the whole cultural content that is produced inside the MMORPG. Narratives are a result of their activities, and are created by individuals who already carry a subjective content that shapes the narrative.
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Avatars or characters that players’ create cannot be left aside because often there is a story and an explanation for the choice. We should equally consider all non-game dependent content that the gamer brings in before even playing the game, i.e. the expectations towards the game that a player might have before even entering an online world. His or her cultural experiences and expectations also shape the game experience itself and have a strong influence on how the gamer will handle the original “rules of play” that are presented in the game by both game developers and other players. In this sense, if users enter MMORPG’s already carrying a set of essential qualities that ultimately shape the online world, then researchers cannot continue talking about games ignoring all the subjective aspects that preexist the rules, the game play and the very basic social nature of MMORPGS. Games are games because people play them; whatever we choose to study about games, we must understand that the cultural background of the individual players influences any gaming experience. The important thing is to focus on the individual subjective elements of the player without losing sight of the other themes in the study of MMORPGs.
1.4 Conceptual framework: Culture, Community and the Game The definition of culture is considered to be the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all products of human work and thought considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population. Anthropologists examine human group behavior in the context of culture however this term has been widely discussed and debated (Applin & Fischer, 2011). I choose to stick with V. de Munck's (de Munck, 2000) idea that culture is located “out there” in the public world and at the same time it is located “in here” in the private sphere of the self. According to him symbols and behavior patterns become collectivized when the person and people around it use and understand them in the same holistic way. But this explanation still doesn’t answer the question how does a single player adapt those models and suddenly become a part of a broader gamers’ community. How do they learn what to do, how to behave, what to say and finally who has the power to decide what is right and what is wrong? What happens to those who decide to not to interact with other players, or to create their own rules?
1.4.1 Culture and Cognition A concept of culture is central to anthropology where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode their experiences symbolically, and communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. Probably the most popular definition is offered by Tylor (1871) stating that culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. There have been a number of attempts at narrowing down the definition and giving it a less totalizing meaning. F. Boaz argued that human cultural variations are
17 learned but not inherited and Rappaport (1999) offered an idea to look at culture as a tool kit of knowledge, skills and forms of organization. A number of anthropologists have argued for a purely cognitive definition of culture. The idea is here that culture may be limited to the communicative and meaningful aspects of social life: from language to the meaning carried by symbols, persons, actions and events. Geertz (1973) understood culture as "... an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life". (Uichol, 2001). However all scholars seem to agree that culture is not a product of lone individuals. It is a continuously evolving product of people interacting with each other and cultural patterns such as language make no sense except in terms of the interaction of people. The Internet has modified our experience of both space and time and these two views are contextually moderated. People can now adapt their interpretation and more closely correspond to group specific cultural beliefs and expand the number and size of social networks that they can usefully participate in. It is important to note that technologies increase peoples’ capacity to create new paradigms and capabilities as well as continue the old ones; otherwise they would just be data generating objects instead active agents (Applin & Fischer, 2011). As people use the internet they are constantly mixing their online behavior with their actual behavior in daily routines. Historically people have had standards when it comes to interaction and communication and through culture they continuously change their world adjusting and adapting to different situations. Internet is just one of the platforms where people have adapted themselves, but by spending more and more time online they also supported new behavior potentials (Applin & Fischer, 2011; Rosenau, 1992). According to H. Jenkins, gamers tend to form game interpretations, offer evaluations, and construct cultural canons through both their in-game and out of game activities. The in game symbols are turned in to culture, through claiming its materials for their own use, reworking them as the basis for their own cultural creations and social interactions (Jenkins, 1992). A successful MMORPG is cognitively demanding, requiring exploration of complex, multi-dimensional problem spaces, empirical model building, the negotiation of meaning and values within the relevant gaming community, and the coordination of people, (virtual) tools and artifacts, and multiple forms of text – all within persistent virtual worlds with emergent cultural characteristics of their own (Steinkuehler, 2004). Players create rich political systems, hierarchies, and power structures and the means for their enforcement. They collaboratively construct a sense of “space” and “place” in worlds that might exist only on particular servers alone (Clodius, 1994). They also generate social capital, often in the form of formal guild and alliance networks. In-game social groups devise rituals and performances that connect the individual to the social networks of which they are a part and generate in-
18 game adventures, archetypes and characters, and also their stories. Such communities maintain their collective intelligence in the form of unofficial user manuals that are far more accurate than official ones, keeping them in database-backed websites that function as the “how to” manuals for the game, and they create in-game apprenticeship systems that acculturate newcomers into valued cultural practices. So the community contains gamers who have already mastered the social and material practices requisite to game play apprentice, through tested and supported interactions and also the new gamers who lack such knowledge and skill (Steinkuehler, 2004). The existence of certain in game culture is very obvious for new players because they enter a totally new environment and have to go through the stage of disorientation and gradual learning. They all need time to get a certain synopsis of the world they are in as well as at least some knowledge about the toolbox they can use for shaping their avatar, moving around, associating with groups, participating in events, gaining and spending money, create and modify objects, interact and cooperate with others and many other things. This so called learning process might become easier if you have a friend inside who could guide you around and advise you in certain situations. The tasks or so called quests that need to be done in order to gain experience points so the avatar could reach a higher level might seem to be impossible sometimes and it is true that many players quit playing because they consider the game as pointless moving around. On the other hand there is loads of information about any online game in the internet, those who want to learn how to play can do it simply with the help of Google. The new player is automatically added to a sever chat channel, which is the main tool allowing players to communicate with one another. This all seem pretty simple and easy to use, but then there are certain rules, codes, symbols and even language needed to be learn for the successful integration to the game. In this sense not only that we can't deny the existence of a certain culture in the game, but we also have to adapt certain behavior models if we want to fit in. The adaptation process for a new player in game could be easily compared to the naturalization process for a foreigner in a new country. A long learning process is waiting if one is willing to become one of them. In order to understand the whole process and to learn what proper or improper behavior is people use different strategies. Some of the players get help from their friends, who explain them how to find information, how to look for help, how to create groups, how to trade. Some others find this information by themselves searching the internet or simply going the trial and error way. Kinships or guilds also play an important role here, because the membership is based on give-and-take relationship. The kinships are interested in having more active members, so they have to offer them something otherwise they might simply leave and join another guild. In later levels when a person learns how to deal with his character (avatar), he needs to find companions or so called fellowships for harder quests. This is the second phase of learning and
19 adapting the behavior because he becomes aware of the things that are considered to be wrong, inappropriate, and will also find out that there are certain punishments existing although in the beginning it might have sounded as nonsense. N. Yee points out three types of norm violations that occur most frequently in MMORPGs. The categories are cheating, local norm violation and grief play. Cheating is difficult to prove. The risk of sanctions being made against a violator depends on the severity of the violation. Local norm violations have different level of implications for other players and the players are usually sanctioned if the violation appears repeatedly (Yee, The Psychology of MMORPGs: Emotional Investment, Motivations, Relationship Formation, and Problematic Usage, 2006). Usually this problem has to be solved by kinship or raid1 leaders; at very outside the player can be dismissed from a group. Examples of grief play are; unprovoked harassment through game chat channels, repeatedly killing a player as soon as the character comes back to life and behavior not related to the winning condition of the game. Grief play in its different forms is behavior that infringes the higher level norms of the realm and can be difficult to sanction. A most popular punishment is considered to be publicity. When some people aren't aware of the existing behavior patters and norms, or in other cases they are pretty aware but still choose to violate them there is a big potential for a conflict to emerge. Not surprisingly, resources such as and valuable equipment may also lead to conflicts and guild wars in MMORPG. There are multiple ways of breaching norms for how to distribute resources between all members of a guild. The conflicts may rise in both, individual level, among separate players, and in the group level, among kinships. N. Yee outlines the most common examples which might lead to conflicts. The discussions about resources are usually the following situations; begging, ninja looting, and twinking (Yee, 2006). Begging is usually other gamers in game asking for money, and this can in fact be disturbing behavior that many guilds have strict rules against. Most beggars are being ignored2, since it is hard to make other sanctions against them. Beggars will eventually earn a bad reputation since gamers will gossip about this unwanted behavior. Ninja looting is another form of misconduct that most guilds have rules against. Ninja looters are players who steal the loot from other players under certain conditions especially when playing in a group in order to complete a long task which requires more players and usually takes a long time. Usually the lists of potential ninja looters are being posted on forums and constantly refreshed so that fair players wouldn’t get in to traps. When a high level gamer decides to help a low level character with money to buy better equipment or
1 This term is used to describe big group runs starting from 8 people. 2 If a person is added to the ignore list his conversations and messages are no longer seen. 20 helping the low level gamer killing creatures above his/her skill level this is labeled as twinking. The last example is actually not a serious norm violation and most gamers do not care about it. The culture of an online game is composed first of player behavior, as expressed or mediated through language and avatar behavior. In this context, speech becomes very important as a signifier of meaning, since other signals such as facial expression and touch are absent. Not only is speech, generally provided in text form, a highly important element, it is a delineator of the culture. As Ducheneaut and Moore (2004) point out “[gamers] must also be socialized into the game community. To be recognized as a good player you need to learn the lingo, perform your role well when grouped with others, and more generally demonstrate that you are an interesting person to play with”. The next element of any culture is the concept of cultural artifacts. While avatars/players do not create things in the traditional sense, there are items in the game space that signal wealth and/or status (and incidentally are bought and sold both inside and outside of the game). Those items and attributes are important to acquire both for the purposes of personal advancement and the purpose of grouping with others. Cultural behaviors and artifacts can be displayed on the screen, as other information- bearing material such as player statistics, and avatar characteristics themselves. The third element of culture, cultural knowledge, on the other hand, resides in two places; the minds of the players and the minds of the game creators. As Snider (2005) points out there are certain codified rules that are part of the environment, but there very often the rules take the form of conventions and community taboos. Just as in any culture or community these rules are passed down either explicitly or implicitly to the players. At the same time, players are continually shaping and modifying the rules. Regardless of the codified rules built in by game makers, it appears that the greatest resource in attaining cultural knowledge is fellow players. Players are encouraged to ask questions and to depend on the players’ community for knowledge (Ducheneaut & Moore, 2004).
1.4.2 Online communities: between the imaginary and real The second theoretical issue, I across is the concept of community. Through the whole history of mankind, community has been the key concept. Resource sharing and communication between the members of various social structures have led the human race to be what it is today. However, traditional communities have always been geographically oriented in a so called space of locations, but nowadays we have digital or virtual communities that have new rules and social patterns that need to be researched in depth in order to define how they function and what the main characteristics that define them are. Communities that emerge on the Internet and around the online games have some peculiarities and are intensively debated among the academics (Costina, 2010). Even though scholars agree on the term community when referring to the groups of online gamers, the main tension is related to the dichotomous model and distinction between real and 21 virtual or in some cases even calling them imaginary communities. Community can be defined as a social structure around a common interest, where one can realize a positive sense of self, but when alienated, one is negatively detached from community and the sense of self is dislocated and fragmented (Bauman, 2001). Conceptually speaking, the virtual community is not determined by a geographic location, but rather by a certain set of common interests. In this respect, virtual communities have their own dynamics and structure, much like the physical ones (Costina, 2010). According to Castronova, an important benefit of MMORPGs is that they allow players to engage in behavior that would not be possible for them outside the game. In other words a game is a place where the real-world norms do not reach, and virtual behavior is instead regulated by a new set of virtual norms and institutions (Castronova, 2005). Today there are many gamer communities existing independently of any particular game, moving from game to another or participating in several simultaneously. Moving the community outside the in game environment brings to the idea that it is impossible to avoid real-world norms. In fact gaming communities involve people who are adapting many relationship dynamics that take place in everyday life to the game experience. This also includes carrying some of those relationships outside the game even to the offline world and vice versa. The term of virtual community was introduced by Howard Rheigold (1993) who considered it to be a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. He pointed out the potential benefits for personal psychological well-being, as well as for society at large, of belonging to such a group (Rheingold, 1993). An online community on the other hand is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual and have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life (Barzilai, 2003). People usually take those categories for granted and the term society cause associations with structure and rules, while community on the other side is usually linked with micro or in other words individual levels of social interaction. E. Durkheim was also using two different terms to define social groups. One of them is gemeinschaft, which he used while talking about pre-modern kind of social group and which is closer to the English word community, and the new kind of social group he called gesellschaft, which can be translated roughly as society (Jones, 1986). E. Durkheim was separating those two terms in order to explain how pre-modern society transforms to a modern society based on the division of labor. Supporting this idea R. Bella defines the traditional community as a group of people who are socially interdependent, who participate together in discussion and decision making, and who share certain practices that both define the community and are
22 nurtured by it (Bellah, 1985). F. Tonnies also claims that that as humanity moved from a preindustrial to an industrial state, communal ways of life transformed into societal or associative ways of life; we went from small, homogeneous communities to mass, heterogeneous societies (Tonnies, 1957). In a broader sense we come up with an idea that communities are no longer possible in a modern or post-modern world. M. Rosenau also raises a question considering what happens to this traditional sense of community in the late 20th century. What happens to the spatial sense of community, for example, in an era of hyperspace in which our modern concepts of space are meaningless; in which space has been annihilated and spatial barriers have disappeared? And she comes up with an answer that post-modern communities are possible but they should be defined as communities without unity (Rosenau, 1992). Following M. Rosenau idea about the existence post-modern communities there is a need to discuss how and when does a traditional community turn to a post-modern community. And can we consider the virtual community to be an example of post-modern communities? Although the early definitions community presented it as a group of people emphasizing their inhabitance the same physical territory and their economical, social, religious boundaries and strict separation from other groups, the more recent definitions emphasize the importance of the members’ feeling of belonging, the affective ties and mutual support among the members and the common culture they share, leaving out the strict territorial aspect (Cartarescu, 2010). Putting aside the fact that the interaction between individuals involved in MMORPGs is not based on a face- to-face relationship there are many other criteria which allow us to define them as a community. First of all, their choices are defined by the game type they choose which already includes certain cultural models within therefore game choice itself is already a criterion expressing one’s willingness to belong to a certain environment. Another decision players make brings them even closer to the membership of a more certain community, called kinship or guild (the name depends on the game). Basically the kinship can be defined as the community without any further discussions, because if fulfills all the above mentioned criteria – the sense of belonging, ties, support, common culture and even history. The question is how do we name the broader group of players, which accommodates both kinships and single kinless players within? And is there a need for another term which would go beyond the community? The Internet, regarded as the framework for virtual communities, may be defined in this respect as the sum of all the informational human interactions achieved by using the interconnected network systems. Online communities also create the freedom for individuals to choose whether to contribute and join the community or not. In real life, this process is based on the acknowledgement of cultural elements and ideals that are similar or foreign to the other members of the community situated at the same level in terms of status and role. The same characteristics apply to the virtual communities; however here individuals have the opportunity to be
23 anything they want to be and have a possibility to hide some of the personal aspects to the absence of face-to-face interaction (Costina, 2010).
2. Methodological challenge
Researching online communities might seem simple because all one actually needs is a computer and internet in order to access one or another game. There are plenty of games that are now free therefore no big expenses are needed. However choosing the methods for this research was the hardest part of the whole work. Even though gaming studies (ludology) have started to become a recognized discipline within the last decade and studies of online games make up a significant part of the current game studies literature, anthropology has only recently taken an interest in internet-based social interactions. This research area is relatively new and a coherent focus or approach has not yet been developed especially when in case of online gaming, as anthropologists have just recently started to pay attention at this phenomenon (Wilson, Peterson, 2002). However, anthropology is uniquely suited to study gaming cultures and communities because it could provide a new framework and methodology for the study of games and culture (Boellstorff, 2006).
2.1 Research object As mentioned before the aim of this research is to reveal the cultural content that is produced inside the MMORPG through the narratives of the players themselves. In order to avoid the previously discussed dichotomies that are constantly appearing in similar researches we should research the game content equally focusing on the whole non-game dependant content that the gamer brings in before even playing the game. There are several elements of a MMORPG suitable for observation therefore before starting my research I tried to specify the possible research perspectives. Research elements can be classified into three structurally distinctive layers. What all this questions point towards to is a problem of focus: research focused on differing themes usually equals focusing on different levels of study. Hakken provided a scheme to illustrate different levels of research which is very useful in this case when trying to capture the whole of MMORPGs (Hakken, 1999). The author proposes 6 levels of analysis with the following allocation map:
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According to Hakken, the narratological and ludological approaches can be used to explore either social issues or individual identity and gender issues, but there are at least 3 levels of analysis that usually are not mainstream, in the game studies field. Regarding level 5 and 6 it must be said that recently there have been some studies of comparative culture game studies examining cultural differences in how players experience MMORPGs. The 6th level, on the other hand, has a long tradition among Cyberspace Studies (Hakken, 1999). Kolo and Baur suggested a 3 layer model for online gaming analysis. They propose to research the phenomenon through the combination of structures involved in the process: According to them, these layers are technically linked by the hardware and software of the interface, the personal computer and the network In this sense, both the players and the observing researcher refer to these different layers in their remarks or field notes. Therefore, a complete picture of a game situation results from the synopsis of the processes in all layers (Castulus & Baur, 2004). Reynolds and de Zwart also distinguish three research categories, quite similar to the three layers mentioned above. First category is the specifics of the virtual world which includes the mechanics of the 25 game and the content it provides combining it with the additional sources of information related to the game play (i.e. forums and descriptive websites). Second category is the game world immersion view, where the researcher is involved in game participating in the game play and other in game activities. And third category is related to the data generated by players’ interactions and transactions in all the observable platforms both online and offline (Reynolds & de Zwart, 2010). In order to avoid the dichotomous model in this research I define my research object as MMORPGs phenomenon. Salazar’s idea was to approach MMORPGs as an ontological being which is more or less similar to my understanding of the object. The aim of this research is to provide an ethnographical description of MMORPGs phenomenon in general, which means starting with individual layer of experiences, expectations and feeling of the players, moving towards the game play and social interaction and finally focusing on the big picture of all the aspects combined. The main goal is avoid drawing boundaries and to approach this phenomenon by combining the individual, lugological and narratological aspects of online games.
2.2 Virtual ethnography With the emergence of new forms of cultures the notion of the field as a geographically defined research area becomes problematic as well. First reflections on the possible consequences for ethnographic practice started in the mid 80ies. Marcus and Fischer (1986) pointed to the fact that anthropological research on local and regional worlds tends to underestimate the transnational political, economic and cultural forces that shape the local contexts. In order to take account of these global forces ethnographies should be conceptualized multi-locally or as multi-sited. Since both people and objects would be likely to become increasingly mobile, then ethnography has to get engaged with these movements (Wittel, 2005). There are two possible strategies to modernize ethnography beyond the tradition of fieldwork in a geographically defined locality with clear borders and boundaries. The first strategy suggests a "research self-consciously embedded in a world system", that "moves out from the single sites and local situations to examine the circulation of cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space" (Wittel, 2005). Closely related to this approach are suggestions to redefine the notion of the field. Gupta and Ferguson (1997), suggested de-centring the notion of the field. Instead of the field being used to connote locality, to "the here" and "the elsewhere", the field should rather be conceptualized as political location. The second strategy to overcome a traditional concept of fieldwork – less theorized, however grounded on a rapidly growing body of research—is a shift from material spaces to so-called cyberspace. The growth of the Internet is one of the greatest cultural phenomena of our time, impacting almost all areas of life.
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According to Boellstorff (2006), there are three ways in which anthropology can aid in the interdisciplinary study of games. First, they can study individual game cultures as many games are developing their own cultural forms. Secondly, they can study the cultures of gaming; most people who play games participate in more than one game and more than one genre. Finally, he posits that the gaming of cultures should also be studied as gaming becomes more significant in contemporary society (Boellstorff, 2006). Boellstorff did not provide a concrete research methodology for online gaming, but he claims that many ethnographic techniques that are currently used in anthropology can also be adapted to study online gaming. Synthetic worlds offer a very actual and interesting research arena for socio-cultural sciences and ethnography is one of the possibilities to gather qualitative research data. Ethnographic research in and on a network requires careful consideration about which areas and parts of the network to include, which ones to partially include and which ones to exclude. The necessity of spatially limiting the research area is nothing new. The classic field had to be constructed as well. However the construction of the field was facilitated by the fact that fields seemed to have supposedly pre-constructed borders anyway, geographic, social or cultural borders. Networks in contrast are somehow infinite, they are open structures and highly dynamic. By drawing boundaries, the ethnographer actively and consciously participates in the construction of spaces and in the sense of difference. In this respect the framing of the network for the research can pre-structure the findings and conclusions of any ethnographic inquiry (Wittel, 2005). Another important difference between traditional fieldwork and ethnography of networks is the issue of access. Usually there was always one person who opens the field for the researcher, introduces her to the community, serves as mediator between community and ethnographer, and who carefully and step by step makes the researcher familiar with the strange environment. More often the same person is also a key informant for the ethnographer and a formal or informal leader of the community. All these factors affect the ethnographic work. Firstly, it may be the case that a lot more time is needed to establish access to multiple sites than to one single site— allowing less time later on for the research. Secondly, networks become more and more networks that produce, mobilize and transport information and knowledge. The ethnographer is likely to find him/her in a position as a beggar. Access is usually negotiated within an economic frame, on the basis of exchange; it depends on what the ethnographer has to offer. That is to say, in order to get access, he/she needs to get familiar with the knowledge that is circulated within the net. Familiar enough to construct a persuasive argument how the observed would finally benefit from the research (Wittel, 2005). Virtual ethnography is a method broadly used by scholars researching online. This method does include both participant observation and interviews, but mainly focuses on the analysis of media content,
27 virtual objects, websites and any other forms of written or multi-media sources (Ducheneaut, Yee, Nickell, & Moore, 2007). Such artifacts have a cultural meaning and are valuable to the ethnographer, but because of the nature of this culture and its environment, some established methods must be considered and applied under new circumstances. Virtual ethnography is still widely debated and one of the biggest question marks is related to authenticity of the data. Researchers also have to take into account their own cultural background, language, norms and values before interpreting their observations. Language and gestures are very important aspects of culture and it is often asked whether it can be captured in online environment without face-to-face interaction. For this reason virtual ethnographers have adjusted their methodology focusing on what and when was said instead of how it was said. Online participants have also adjusted their communication means and with the use of words and combinations of symbols learned to express their emotions in written. In conclusion, a shift from classical fieldwork to multi-sited network ethnography is changing the relationship between the ethnographer and the observed in such a way that the boundaries between home and the remote field become less clear. It reduces the time that can be spent with one single site, which can affect the search for hidden and deep layers of meanings.
2.3 Methodology This study as most of the online researches is ethnographic in nature because it requires involvement in the community which cannot be done without creating and avatar. Participant observation in online games is as effective as it would be in any other field because it not only allows but rather requires the researcher to become a part of the community. Participant observation (method 1) was also the first method I used when I entered the field. There were many things I had to observe until I finally reached the community itself. I had to learn not only the basic mechanics of the game, so I could control my character, but I also had to learn the ways and the means of players’ interactions. I began my journey trying to spend at least 10 hours per week to get acquainted within the game. I have to mention that taking field notes in online settings is much easier than doing it offline. Easily available software enabled me to record scenes almost automatically without any big effort and this method didn’t disturb the daily life of observed participants After I got acquainted with the game and settled in a community which became the main focus of my research I used a free list (method 2) to find if there were any shared categories and behavior norms among the players. According to V. de Munck, free lists are good to use at the beginning of the research in order to find out the things which are common and important for the informants (de Munck, 2008). I decided to use the community forums for collecting the data since all the members of the group have access to it and most of the follow the information placed there. I had introduced myself as a student of social anthropology since my very first day on forums, so I had no problems in posting my request for the research. 28
When conducting an online ethnography, I faced several problematic issues. First of all, the problem of anonymity, which means that it is often difficult to physically observe the people to confirm the accuracy of their statements. There is also no way to visually verify such information as age, gender, ethnicity or nationality even if these are not the focal points. It can also be extremely problematic when it comes to people under the age of 18, because one can never be sure. Voice chat and video conversations (or both) can help a lot, but even though people are willing to speak to you online it is a real challenge to convince people to have a video conversation. Nonetheless, Wellman and Gulia found that online gamers tend to trust strangers and show willingness to communicate truthfully. There is as much chance of being misinformed via the internet, according to them, as there is in face-to-face ethnography; in “live” ethnography people are able to give anthropologists incorrect information and even though some of the non-verbal communication is expressed, it is typically ignored and it is the verbal information that the vast majority of anthropologists tend to focus on during the analysis of the interviews (Wellman, Gulia, 1999). Interviews (method 3) are important for any kind of field research; therefore I had to figure out how I would interview my informants. Interviews in this case can be conducted in several different platforms using in game chat, instant messengers, community forums, e-mails or meeting face-to-face with informants. The benefit of online interviews is that the history of a chat can be copied and stored as valuable data. This process also helps to avoid errors and time consuming transcriptions. I first started with simple conversations in order to see if people are willing to speak and to test how personal the conversations can get. To my surprise I did not experience a single rejection even though I have introduced myself and the purpose of our conversation at the very beginning. I had many of the above mentioned concerns though and I decided to ask several Danish players to meet with me for a face-to-face interview. I have to admit that this was probably not the greatest idea. My research was focused on the online gaming, virtual community and virtual interactions among the players and face-to-face interviews disrupted the context. It could be compared to a research done on a remote island and informants are taken out to a big city for interviews. However during the interviews I realized that people tend to talk about different things when they are interviewed face-to-face than when online. Even though the questions asked were the same, the face-to-face conversation always turned to more about the mechanics of the game, play styles, characters and their abilities. Meanwhile when people talk online and they constantly see their character in front of them, they are more likely to shift their attention to more personal things instead of talking about game mechanics and characters’ abilities. I finally decided to collect both online and face-to-face interviews in order to compare them as part of my research. Wittel (2000) has criticized the online participant observation, stating that it can only take place in a limited mode as the researcher is not able to observe the community in a face-to-face interaction. Since most
29 of the communication takes place in writing, the pattern of interpersonal communication is changed; layers such as speech tone and body language are lost and there is a time lapse in the conversation as each person formulates and types their reply (Sade-Beck, 2004). These points, however, do not constitute a major issue in the study and ethnography of online games. The face-to-face environment is changed to a character-to- character environment. This does not reduce the effectiveness of participant observation – it simply changes its nature. In the majority of online games, characters have the ability to express emotions through special commands that tells the character to complete some kind of action3. Some players may also chat through the use of microphone software, eliminating the need to type however the most popular way is to interact in written using word shortenings4. Since the language of gaming is unique and games contain a plethora of different terms which are not used in other contexts (e.g. noob refers to a person that is not familiar with the game, or is making elementary mistakes in game play or communication) it is important for the researcher to learn the story and know the history of the game. Without this knowledge, it would be difficult for an anthropologist to conduct meaningful conversations with players or engage in participant observation. Interviews were not my greatest source of information though. Most of the bigger online gaming communities have another place to interact apart from the game. They are using different chat programs5 and most likely a web page, so called forums, where they announce latest news, organize discussions, share their opinions and experience. Forum content analysis (method 4) gave me a deeper insight to how the community operated and how members are dealing with one or another issue. It also revealed the structure of the community in terms of leadership and power relations, access limits and posting rules. Even though I have participated and observed only one online game, the community and its web page gave me indirect access to several other games, because same members happened to be playing more than one game. Forum contents vary from game related information (i.e. guides to help players find things or places in game, tactics how to successfully complete the missions) to topics regarding players’ behavior, violation of norms and
3 Several examples: mood_angry, mood_calm, mood_happy (emotes to express the mood); wave, slap, burp, hug, kneel, bow (any many others are used very often in game to replace a written communication; e.g. instead of typing “hello” players tend to click the ‘wave’ emotion which is also automatically written in the line of actions characters perform and even we missed the action itself, we get a note on the screen saying ‘Player1 waves to Player2’). 4 Some shortenings are widely used in any kind of virtual interactions (LOL – laugh out loud, FYI – for your information, AKA – as known as, CU – see you, etc.), others have evolved in games and are only used in that context (DKP – Dragon killing points, NN – good night, GJ – good job, etc.) 5 There are several chat programs designed especially for online gaming allowing a group of people to chat in real time. Most popular are Team Speak, Ventrilo, and Mumble. 30 conflicts. Some of the topics, like members’ discussion about the betrayal of the community gave me a lot of useful information in addition to the data gathered during the interviews.
2.4 Ethical issues Even though virtual ethnography and its main methods are very useful when collecting data online there are some potential ethical traps too. One of them is the anonymity of the interviewed or observed person. Knowing that the characters used online are fictive there is always a chance the person sitting behind it might also provide fake information. It is always hard to prove their age, identity and in fact their actual existence. This is extremely important when it comes to the groups that need extra protection, i.e. kids. On the other hand the researcher himself has to figure out how to prove his own identity and status to the informants. Building a relationship between the researcher and informants is critical to every ethnographic study, but also difficult to achieve in an online setting. The possibility to observe the environment without informing others about your roll is another ethical dilemma. On one hand it is very useful and is a great source of information because the daily routine of the participants is not disturbed and their actions don’t change due to the presence of the observer. On the other hand it raises a question if this data can be used. The leakage of data involves real persons that might have severe consequences. Some of the online tools (i.e. Google) for search, filter and combine data can be used to reveal the true nature and personal information of informants. There are some debates going on about the data that Internet users choose to provide online. The latest discussion was related to Facebook social network after announcing that the data that users provide there becomes the property of Facebook (Fraser & Dutta, 2008). This basically means that each person is responsible for the personal information that he provides on the Internet because it can be used by anyone having access to it. Under-aged informants, data leakages and security of informants’ identity are not the only things that can put traps for online game researchers. As I have already mentioned anonymity is one of the most sensitive things in online gaming communities. Some players are willing to reveal all personal information, some only parts of it, but there are also those who wish to remain completely anonymous. During the third month of my research I was accused of exposing someone’s privacy during a simple conversation which I had no intention of recording or using for my report. Assuming that the internet is a public space where information is accessible to anyone, people who are sharing anything on it should know that it will be publicly available. However not all have agreed on this thought. What I did was a simple Google search of an e-mail address of one member who was part of the community. In fact I did the search with his permission after an argument that online identities can be traceable. His exact words were: “show me how!”. And I simply ‘googled’ the e-mail he provided in his profile and in minutes of time Google provided different 31 pages where he had registered or used the same e-mail. I simply asked whether he was playing Napoleon wars (another online game), because according to Google he had an account registered on the same e-mail address. I was accused of crossing the border and exposing his privacy, but not only because of the e-mail I ‘googled’, but because the e-mail address contained his real name and surname and with one mouse click a lot of his personal details appeared on my screen. After this incident I have consulted several co-students and academics working in similar fields willing to understand whether this was actually my fault. I didn’t put that information out there; I only used the tools that helped me to find out more by researching the details. After this incident I do however ask my other informants whether I can do a further search even though I would have never used any kind of information without the person’s consent. I only did what thousands of people do every day without even thinking about it. The intentions of the researcher might be honestly good and scientifically right but the way and the outcome might be harmful to the informants. The ethnographical literature provides many different examples and is very aware of the issue but does not provide any standard way to deal with them (Jacobson, 1999; Johns, Chen, & Hall, 2004). Generally speaking, researchers are required to obtain consent from the human subjects of their research. This means that researchers must identify their subjects in advance and explain to them the nature of the research being conducted. The simplest way to collect consent is to declare oneself as a researcher by some explicit act, such as a character name including the word “researcher” including additional information in the character’s profile, which can be viewed by other players, clearly declaring the researcher’s intentions regarding the participation and observation (Reynolds & de Zwart, 2010). I personally chose a different character name, but have provided the whole information about my intentions and reasons for participation. Before using any information that I obtained outside the interviews I have contacted each informant personally asking whether I can include that particular information into my work.
2.5 Entering the field In the last twenty years, some anthropologists have shifted focus and moved their researches much closer to home. Using same methods, often described as “ethnographic”, similar to those used in the past to study more remote cultures, these anthropologists are taking a more introspective route, studying groups that are immersed in our cultures. It is in this more recent tradition of anthropology that I decided to focus on something, that is so close that can be explored without even leaving the house, but at the same time is relatively distant. The topic attracted me first when I accidentally stumbled upon a website with a video called “Funeral ambush”. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was not the real funeral that was ambushed, but it was people in the game who gathered to give their respects to their dead friend’s avatar. It was their 32 own way of mourning a friend. Not everybody held the same opinion apparently and another group of players decided that it is complete nonsense to organize a funeral in a game that has an open war zone. They decided to ambush the mourning group of people in order to prove to them that it is a game and it should stay that way. The website contains hundreds or even thousands of comments and different opinions related to the latter event. Even though the above mentioned “Funeral ambush” phenomenon which attracted my attention to this field in the first place happened in the game World of Warcraft (WoW), I decided to choose another game for my explorations. I did some internet research about most popular online games and their evaluations. My decision was influenced by several reasons. First, even though WoW is one of the most popular online games which, even after a decade, still has the largest communities worldwide, its success has downsides. It turned out that WoW developers already see their product as dead because with the improvement of technologies new better and more attractive games launch every year. It is calculated that an average 20-40 years-of-age player sticks with one game for approximately two years. If the game does not bring in new features it is doomed for a slow death and WoW is such a case. Secondly, I was advised to look for a game that would allow players more freedom in making choices within the game. Many games are limited by the designers and developers and players only rarely can make their own choices in the story line of the game, which makes the game boring and less attractive. A third criterion was the game fee. The majority of games have a monthly fee which varies from 10 to 30 Euros per month, but there were also games which would allow free access with limited content. Finally, according to Yee (2002), a story line is very important as it is one of the first aspects of the game that players pay attention to. After three and a half weeks I was able to start my journey as an elf hunter in the Middle Earth – a world of elves, dwarves, men, hobbits and many other races created by J. J. R. Tolkien in his trilogy Lord of the Rings. The game Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) story line is based on Tolkien’s books, and so is the game content. I thought that it is a must to be familiar with Tolkien’s writings or at least to have seen the movies in order to enjoy the game even though there is no specific story line knowledge required in order to successfully master the game mechanics. The main problem with this game was that it was possible to play it without a monthly fee, which means that it was accessible to everyone and especially attracted those who cannot afford the fee or are simply unable to purchase it, e.g. kids who don’t own credit cards. After another internet research I discovered a data base which provided the names of many kinships (guilds in other games) within that game. In order to be accepted to a kinship/guild one has to either contact a responsible person in the game or to simply go on their website and fill in an application (see appendix1). I have applied to five different kinships and three of them answered me. I decided to stay in two of them, but that did not go well
33 because apparently a person can belong to only one kinship at a time. It soon came out that I have been participating in the activities of two communities and in less than a week I was kicked out of both of them. I then joined the third community that had responded to my application and that was the community I have been part of during my research. The very first week I have created my own profile on their website in order to make myself look like any other member in that community. Even though I have clearly written in my profile description that I am a student of anthropology working on my master thesis and exploring the online communities, none seemed to care or ask anything (and my profile was viewed 298 times). Only after a few months I dared to make my first request for my research and was surprised how helpful the members of the community were when asked to help me out by filling in the free lists. Another strong side of this choice was that this community did not accept members under 18 years old. It is still an unanswered question for me, why people reveal their real age even if they know that their applications will be declined and who would ever find out if they were lying. However there are several under-aged players, but all of them are children of players who are members of the community. Kinship forums were especially useful in terms of community demographics since the majority of the players had filled in their profiles with basic information such as gender, age, country. Even though many players reveal their real names, occupations and other personal information, players were still addressed through their nicknames. Both kinship chat channel and web page are completely protected from non-members and only a small amount of information is available for public visitors. I was given full access to the information posted on forums, but only after I explained how the informant protection works and that all names will be changed. I still have to double check with each member if I wanted to use any of the forum information for my papers. I now have my own small section on forums dedicated to my research where I post all the information that I am planning to use for my research and I also got some useful feedback after I presented some of my already written topic related works.
3. Presentation of ethnographical data: the case of LotRO
Within this part of my work I will introduce to the outcomes of my ethnographical study. The first part is focusing on MMORPGs as a cultural system introducing to cultural players’ behavior, online cultural artifacts and cultural knowledge acquired in virtual environments. In order to better understand the population of MMORPG environments I introduce to the issue of gender and age of the players. As multiplayer games enable players to communicate and collaborate in joint game session, I studied different forms of communication and social interactions among the community members considering it an important
34 part of my research. This chapter also contains descriptive analysis of norms and rules that are used in MMORPG environments also focusing on the organization and management of the community through the use of these rules. I also discuss the power and status relations and the burden of leadership in MMORPGs focusing on hierarchical structure of within the community and the game. Finally, I discuss the issue of crossing the social boundaries in virtual spaces and describe the relationships between members of the community.
3.1 MMORPG as a cultural system The cultural context of the MMORPG can be defined in much the same way as culture is defined outside the virtual environment. According to Spradley (1980), culture is learned therefore he divides the defining elements of culture into three categories: the things people do (cultural behavior), the things people make and use (cultural artifacts) and the things people know (cultural knowledge). His particular definition of culture is “the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior”. The culture of an online game is composed first of player behavior, as expressed or mediated through language and avatar behavior. In this context, speech becomes very important as a signifier of meaning, since other signals such as facial expression and touch are absent. Not only is speech, generally provided in text form, a highly important element, it is a delineator of the culture. As Ducheneaut and Moore (2004) point out “[gamers] must also be socialized into the game community. To be recognized as a good player you need to learn the lingo, perform your role well when grouped with others, and more generally demonstrate that you are an interesting person to play with”. The next element of any culture is the concept of cultural artifacts. While avatars/players do not create things in the traditional sense, there are items in the game space that signal wealth and/or status (and incidentally are bought and sold both inside and outside of the game). Those items and attributes are important to acquire both for the purposes of personal advancement and the purpose of grouping with others. Cultural behaviors and artifacts can be displayed on the screen, as other information-bearing material such as player statistics, and avatar characteristics themselves. The third element of culture, cultural knowledge, on the other hand, resides in two places; the minds of the players and the minds of the game creators. As Snider (2005) points out there are certain codified rules that are part of the environment, but there very often the rules take the form of conventions and community taboos. Just as in any culture or community these rules are passed down either explicitly or implicitly to the players. At the same time, players are continually shaping and modifying the rules. Regardless of the codified rules built in by game makers, it appears that the greatest resource in attaining cultural knowledge is fellow
35 players. Players are encouraged to ask questions and to depend on the players’ community for knowledge (Ducheneaut & Moore, 2004).
3.1.1 Player demographics: age and gender at issue The first thing anyone does when they enter a MMORPG is cobble together an in-game persona, called an avatar, toon, or character—a little man, woman, alien, or mythical creature (in this game, the characters are taken from J. J. R. Tolkien’s stories – elves, dwarves, hobbits or humans) that is later involved into the game world through the storyline which is followed through completing different tasks and quests. In this particular game the character is part of the world called The Middle Earth created by J. J. R. Tolkien. The player gets involved into the adventure of the fellowship who is taking the ring to Mordor to destroy it. The main form for interaction in game is through the avatars, therefore there is a high level of anonymity when it comes to player interactions. The identity of the participants in this ethnographic study is also anonymous when it comes to the excerpts from global chat or official developers’ forums and their age and gender is not generally known, except for the information that participants revealed about themselves during the interviews or course of play. However there is some recent work that has been carried out to determine the demographics of MMORPG players (Yee, 2007) and respondents to an online survey reported their ages from 11 to 68 years old with an average age of 26 years. 25% of the respondents indicated that they were teenagers. This information is based on self-selected participants and the reliability cannot be verified, but it is the best estimate currently available, and there is no reason to assume that the demographics of LotRO players are different. The main characteristics of my informants are as following. The average age of the informants is 31. The youngest informant was 18, the oldest 64. There were 12 male informants and 4 - female. 10 of them are married, 6 single. 6 informants are employed, 3 unemployed, 5 students and 1 retired. The geographical distribution of informant is as following: United Kingdome (4), Germany (1), Check Republic (2), Norway (1), Denmark (2), Sweden (1), Poland (1), Portugal (1), Netherlands (1) and Turkey (2). There are many ways we could begin to ask how male and female players project themselves differently in MMORPGs, but first we have to establish that LotRO provides room for variation. In this game, a player could choose to never communicate with anyone else. They could play the game as if it were a single-player game. A gamer could also choose to never kill a creature. Almost no one plays at these extremes, but between these two extremes is room for variation. It is the possibility of variation that makes it meaningful to ask whether male and female players find the game appealing because of different reasons. I found that female players find the social interaction of the game significantly more appealing than male players. Male players, on the other hand, are significantly more likely to enjoy the sense of power the 36 game gives. We also found that female players are significantly more likely to always group with people they've grouped with before when compared with male players who are more likely to have a goal in mind when logging to the game. Despite the differences male and female players are equally likely to belong to guilds. Superficially, it might seem that there is no gender difference in participation in guilds, but if we look a little closer, we find that this is not the case at all. Female players are significantly more likely to be in officer or leader positions within guilds than male players. The community leader in this particular case is female and there are female officers in other gaming divisions. Female players are also significantly more likely to participate in guild events than male players. Thus, it isn't surprising that female players find belonging to a guild significantly more enjoyable than male players. I also noticed that female players tend to use emoted more often than male players and I could also claim that female players feel that their online friendships are better or comparable to their real-life friendships, while male players feel that their in game friendships do not come close to their real-life friendships. Female players are making real friends in games and move their friendships to other social platforms (i.e. facebook), they also view games as a social community rather than just a game: “sometimes I just log on for a conversation not for the game. There are ppl whom I consider to be friends and whom I can joke around and share personal stuff if something made me feel bad” (female, 26). Finally, according to Yee (2007) female players attach to their characters more than female players. Respondents were asked whether they would sell their main character at a price determined by their level. We found that female players are significantly less willing to sell their characters when compared with male players. Female players also tend to create characters reflecting themselves, usually playing a female character as well. Men on the other hand also choose to play female characters: “well most of the time when playing you see the butt of your toon so it’s much more pleasant to have your eyes on the elf chick’s butt rather a fat dwarf” (Male, 32). This can also explain the inside joke that MMORPGs stands for Many Men Online Role Playing Girls.
3.1.2 Player interaction: ways of communication and linguistics Multiplayer games enable players to communicate and collaborate in joint game sessions. Whether the activity is about killing each other or celebrating birthdays while drinking virtual beer, the underlying theme is about togetherness. Players may have different reasons for playing these games, but they all still want to play with - or against - other people. Level of communication support in these games varies greatly. Most of them support textual chatting; some of them enable communicative gestures, while others concentrate on interaction forms that are highly action-specific and goal-oriented. However, the players have attempted to overcome the apparent limitations by using external communication support. In this part of my 37 work I will be focusing the forms of interaction available to players, ways of communication and in game linguistics. There are several different types of interaction occurring between players, or between players and the game world, and are used to convey the actions of the player to oneself, as well as to others. Interaction forms enable awareness of actions by offering mutually perceivable understanding of the game world. Bowman and Hodges (1999) point out that the current applications within the entertainment sector (i.e., computer games) do not usually require any complex interaction between the user and the system. Although the user may be interacting frequently, the interactions are mostly simple in nature. In general, the richness of interaction within, for example, the communication situation varies depending on the available medium. The number of channels, their dynamics, the scope and complexity of the implemented features affect the overall level of richness.
LotRO is a persistent game world and is structured to enable a player to interact with dozens or hundreds of other players through their avatars gesturing, talking, or fighting the same enemy – in real time.
The average player spends 22.7 hours (Yee, 2007) per week engaged in the game through avatar, and most players spend several additional hours on the discussion boards and forums related to the game. Beyond these engagements there is also the fan art, fan videos, endless MMORPGs related blogs, wikis and websites abound, all created and maintained by the players. These are often used simultaneously, with players checking wikis or blogs for tips and secrets while engaged in the game, in addition to the constant out-of- game communication between players through by Ventrillo, Teamspeak, Mumble or Skype (software enabling voice chat communication among a group of people). This simultaneous engagement within the game along with other frames of participation highlights a player’s ability to co-exist and orient to a variety of participant communication throughout the game play. Regardless of the size or structure of a guild or group, socializing tends to be a big part of playing an MMORPG. In some ways, the game is like a very big, very elaborate chat room. As players complete quests and fight their way through dungeons, they're often carrying on multiple conversations. Most games have lots of chat channels that allow players to talk only to their guild, their group or everyone in a particular zone and also have special channels for trade or for players who are looking for groups or guilds. When considering ethnographic and discursive research of online communities, it is first essential to understand the structure of the interrelationships between participants within this particular space. LotRO offers examples of social behavior and patterns both within the game and beyond it in online communities. Their social structures oriented to their interactions with other players not only through their avatars create a culturally significant arena of multimodal communication patterns. These digital cultural spaces provide
38 salient examples of social realities that players are co-constructing through the communication. Communication in MMORPGs can be described as point-to-point (between two players), point-to-mass (game developers to players), reciprocal communication (among groups and guilds), and massively parallel (among all players within the game at any given time). There are many different chat channels available in game and each of them has a different level of privacy. The channels, level of privacy and discussion topics reveal the different types of communications within the MMORPGs environment. Massively parallel communication is the most complicated way of communication because due to the absence of face-to-face interaction people are more likely to express their opinion in various discussions. The main in game channel is a global chat channel that broadcasts to all other players in the game. This channel is mainly used for grouping in order to complete fellowship quests, in game artifact trade purposes, game related discussion or for help and information regarding the game content. The channel is accessed by all players active on that particular server (though there might be new players that don’t know about the existence of such channel) and provides information about the number of the players who have accessed it. There is no personal information shared on such channels, but it sometimes conversations lead to controversial discussions about things outside the game, i.e. global events or politics. This can be well illustrated by the following discussion about the riots in London in 2011, which involves 9 players with several different opinions (screenshot taken 8th of August, 2011 [12:32]; number of users in the channel at that moment was 469): [Globallff]P1: now ppl [people] just using that as an excuse [Globallff]P2: lol [laugh out loud] [Globallff]P3: lol he shot a police officer and was waving a pistol abut [about]. Not surprised he got shot [Globallff]P1: like any1 [anyone] cares about the thug [Globallff]P1: aye lucky cop mind [Globallff]P4: Apparently the guy shot a police officer but the bullet got stopped by the police radio [Globallff]P3: cop got shot and it it his radio [Globallff]P5: he didn’t shoot a police officer they had intelligence he had a gun and was going to kill someone, the cop was shot accidently by another cop, the criminal didn’t comply with the police requests so was shot [Globallff]P1: yeh he opened fire first then got abliterated full of bullets [Globallff]P3: my best mate is a met copper. hwas [he was] there and it was mental apparently [Globallff]P6: the paper only said he got shot by police and that he had 4 kids. Good to know it wasn’t just that [Globallff]P5: he never fired a single shot [Globallff]P3: he did P5 [Globallff]P1: lol the cop was shot by another cop? Love to know how that works out, the cops been taking techniques from sean bean (ronin part) [Globallff]P7: Conflicting witness statements [Globallff]P8: They felt happy when they shot the black dude, just saying [Globallff]P1: The guy who got shot, shot the cop m8 [mate], coz he was facing the cop woulda hit the cop in the side/back – not front [Globallff]P9: It doesn’t really matter whether he shot the Policeman or not, if you are carrying a gun there is only one reason why you have it [Globallff]P1: aye [yes] lol [Globallff]P7: Fashion statement. [Globallff]P3: P9 speaks the truth [Globallff]P7: Or that’s what it is these days. [Globallff]P1: dont expect mercy from cops if u [you] holding gun imo [in my opinion]
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[Globallff]P6: kind of stupid to riot for. It’s like the soccer supporters who burned down their own town just because the local team lost
Other conversations might get harsh and assaulting when it comes to global discussions about some of the game content related things which not only reveals the conflict between players but the content of the discussion also contains some unwritten rules about what players should not be forming groups revealing different opinion regarding the game play (screenshot taken 12th of February, 2012 [23:56]; number of users in the channel at that moment was 647): [Globallff]P1: Any1 [anyone] wanna go for ToO? [Globallff]P2: you will lead it? [Globallff]P1: can do [Globallff]P3: lol [laugh out loud] dude you need to prepare your LIs [legendary items – highest level weapons] first [Globallff]P2: And still you need better gear to do those instances [Globallff]P3: You can’t just go in there without tacticts and well geared group coz [because] you will simply wipe [all die] [Globallff]P1: guys I’m trying to help,but I need you trust [Globallff]P1: it’s not like going blind [Globallff]P4: P1, get some decent gear from other instances first [Globallff]P5: dude you’re a moron if u think u can get 11 more ppl to waist their time with u [Globallff]P1: we won’t fail once we go [Globallff]P2: lol douche [Globallff]P3: lol [Globallff]P5: hahaha made my day [Globallff]P6: guys… if you dont want to join his raid dont… but why give him such a hard time [Globallff]P7: agreed [Globallff]P2: because it’s getting absurd [Globallff]P3: just check his items heh [Globallff]P6: its not absurd… he can try to form any raid he likes [Globallff]P3: or his wepon lol [Globallff]P6: that’s why this channel’s for [Globallff]P6: now go farm [get] yourselves some tolerance [Globallff]P8: aye [yes, agree] it’s a little over the top now. gear, traits, mental age et cetera. P1 = joke. [Globallff]P1: I know what to do [Globallff]P3: cheers for u [Globallff]P7: lol P1 don’t forget that it’s always the elitist endgamers that diss everyone hopefully they will run out of content soon and return to wow [World of Warcraft] [Globallff]P9: guys get over your problems with his gear and let him be. why have people grown so intolerant on this server?
Kinship and fellowship channels have a higher privacy level because the participants of such conversations are usually already acquainted with each other. Belonging to the kinship or guild gives players some sort of security and this is the channel where people would firstly ask for help or information not being afraid to be teased as it often happens in global channels. The feeling of safety in kinship chat exists because of the prominent distinction between new and old players both in game and on the forums. This distinction is based on level of experience in MMORPGs in general and when a new player asks something that is considered to be common knowledge among more experience players the discussion might end up with unhidden mocking and even harassment. Also after playing together for a longer time (months or even years) conversations among players become more personal and they also develop certain jokes, which an outsider would probably not understand. The following conversation is among kinship members joking about one members situation at home also 40 wrapping it in gaming context using specific lexicon which makes it even more fun for them (screenshot taken 25th of November, 2011 [21:14]; number of users in the channel at that moment was 12): [Kinship]P1: Wait I can’t go now. wife talking to me now and mad son swinging from keyboard noooooo [Kinship]P2: Throw your son out window [Kinship]P2: Problem solved [Kinship]P3: lol [Kinship]P1: Im trying to [Kinship]P1: little bloody git [Kinship]P2: use shield bash [a skill used by one of the classes meaning an action of hitting with a shield] on him [Kinship]P3: lol whats a git? [Kinship]P4: he might later need a shield from his wife [Kinship]P2: lol [Kinship]P2: he’s gonna kite [kiting refers to one of the tactics used during the runs when one of the players gets the monsters attention and then has the monster chasing him to distract from other members of the group] her tbh [to be honest]
Point to mass communication or in other words developers to players communication is developed through the official developers’ forums. Players can find all the news regarding the game, the rules and all the needed information. However there is a there is a great distinction between the developers and the players, particularly in the use of us versus them by the players. The following conversation illustrates the disappointment in the expansion of the game complaining about it on global channel (screenshot taken 10th of January, 2011 [19:15]; number of users in the channel at that moment was 233): [Globallff]P1: Turbine sux [sucks] big time. It’s all about the money [Globallff]P2: lol dude they just doing their work [Globallff]P1: ye but their work sux, they don’t really care about us they just want to make it all cheap and take the money without putting an effort
However none of such complaints ever show up on the official developers’ forums which mainly contain the information about what type of game it is and how it is played. Even though the players themselves are the authors of the majority messages on the forums, developers are held responsible for any inappropriate content. At the same time these forums are extremely because they highlight the variety of opinions and different styles of game play. Communication on forums is very structured mainly because its first purpose is to create a game play database, where players could find any type of information or get his game play related questions answered. There are a wide variety of public forums covering everything from customer service to guild relations or game suggestions with developers’ responses. In this way, the forums automatically delineate the types of audiences through their various titles for these forums: if you are a beginner, there’s a forum for that. The discussion boards themselves gather their readers or even active discussion participants. But more importantly forums aren’t just top-down developers to players relation, but also t players’ own understandings of the game. This is extremely important when it comes to discussions about avatars characteristics, there is no one correct opinion and I was truly surprised about the extent of the comments that players write willing to explain and defend their choices.
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Player to player communication can happen in all places; however it is often taken to the private conversations with the highest level of privacy. Players agree that “global chat is not a place for personal chit chat. If you see some1 [someone] in global [chat] after a long time don’t just put out there how much u miss them there are IMs for that” [Female, 31] (IMs is a private personal channel that can only sued by two players). Private channels can be used for various types of conversations starting with advices on game play, notifications on improper behavior and ending with very personal content. Despite the range of all the different ways and forms of communication it can still be very complicated unless certain requirements are met. First of all, there are only several languages available both in game and on forums, in this case, developers provide only English, German, Russian and French speaking servers and forums. Miscommunication might be a serious issue especially when it comes to the group play. For successful communication to players need not only to understand properly at least one of the previously mentioned languages but to actually understand what is being said and to recognize their socially organized regularity within the exchange. Within the game, individuals need to understand particular vocabulary and grammar unique to both MMORPGs in general and to the lexicon used in the particular game. Voice communication is available only in a small group of people and is not possible when it comes to global channels or forums. Since players usually engage in other activities (the actual game play), i.e. killing an orc while typing, they use a lot of shortenings: brb [be right back], afk [way from keybord], gz [congratulations], y [why], etc. These shortenings are common not only in MMORPGs but are used widely in any internet based communication therefore are already well known by the majority of the internet users. It is more important to understand certain lexicon explaining the game play, i.e. kiting [previously explained as getting enemy’s attention and having him chasing you to distract from other players]. These terms are essential in group play because when a player is told to kite he is supposed to know what to do otherwise the whole group could get killed. The in game environment and absence of face-to-face interaction might lead to the assumption that it is impossible for one to express the emotions online. This is not entirely true as players (generally all internet users) have developed a way to express their emotions through different symbols. As an example, when a player is writing in LOCK CAPS he/she either wants to stress the point or is annoyed and wants to point out his opinion. Lock caps are usually considered rude in game environment and if a player had written something in caps, he/she often apologizes for it (“soz caps [sorry for lock caps]”) because it’s equal to shouting. Another form to express emotions is allowed through game mechanics by using so called Emote commands, which are widely used by players in different situations, i.e. “Player X gives a big hug to Player
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Y”; “Player X waves to Player Y”; “Player X slaps Player Y”; “Player X openly mocks Player Y”. These are only few examples from over 80 possible emotes which are used together with the written communication. The following excerpt from a raid group chat channel can illustrate this (screenshot taken 3rd of June, 2011 [21:15]; number of users in the channel at that moment was 12): [Raid] P1: You take a left side I will kite the ones on the rigt. [Raid] P2: how am I supposed to kite them? [Raid] P1: dude I asked before if everyone knew the tactics and you ask me the things now? [Raid] P2: I was afk [away from keyboard] [Raid] P3: *sigh* [Raid] P4: *facepalm* *Player 1 slaps Player 2 on the cheek* [Raid] P2: outch that hurt
Every emotion used by the players can be seen on the screen, and that adds additional sense to the words. The reduced set of intuitive non-verbal cues is one of the distinctive features that separate computer-mediated communication settings from face-to-face encounters. Multiplayer games however do have fundamental problems in supporting rich social activity, and, thus, players constantly seek for external support in order to fulfill their need to socialize.
3.1.3 Adjusting in the game: rules and norms Tuomela (1995) has distinguished two kinds of social norms (meaning community norms), namely, rules and proper social norms. Rules are norms created by an authority structure and always based on agreement making. Proper social norms are based on mutual belief. Rules can be formal, in which case they are connected to formal sanctions, or informal, where the sanctions are also informal. Proper social norms consist of conventions, which apply to a large group such as a whole society or socioeconomic class, and group-specific norms. The sanctions connected to both types of proper social norms are social sanctions and may include punishment by others and expelling from the group. Aside from these norms, Tuomela (1995) also described personal norms and potential social norms containing, among others, moral and prudential norms. The reasons for accepting norms differ as to the kind of norms: rules are obeyed because they are agreed upon; proper social norms are obeyed because others expect one to obey; moral norms are obeyed because of one’s conscience; and finally, prudential norms are obeyed because it is the rational thing to do. The motivational power of all types of norms depends on the norm being a subject’s reason for action. In other words, norms need to be internalized and accepted (Tomela, 1995). In order to understand the whole process and to learn what proper or improper behavior is people use different strategies. Some of the players get help from their friends, who explain them how to find information, how to look for help, how to create groups, how to trade. Some others find this information by
43 themselves searching the internet or simply going the trial and error way. As already mentioned before, MMORPGs are social and the game content itself requires players’ collaboration in order to complete some of the tasks. Majority parts of the game can be completed by a single player but usually to achieve the greater success or gain better rewards group play is required. Some of the groups can be temporary lasting only as long as it takes to kill a monster or clear a dungeon. Such groups are formed instantly be simple using global in game chat channels calling for fellowship (i.e. LFM ToO Acid T1 10/12, need cappy and burg6). Many games allow one person in the group to act as a leader and usually that is the person who gets to decide whom to invite to the group or remove from it, he also gets to decide on the rules of reward distribution. There are certain rules how to form a group, how to distribute the rewards and also there are certain behavior norms structuring players’ interactions and communication. I used a Freelist method as part of my research. According to V. de Munck, freelists are used in the beginning of the research in order to find out the things which are common and important for the informants (Munck: 2008). I decided to use this method to find out whether we can talk about the existence of shared categories and behavior norms among the players. I asked several community members to make a list of words that define what bad players are. The outcomes show several very obvious categories:
Yee (2007) points out three types of norm violations that occur most frequently in MMORPGs. The categories are cheating, local norm violation and grief play. Cheating is difficult to prove. The risk of
6 This is a call for fellowship in channel globallff [globally looking for fellowship]; LFM refers to looking for more. ToO [Tower of Ortanch] is the name of the instance that they are planning to run and Acid [Acid Wing] is to specify that they aren’t doing all the parts, but just one of them. 10/12 means that there are already 10 players in the group and 2 more spots available however not everyone can join this group since they only need two particular classes (in this case captain and burglar). 44 sanctions being made against a violator depends on the severity of the violation. Local norm violations have different level of implications for other players and the players are usually sanctioned if the violation appears repeatedly. Usually this problem has to be solved by kinship or raid leaders; at very outside the player can be dismissed from a group. Examples of grief play are; unprovoked harassment through game chat channels, repeatedly killing a player as soon as the character comes back to life and behavior not related to the winning condition of the game. Grief play in its different forms is behavior that infringes the higher level norms of the realm and can be difficult to sanction. A most popular punishment is considered to be publicity. There are certain channels in game which are visited by the majority of players. Such channels work globally and it does not matter in which part of the game you are. If someone announces the name of a person who violated any kind of norms warning other people to be careful, it might lead to some bad consequences, such as public humiliation, which has forced some players to change their character names7. My free list also includes the above mentioned categories. Thieves, cheaters, quitters and prompters were most frequently used by informants. Those characteristics are all negative, but cheaters and thieves are more likely to be considered as law breakers in real life too and would receive some sort of punishment after committing the act. But the other two words, prompters and quitters in real life could be considered only as negative characteristics but the act might not lead to the punishment. The list of bad players’ characteristics is also opposite to the list of personal players’ characteristics. Some of the informants who claimed to be helpful also listed the word unhelpful referring to the bad player. And prompters were considered bad by those informants who turned out to be explorers according to the Bartle test, which is quite reasonable knowing that more time is needed to explore the area and someone rushing and urging the explorer might ruin the whole thing.
3.2. Online community: from kinship to European gaming Community
Another feature that helps define MMORPGs as cultural phenomenon is the concept of the guild (or kinship, clan, crew) which becomes a major part of a MMORPG player’s life. Kinships are usually groups of people who are working toward a common goal in a game. The main purpose for guild creation is either raiding (group play requiring 10 or more players to complete the task) or socialization. Players argue that one type of guild is better than another, but it all depends on what a particular player is looking for in the game. A player who wants to spend lots of time raiding may not be happy in a smaller guild that is mostly devoted to playing in small groups and having good conversations. Some players join the game just for pure action and
7 Changing character name might be an issue because it can be done only by paying the money to the game developers. 45 consider the conversations about non game related things as a waste of time. For others the guild life might go way beyond the game on to the friendship relations and be much more rewarding than real-world social interactions. The guild system allows players to enjoy all the benefits of in game a social life. MMORPG environments seem, to reproduce the typical traditional society based on small familiar groups, in which people live, considering themselves as part of a community. In this kind of society, identity is not founded on peculiarities someone has as single individual, but is based on the fact that he/she belongs to the community. This means that her/his whole existence is strictly tied to belonging to the community; she/he cannot choose freely her/his own destiny, which remains tightly dependent on decisions that the community make for each member. The social environment represented in MMORPGs and especially the communities have a strong hierarchical system which includes every single player, where new players (usually referred to as noobs or newbies) are at the bottom of the pyramid and high skilled and experienced players are (those who have good knowledge of the game content and group play tactics) are being looked up at. At the same time it is a world of possibilities, a world where players, free from every constraint, can move from one social context to a different one. In general kinships are created by the players themselves to get assistance and to assist other players inside the game. People are natural organizers therefore kinships are strictly organized. The kinship I became part of during my research was originally created in LotRO when several friends decided that they could expand their circle adding more like minded people whom they met while exploring the game: “We were like 5 or 6 people playing together when we Player1 suggested that it would be great to have our own kin. Since it was his idea everyone decided that he should lead this kin and some of us where his officers. After we reached the highest level we were all eager to try out the end content and we needed more people for raids. We started recruiting heavily and soon we became one of the biggest kinships on that server. We then had too many players and no organization. Forums helped us a lot; we created a run schedule, game discussion boards, library to share tactics. If one wanted to attend the run signing up wasn’t enough we took only the best. Some players weren’t happy about the rules but we had to make it work we didn’t want waste time of 11 people if one didn’t know what to do. <…> In 4 years we made great friends there, we had our ups and downs, due to the disagreements on management some of the left the kin, created their own kin. Some came back some didn’t. Some stopped playing the game or moved to other games. Forums were that thing that kept us all together till now. <…> We now have over 400 active members playing in 4 different games”. [Male, 32]
The roots of this particular community lead to 2004 when a bunch of friends decided to create their own guild. As we can see from the narrative within 8 years it has expanded to over 400 active members which is a huge amount and requires a lot of effort in structuring and managing it. It is obvious that the analysis of the guild can provide a researcher with most stable and fertile area to conduct ethnographical research, in conjunction with interacting with other players from outside the guild. However, it should note that not all guilds are as functional or as helpful as the one I found myself in. Some are more relaxed, some are dysfunctional, some are extremely demanding on the player’s time and require 46 applications to be submitted detailing how committed a player is to the game, what kind of weapons and amour the player has, and how far the player has progressed in the game. Yet all these would prove interesting to someone who wishes to see how actors interact in online gaming communities, as the guild has defined its own boundaries based on its social and cultural identity.
3.2.1 Community structure and management One area that has attracted recent research attention is the longevity of guilds. Recent studies carried out in World of Warcraft (Ducheneaut, 2006) demonstrated that approximately 21% of guilds disappear within a first month of forming. This statistic would seem to indicate that poorly formed guilds are a fairly common occurrence. However, work that has explored other issues relating to guilds, such as guild organization and management (Stalzer, 2005a; 2005b), has not extended to exploring whether the current means for forming guilds are effective. In particular, the issue of matching players who have similar expectations from a guild has not appeared to be an issue of research at all. The management and organization of an online community is usually more work than most leaders would think about: “at first we had to make a decent website. I did it but we had a fund raiser to collect the money to pay for it. When we had one game structure was simple we had a leader and several officers. Now we have 4 leaders to lead 4 different divisions. Each of them got its own officers to assist. We now also have community leader which is the highest rank and community officers who all belong to different divisions but help managing the whole community” [Male, 32]. The personality conflicts, cliques, backstabbing, deliberations and other tensions that arise in the everyday management of a guild oftentimes feel out of place in what is supposed to be a form of entertainment. Some narratives highlight the experiences of MMORPG players who have watched guilds fracture or dissipate, and the lessons these individuals learned. These stories show that guild management in MMORPGs is a much more elaborate and complex task than most realize. One common dilemma that causes most guilds to fracture is the tension between power and casual players – the former wanting to carry out more difficult raids while the latter being perfectly happy the way things are. Eventually, this unresolved tension causes the guild to either split or fall apart altogether: “I will never forget our first split. Our leader and all the officers just took off and made their own guild. Now when I look back maybe they really did have their reasons. They wanted to raid more others didn’t have the time so they packed and left taking all the active members with them. And the kin they created back then is still active the only funny thing is that none of the creators are playing there” [Male, 32]. Split ups are very common and, in fact inevitable. On the other hand it also helps to filter the core members and find out who remain loyal no matter what. If the community is big enough after some of the 47 members leave it doesn’t fall completely apart. The structure can be easily restored by electing a new leader: “After the whole leadership went out Player X stepped up picked new officers to help him and worked his ass off to rebuild the kin. They went for heavy recruitment of new players and some of them have adjusted well and are now full members for years” [Female, 26]. In order to avoid the disagreements and split ups every kinship has a think description about their activities, aims and types of members they are looking for: “We are what we are. We always defined ourselves as a social CASUAL kin, which means we aren’t heavy raiders, sometimes people don’t understand they join us and try to make their own schedule which usually doesn’t work and when they realize that their playing needs aren’t met here they leave unsatisfied” [Male, 36]. The recruitment is one of the ongoing processes in any MMORPG community. There is always at least one officer responsible for the recruitment of new players: “sometimes they call us head hunters because we try to lure good players to our kin” [Male, 23]. Recruitment can happen in many different ways – posting recruitment messages in global game chat, there are separate recruitment threads on official developers’ forums, and kinships also have their descriptions in LotRO wiki8 where players can see what kinships are active on different servers. Recruitment is considered to be a job and not an easy one as there are certain rules to regulate the process: “you have to talk to the players before inviting them. Sometimes they just find out info about the kin and simply apply on forums. We have a 2 week trial period for new members. If we see that one is friendly and active we promote him to members, otherwise we decline his application” [Male, 23]. As we can see the recruitment process goes two ways, either players themselves want to become part of the community or current members try to attract other good players to the guild.
3.2.2 Different types of guilds: goals and conflicts As already mentioned before, many guilds seem to exist only to make grouping or raiding easier and more rewarding therefore this definition suggests that guilds are made of people that gather together in order to reach some shared goal. This goal however might as well be something different than raiding or fighting monsters. Guild, especially social guilds, can set their goal as providing a friendly and pleasant chat environment for their members, or Role Playing guilds can aim to provide some good role playing event within a game. The shared goal of the guild can be either declared or real. Declared goal is that goal that is clearly declared in the guild’s own definition, while the real goal will emerge more form guild actual actions and chooses than from official declarations.
8 http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Social:List_of_Kinships 48
Based on players playing habits and game play expectations guilds differ in between. Majority of the guilds declare themselves to be normal PVE9 guilds while they mainly care about a good social environment for their members with no great pressure on doing in-game things. Even if it is almost impossible to find a pure guild that won’t overlap many different types of play style, in this part I will provide a rough description of the major types of the guilds since I find useful for further player interaction analysis. As already mentioned majority of the guilds define themselves as PVE guilds. Such guilds mainly focus on instances, that can be completed either in small fellowships (in this game up to 6 players) or in large groups (called raid groups that can be up to 24 players). Obviously coordination of small groups much easier than coordinating large, twenty-four people, parties. Instances for small groups are usually easier and the tactics are less complicated therefore guilds that focus on small group runs are less formally structured than raiding guilds. The actual division among players occurs when it comes to raiding as such groups require not only good leadership but also dedication from all players. Casual guilds usually focus on social environment and free will which means that even if they form a raid group once in a while players can choose whether to participate in it or not: “we all want to win, but there is no forcing to attend the runs here. If you want you join, if not you go do stuff u want” [Male, 46]. Raiding guilds on the other hand are the most hardcore guilds in the game. They’re dedicated to explore high-end content of the game, instances that require at least 12 well geared characters. Due to the number of player required to play a single raid these guilds require a high level of coordination. These guilds can run raid-instances many times per week and since every attempt can take several hours, great time availability is required to members. Generally raid guilds are very formally structured and require a high level of dedication from members. These guilds are often perceived as the coolest guilds in the game where only the best players are allowed (Williams, Ducheneaut, Xiong, Zhang, Yee and Nickell 2006). Conflicts usually begin when players try to combine casual game play with raiding: “People want to raid and get good loot [rewards], but none wants to put effort into preparing their toons properly” [Male, 28]. “All trouble start when it comes to raiding, you need to grind [repeat same tasks or actions over and over to increase characters abilities], organize a schedule, have ppl [people] signing up so you would know what classes you got and which u need to pug [PUG – pick up groups, if there are not enough kinship players
9 Usually a PvE (Player versus Environment) mode can be played either alone, with other players. The PvE mode may contain a storyline that is narrated as the player progresses through missions. It may also contain missions that may be done in any order. Characters playing in this mode are often protected against being killed by other players and/or having their possessions stolen. An example of a game where this is not the case is Eve Online, where players can be, and often are, ambushed by other players while attempting to complete a PvE mission. 49 online at that moment, random players from other guilds are invited to the run]” [Female, 26]. Raiding issue can lead to huge conflicts in guilds (screenshot taken 16th of November, 2011 [21:15]; number of users in the channel at that moment was 15): [Kinship] P1: ffs [for fuck sake] dude if u want to go on runs with us go do some grinding first [Kinship] P2: I have to agree with him, we could use the spot for some descent dps [Kinship] P3: come on guys he’s a kin you can’t just leave him out [Kinship] P1: aye but the post on forums made it clear about raiding – wanna raid, prpare for it [Kinship] P1: otherwise he’ll just waist the time of 11 other people [Kinship] P3: and so what he will deal less damage we can still make it and he will get better gear there [Kinship] P2: it’s a dps race dude if he’s coming I’m not going. see no point Conversations like this often occur both in global and kinship chats. As the community I conducted my research in was one of the casual guilds trying to combine casual game play, free will and raiding structure, many topics on forums were dedicated to conflict solving and organization matters, trying to reach an agreement between the members. Another major disagreement happens around also around the different types of game play. Games themselves are divided into PvE and PvP10 type of games. PvP refers to players that aim to fight against other real players and requires a good amount of practice in tactics and, in order to be properly equipped, it requires lot of time spent in PvP activities. In this case, LotRO is considered to be a PvE type of game though it provides several zones for PvP interaction. This particular community defines themselves as casual pursuing a comfortable game and social environment over the progression in game high-end content. Members in this group do run instances as well as PVP and even explore Raids (even if it is quite hard to coordinate a 24 good players group if you’re not well structured), but that is not perceived nor declared as their primal goal. In community description they describe themselves as following: “We are a casual kinship at the same time embracing balance between solo players or those who are leveling new alts, PvP players who are working out their ranks in Ettens, and those who are devoted for the high-end content. We are currently raiding on weekends and we use Suicide Kings loot rules for the fair distribution of goods. During the week we are running the small group instances using the simple roll/ pass. We have always cared about our members and we are always ready to help if needed. The run schedule for the week is posted on forums together with the requirements and guidelines. The atmosphere in kinship is always warm and welcome, since our goal is fun! We do have our set of rules to help us avoid misunderstandings and provide the structure, but at the same time we are aware of the fact that we all have outside lives too.” Thick description and declaration of certain community values, rules and norms is useful to avoid unnecessary conflicts. Players can read the description understand the goals and then decide whether their
10 Player versus player (PvP) is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants (other players). This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment (PvE). 50 game play fits into this description allowing them to choose to join the ranks or continue searching for another community.
3.2.3 Power relations, decision making and the burden of leadership As shown before many guilds provide tools both online and offline to reach a better coordination between members, but what happens when coordination fails or when a guild member plays often truant from his duties? Active rules enforcement systems are not present in the game, there is no way for a guild leader to force a member to behave in a prescribed way. How authority works within such a context? Usually authority has the power to enforce rules or laws since the monopoly of violence stay on the background as an unexpressed threat. When it comes to leadership and decision making first of all we also have to take in to account that the leading system inside the guild is usually dictatorial. Although the issues are discussed publicly there is no way the situation will be improved to make everyone happy. According to N. Luhmann the end of the power is reached when Ego starts to prefer the “unwanted alternative” to acting as ordered. Observing power within a perspective of “avoiding undesirable alternatives”, instead of the capability to enforce something, is a powerful tool that gives us the opportunity to deal with many everyday social environments where force action is not a real option (Luhman, 2000). Even if it is a fantasy world based on a never ending war as a common background, when it comes to guilds or others kind of collaboration between players, violence is not an option. A. Hirschman distinguishes between voice and exit as two possible options. Voice that is typical of the political approach to problem consists in the expression of the problem in a public way in order to reach mediation or some kind of agreement. Exit strategy, that according to Hirschman, is more typical of the economical approach to problems suggest to unhappy customer (or player in MMORPG) to move away and search for a better situation elsewhere. Each bigger community has its rules introduced in written and accessible to every member. Specifically in this case there are three sets of rules: general rules, ranks and privileges and rules regarding runs and raiding. General rules mostly refer to the personal players’ behavior explaining what behavior is expected and what one is supposed to do in order to become a full member of the community also providing the knowledge about the punishment for violation of behavioral norms, i.e. “We expect you to be polite (saying hi and bye, etc.), respect all other members in the kinship, to behave maturely in all your dealings within and outside the kinship. Any sort of threatening behavior or harassing will result in both dismissals from the kinship and a report being filed to Turbine.” Or “If you break the rules, you will get a warning. Three warnings is a free get out of the kin ticket” (excerpts taken from community forums). Rules regarding ranks and privileges are necessary for community structural maintenance so that the structure would be clear 51 for everyone, but in some cases the hierarchical community structure can also be used for punishment purposes: “Recruits – from now on recruit rank will be the case of punishment and therefore has no privileges (Players who didn’t fill the application will remain recruits until they do it and players who receive a warning will be demoted to recruits until they apply some changes in their behavior” (excerpts taken from community forums). Power relations are also clearly defined within the set of rules: “The kinship leader and the officers can discuss demoting/ dismissing anyone from the kinship that has continually caused trouble” (excerpts taken from community forums). If the major threat that a single character can face in MMORPG is to be kicked out of a guild means that guilds and relations are a core element of the game. Grouping is required to move further in the game, and then being banned from grouping, or being banned from well organized groups, is a powerful way of social control. If we observe this power-mechanism far from the game context it could resemble quite a classical mechanism: power is constructed within social groups by controlling the access of a valuable resource. Within the game context the valuable resources is the opportunity to gather up a good group of players access to which is controlled by the social structures we called guilds. But this point of view wouldn't be entirely correct because a player who is dismissed from one guild can easily get an invitation to another guild, so the power and social control loses its strength: “it’s not a real punishment, you kick him out for misbehavior and by the end of the day he’s already a member of another kin” [Male, 22]. This however might be changed through the publicity when a player’s violations are publicly announced, i.e. [globallff] P1: I advise not to join Plyer X’s group as he is a thief (screenshot taken 15th of May, 2011 [13:11]; number of users in the channel at that moment was 401) or [globallff] P2: I would like to inform other kinship leaders and officers that Player X is an exploiter just looking to benefit from your resources (screenshot taken 11th of March, 2012 [20:05]; number of users in the channel at that moment was 1266). So in this case the power is gained not only through leadership, decision making and punishment by dismissing the player from the guild, but also through public announcement explaining the reasons. Leaders are also aware of the fact that dismissing one player might bring a negative effect on other guild members, because that way they realize how fragile their belonging to their guild is. Trying to avoid it leaders try at least to pretend that the decisions are made by the whole group, not them alone. This way the question about the unwanted player is usually raised on forums and the decision is made based on the public voting poll: “I can’t just kick some1 [someone] even though I know he’s no use to this kin. First of all we try to talk to the member. To explain why his behavior is bothering us and if he doesn’t do anything about it we vote in the officer quarters and then make a post on forums explaining the reasons” [Male, 23].
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Another source of empowerment emerges from the competition of guilds and players themselves. The leader in this case become powerless unless he is able to offer something that many players would want to have. The guilds compete among themselves willing to attract more active players and concord more difficult instances, so they could boast that their players have best equipment and playing skills: “when it all started we had more players willing to go as we could actually accept. We were first to complete the hard modes and people had best equipment” [Female, 31] and “when you inspect people you usually see what gear they have and u know where it’s from. If you see that many people belonging to that kinship are well geared you know that they are doing certain runs and they succeed in them” [Male, 28]. This situation is used by well skilled players who usually are alone already famous in global chat rooms, because they can choose which guild they want to be part of and at the same time bring that guild glory and fame: “I don’t need them coz [because] they need me. I already have all the good stuff and they would benefit from my awesome dps [damage per second – defines how much damage the character can deal] + I know tactics” [Male, 36]. In a controversial situation when a good player leaves a guild, the guild might gain a bad name. Gossips flow fast in MMORPGs and leaders are trying their best to keep their guilds’ prestige and fame. This way the leaders become very committed to the group in order to fulfill their desires. N. Yee was analyzing the complexity of the leadership. According to him most of the players consider leadership as a burden. Many guild leaders described how they tried to be everyone’s friend and tried making sure that everyone in the guild was happy: “Leadership is annoying, all you do is try to make everyone happy. you have to hear everyones opinion and find a way to please as many as u can” [Male, 46]. The most common lesson that respondents learned was that it’s simply impossible to please everyone. But the main reason that can’t please everyone is because of the sheer diversity of needs and motivations in any group of people. Different guild members are in the guild for different reasons and derive satisfaction from different things. He also claims that male players find leadership positions more enjoyable than female players, but this does not translate into any differences in actual leadership likelihood (Yee, 2006).
3.3 Bridging the worlds: between the “real” and the “virtual” The overlapping participation between online and offline environments are extremely evident in interpersonal relationships. The relationship development among players can be defined as dual directional: there are players who know each other outside the game and start playing together and there are players who meet through their avatars online and then develop this into relationships beyond the game or virtual world in general. Of course, the vast majority of interactions online are with other avatars whose players will never meet in person, but this is standard of any participation framework, i.e. within workplaces or schools the majority of individuals interact only in those spaces. 53
Friends usually play together in order to “stay in touch” or “do something fun together” or “because we both like the game”. This is interesting however this motivation for social interaction is not unique as already for thousands of years people have been staying in touch and doing things they both enjoy. The difference today is that internet based digital social spaces including MMORPGs have expanded the possibility to establish relationships with individuals, despite a lack of face-to-face contact as the internet allows the distant social interactions to happen in real time and with multiple individuals co-present at the same time physically being in different geographic locations. In order to better understand the social environment within the community I have asked my informants to create another freelist requesting them to: 1) to do the Bartle test11 and to inform me about the results and their own comments (weather they agree or not with the outcomes and why); 2) I asked them to do the “I am….” list. Self perception of the players reveals several interesting outcomes. The following list was modified by adding the players' types (Bartle Test results) as the first variable of the list. This was done in order to answer the question if gamers’ communities are homogeneous and if players choose a community unconsciously based on their type. This issue will be discussed broader in the analysis section. The following list is sorted by frequency. Informants used 76 different words for self identification.
As I have already mentioned before the Bartle test results where added as a first characteristic to each list in order to find out if community contains same type of players. The Bartle test of gamer classifies online
11 It is a player personality analyzer that classifies them as an explorers, socializers, killers or achievers. Originally designed for MUD (multi-user dungeon) participants, it remains relevant to new virtual worlds and MMORPGs. 54 players into categories based on their gaming preferences. My assumption was that players might accordingly unconsciously group and establish communities based on their gaming preferences. This assumption was not true because according to the test results of my informants there are all four types of players in the community. The four categories are achiever (7 informants), socializer (5 informants), explorer (312 informants); killer (3 informants). The existence of all four categories proves that the community is heterogeneous and the player do not group based on their gaming types. An interesting thing is that most of informants were defining themselves using personal characteristics or habits but only few of them were talking about their social status. This leads me to the question whether the topic of my research and the circumstances of the survey could influence their lists. It would seem reasonable because based on my own observations in the game environment players do not talk much about their families, marital statuses or their work. For this reason informants could have picked out the characteristics accordingly and mention the things which are more related to the game. This could also explain the fact that only one of the informants named his nationality13. Nationality is not important in game environment and if applying for the guild information about the country is asked, that it’s only to gain knowledge on the time zone the players are at (time zone is important for run schedules as it sometimes can get hard gathering 24 people online at the same time). But based on my own observations I should mention that nationality becomes very important when it comes to sports14. Most of the informants listed their positive characteristics, such as fun loving, talkative, helpful, caring etc., but the list also contains several negative descriptions, most motioned bored and tired. According to N. Yee most players use these adjectives when explaining the reasons why they play the game, according to the scholar, players go to play when they feel tired or bored of work and want to change the environment15. Instead of going out, they go to explore castles and dungeons or according to one of my informants hide in the middle earth. Also several informants mentioned that they are enjoying them game. In my opinion the game is considered to be some sort of entertainment, a place for some sort of amusement during the free time. Most of the informants seem to be positive thinking because they used such words as happy, optimistic and only one informant stated himself as unhappy.
12 Accordingly to the list there should be 4 explorers, but I corrected it into 3 because one of the informants listed explorer as a personal characteristic, not related to the test results. 13 Dutch - see Appendix 1. Frequency list No 31. 14 During the International Ice Hockey Championship 2011, Czechs, Finns and Swedish seemed to be very proud of their nationalities while discussing the game results (All three countries came to the finals and received the medals). 15 For more information see N. Yee Daedalus Project (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/pdf/3-2.pdf) (2011.05.10) 55
None of the informants listed words related to their in-game characters, which leads to the idea that game and real live are strictly apart. One of the informants even described himself as enjoying the RL (RL in gamers slang refers to Real Life). Some of the informants mentioned bike riding or being ecological which directly points to the real life habits reminding that these things are more important than jumping of the cliffs or fighting goblins in game. When asked about how gaming reflects on their offline world almost all informants were talking about sleep deprivation and physical discomfort caused by spending too much time online: “once you get into the raid minimum 2 hours are gone. If things go south it can take 4 or more. That can seem insane but that’s how it happens. Once we were exploring a new instance we wiped a lot but we also progressed and everyone was eager to complete the run. When we were finally done I realized that my alarm will go on in 20 min so I just headed straight to shower and then to work” [Male, 28]. Several informants also articulated the tensions that can emerge when their loved ones who do not share their interest in game play neglecting their activities: “at first I tried showing her [wife] and explain why this game is fun but that woman hates pcs [personal computers] in general. Now I gave up I play when I got time and if she really insists on sth [something] and starts bugging me I just have to shut it down no matter what I was doing” (Male, 32).
3.3.2 Crossing and social boundaries Online games blur social boundaries embedded in traditional games. Players take great care in managing their identities so as to create characters that are distinctly different from their physical selves in order to mix comfortably in a gaming community. Numerous and varied cross-boundary interactions can facilitate contact and communication among members of different social and cultural groups, which in the past would be confined in terms of gender, age group, locality, or nationality. Boundary blurring introduces anxiety to game playing and challenges player habits. Regardless of not being able to ascertain true identities behind avatars, players may feel uncomfortable interacting with so many people with so many different backgrounds. Traditional games and social activities occur between peers of similar ages and often of the same sex. In adolescent culture, playing games with younger children is usually considered embarrassing and inappropriate. However, avatars do not contain information or even clues as to the actual identities of players, thus requiring players to deal with others from different age cohorts in complex communication, negotiation, cooperation, and conflict interactions. At the same time in traditional game worlds, players usually have connections beyond physical proximity. Thus, traditional game participants are more likely to share cultural knowledge in terms of age, location, social or economic class. In other words, traditional game 56 groups tend toward homogeneity. None of these cultural connections are required for online gaming. Language may work as an exclusionary factor, but not always. Heterogeneity can lead to value conflict, but it also increases the potential for acknowledging differences, negotiate compromises, shifting boundaries, or even constructing new values. Social boundaries imply social ranking. The potential for change in individual status depends on the amount of ambiguity in a boundary. Fear of lost status following change increases anxiety and resistance in both online and offline environments. Online game players continuously distinguish between “them” and “us,” redraw social boundaries, and protect their collective group statuses. The distinction between “us” and “them” is usually used when talking about developers (they) and players (us) or trying to separate between the communities. Cross-boundary co-playing in online gaming triggers anxiety because it challenges all status dimensions by blurring existing social boundaries. Certain players refuse to let go of their physical world statuses when they play online games, leading them to resist boundary changes or online losses (i.e. creating a character that has appearance similar to ones physical body).
3.3.2 Friendships within and beyond the game Acquiring gradual personal knowledge of offline players can both affect the online interactions as well as create relationships entirely external to the game itself. Friendships arise, parties occur, and face-to- face interaction comes to fruition, all oriented to the game play. The online relationships can also affect other offline relationships before players even meet face-to-face. For instance relationships between players of a romantic nature can cause distress and divorce in co-habituating couples. More optimistically, players can fall in love while playing the game together and sustain long-term, serious romantic relationships. Guild members will fly each other across the country for guild parties and reunions and drive extended distances for funerals and support in times of crisis (Rheingold, 2000). Beyond developments of loyalty and time/money/emotional investment between players simply through their engagement with each other in this environment, the behavior within the game itself changes based on understandings of the out-of-game person behind the avatar. According to Yee (2007) many gamers play with someone they know in real life. For example, 60% of female gamers and 16% of male gamers play with a romantic partner. 40% of female gamers and 35% of male gamers play with a family member. In my community there were at least 5 couples playing together and there is a number of people who invited their friends or family members to join the community. There are also examples of players who started their friendships in virtual environments and now spent weekends 57 watching football together in a pub: “aye at first I met with Player A, we grouped for some questing. I enjoyed his jokes added him to the [friend] list and then we kept questing together. Then we met Player B he’s a bit older though. It turned out we all live not far apart from each other so we decided to meet for a beer lol” (Male, 36). But it’s not always fun to play with someone you have an existing relationship with. Several players commented on the intrusion of obligation and how playing a game can feel more like baby-sitting: “I made a new toon to play with her because I level faster, so now I have one that I use only when playing with her” (Male, 23) or “sometimes it gets really annoying if it were some random dude I would prolly [probably] have told him to bug off.. now I can’t” (Male, 22). For others, the game play strengthens existing bonds by providing another shared source of entertainment as well as ways for people to build trust through working together: “it’s nice way of entertainment. We are at the same time together but also apart doing our own thing and then we can discuss and share our experiences. Though sometimes it leads to disagreements… once we even had a fight on virtues [one of the means to describe characters abilities] lol” (Female, 26). The following picture illustrates a group of players that gathered online just to hang out with friends: “here’s a screenshot with me and my buddies. That evening we just set our toons to play music and chatted while drinking beer” (Male, 32). Picture from informant’s personal gallery:
Another very common activity among community members is to celebrate birthdays. The community calendar announces the birthdays of members who decided to share that information (revealing the birth date
58 is optional, some members add the full date, others choose to only add month and day). Every division with the community has different traditions to celebrate birthdays. In LotRO kinship members gather to the kinship house each bringing a present to the member celebrating the birthday. A gift can be any in game item or artifact. Players who have enabled music play on their avatars organize a group and play a birthday song meanwhile others set their avatars in dancing mode. After delivering the presents all gather for a group picture:
Afterwards it is time to drink virtual beer. As can be seen in the picture there is a big keg behind the avatars that contains strong beer. When one drinks from the keg an allusion for drunken view is created, the screen becomes blurry and less colorful and everything swings around. Afterwards the character passes out and wakes up in a completely different area without his pants. Community members seem to give great value to such celebrations: “If was really fun. They could have just ignored it. It was a week day and I didn’t intend to celebrate it.. well at least not until the weekend and if was really nice that kins thought about it. They brought presents, Player X even wrote me a poem lol” (Female, 31). Another form of bonding among players is sharing their real life contact information and this in my opinion is one way to measure how willing MMORPG players are in bringing their virtual social network into the real world. While it could be argued that people giving out their facebook information and emails are maintaining superficial guild contact information for distribution that is a less viable argument for why
59 people give out their phone numbers. I feel that measuring the prevalence of sharing contact information gives a rough approximation of the strength of social ties that develop in the game. There was another question I brought up to informants who claimed that sharing personal information in game context is inappropriate as it disturbs the game. I asked them if they consider the online relationships meaningless. There are different ways that players approach the question pointing out what the key issues. Some of the players considered MMORPG relationships superficial and faceless communication not worth the effort: “I don’t bond in game as it is pointless, I can’t see nor touch the person. If some1 cries I would hug him online if I know that some1 is sad or hurt what am I supposed to do?” (Male, 23). “Relationships are real people care but at the same time they are meaningless. I don’t I would bother sitting through a conflict if some1 would start and argument with me. I would just log off” (Male, 36). Meanwhile other respondents considered facelessness to be an advantage as communication becomes easier: “sometimes it’s even better because you can say it all out knowing that you will probably never meet this person on the street” (Female, 54). However majority of the players acknowledge the there is a real person with feelings sitting behind each avatar.
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Conclusions
Cyber anthropology is a fascinating field of study because the transfer of social structures from physical reality to the virtual realm is rather slow but continuous and social norms are still changing. From the perspective of the individual perception if virtual worlds would remain in the state of a game, this kind of research would seem insignificant, but the game and online community impact and influence to player’s life is significant. Although online games have achieved great heights of success in recent years, only a few realize how long the genre has existed prior to this explosion of popularity and that these online worlds have been around for nearly as long as the Internet itself. Exploring the evolution of online games from their invention all the way up to the massive 3D landscapes of modern times and studying the history online games give us an idea as to how the first original games that were built were conceptualized. The origins of the various types of online games which are responsible for the present enjoyment gives us a better understanding of the current processes that are currently going on in MMORPGs. Aside from the technological development of online games it is also important to mention the social history of games which contains the confusion, tension and changing perceptions of games that have changed the understanding of their use over the past 20 years. The reaction to games is merely one example among a long string of new media technologies that on one hand have been seen as a way to add convenience to daily life, and spread egalitarian, democratic values in a kind of software that all classes and groups are equally eligible and empowered by the new technology, but on the other side the new media is considered to be morally corrupting, poisonous, to have created new stresses and inequalities that had not existed before. Researches focusing on MMORPG player at the individual level left out many essential elements due to the complex particularities of MMORPG’s. Ethnographic research therefore is necessary to reveal players’ narratives that can be considered as a part of the whole cultural content that is produced inside the MMORPG. Narratives are a result of their activities, and are created by individuals who already carry a subjective content that shapes the narrative. The cultural context of the MMORPG can be defined in much the same way as culture is defined outside the virtual environment. The culture of an online game is composed players’ behavior, virtual cultural artifact and cultural knowledge acquired during the game play. As multiplayer games enable players to communicate and collaborate in joint game session it turned out that there are several different types of interaction occurring between players, or between players and the game world, and are used to convey the actions of the player to oneself, as well as to others. Interaction forms enable awareness of actions by offering mutually perceivable understanding of the game world.
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LotRO is a persistent game world and is structured to enable a player to interact with dozens or hundreds of other players through their avatars gesturing, talking, or fighting the same enemy – in real time however most players spend several additional hours on the discussion boards and forums related to the game. Beyond these engagements there is also the fan art, fan videos, endless MMORPGs related blogs, wikis and websites abound, all created and maintained by the players. These are often used simultaneously, with players checking wikis or blogs for tips and secrets while engaged in the game, in addition to the constant out-of-game communication between players using different software enabling voice chat communication among a group of people. Although the absence of face-to-face interaction might lead to the assumption that it is impossible for one to express the emotions online which is not entirely true as players (generally all internet users) have developed a way to express their emotions through different symbols. In order to understand the whole process and to learn what proper or improper behavior is players use different strategies. Some of the players get help from their friends, who explain them how to find information, how to look for help, how to create groups, how to trade. Some others find this information by themselves searching the internet or simply going the trial and error way. Also MMORPG environments reproduce the typical traditional society based on small familiar groups, in which people live, considering themselves as part of a community. In this kind of society, identity is not founded on peculiarities someone has as single individual, but is based on the fact that he/she belongs to the community. This means that her/his whole existence is strictly tied to belonging to the community; she/he cannot choose freely her/his own destiny, which remains tightly dependent on decisions that the community make for each member. The social environment represented in MMORPGs and especially the communities have a strong hierarchical system which includes every single player, where new players are at the bottom of the pyramid and high skilled and experienced players are (those who have good knowledge of the game content and group play tactics) are being looked up at. At the same time it is a world of possibilities, a world where players, free from every constraint, can move from one social context to a different one. Based on gamers’ different playing habits and game play expectations communities might also differ in between. The issue of matching players who have similar expectations from a community or the guild has turned the management and organization into hard work. Therefore a thick description and declaration of certain community values, rules and norms is useful to avoid unnecessary conflicts. As online games blur social boundaries embedded in traditional games varied cross-boundary interactions can facilitate contact and communication among members of different social and cultural groups, which in the past would be confined in terms of gender, age group, locality, or nationality. Acquiring gradual personal knowledge of offline players can both affect the online interactions as well as create relationships entirely external to the game
62 itself. The overlapping participation between online and offline environments are extremely evident in interpersonal relationships which extend beyond the virtual environment.
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Appendixes
Appendix 1 – Community membership application
Name: Sex: Age: Country: Timezone: Tell us few words about yourself:
Character Information
Main character name: Class: Current level: Vocations: Alts (name, class, level):
Gaming History & Information:
Other MMORPGs you have played (or are still playing): Previous guilds you've been a part of and why you left them: Your account type (f2p, premium, vip): How did you hear about us: Why did you want to join Community X (what are your expectations): Your questions to us:
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Appendix 2 – General Community rules
General rules
All new members are expected to register on the forums (www.xxx.com) and fill in the application in recruitment center. You will not get full member status if your application is not there. We expect you to be polite (saying hi and bye, etc.), respect all other members in the kinship, to behave maturely in all your dealings within and outside the kinship. Any sort of threatening behavior or harassing will result in both dismissals from the kinship and a report being filed to Turbine. All items in the kinship chests (in our kinship house) are free to take, but don't try to make money on them. If you take something, try to put something back you think others could use, please. If you break the rules, you will get a warning. Three warnings is a “free get out of the kin" ticket. If you leave the kinship please don't spam other members with messages asking them to join you in any new kinship you have started/ joined as this will not be taken well. Helping other members is not a rule, but keep in mind that if you are level 65, and you help others on their lower levels, or even help alts grow up, finally it is beneficial to the kinship, because the more level 65’s we have in the kinship, the more choice we will have in players who wish to register for high level (end-) game content, the more fun it is to play as a level 65. Players shouldn't have alts in other Kinships. If a new member has joined from another Kinship he is expected to bring his alts within a month.
Ranks and Privileges
Those who have been promoted to kinsmen/ kinswomen have access to the kinship house chests and may also request items from KinBank. Also within reason may request assistance from the kinship for accomplishing quests. Recruits are newly recruited players on trial period or members who are punished and therefore have no privileges (Players who didn’t fill the application will remain recruits until they do it and players who receive a warning will be demoted to recruits until they apply some changes in their behavior. Otherwise they get the free ticket out). The kinship leader and the officers can discuss demoting/ dismissing anyone from the kinship that has continually caused trouble (spamming annoying requests demanding for help) or has/ is being disruptive to others with IMs, or for excessive abusive of privileges. Use AFK section on forums if you are planning to be absent. If you are absent for 30 days without any notification to an Officer, or post on forum you will be demoted to recruit. If you are off line for 60 days under the same circumstances, we will assume you won't be back and you will be expelled from the Kinship. To avoid this for you and alts, make sure your identification notes are there. Number of officers depends on number of members and recruits. Spots are officers will be announced on the forum. In order to become an officer, a member must satisfy some conditions: o Must be ranked to kinsman/ kinswoman; o Must be active; o Must be in the kinship for a minimum of 2 months; o Must have proven himself as a helpful member; o Must be of level 50+ (if it's the first toon); o Must apply for officer's position on forums;
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Runs and Raids
Only raid officers are allowed to start the raid group for the scheduled raids. Raid group is within kinship, kinsmen can't get locks on their main character, or an alt usually needed, while doing a raid outside the kinship. Members who want to attend MUST sign up for runs on forums. Recruits can sign up for runs and attend them if there are free places, but they don't get the priority over Kinsmen/ Kinswomen. The rewards are distributed using the Suicide Kings mixed with DKP Loot system. Members who have signed up for the raid are expected to show up on time (if the time is bad for them but they could join a bit later they must leave a note when signing for the run). When invites for the raid start all have to be prepared with all the needed consumables (potions, food, scrolls, hope tokens, etc.), gear has to be repaired and you shouldn't be doing any other instances/ skirmishes/ ettenmoors at the time. Those who appear to be unprepared during the raid (don't have scrolls, tokens, etc.) will be punished and might be replaced by other members who are in the waiting list and/ or drop to the bottom of the loot list.
Officers
All officers must be active at least 3 days per week. Officer meeting should be arranged at least once per month to discuss where we stand and what is needed to be done. ALL officers have to attend it. Every officer can call a meeting if they feel there is a need.
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Appendix 3 – Glossary of terms
MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game; a class of computer games characterized by real time play on remote servers, complex graphical interfaces, and the ability to interact with many players simultaneously in both cooperative and combat fashions. Avatar: The three-dimensional visual representation of a player in the virtual world. Players have significant control over the appearance of their avatars, and are able to decide the race, skin tone, hair color, eye shape, eye color, hairstyle, facial piercings, facial expression, and markings of their avatar. During the course of the game, players will gain armor and clothing that will allow them to further customize the appearance of their avatars, making two identical avatars highly unlikely. Emote: An expression of emotion online. Lord of the Rings Online has a database of built-in emotes, which cause the player’s avatar to perform an action. This may range from spitting at another player to smiling, waving, bowing, dancing, telling a joke, flirting, hugging, crying, etc. Some emotes produce a visible action, while others will announce themselves to other players in the chat window. Guild/Kinship: A group of players, who voluntarily join together as an established group to complete high- level quests, share trade skills, help out low-level players, and maintain in-game friendships and camaraderie. Guilds may contain as few as ten people or as many as several hundred. Guilds mark themselves through the use of wearable tabards with unique designs and visible titles, and many have guild websites separate from the game. Each guild is run by the members or elected or designated leaders. Instance: A series of group quests which take place in a dungeon, where a group of players are transported to and must play as a unit to finish the quest. Instances cannot be completed alone. AFK - Away from keyboard Aggro: As a verb, it refers to a hostile mob that has noticed a player and is actively trying to attack that player. As a noun, it refers to the amount of “hostility” the player has generated on the mob. In typical combat strategy, the fighter tries to take as much aggro as possible away from weaker players such as healers and mages. Alt: Short for “alternate”. It refers to the alternate character a player has from their main character. This is not a stable category as sometimes alts can out level mains and sometimes mains become moth-balled.
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