The life and death of online gaming communities

Abstract

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) can be fascinating laboratories to observe group dynamics online. In particular, players must form persistent associations or "guilds" to coordinate their actions and accomplish the games' toughest objectives. Managing a guild, however, is notoriously difficult and many do not survive very long. In this paper, we examine some of the factors that could explain the success or failure of a game guild based on more than a year of data collected from five World of Warcraft servers. Our focus is on structural properties of these groups, as represented by their social networks and other variables. We use this data to discuss what games can teach us about group dynamics online and, in particular, what tools and techniques could be used to better support gaming communities.

An analysis of online match-based games

“…Thus, understanding the characteristics of online match-based games may lead not only to improving current online game organization and architecture, but also, as player demands naturally become more sophisticated, in designing a new generation of match-based MMVEs, for example, for training purposes. Although a rich body of online gaming knowledge already exists, specifically about player behavior [1], [2], network traffic [3], [4], and meta-gaming activity [5], [6], few previous studies [7], [8] have focused on match-based games. Complementing these studies, we present in this work an analysis of the workload, competition, and player evolution in match-based online games.…”

Situating Productive Play: Online Gaming Practices and Guanxi in China

“…Our goal was to examine the ways in which instrumentalism and sentiment come together in guanxi networks that are developed and/or maintained through online gaming practices in China, and not how guanxi practices we observed in and around online gaming in China might be similar or different from social capital in online games in the U.S. Emotional aspects of the material and instrumental exchanges that come together in guanxi are not easily visible to outside observers, and the combination of instrumentalism and sentiment thus often appears contradictory [6] and leads to associations with corruption and bribing. We have thus refrained from a direct comparison between the "here" and "there" and rather focused on the practical contingencies of entertainment and its situated uses in the cultural context of urban China.…”

“…First, we wish to highlight that the work presented here acknowledges Chinese cultural particularities in relation to online gaming practices, while refraining from describing these practices as intrinsically Chinese [6,10]. Our goal was to examine the ways in which instrumentalism and sentiment come together in guanxi networks that are developed and/or maintained through online gaming practices in China, and not how guanxi practices we observed in and around online gaming in China might be similar or different from social capital in online games in the U.S.…”

“…How and to what extent guanxi in Chinese societies differs from more general and culturally widespread processes of social networking and social capitalism remains a contentious issue [6]. From the perspective of HCI, however, even if guanxi is no more than an exemplar of a more generic phenomenon, it provides a particularly useful and culturally specific vantage point from which to consider how the design of online games (and online social spaces more generally) can become implicated within larger practices of currying favor, building networks, managing reputation, and leveraging social capital.…”

Interactive Game Based Learning: Advantages and Disadvantages

“…Groups often face difficulties in cooperation because of the different time-constraints of the various players. This makes groups or guilds in MMOGs very fragile [5]. Relationships between people communicating via the Internet are often described as weak and shallow.…”