research-article

Open access

"We're so much more than the in-game clan": Gaming Experiences and Group Management in Multi-Space Online Communities

Authors:

Austin L. Toombs,

Abbee Westbrook,

Michael LaPeterAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 6, Issue CSCW2

Article No.: 394, Pages 1 - 29

https://doi.org/10.1145/3555119

Published: 11 November 2022 Publication History

Abstract

The platforms that host online gaming groups and communities continue to evolve, and it has become possible to join, participate in, and consume content from groups that exist across multiple tools, platforms, and spaces at the same time. In this paper, we explore how groups use and rely upon assemblages of multiple online spaces to accomplish the "work" of participating in these gaming groups. We present an interview study with users of the100.io, a platform that hosts gaming community spaces, helps players find groups, and operates as a gaming event scheduling tool for its users. Contrary to our initial assumptions, we found that users relied upon the100 as a kind of glue for flexibly-interconnected, multi-space group configurations. These multi-space groups support our participants' desires to approach online gaming as a social practice, provide additional accountability among players, and enable multiple forms of social participation within those communities. Our findings point towards opportunities to expand social computing scholarship to better describe how users of online communities flexibly bridge across technical infrastructure.

References

[1]

Anupama Aggarwal. 2016. Detecting and Mitigating the Effect of Manipulated Reputation on Online Social Networks. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web (Montréal, Québec, Canada) (WWW '16 Companion). International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee, Republic and Canton of Geneva, CHE, 293--297. https://doi.org/10.1145/2872518.2888601

Digital Library

[2]

Imeh Akpan, Paul Marshall, Jon Bird, and Daniel Harrison. 2013. Exploring the Effects of Space and Place on Engagement with an Interactive Installation. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Paris, France) (CHI '13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2213--2222. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2481306

Digital Library

[3]

Tawfiq Ammari, Sarita Schoenebeck, and Daniel M. Romero. 2018. Pseudonymous Parents: Comparing Parenting Roles and Identities on the Mommit and Daddit Subreddits. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada) (CHI '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 489, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174063

Digital Library

[4]

Abdulgaffar Olawale Arikewuyo, Bahire Efe-Özad, Tamar Haruna Dambo, Saudat S Abdulbaqi, and Halima Oluwaseyi Arikewuyo. 2021. An examination of how multiple use of social media platforms influence romantic relationships. Journal of Public Affairs 21, 3 (2021), e2240.

[5]

Michal Boron, Jerzy Brzezi'ski, and Anna Kobusi'ska. 2020. P2P matchmaking solution for online games. Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications 13, 1 (Jan. 2020), 137--150.

[6]

Andrea Braithwaite. 2018. WoWing Alone: The Evolution of Multiplayer" in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture 13, 2 (March 2018), 119--135.

[7]

Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2012. Thematic analysis. American Psychological Association.

[8]

Kathy Charmaz. 2000. Grounded theory: Objectivist and constructivist methods. Handbook of qualitative research 2 (2000), 509--535.

[9]

Janghee Cho and Rick Wash. 2021. How Potential New Members Approach an Online Community. Comput. Support. Coop. Work 30, 1 (Feb. 2021), 35--77.

[10]

Henriette Cramer and Maia L Jacobs. 2015. Couples' Communication Channels: What, When & Why?. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Seoul, Republic of Korea) (CHI '15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 709--712.

Digital Library

[11]

Nicole Crenshaw and Bonnie Nardi. 2016. ?It Was More Than Just the Game, It Was the Community": Social Affordances in Online Games. In Proceedings of the 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (HICSS '16). IEEE Computer Society, USA, 3781--3790. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2016.471

Digital Library

[12]

Michael A DeVito, Ashley Marie Walker, and Jeremy Birnholtz. 2018. 'Too Gay for Facebook': Presenting LGBTQ Identity Throughout the Personal Social Media Ecosystem. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW (Nov. 2018), 1--23.

Digital Library

[13]

Jennifer deWinter, Carly A. Kocurek, and Stephanie Vie. 2017. Managing Community Managers: Social Labor, Feminized Skills, and Professionalization. Commun. Des. Q. Rev 4, 4 (March 2017), 36--45. https://doi.org/10.1145/3071088.3071092

Digital Library

[14]

Paul Dourish. 2006. Re-Space-Ing Place: Place" and Space" Ten Years On. In Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Banff, Alberta, Canada) (CSCW '06). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 299--308. https://doi.org/10.1145/1180875.1180921

Digital Library

[15]

Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nicholas Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert J. Moore. 2006. Alone Together": Exploring the Social Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada) (CHI '06). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 407--416. https://doi.org/10.1145/1124772.1124834

Digital Library

[16]

Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nicholas Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert J. Moore. 2007. The Life and Death of Online Gaming Communities: A Look at Guilds in World of Warcraft. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California, USA) (CHI '07). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 839--848. https://doi.org/10.1145/1240624.1240750

Digital Library

[17]

Casey Fiesler and Brianna Dym. 2020. Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 4, CSCW1, Article 042 (May 2020), 25 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3392847

Digital Library

[18]

Bent Flyvbjerg. 2006. Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research. Qual. Inq. 12, 2 (April 2006), 219--245.

[19]

Sarah Fox, Rachel Rose Ulgado, and Daniela Rosner. 2015. Hacking Culture, Not Devices: Access and Recognition in Feminist Hackerspaces. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (Vancouver, BC, Canada) (CSCW '15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 56--68. https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675223

Digital Library

[20]

Guo Freeman and Donghee Yvette Wohn. 2019. Understanding eSports team formation and coordination. Comput. Support. Coop. Work 28, 1--2 (2019), 95--126.

Digital Library

[21]

Carla F Griggio, Joanna McGrenere, and Wendy E Mackay. 2019. Customizations and Expression Breakdowns in Ecosystems of Communication Apps. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 3, CSCW (Nov. 2019), 1--26.

Digital Library

[22]

Steve Harrison and Paul Dourish. 1996. Re-place-ing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems. In Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (New York, New York, USA). ACM Request Permissions, 67--76.

Digital Library

[23]

Daniel Herron, Wendy Moncur, and Elise van den Hoven. 2017. Digital Decoupling and Disentangling: Towards Design for Romantic Break Up. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (Edinburgh, United Kingdom) (DIS '17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1175--1185. https://doi.org/10.1145/3064663.3064765

Digital Library

[24]

Sohyeon Hwang and Jeremy D. Foote. 2021. Why Do People Participate in Small Online Communities? Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2, Article 462 (oct 2021), 25 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479606

Digital Library

[25]

Adele Lu Jia, Siqi Shen, Ruud Van De Bovenkamp, Alexandru Iosup, Fernando Kuipers, and Dick H. J. Epema. 2015. Socializing by Gaming: Revealing Social Relationships in Multiplayer Online Games. ACM Trans. Knowl. Discov. Data 10, 2, Article 11 (Oct. 2015), 29 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2736698

Digital Library

[26]

Charles Kiene, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2018. Managing Organizational Culture in Online Group Mergers. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW (Nov. 2018), 1--21.

Digital Library

[27]

Jooyeon Kim, Brian C Keegan, Sungjoon Park, and Alice Oh. 2016. The Proficiency-Congruency Dilemma: Virtual Team Design and Performance in Multiplayer Online Games. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California, USA) (CHI '16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 4351--4365.

Digital Library

[28]

Robert E Kraut and Paul Resnick. 2012. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. MIT Press.

Digital Library

[29]

Ahreum Lee, Austin L. Toombs, Ingrid Erickson, David Nemer, Yu-shen Ho, Eunkyung Jo, and Zhuang Guo. 2019. The Social Infrastructure of Co-Spaces: Home, Work, and Sociable Places for Digital Nomads. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 3, CSCW, Article 142 (Nov. 2019), 23 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359244

Digital Library

[30]

Lingyuan Li, Jirassaya Uttarapong, Guo Freeman, and Donghee Yvette Wohn. 2020. Spontaneous, Yet Studious: Esports Practices. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 4, CSCW2 (Oct. 2020), 1--25.

[31]

Elizabeth D Mynatt, Vicki L O'Day, Annette Adler, and Mizuko Ito. 1998. Network Communities: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed., 123--156 pages.

[32]

Bonnie Nardi and Justin Harris. 2006. Strangers and friends: Collaborative play in World of Warcraft. In Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM, 149--158.

Digital Library

[33]

Midas Nouwens, Carla F Griggio, and Wendy E Mackay. 2017. WhatsApp is for family; Messenger is for friends: Communication Places in App Ecosystems. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 727--735.

Digital Library

[34]

Fayika Farhat Nova, Michael Ann DeVito, Pratyasha Saha, Kazi Shohanur Rashid, Shashwata Roy Turzo, Sadia Afrin, and Shion Guha. 2021. Facebook promotes more harassment. Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW1 (April 2021), 1--35.

Digital Library

[35]

Tyler Pace, Austin Toombs, Shad Gross, Tony Pattin, Jeffrey Bardzell, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2013. A Tribute to Mad Skill: Expert Amateur Visuality and World of Warcraft Machinima. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Paris, France) (CHI '13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2019--2028. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466267

Digital Library

[36]

Michael Quinn Patton. 2014. Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice. Sage publications.

[37]

Anthony T Pinter, Morgan Klaus Scheuerman, and Jed R Brubaker. 2021. Entering Doors, Evading Traps: Benefits and Risks of Visibility During Transgender Coming Outs. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 4, CSCW3 (Jan. 2021), 1--27.

Digital Library

[38]

Nathaniel Poor. 2019. Building and Sustaining Large, Long-Term Online Communities: Family Business and Gamifying the Game. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (San Luis Obispo, California) (FDG '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 35, 12 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3337722.3337760

Digital Library

[39]

Benjamin Saunders, Julius Sim, Tom Kingstone, Shula Baker, Jackie Waterfield, Bernadette Bartlam, Heather Burroughs, and Clare Jinks. 2018. Saturation in qualitative research: exploring its conceptualization and operationalization. Quality & quantity 52, 4 (2018), 1893--1907.

[40]

Morgan Klaus Scheuerman, Stacy M. Branham, and Foad Hamidi. 2018. Safe Spaces and Safe Places: Unpacking Technology-Mediated Experiences of Safety and Harm with Transgender People. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 155 (Nov. 2018), 27 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274424

Digital Library

[41]

Michael Helfried Schiller, Gunter Wallner, Christopher Schinnerl, Alexander Monte Calvo, Johanna Pirker, Rafet Sifa, and Anders Drachen. 2018. Inside the group: Investigating social structures in player groups and their influence on activity. IEEE Transactions on Games (2018).

[42]

Lauren E Scissors and Darren Gergle. 2013. Back and forth, back and forth": channel switching in romantic couple conflict. In Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work (San Antonio, Texas, USA) (CSCW '13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 237--248.

Digital Library

[43]

Robert E Stake. 1995. The art of case study research. sage.

[44]

Casey Swezey and Janet Vertesi. 2019. Working Apart, Together: The Challenges of Co-Work. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 3, CSCW, Article 204 (Nov. 2019), 22 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359306

Digital Library

[45]

Austin L Toombs, Michael A Davidge, Jeongjin Park, Gregory Sirko, and Michael LaPeter. 2019. Algorithmically-Generated Communities: A Case Study. In Conference Companion Publication of the 2019 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (Austin, TX, USA) (CSCW '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 387--391.

Digital Library

[46]

Austin L. Toombs, Kellie Morrissey, Emma Simpson, Colin M. Gray, John Vines, and Madeline Balaam. 2018. Supporting the Complex Social Lives of New Parents. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada) (CHI '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 420, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173994

Digital Library

[47]

Maxime Véron, Olivier Marin, and Sébastien Monnet. 2014. Matchmaking in Multi-Player on-Line Games: Studying User Traces to Improve the User Experience. In Proceedings of Network and Operating System Support on Digital Audio and Video Workshop (Singapore, Singapore) (NOSSDAV '14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 7--12. https://doi.org/10.1145/2597176.2578265

Digital Library

[48]

Günter Wallner and Simone Kriglstein. 2018. Introducing PlaNet: A Tool for Visualizing Player Communities. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (Malmö, Sweden) (FDG '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 42, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3235765.3235808

Digital Library

[49]

Günter Wallner, Christopher Schinnerl, Michael Helfried Schiller, Alexander Monte Calvo, Johanna Pirker, Rafet Sifa, and Anders Drachen. 2019. Beyond the individual: Understanding social structures of an online player matchmaking website. Entertainment Computing 30 (2019), 100284.

[50]

N Wang and J Wu. 2018. Latency Minimization Through Optimal User Matchmaking in Multi-Party Online Applications. In 2018 IEEE 19th International Symposium on A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks" (WoWMoM). 1--10.

[51]

Bryan Watson, Thomas Watson, and Jun Zheng. 2019. A study of friend recommendations for gaming communities. Int. J. Web Based Communities 15, 4 (Jan. 2019), 292--314.

Digital Library

[52]

Alex Zook. 2019. Building Matchmaking Systems. Data Analytics Applications in Gaming and Entertainment (2019), 33.

Cited By

Ruiz-Poveda Vera CJiménez Peláez JRubio Romero J(2024)Videojuegos como espacios de interacción: preferencias y prácticas de los nativos digitales en EspañaÁrea Abierta10.5209/arab.9624124:3(145-159)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.5209/arab.96241
Lai YLee YChang CDai WChen Y(2024)Exploring the Role of Mom's Chat Groups in the Messaging App: Enhancing Support and Empowerment for Stay-At-Home MothersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36330688:GROUP(1-20)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3633068

Index Terms

"We're so much more than the in-game clan": Gaming Experiences and Group Management in Multi-Space Online Communities
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Collaborative and social computing systems and tools
      1. Social networking sites
    2. Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing
  2. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI

Recommendations

Predicting Member Productivity and Withdrawal from Pre-Joining Attachments in Online Production Groups
CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

Productive and dedicated members are critical to the success of online production communities like Wikipedia. Many communities organize in subgroups where members voluntarily work on projects of shared interest. In this paper, we investigate how members' ...
Personal networks as a case for online communities: two case studies

The paper will compare the results from two empirical studies which both deal with the idea of personal social networks and the way they evolve into community ties, with the purpose of identifying the means by which such communities can shift from real-life ...
Out With The Old, In With The New?: Unpacking Member Turnover in Online Production Groups

Nearly any group is subject to turnover : some people leave, while others join. Turnover can be especially high in online groups, since participation typically is strictly voluntary. We investigated the effects of member turnover in online groups, ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 6, Issue CSCW2

CSCW

November 2022

8205 pages

EISSN:2573-0142

DOI:10.1145/3571154

Editor:
Jeff Nichols
Google

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2022 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 11 November 2022

Published in PACMHCI Volume 6, Issue CSCW2

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
536
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)305
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)31

Reflects downloads up to 22 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Ruiz-Poveda Vera CJiménez Peláez JRubio Romero J(2024)Videojuegos como espacios de interacción: preferencias y prácticas de los nativos digitales en EspañaÁrea Abierta10.5209/arab.9624124:3(145-159)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.5209/arab.96241
Lai YLee YChang CDai WChen Y(2024)Exploring the Role of Mom's Chat Groups in the Messaging App: Enhancing Support and Empowerment for Stay-At-Home MothersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36330688:GROUP(1-20)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3633068

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents