MMORPG

Mit diesem Titel liegt eine veröffentlichte Magisterarbeit vor, deren redaktioneller Beschreibungstext auf dem Buchrücken einen „Blick über den Tellerrand hinaus“ verspricht. Dieses Versprechen soll sich durch drei Leitaspekte einlösen, die den Einfluss von virtuellen Welten auf das menschliche Verhalten fokussieren, zweitens das Suchtpotenzial und die Isolation von der Außenwelt thematisieren und drittens die neuen sozialen Komponenten beleuchten, die durch die ‚Begehung’ virtueller Welten ermöglicht werden.

O Universo Paralelo de Priston é uma reportagem do estilo “jornalismo gonzo” produzida para a disciplina de Jornalismo Literário do quarto semestre (2011/2) do curso de Comunicação Social - Habilitação em Jornalismo da Unochapecó. A internet provocou uma transformação no conceito das comunidades humanas. Reflexo disso, comunidades nascem o tempo todo em todos os lugares, e a facilidade de entrar e sair delas, proporciona uma nova sociedade disforme. O objetivo de cada membro nessas novas comunidades também sofre alterações.

The average Hardcore ΜΜORPG Gamer (HCG) has an equally strong feeling of two realities, that is, the in-game reality and the out-of-game reality, albeit with more effective expression of cognitive and social skills as well as with better emotional functionality when being in-game. Recent research findings about the out-of-game environment demonstrate low quality of social and I-thou relationships. Most research focuses on the psychopathological characteristics of HCGs, while their positive personality traits are rarely described. In this analytical framework, we set out to examine the main differences between the in-game and the out-of-game profile of the HCG, as well as the general HCG profile's relation to the profile of the non-Gamer (NG), focusing on the positive personality traits. The present work is in progress and further analysis is undergoing.

This Honors Thesis examines American Values within the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, World Of Warcraft. The thesis presents factors such as community identity and game specific ethics as a challenge to mainstream rhetoric's based on sensationalized reports and assumptions made by non-gamers about the significance and value of the game..

This thesis is based on an empirical study of the BBC’s Muddle Earth multiplayer online game. It is a study of game production in the context of cross-media strategies, and follows the adaptation journey of the Muddle Earth IP from a book, into a TV series, and finally into a game.

At a time when cross-media strategies have become an established part of the children’s media landscape, staying ‘on brand’ across different media is an essential factor to maximise audience benefits. In order to provide seamless cross-media experiences, game adaptations are required to live up to the expectations set up by their source materials – brand consistency becomes an essential target for production.

Brand consistency, however, is a fluid concept with floating meanings, often only defined in operation when producers provide feedback in processes of revision leading to the approval of new content. Furthermore, it can be found at different levels, from surface form (visual elements, game assets), to deeper content (tone, style and effect). The research investigates both, and makes use of narrative concepts and models to assess brand consistency at the more complex level of content.

Game adaptations are also required to meet the expectations of game players. Adapting into a new medium includes some level of remediation, but also entails the use of new devices and conventions, which offer different kinds of pleasures. This study looks at the ways in which these were translated, continued and modified in Muddle Earth.

The research looks at the text and its production, drawing on empirical data from game-playing, interviews with producers and the analysis of design and production documents. The theoretical framework is derived from game studies, adaptation studies, intertextuality and narrative theory, and political economy.

In this paper we propose that Second Life (SL) might be an ideal plateau for novice
fashion designers to experiment in their milieu and gains skills in design and a variety of
other fashion related activities such as marketing and customer identification. First, we
address issues of demographics, social interaction and emotional involvement in SL.
Second, we compare and contrast the fashion industry with the SL fashion industry in an
effort to inform future research about the particularities of the SL market. Our analysis
suggests that SL demographics and identity of residents may not be indicative of SL
consumption and that SL fashion departs significantly from real life fashion in terms of
fashion cycles, products and the characteristics of a fashion designer’s occupation.

In research on Massively Multiple Online Games and Worlds (MMOs) like World of Warcraft, Everquest or Second Life, the term “worldness” addresses how the various layers of a virtual world–the animated 3D pictorial spectacle, the interactive world of mobile nonplayer
characters, the virtual community of other players– all hang together as an autonomous “world.” This article deploys Bakhtinian concepts of chronotopes operating at different scales to explore the worldness of one such online “world” (Ryzom’s Atys). I will show that these different layered chronotopes become visible at moments of crisis. In each crisis, the chronotopic worldness of Atys affords developers and players not only a domain for potential conflict, but also political collaboration and engagement.
(This is a prepublication draft, please contact me for the published paper)

L’accroissement  du  nombre  des  communautés  virtuelles  est  indéniable.  Notre article  s’intéresse  à  un  type  de  communautés  virtuelles :  les  mondes  virtuels,  plus précisément, les MMO/MMORPG. Pour l’année 2011, Newzoo (2011) estime que le segment des  MMO/MMORPG,  au  niveau  mondial,  atteindrait  2,6  milliards  de  dollars,  et  la  niche
française s’élèverait à 250 millions d’euros. Au deuxième trimestre 2011, KZero a recensé 1,4 milliard  de  comptes  enregistrés  d’utilisateurs  de  mondes  virtuels,  au  niveau  mondial.  Nous définissons les MMO/MMORPG comme un monde persistant, construit grâce à des moyens informatiques et interactifs. Ils forment un réseau d’individus où les personnes se connectent simultanément  sans  aucune  restriction  de  nombre.  Les  individus  sont  représentés  par  leur avatar. Malgré la diversité de ces mondes virtuels, deux notions essentielles caractérisent les MMO/MMORPG : la persistance et les relations sociales. Des recherches académiques ont été menées  pour  répertorier  les  facteurs  motivationnels  des  utilisateurs  de  MMO/MMORPG.
L’objectif central de notre article est de comprendre la perception de l’expérience virtuelle par
les  non-utilisateurs  de  ces  mondes  virtuels.  Nous  avons  adopté  une  démarche  exploratoire.
Nous  avons  organisé  deux  entretiens  collectifs,  qui  réunissaient  les  utilisateurs  et  les  non-
utilisateurs.  L’analyse  du  discours  des  participants  nous  a  permis  d’explorer  les  freins empêchant  le  vécu  de  ce  type  d’expérience  virtuelle.  Nous  nous  sommes  intéressés  à  la
perception  des  caractéristiques  des  MMO/MMORPG  de  nos  interviewés.  Pour  les  « non joueurs », le concept de persistance n’est pas assimilé. Alors, ils se réfèrent à leur expérience en  tant  qu’utilisateurs  d’Internet,  ce  qui  fait  naître  un  sentiment  de  peur  de  succomber  à
l’addiction  des  MMO/MMORPG.  Le  second  critère,  les  relations  sociales,  implique  la présence de normes sociales, de l’emploi d’un vocable spécifique et de l’évolution au travers
d’un  avatar.  Ces  notions  sont  inconnues  pour  les  « non  joueurs ».  Ils  se  réfèrent  à  leurs expériences antérieures  de  jeux  vidéo,  qui  diffèrent  des  MMO/MMORPG.  Ce  qui  engendre des  incompréhensions.  Ils  scindent  le  réel  et  le  virtuel,  car,  selon  eux,  le  jeu  évolue, exclusivement, dans la sphère virtuelle et rien de concret ne peut impacter le monde réel, ni même des relations sociales.

The presentation from April 11th, 2015 "The Therapeutic and Educational Uses of Role-Playing Games (RPG) as Intervention Modalities for Individuals and Groups from the Therapeutic Recreation Perspective" at Seattle Children's Hospital for the Washington State Therapeutic Recreation Association (WSTRA) 16th annual conference. The live version of this presentation was certified for Continuing Education Units (CEU's) by the American Therapeutic Recreation Association (ATRA).
Provides in-depth information about all forms of role-playing games (tabletop, live-action (LARP), computer-based, and choose your own adventure), how they benefit users in normal diversional use, how professional may use them in standard approaches to achieve client goals, and how they may be modified to meet specific client needs.

The paper makes some remarks about the language variety spoken and written in online gaming communities through a quantitative analysis of the lexicon composition, subsequently discussing the role of common words, toponyms, and anglicisms. Furthermore, the study highlights the extension of the technical terminology and the importance of the jargon: the technical terminology is needed to distinctly denote a large group of complex and exclusive referents, while the role of jargon words is to define and preserve the group identity; the combination of these two elements makes texts written by gamers hard to understand, and it forces new members of a community to follow a learning process based on prolonged social interactions.
The broadest part of the article consists of a glossary that gathers a selection of unique terms extracted from Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games chats. Each entry contains information about the meaning of the associated word, its formation, its distribution and, in some cases, a list of its variants and synonyms. The glossary exhibits a large amount of loanwords, both integrated and non–integrated, and calques, whereas derivatives and compound words are rare. However, the more common word–formation processes are the verbalization of English nouns and the contraction of words that causes a considerable linguistic variation.

This paper proposes a new and reliable metric for measuring character attachment (CA), the connection felt by a video game player toward a video game character. Results of construct
validity analyses indicate that the proposed CA scale has a significant relationship with self-esteem, addiction, game enjoyment, and time spent playing games; all of these relationships are predicted by theory. Additionally, CA levels for role-playing games differ significantly from CA levels of other character-driven games.

You sign-in to your new account and are prompted to create an avatar from a limited choice of factionalised humanoid ‘races’ and the associated genders, fighting classes, visual features, and name options. Through your personalised avatar you are then thrust into the world of Azeroth, just one of several ‘worlds’ in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, World of Warcraft (WOW). Here, you quickly become aware of the plight of your chosen people – Orcs. Despite their historic displacement and continued marginalisation, you are empowered and compelled to resist and mobilise with the other ‘heroes’ of your faction’s races to collectively avoid subjugation and ultimately conquer this immersive, dynamic and brutal world.

Vital to the success of any virtual world (game or not) is an immersive experience for the user. Here musical soundscape plays an integral role - referencing ‘real world’ precedent, and informing ‘authentic’ fantasy experience. World of Warcraft (WOW) is the most successful virtual world to date. Though the current number of users (the population) is just over 5 million, the number of former users exceeds 100 million. Drawing on insider experience and secondary source material, this paper examines nostalgia for WOW’s soundtrack through the concepts of immersive engagement and diaspora.

Though the primacy of violence within WOW and the persistence of essentialising and othering music practices (including fetishism) is troubling, the Diaspora’s consumption of nostalgic music media also implies the beneficial potential of game design immersivity models.

In this paper we articulate an empirical approach to the study of social action in digitallymediated contexts. Our approach extends Carl Couch’s theory of cooperative action, which is based on a set of “elements of sociation”: acknowledged attentiveness, mutual responsiveness, congruent functional identities, shared focus, and social objective. Three additional elements of sociation, adapted from studies of jazz performance, are added to the list of elements that characterize coordinated action: a formal theory of task performance, an informal theory of task performance, and synchronicity of individual actions. Using audio-visual recordings of gameplay, the minutiae of social action were captured and subjected to repetitive, reflexive and collaborative analysis in order to identify these patterns, including their potential causes and consequences. We use data from two games—the single-player real-time strategy game Eufloria and the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft...

Early virtual worlds – the text MUDs that dominated the first 20 years of the genre’s existence – prided themselves on the degree to which they were realistic. Ones in which bags could contain bags containing bags would disparage ones that didn’t even have bags; ones in which biscuits disintegrated when wet would look down on ones in which you could swim across a river and your crackers would be just as edible when you reached the other side as they were before you set off; ones in which icicles melted to water when exposed to above-zero temperatures would mock ones in which you could safely carry them across a bakingly hot desert in your coat pocket.

LOTRO also goes out of its way to be realistic. Its landscapes are rendered to look like real landscapes; its avatars don’t have cartoon features; it’s faithful to the books upon which it is based; it’s geographically consistent; it studiously adopts a covering fiction for useful but unrealistic MMO tropes such as death (Morale failure) and teleportation (fast horses). It’s a great deal more realistic than most MMOs out there.

Why is it, then, that a player of an early MUD who time-travelled to the present day would nevertheless regard LOTRO’s realisticness as a joke?

This book aims to provide insights into how ‘second lives’ in the sense of virtual identities and communities are constructed textually, semiotically and discursively, specifically in the online environment Second Life and Massively Multiplayer Online Games such as World of Warcraft. The book’s philosophy is multi-disciplinary and its goal is to explore the question of how we as gamers and residents of virtual worlds construct alternative online realities in a variety of ways. Of particular significance to this endeavour are conceptions of the body in cyberspace and of spatiality, which manifests itself in ‘natural’ and built environments as well as the triad of space, place and landscape. The contributors’ disciplinary backgrounds include media, communication, cultural and literary studies, and they examine issues of reception and production, identity, community, gender, spatiality, natural and built environments using a plethora of methodological approaches ranging from theoretical and philosophical contemplation through social semiotics to corpus-based discourse analysis.

Today's massively multiplayer online role-playing games are the direct descendants of the textual worlds of the 1980s, not only in design and implementation terms, but also in the way they are evolving thematically. Thus far, they have faithfully mirrored the path taken by their forebears. If they continue to do so, what can we expect of the graphical worlds of the future?

The growth in the populations of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) has stopped growing since 2009. The arguments for why this has happened typically focus on the humans that play them whether that be psychological, financial, or lifestyle factors. However, these previous enquiries have failed to address MMORPG players as both a result of not just the human and social, but also of technological actants. Through the semi-structured interviews of sixteen participants obtained through a snowball sampling strategy within the MMORPG of Final Fantasy XIV, this thesis uses a novel application of Actor Network Theory to trace their MMORPG play. This led to the uncovering of important non-human, technological actants, that formed an important part of the construct of MMORPG play and the player itself, and, have been underserved by previous research. The first finding is that humans, more specifically, those who study participants considered as “friends” throughout MMORPG play were actually found to be fragile and non-essential to sustaining that play; the second finding is that humans do not hold as privileged a position within the sphere of MMORPG play and development, and that non-human, technologies often have as dramatic an effect on play; thirdly, this thesis finds that the way in which MMORPG play occurred and MMORPG players came to be could not be classified with rudimentary taxonomies as had been attempted previously, rather each occurrence of play and each player construct was unique through formation; and, finally, the fourth finding is that how one eventually comes to be an MMORPG player is the realisation of a complex tapestry of potentialities, sometimes years in the making. These findings through the application of Actor Network Theory alter the current understanding of the MMORPG player and allow us to answer the thesis question of “how have we misunderstood MMORPG play?”

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was nominated as the first female presidential candidate of a major party in a United States election and Sylvanas Windrunner was appointed as the first female Warchief of the Horde in the fictional land of Azeroth in which the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft is set. This article is a rhetorical analysis of how authority and ethos were constructed by, respectively, Lady Sylvanas and Garrosh Hellscream in the World of Warcraft and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 United States election. As well as investigating issues of race and gender, it explores how these four figures deploy what Richard Weaver has termed "charismatic" and "ultimate" terms to establish the legitimacy of their actions and positions. This paper was published in Popular Culture Review 29.1 (Spring 2018): 31-50. It is an open access journal; the link is posted below.

“Curiouser and curiouser!”
– Alice, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll 1865).

“We will go to the Emerald City and ask the Great Oz how to get back to Kansas again.”
– Dorothy, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum 1900).

According to the conventions of fiction, it would seem that when a young girl finds herself unexpectedly in a strange and wonderful place, she has two ways to proceed. She can, as Dorothy did, set out to follow a predetermined path; or she can, as Alice did, go where fortune takes her.

The same two options are available to players of virtual worlds1. When they begin, they can either follow the yellow brick road laid out before them, or simply wander as they will. The advantage of the former is that they know where they’re going; the advantage of the latter is that they’ll see things that can’t be seen from the well-trodden trail.

Online computer games are increasingly seen by game studies and industry as `more than games', i.e., places where players form and maintain relationships by playing together. However, currently, these practices of playing together and their roles for gameplay and the relationships of the players are not presented and explained in an integrated manner. In this context, my research focused on exploring social aspects within and around two online games, World of Warcraft and Star Kingdoms. Specifically, I investigated the emerging practices of playing together with fellow players, friends, family and romantic partners and their functions in an integrated fashion. To achieve this aim, an ethnographic study was conducted (using participant observation and semi-structured interviews) and the data were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively through a ritualisation framework inspired by a multidisciplinary perspective on secular ritual (coming from anthropology, communication and media studies and social psychology). Within this framework, ritual and ritualized play (but also ritualization as a process) were defined as referring to practices through which the game is enriched with new meanings that go beyond the game being `just a game'. These new meanings include those centered on relationships/social interactions and identity. Thus, many gamers play computer games not only for their gameplay, but also for the relationships/interactions established and/or maintained through them. In addition to their value for anthropology, social psychology and communication studies, these findings are particularly useful for game developers and UX designers, who have to find ways to accommodate and support these relationships/interactions via game design, alternative media or marketing strategies.

Online gaming "worlds," virtual places where people meet other people as virtual avatars, are designed using the same process that theme parks designers use. But they are built in the electrons of virtual space versus in the "brick and mortar" world.  Some gamers and social scientists say these games are like Disney theme parks.  Some say they are sandboxes and others discuss how such games are tools to learn to maneuver in real life.  This short essay discusses these various roles.

This paper describes various pitfalls associated with the notion of real-world ownership of virtual property, taken from the perspective of a developer of virtual worlds. It makes no commentary on the positives of virtual property; rather, it assumes that the reader already regards the concept favourably or as inevitable, and is performing due diligence to discover the extent of any downside to it. Five pitfalls are summarised in total, of which one is philosophical, two are law-related and two are concerned with gameplay.

This research investigated the associations between personality traits and both normal and problematic massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPGs) play, as measured by a self report scale. A total of 225 participants completed the online questionnaire, 66 of whom played MMORPGs. Correlational analyses indicated that low levels of functional impulsivity and agreeableness alongside high levels of verbal aggression and video game dependency were associated with greater amount of time spent playing MMORPGs. When comparing problematic and non-problematic MMORPG players directly, problematic players were found to be lower in self regulation, dysfunctional impulsivity and agreeableness, suggesting that these traits may be important in the development and maintenance of problematic MMORPG use.► Problematic massively multiplayer online role playing game users’ personality. ► MMORPG play correlated with low functional impulsivity and high verbal aggression. ► Problematic, non-problematic players and non-players were compared. ► Problematic players were lower in self regulation. ► Problematic players were also lower in dysfunctional impulsivity and agreeableness.

The aim of this study was to investigate (a) the mediating role played by the fear of missing out (FoMO) between social identity and online game addiction, and (b) the moderating role of the need to belong in the indirect relationship between social identity and online game addiction. This model was examined among 318 MMORPGs gamers. Gamers completed surveys regarding social identity, FoMO, the need to belong and online game addiction. Results demonstrated that the impact of social identity on online game addiction can be fully mediated by gamers' FoMO. Furthermore, this indirect relationship was moderated by the need to belong in the first stage of the mediation process, such that the path from social identity was stronger in the context of greater need to belong.

Massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, or MMOs, present an increasingly popular digital media experience whereby identity emerges as players contribute materially to play but contributions are governed by affordances and constraints of the game. Unique to such digital worlds is the player’s ability to create and control a digital body – an avatar – to represent the Self in the immersive gameworld. Although notions of identity and the Self in digital games have been examined through a number of approaches, it is still unclear how the way one sees the avatar in the uncanny situation of having two bodies – one digital, one physical – contributes to a sense of Self in and around these games. Further, it is unclear how non-human objects contribute to human senses of Self.

In that vein, this study examines two research questions: How do players have relationships with their avatars in a digital game? And how does the Self emerge in relation to those relationships? Toward understanding how nonhumans play a role in the emergence of the Self, this study approaches these questions from an actor-network perspective, examining how human, nonhuman, material, and semiotic objects exist in complex webs of relations and how those relations give rise to particular senses of Self in relation to particular gameplay situations.

Tracing the history of the construct of “Self” from romantic and singular to postmodern and pluralistic, I argue for an approach to Self that accommodates postmodern perspectives that embodiment is only one way that the Self is signified across spaces. Actor-Network Theory principles are integrated with postmodern notions of identity to propose a Network Model of Self. In this model, the Self is a network of personas that are, themselves, complex networks of objects. Following, I present a research approach called “object-relation mapping” that integrates phenomenology, Actor-Network Theory, social network analysis, and Grounded Theory to accommodate network structures and multiplicities of the Self as it is signified across spaces.

To address the questions of how the Self emerges in relation to different player-avatar relationships, I conducted in-depth interviews with 29 players of the online digital game World of Warcraft. Transcripts of those interviews were analyzed via thematic analysis for patterns in player-avatar relationships and via object-relation mapping for semantic and structural patterns in how object-relations give rise to persona- and Self-networks.

Through this analysis, a four-point typology of player-avatar relationships emerged, characterized by variations in emotional intimacy, self-differentiation, perceived agency, and primary gameplay focus. It is interpreted that the different relationships are the result of sense-making processes in response to the uncanny situation of having two bodies – one digital and one physical. Analysis revealed that players of different relationship types “activated” different types of personas, resulting in a Self that was more or less complex and consistent across game and non-game spaces.  Further, players of each relationship type differently approached particular objects in crafting those personas. Ultimately a model of active Self-organization is presented, where players work with the affordances and against the constraints of objects in sense-making practices in order to maintain and protect preferred senses of agency and to achieve personal gameplay goals.

These findings suggest that players see avatars as objects that are, to different degrees, both human and technological, and as resources in the purposeful organization of a Self that serves individual psychological, social, and functional purposes. Different phenomenal accounts of the player-avatar relationship emerge as players work to make sense of human-technology interactions and to maintain agency and Selfhood in the face of technological constraints. Implications for human-technology relationships, more broadly, are discussed.