The Socal Life of Networked Play: Games v Worlds

I have spent time in both MMOG as well as virtual worlds though I have had a much more extensive time playing MMOGs I spent a round a year playing World of Warcraft (WoW) and one of my classes had us spend a lot of time in second life even as far as holding a class in second life which was a bit of a unique experience. One of the main differences I noticed was how much players identified with their characters. The players of a MMOG will often make decisions related to the playability of their character: stats, abilities and so on. On the other end of the spectrum some one playing in a virtual world will make decisions either based off their real world persona or the persona they invent for the game.

            The two worlds also separate by how the rules are enforced. As Curtis mentions the player base of LambdaMOO was controlled by special players called wizards “a special class of [player]…who fulfill both the ‘authority’ and ‘police’ roles. “ The wizards basically enforce the rules and punish others by “toading” the offender’s characters.  This method of punishment can be seen as a more real world punishment then what would be seen in a MMOG. The act of punishing a character in world to keep the current story immersed rather then just banning the character. Virtual worlds often have a more open rule set. In a MMOG the rules are set in stone the only way to break a rule is a glitch. In a virtual world the rules are much more lax giving players more freedom in what they can do but also allowing them to be more harmful at the same time. Dibbell wrote about one such attack that was with in the rules of the game but violated the players on a personal level. A character named “Mr. Bungle” created “the ‘voodoo doll,’ a subprogram that served the not-exactly kosher purpose of attributing actions to other characters that their users did not actually write.” I actually have experienced something like this first hand in wow, not nearly to this extent though. Someone once used word wrapping to make it look like my character was quitting and giving away all of its gold. Well a moment after that happened, my chat box turned pink with private messages asking for hand outs. It was a minor nuisance but seeing as it can be a problem in a graphical game to have some one else put words in your mouth it must be devastating to have some one do that when text is your only means of communication. Also the fact that these players were invested in what their characters were and what they did only compounded the damage.

            Another interesting difference between MMOGs and virtual worlds is highlighted by Farmer & Morningstar. They had to face the community asking questions such as “is an avatar an extension or a human being or a Pack-Man-like critter destined to die a thousand deaths or something else entirely? Is Habitat murder a crime?... Is it all ‘just a game’?” and many other questions. They had to face the questions of a community trying to breath life in to their avatars and ended up developing the early parts of a judicial system to handle crimes. In a game like WoW if you get upset about you character getting killed you’ll usually get told you should have played on a pvp server your character is seen only as an avatar a representation and no one really cares what happens to it. On the other end in second life I’m not even sure that there is a way to kill other players but I’m willing to bet even if there was no real penalty to being killed the players would still feel as if their character had been violated.

            Virtual worlds also carry something not many MMOGs support. Virtual worlds support a lot of user generated content which allows players to mold the world to match their own stories. The text based MUDs are a great example of this because they simply need to come up the descriptions and interactions of objects to be able to add them to the world. Worlds like Second Life also support a lot of user generated content. Second Life lets a player buy land and build what ever they want on it and they can program anything they build to have certain behaviors so anything from a horse to a plane can be made. Though as Mnookin mentions, allowing the users to create their own content can lead to problems of people getting attached to their creations. One interesting example of such ownership is in the case of “Margaux v. Yib, Yib refused to allow a helicopter pad created by Margeaux [to have] a place in her list of outdoor rooms.” Yib’s designs had be come a standard for aviation and because of that her list was seen a public property. This is something that will never happen in a MMOG. The closet thing would be modding the WoW interface with add-ons and macros and those are stored on your computer no one else has permission to those with out your permission. Another example of property comes from Pearce’s “Productive Play”.  In the article the closing of Uru and the immigration of its players to There is talked about. One of the interesting points of this migration is transfer of culture to the player’s new homes and how the inhabitants of There took offense to it. “At first, players created artifacts that were directly derived from the original Uru game. Over time, players who emerged as the artisans of eh group began creating new Uruesque objects.” When their culture began to see resistance, one of the Uru players begin to build “Uru-like objects” and sold them to the There population. These objects spread though out the world and became somewhat of a standard. The player content allowed the culture of another game to be spliced in to the current world and something new was created. A MMOG like WoW wouldn’t be able to support something of this level. The game is too rigid and the effect that players have on the game is too small to change more then how players interact with each other: the world it self can’t really be changed.

            Another diffrence between the two types of games can be seen in Pearce’s “Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft.”like Disneyland, World of Warcraft contains different ‘lands’ with unique theams: on the ‘Alliance’ side (the good guys), there are human areas, elven areas, dwarf areas and gnome areas, while areas such as ‘the Barrens,’ ‘Desolace’ and ‘Mulgore’ are dominated by the ‘Horde’ (bad guys).” Pearce’s quote demonstrates what the main difference between the zones is in a typical MMOG. The zones are split based upon good and evil and that’s the main theme spread across all parts of the world. In a world such as Second Life the theme can change dramatically from zone to zone. For instance one zone may be medieval themed while another is steam punk and a third is Jurassic.

            Taylor discusses another way that designers choices can affect how the players respond to the game or virtual world.  Taylor “Multiple Pleasures” discusses how many female players respond to the way there character looks and behaves as one player said “The avatars do kinda affect the way I think about my characters sometimes […] When I play a wood elf with the happy expression on her face I kinda try to be more cheery.” The mood of the character affects the player’s mood, in Second Life where the player can control facial expressions and clothing and even go as far as to turn their character in to a mythical beast; the user is given a lot of power not only over their character but also how they feel while playing. To contrast, in WoW where the user can only select from preset characters the way they feel about their characters is locked in and it’s a lot more common to run in to the problem of “combat lingerie” which may upset gamers who care about how their characters look.  Taylor also talks about character permanence in “Intentional Bodies” the article mentions that players were billed if they wanted to change something such as their name or appearance though as Taylor says “there was also a desire to allow people a broad degree of flexibility when it came to personal identity and their avatars.” What the programmers later realized was that these fees were too much and it stunted the experimentation that players could have had with their avatars. The opposite ends of this spectrum can be seen in WoW and Second Life. Second Life allows players to change their form on a whim and players will take advantage of this to help define who their character is or who they want them to be. While features can be changed in WoW it comes at a cost either of in game money or real world money depending on the change. WoW’s model stunts a player’s extermination with their avatar by making it difficult and costly to go through the process so players don’t really focus on such elements.

 

Bibliography

Curtis P. Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities.

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). A Rape in Cyberspace.

Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991). The Lesson of LucasArts Habitat.

Mnookin, J. (1996) Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication: Volume 2, Number 1: Part 1 of a Special Issue, June 1996.

Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1. 1-8.

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. 1-6.

Taylor, T.L. (2003). Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them. International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 19, No. 1. 25-34.

Taylor, T.L. (2003). Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming. Convergence, Vol. 9, No. 1, 21-46.