Game Design as Cultural Practice Fall 2009

A Social Understanding of WoW and Second Life

Having played both of these games briefly, the interesting thing I felt I should talk about is how my personality in real life could be altered by playing these games for an extensive period of time. I am going to talk about the things I felt affected me while playing these games, which are social consciousness and emotional investment.

While describing MMOGs, Pearce says that "they are public places that thousands of people enter simultaneously to share an entertainment experience". I think it's not just a space for sharing an entertainment medium but also a social forum to display one's accomplishments. I think some people see the Amusement Park as a forum to show off their lack of fear in dangerous situations(in this case, being the rides). In WoW, I've noticed people using the community as a forum to show off these same skills, but in terms of game play and tactics. Perhaps they are compensating for their lack of accomplishments in dangerous situations in the real world with their accomplishments in this game.

In the paper on Productive Play, Pearce mentions that play can be productive when it contains means of producing your own culture and expressing yourself. I feel this is especially crucial when considering how players develop their real-world personalities by playing the game. In Second Life, I realised I can develop my real-world personality because my behaviour can be easily translated into the virtual world. In WoW, due to the rule based nature of the game, I feel like I'm only trying to accomplish immediate tasks so I can move on the next task.

In "A Rape In Cyberspace", it is quite clear how much emotional investment people have put in their avatars. The effect of such an inappropriate interaction is more drastic for the player in Second Life than in WoW because the player has a stronger investment in their virtual identity. In WoW, I felt like my avatar was merely a tool for just completely the tasks at hand. I can see how difficult it would be to regulate a world where the results of such inappropriate actions have such far reaching consequences that bleed into the real world. Mnookin describes the complexities involved in clearing enunciating the differences between the laws in both worlds. After playing Second Life, I was confused as to whether I'd actually want somebody to give me a clear distinction between my real-world and the virtual world. It seems obvious that it would be helpful in many aspects but it seems like many people are so invested in this world that they'd rather not accept terms which state that there is a clear fundamental difference between the worlds.

Building on individual development, I had mentioned in my previous blogpost that even single-player games can induce multi-player feel because of our social nature. Morningstar and Farmer state that "a definitive characteristic of a cyberspace system is that it represents a multi-user environment." They further go on to explain the difficulty in creating a process that would resemble a real human being's interaction. I do not think this is significant in WoW because we have a strong propensity to accept a social space within a rule defined world that doesn't resemble our real world. The moment I started interacting in Second Life, a world that is extremely familiar to my real-world, I was not as willing to accept any interaction that was not human-like. I expected familiar emotional responses to all sorts of interactions because of the familiarity of the environment.  

In particular, as Curtis mentions in his paper on Mudding, "Some players apparently find it quite difficult to interact with those whose
true gender has been called into question". I realised the difference personally while playing Second Life as opposed to WoW. Because Second Life induces a sense of familiarity with my real world, I would not like to see such odd discrepancies in social interaction. In WoW, however, because of the exaggeration in costumes, avatar designs and other non-familiar elements involved in my interaction, I would not find it particularly disconcerting if somebody does not mention their real gender to me. I feel as if their personalities are important to me in the realms of the task that we have to complete together.

After having personally experienced these aspects during my game play, I wonder if these players, who have been immersed in these games for a long time, are able to notice their change in social behaviour. Would they be able to tell if they seamlessly changed their behavioural patterns from one world to fit another?

References:

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

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." ion 19, no. 1. 

Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006.http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf

Mnookin, J. (1996) Virtual(ly) "Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO." Volume 2, Number 1: Part 1 of a Special Issue, June, 1996. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace."http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

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

An ignorant yet vicarious attempt at understanding MMOGs and Virtual Worlds

I have never really played MMOGs or been part of virtual worlds, though I have always been around people constantly raving about it. I am going to base my comparison of the forms of World of Warcraft and Second Life on an audacious premise. I am going to explain my understanding of the difference based on the method of recommendation I received from people who play these games regularly.

One observation I have noticed in these worlds I cannot mention enough that continues to reinforce the notion of productive play are the lengths people will go to make themselves feel comfortable in a virtual world. Using the example of the Uru Diaspora (Pearce 2006, p.3), it is incredible how people will create artifacts which give them a sense of relief and familiarity. I think the contrast in this regard to players in World of Warcraft is that in the WoW world, people attach themselves to communities based on the tasks they can perform together. In places like Second Life, people don't mind creating artifacts in isolation in or seeming individualistic and then looking around for people with similar interests.

While reading the papers, I was trying to vicariously decide on why people prefer one to the other. I cannot find a clear distinction between the 2 from my limited experience but I can however describe why I think they are both essential in understanding human behaviour. I realise that my observations will seem diminishing in significance from the already existing discussions from people who have extensive experience in this.

I am trying to apply a cognitive theory behind what I have observed. I found it interesting there are so many aspects of specific types of virtual worlds that bleed onto other types and essential to their sustainability. It's interesting how text based virtual realities do in terms of providing an substitute social reality. Curtis talks about how an emotional experience is often limited in a text based virtual reality. I have noticed that certain types of people would find different realities to be intrusive.

I wonder if people suffering from Asperger's Snydrome can improve their condition by practicing their social skills in Second Life. Or could they only grasp the weight of social awareness by going on a team mission in WoW. 

In "A Rape in Cyberspace", Julian explains explicitly how complicated this "realities" are between the virtual world and the real world. From a neuro-scientific view point, it's more interesting to see how the people define "reality". Would we be able to argue with them that what they define reality as being is not so, because that's not how we perceive it?

In games like WoW, it would be easier to argue with a player that his reality is a bit warped because the actual emotional response of using spells and magic would not translate to the real world. In second life, however, the emotional responses can be studied in parallel and it would seem odd to convince someone that their reality is not "real" because their emotional reactions are very real to them as the same personal situations can occur in real life.

I hope my blogpost on this subject does not seem too ignorantly contrived but an attempt at vicariously understanding the behaviour in these worlds at a cognitive level.

References:

Curtis, P. "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/MOO_MUD_IRC/curtis_mudding.article

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace." http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991) "The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat." http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." International Journal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1. www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf

 

The difference between Virtual Worlds and MMOG’s is whether or not something tries to kill me while I do menial tasks for useless trinkets.

One of the most depressing realizations that a cynical person can come to is that no matter what they do, the world will neither change over nor miss their personal existence. Due to some horrendously conservative choices made by developers behind massive environment games, these realizations are not only limited to cynical people but also get to damage the optimism and personal joy of everyone involved.

For my two experiences, I will refer to Club Penguin and my personal transcendence to World of Warcraft Level 50 Night Elf and subsequent account deletion (it was for my own good).

First, let’s argue the blog topic and explain how these two kinds of games intend to be different from one another. World of Warcraft is a consistent reality (you even have to watch yourself fly places!) that has “real” hazards that can render you harmed through “real” consequences. You as the player are constantly in respect of these consequences that can be levied upon you and you must be ready to deal with them by acquiring new gear, teaming up with more and more players, and slaying new fiends.

Club Penguin is a fun loving comfortable environment where there is no real danger other than getting out-shown by your peers by not having enough gold to buy large amounts of gear. You earn gold by playing mini flash games.

In theory, there is a wonderful difference between this casual playground and this grueling fantasy land. Unfortunately, in reality, the difference is almost negligible. Of the attributes I laid out for both types of games, note that neither one had the honor of allowing the player to carve his own impact on the environment. This is because, due to the fact that the designers want to make the assumption that you’ll never be available for something else that the players would deem a fun experience, they must create game scenarios that can be easily instanced for millions of players at the same time regardless of active population. This makes everything boring because everyone has to get the same experience so no one has to go through the awful unbalanced personal experience of having a quest giver absent from their town hall.

For this reason, the game content of an MMOG can never fulfill Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer’s idea of a virtual community as it will never physically “scale with its population” or sustain a remotely dynamic environment. Instead, the designers simply become gate keepers that are in constant fear that their game will be exploited and their in-game economy will become completely broken and fun will be removed. This means that prices are automatically set, but it also means you cannot creatively approach any challenge, because if for some horrible reason everyone found a way to exploit your creative approach then the game’s economy would crash along the millions of subscribers that need to be constantly glued to the banality. T.L. Taylor’s claim that communities are built around the process of “conveying, stabilizing, and... challenging ... identity and community” vanish in sea of pointless tasks that often just get finished by doing the least amount of work necessary, for extremely long periods of time. (Taylor 29) Finally, this means that all conflicts in the game must be simple and repetitive because any large amounts of allotment could be a potential exploit. So, the difference between virtual worlds and MMOG’s is, in practice, watered down to semantics. The game has become so closed that Julian Dibbell’s treasured rape scenario will never even be possible, now we assume this is a good thing. The truth is, though, in a world where can’t get (cyber) raped, we also cannot come into (cyber) contact. Instead we trudge around like a legion of bitterly cynical people, ineffectual against the environment that controls us. The legal mechanisms are static, the environment is fixed, and social structures are produced out of boring necessity; were she dead, Jennifer Mnookin would be rolling over in her grave.

The horrific complaint is not just relegated to MMOG’s either. The desperate need for balance and containment applies to Virtual Worlds and in most cases, much worse ways. Personally, I think the differences between Virtual Worlds and MMOG’s is the difference between micro-transactions and subscription fees. Micro-transactions dominate Virtual Worlds in a very unhealthy way. Second Life is the biggest offender. The fact that someone can make a career out of selling virtual land highlights a problem with our expectations as gamers and a gaping hole with the balance of merchandise in the future(imagine an entire gross domestic product based on virtual land – I don’t want to). While Second Life does get a pass for using a MUD convention treasured by Pavel Curtis  and allows users to sell and own custom content (anyone is allowed to make content and sell it), it does still go to great lengths to make certain plots of land valuable and un-editable. In club penguin I can spend hours upon hours making all the gold I want, but it just amounts to selecting from a list of predesigned clothing, essentially I’m putting hours or money into watered down merchandise. The real problem with this valued merchandise is that once again, economy and balance must be held to such a regard that creative decisions or actions need to be categorized and contained to prevent exploitation.

Why is it that designers must make such conservative choices? Celia Pearce has the fortune of being able to traverse through what one would consider to be the idyllic MMOG/Virtual World, Uru. A Virtual World that had many attributes taken from MMOG architecture, Uru was live for a very short amount of time. Oddly enough, though, creativity soared. Pearce discusses instances where players began to terraform their own environments and create almost a virtual state that carried what she was compelled to call “refugees”. Out of sight from a production herder, the group involved with Uru was able to go to any length they deemed necessary to maintain a community, and in many cases this included penning a whole world in the style of the fictional characters that populate the Uru universe. For most massively available online games, this freedom does not exist, however, the capabilities to have such freedom clearly do.

Brenda Laurel says it best when she says that “being able to see the effects of our actions is what gives us the sense of agency or personal power”. (68) In the MMOG/Virtual World paradigm, the player is, by design, stripped of that agency. After that, what is it that we have? Some big shoulder armor for my night elf and sunglasses for my turquoise penguin, that’s what.

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

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace."http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

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

 Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf

Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006.http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." ion 19, no. 1. 

Mnookin, J. (1996) Virtual(ly) "Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO." Volume 2, Number 1: Part 1 of a Special Issue, June, 1996. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html

Laurel, Brenda. (2001). Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.

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.

Alternative social lives in alternative social worlds

    Online communities have always intrigued me.  Even when I was young I would play this small scale online ‘game’ in the JumpStart series that allowed you to move around a theme park and interact with other people.  Granted, users were rarely on, and my parents weren’t crazy about me playing with strangers, but I was fascinated by this idea of alternate identities and creating alternate communities.  It wasn’t until much later in life that I was introduced to MUD’s, arguably one of the deepest forms of online communities out there.  In these MUD’s you can create a character from scratch, to be whomever you what her to be, a truly unique personality, one that does not have to correspond to the physical person at all, but can be a total disembodiment of the user playing.  You can literally create a completely new you with no consequences [2].  While MUD’s are still around today, the more popular versions of online communities come in three dimensions now.  With systems like World of Warcraft and There.com now readily available, there is a wide array of choices for people to be a part of one of these separate societies. 

 

Personally, I have taken part in two distinctly different networked playgrounds: World of Warcraft and Second Life.  WoW is a massively multiplayer game, with set rules, a tiered leveling structure, and objectives to beat.  Second Life, on the other hand, is a virtual world that allows its users the freedom to do what they please without having to follow any sort of narrative or linear path.  Both these platforms are ludicrously popular and, while they definitely share some features, we will see how different they really are.  Why are online communities so popular?  The short answer can be derived from something already mentioned- you can be anyone you want!  Pearce and Curtis both discuss how, in online communities, you can create an avatar that may or may not be anything like your real self, and then inhabit a virtual world with this avatar.  You can act however you want (assuming you follow the laws of the game) with little to zero consequence for social errs.  There is no penalty, for example, for taking all of your clothes off in WoW and running around the city.  And, in the worst-case scenario where your avatar has somehow been irreparably socially demoted, you can always just create a new avatar [1, 5].

Of course both WoW and SL offer this feature, the most attractive feature of online communities.  But the difference is the context in which they are offered.  In WoW you must make a character in a medieval fantasy setting.  You can be an elf, a creature of undead, or perhaps a dwarf, but really there is only a static set of possible characters.  While this limitation seems like a drawback, it actually increases the alternate social experience for people.  Taylor talks about how, in games such as WoW, you are forced into these certain social roles, and then you must live that role.  Players enjoy playing as only an elf, to take part in elf culture, to become knowledgeable in the social responsibilities of this role [7].  Of course, in WoW, your class has a huge influence on your avatar, so this aspect further embeds the players alternate identity.  Personally, I play WoW for this exact reason.  I enjoy taking on an alternate persona, to have responsibilities that do not exist for me in real life but, because of my defined role in the game, people rely on me for.  One character I had, for example, was a healer, and so I had to specialize in jobs and tasks that improved my healing.  To me it is fascinating, and extremely satisfying, to focus on one responsibility and to excel at that, to become a part of the ‘healer’ culture of the Warcraft world, and then to fit into a team as a specialist in my talent.  This aspect of avatar creation is something that sets WoW apart from SL.

Second Life has its own forms of unique attraction, though.  While WoW forces its players to fit into a certain social identity, SL lets the player be anyone she wants.  This ultimate freedom is what pulls people to this type of universe.  In SL you can explore, buy, sell, start a business, build buildings, join a club, start a city, or do nothing.  There are no quests and no story, just a world to inhabit, to be discovered and created by its citizens.  This carries over from MUD’s, where players were “literally building their own universe room by room” [4].  In SL, the players are in complete control to do this, to create their own communities and homes.  It allows people the freedom of the MUD’s but in the visually rich environment of three dimensions, something MUD’s could not offer.  This self-government feature is something that is crucial to the SL experience, but does not always work well.  Farmer and Morningstar, in a discussion about the LucasArts Habitat, say you have to allow the users to get together and develop goals and that it is the responsibility of the developers to recognize what these goals are of their users and to help them achieve it, but to not become involved [3].  Too much control will drive users who want the autonomous control away from the system, while too little control can cause internal issues and create a lack of focus for the world after awhile.

My personal experience with SL was initially enthrallment.  I was excited about the potential of the world, and I had the most fun just flying around to different communities and seeing what everyone had built and done.  But soon I discovered that if you didn’t join any groups or meet anyone, you could become bored extremely quickly.  So I joined a few groups and met some new friends.  I began to settle in a ‘society’ in the world.  But eventually I became bored again and just flew away to new lands, to explore more.  The vastness of the world kept me wanting to continually be moving, but it also made me feel like I could never truly become a part of it.  Maybe I didn’t devote enough time to truly becoming a member of the SL community, but eventually I stopped playing.  I think the similarity to real life (i.e. human avatars, normally structured communities, business, etc.) turned me away in the end.  When I join an online community, I want to really lose myself in an unfamiliar world. 

So it is clear that online games and virtual worlds will approach designing features differently, to cater to the kind of users that will be taking part.  WoW strives to immerse the players in an experience that is very separate from real life, while SL wants to create an environment that its users can then inhabit and manipulate to make truly their own.  But both are systems that are community driven and rely heavily on a graphical interface to push their features.  Modern virtual games and communities are becoming similar to amusement parks where people can come together and take part in attractions, made much easier with the advent of 3D [6].  The people are the focus of these worlds; how they create their avatars, what they do, how they interact with each other.  Creating my avatar is something that is important to me when I join a community online, and Taylor says it is one of the most critical aspects of a successful virtual society.  You must hand as much control over to the individual as possible, so they feel they are truly the ones inhabiting the world [8].  Both WoW and SL do this successfully, if somewhat differently, and they have set the standard for online communities of their kinds.

Works Cited

1. Curtis, P. “Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities.” <http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/MOO_MUD_IRC/curtis_mudding.article>

2. Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). “A Rape in Cyberspace. <http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html>

3. Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991). “The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat.” <http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html>

4. 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. <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html>

5. Pearce, C. (2006). “Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up.” Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006. <http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf>

6. Pearce, C. (2007). “Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft.” In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. <http://lcc.gatech/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PeaerceSpaceTimePlay.pdf>

7. Taylor, T.L. (2003). “Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming,” Convergence, Vol. 9, No. 1, 21-46, Spring 2003. <http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/CourseReadings/TaylorMultiplePleasures.pdf>

8. Taylor, T.L. (2003). “International Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them.” International Jounal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1. <www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf>

The Social Life of WOW & SL

    I’ve never been much of a fan of MMOG or virtual worlds.  To be honest, until this assignment I’d never played and had little involvement in any of the games listed.  The only game I’ve ever had any involvement in is World of WarCraft and my involvement in that was watching it slowly ruin my friend’s actual life.  MMOGs and virtual words like World of WarCraft consume players.  The main difference between the two is the objective.  While there’s plenty to keep you occupied in WOW, the game is largely goal-oriented, navigating dungeons, leveling up, and defeating bosses.  Second Life is a virtual world in the truest sense.  Second Life, like a MUD is “not goal-oriented; it has no beginning or end, no ‘score’, and no notion of ‘winning’ or ‘success.’” [Curtis 1]  WOW, though goal-oriented, doesn’t really have an end either.  While you can make it to the final dungeon and kill the final boss the world never ceases to exist, and expansions and new content patches are released a few times a year to continue to expand the world and keep it interesting to users.  What made the game fun for me was the PVP combat WOW offered which makes sense since “conflict is the essence of drama” [Morningstar and Farmer]. 
    Both games allow the players to assume new online identities and promote a certain “commitment to some vision of diversity”.  WOW offers this diversity in a more fantastical way with various races and species, while Second Life restricts you to the human species.  You can do things like customize your clothing (gear in WOW) choose careers/professions, fisherman, blacksmith.  The games differ in their social aspects.  In WOW you join other players to build a stronger party in order to conquer dungeons and defeat bosses.  The incentive to socialize was to find players that would improve your party and help accomplish goals in the game.  In Second Life, I found it hard to find an incentive to socialize.  I guess the allure of the game is that since you’re in a virtual world, a player is less shy, less timid, and feels more comfortable to interact with others than they might in the real world. 
    One thing I find particularly interesting about the games is the impact they have on people’s real lives.  As I stated earlier, my friend became so consumed in WOW that he stopped caring about his real world responsibilities and ended up failing classes and having to drop out of school for a semester, all over a video game.  He told me that people will actually spend ridiculous amounts of time on the game to harvest fake money and items, in order to sell them for actual money in the real world.  In Second Life, you can buy the virtual world money, called Lindens, using real world money.  I guess it shouldn’t strike me as weird though, people are essentially using their money for entertainment in the form of an online virtual world.  Dibbell writes of one case of an online affecting someone in the real world.  In LambdaMOO, an object oriented MUD, a user, Mr. Bungle, wrote a script to create a voodoo doll which allowed for him to essentially control what other users do.  Naturally, he used his powers for evil, sodomizing a woman in the MUD world, traumatizing her in real life.  While Mr. Bungle used the ability to create his own objects for evil, and in a rather unproductive way supporting the argument that games in general are unproductive, Pearce argues that games can be made productive. Pearce mentions a “hybrid entertainment form in which players …produce their own entertainment media.”  Second Life offers this affordance to its community.  They allow people to write code to create objects and sell them in the virtual world.  One Second Life enthusiast actually created her own clothing company within the world, bought land and sold her product to others in the community, all the while making a substantial amount of money in the real world. 
    I’ve seen games affect people’s emotions; getting angry and frustrated at a game they had difficulty mastering.  I’ve seen games affect people’s responsibilities to the real world: my friend neglecting his responsibilities to his school courses.  I’ve also seen the effect the gaming world can have on people’s wallets: watching numerous friends spend money they don’t have on games they don’t necessarily need.  The digital gaming world has evolved immensely since its birth, and is only continuing to grow.

Work Cited

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.

Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (2007). A Game of Ones Own: Towards a New Gendered Poetics of Game Space. In Proceedings, Digital Arts & Culture 2007, Perth, Australia. 1-11.

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.

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.

The Worlds of Guild Wars and Habbo Hotel

The Worlds of Guild Wars and Habbo Hotel

 

    As a MMOG Guild Wars is rather successful, going off of the free-to-play plan where players are only required to pay once and play without a subscription fee. As a virtual world, Habbo Hotel has become a veritable hit, using a slightly different free-to-play method where even the initial game is free. Both games are similar in their money-producing methods, but that is where the similarities end, because Guild Wars is one kind of game while Habbo Hotel strives to provide a totally different experience. Although the connection to earlier, frontrunners in these kind of games such as MUDs is obvious, there has been enough of an evolution between the two type of games, MMOG and virtual world, that the dynamic and social ethos of the two separate worlds has become wholly unique.

    To start off, there is a certain element to virtual worlds that is usually not apparent in the typical MMOG, especially Guild Wars. This element is the use of more realistic avatars that attempt to show off more of the player individually. This creates a connection between the player and avatar that, as Julian Dibbel puts it, is neither real nor make-believe but is "profoundly, compellingly, and emotionally true". In this case, the realization of a more life-like avatar that the player can customize to match stylistic preferences allows a deeper connection during play time. In a game like Guild Wars, all the necessary avatar customization are there, only the whole setting and prototypal look of the avatar can throw off any real-life reflections that are provided with virtual worlds. This ability to suck the player into the character of the avatar is important in how the gameplay of the two games is different, and therefore how the emergent actions of the players create the dynamic world in which these games claim to contain.

    Jennifer L. Mnookin, in her essay on the LambdaMOO phenomenon, emphasized the beauty of emergent laws and social conduct within worlds like Habbo Hotel. She mentions that at times, the legal system can be "whatever the players make of it". Such is the case in Habbo Hotel where players are given the freedom to make their own rooms, whether they be another of the popular "dating" rooms, or just a place for people to chill and relax. Within these rooms the creator is given the power to control and mediate the action, kicking individuals out at any moment and providing their own little rules like "no cursing" or "girls only". Thus, each of these rooms become what Mnookin describe as social clubs, or rather places where the laws are generally irrelevant to the larger framework at hand. Conversely, MMOGs like Guild Wars are based more on a set gameplay with more concrete and universal laws that, usually, cannot be altered or broken without penalty. Again the affordances and constraints between the two different games is clear and can be defined more clearly through Pavel Curtis' description of what MUDs do for the players.

    Guild Wars uses a more standard set of rules to govern its gameplay and part of the reason why MMOGs provide less freedom in this department is the acknowledgment of goals and missions. In order to accommodate this, the game developers cannot allow too much freedom with the rules of play simply because then the "goal" or "end" becomes irrelevant and the game is not a game anymore. Curtis says that MUDs usually ditch the idea of an ultimate goal and therefore people do not play these worlds as games but rather just as social experiences. Such is the case for Habbo Hotel where there is never a clear "win" state that everyone is striving for. Some could say that their ultimate goal is to have a high level pet, or maybe have the biggest room in the hotel. But, these are all user-created goals, much like everything else in Habbo Hotel, and Curtis describes this as a key component to MUDs and virtual worlds. Chip Morningstar and Randall Farmer mention this as an important part of their premise in "Habitat", basically the forward motion of gameplay through the purely created achievements of self-fulfilling goals. That's not to say that Guild Wars is totally rigid in their system. Interestingly, one can observe a real time shifting of the economy, generally in terms of fluctuating prices of items. Like Habbo, Guild Wars has  a distinct system of trading and sell/buy that changes dynamically based on player interaction. This is perhaps one of the few moments where MMOGs can claim to be moving towards what Celia Pearce says as the threatening of total power from the producer and putting part of the media creation within the hands of the players. Such is the case for MUDs and virtual worlds where self-creation is encouraged and in fact necessary.

    It is interesting to note that T.L. Taylor talks about the tools given in MUDs and virtual worlds as ways for people to shape an identity and embodiment. However, Pearce says that for a commitment to the idea of a community, there needs to a some persistence. In Guild Wars, once a character is picked, the player is stuck with that character and not much customization is provided apart from surface level clothes and such. This allows for, as Pearce puts it, a way for the player to maintain the same role throughout the game. Habbo Hotel, in attempting to allow total creative liberties, allows the changing of the avatar to a full extent. Skin color, hair, and animations can all be changed, from one minute to the next.  Players of Habbo Hotel can approach the game in a much different way because they are not required to stay within the rules for even their identity.

    At a cursory glance, the two separate worlds of Guild Wars and Habbo Hotel seem similar. They both provide the platform on which people can socialize and engage in apparent goals and activities. However, a closer looks shows that virtual worlds indeed try to provide a different experience, one less interested in having gameplay, but rather giving free reign to play how you wish. MMOGs at times can seem like they are attempting to portray this concept of user-created worlds, but ultimately they are just allowing social interactions within a preset world.

 

 

Bibliography

 

Curtis, P. "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/MOO_MUD_IRC/curtis_mudding.article

 

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace." http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

 

Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991) "The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat." http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html

 

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf

 

Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf

 

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." International Journal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1. www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf

 

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. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html

Networked Play: Somewhere Between a “Guest” and a “Resident”

I have a confession to make: like many other students in this class, I’m not a fan of online communities, or playing online in general.  Frankly, I find that there are way too many people.  I prefer to play with AI bots, which are less erratic and don’t expect me to communicate with them.  So I embarked on an exploration mission of these online worlds as an experiment.  Honestly speaking, I was more of a “guest” than a “resident,” as Pearce describes the differences between visitors to Disneyland and members of online communities in “Narrative Environments.”  The MMO I looked at was Urban Dead, a text-based zombie game; the virtual world I looked at was Second Life (just because I’m such a maverick).  

I’ll briefly describe Urban Dead (http://www.urbandead.com -- note that it’s free!), since it might be unfamiliar.  It’s a survival-horror text game based, as are many MMOs, on a conflict between two sides: the zombies and the survivors.  Not unlike “Rock Paper Scissors Tag,” players will switch sides easily: survivors can become zombies when they’re killed (unless revived by another survivor), and zombies can be resurrected into survivors again.  Players have a limited number of moves per day -- this is the Kingdom of Loathing model -- and need to find a safe place to finish the day’s turns (they “go to sleep” when out of turns, becoming fair game for the opposing side).  The main emotion is fear, I found -- much of your time is spent barricading structures against attacks, or venturing out to ransack abandoned buildings (which aren’t always empty!) -- and I didn’t think that the text-based nature of the game detracted from the experience.  What is interesting is that the source of this fear is always the players on the other side, since there are no AI-controlled monsters; somehow this made the danger more real, since I knew the zombies were clever and might be teaming up against me.  However, in an interesting inversion of many MMO conventions, the zombies don’t have the ability to communicate with one another (at least, not until they reach a high level).  I’m firmly in the camp of what Bartle, in “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDS,” would call an explorer -- I mainly want to do my own thing, experimenting with the world and its mechanics, and find that other people mainly get in the way -- so this constraint suited me just fine.

In other ways, too, a highly-directed, highly-constrained game like Urban Dead is a useful contrast with more community-based games like Second Life; I’ll mainly describe Second Life (which has been done to death already on this blog) as it contrasts with Urban Dead.  

To begin running down the list: Urban Dead does not allow players to create their own objects (humans can create barricades against zombies, but these barricades are not unique and are not a mode of player expression), while Second Life obviously does.  Urban Dead is therefore not “productive” as Pearce defines it in “Productive Play,” since there is no cultural production, art, or meaningful contribution to the game world (save for the fact that the strength of the game depends on having a lot of players altogether); Second Life, by contrast, is built mainly on the work of its residents.  

The fact that Urban Dead is so highly constrained, in terms of the actions it allows its players to take, also means that an effective legal or political structure, as is present in Second Life and many other virtual worlds -- and described, in the case of LambdaMOO, by Mnookin in “Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO” -- is largely unnecessary.  To some extent, the ideal social behaviors are embedded in the game, in the form of its incentives: for example, it is possible to kill other players on the same side, but players only receive half the usual number of experience points.  Other forms of socially-unacceptable actions are basically impossible.  There is, for instance, no way to “rape” another character or take control of them in any way (I refer, of course, to Dibbel in “A Rape in Cyberspace”), since it is only possible to communicate via plaintext; I suppose that one player can say to another, “I am raping you,” but in the year 2009 I don’t think this would raise too many eyebrows.  Virtual worlds like Second Life, on the other hand, are often playgrounds for inappropriate or antisocial behavior, due to the wide range of behaviors available to the player (and, more generally, the extra control that players have over their environments), and therefore require more strict and comprehensive sets of regulations.

Additionally, the fluidity of the players’ identities in Urban Dead -- how one switches sides between zombies and humans -- most likely means that players have less of an attachment to their characters.  Identifying strongly with one’s character is a common feature of online gaming in general, both in MMOs and virtual worlds, and is one reason why women gamers comprise a comparatively larger share of the online gaming market (as described by Taylor in “Multiple Pleasure: Women and Online Gaming”).  Virtual worlds take this a step further, allowing players to construct and personalize their own environment (as Curtis might say, they are “extensible from within”).  

I find that the constraints in MMOs, in general, lead to a more surface-level interaction with the game: as Farmer and Morningstar might point out, MMOs  don’t “trust” players as much -- it’s not possible to “delve into the program’s mechanics” (“The Lessons of LucasFilm’s Habitat”).  This is due, perhaps, to another major difference between MMOs and virtual worlds: the nature of goals, and the incentives that they provide.  Since MMOs are more goal-oriented, players have a much stronger incentive to tweak the game’s rules in certain, very specific directions (stronger weapons, more experience, etc.).  Conversely, one of the primary features of virtual worlds and MUDs, according to Curtis in “Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities,” is that there are no inherent goals; players therefore, in theory, have no directed incentives in which to cheat the game, and thus can be trusted a little more to create their own objects and environments (which, of course, leads us to the need for social regulations and laws, as discussed above).  

Generally speaking, I think that Urban Dead is a more “game-like” MMO than others that have been discussed on this blog: it is less socially-oriented (though certainly there is a community), more specifically goal-directed, and more constrained.  It is also meant to be played in short sessions, due to the limited number of turns per day (this was a bonus for me, as I worry that I would get addicted to a game like World of Warcraft); speaking as a “guest,” it was relatively easy to get into.  Second Life, on the other hand, is the quintessential  virtual world: more social, with more emphasis on your avatar, potentially very absorbing and immersive, highly expansive, and with a relatively high barrier to entry (at least for me -- I couldn’t really get into it).  In other words, Second Life struck me as less friendly to “guests”; I was constantly reminded that I was a foolish newbie, that I hadn’t constructed anything, that I wasn’t really a “resident” yet.  I might actually stick with Urban Dead for a little while, though, and maybe I’ll start to feel “at home” soon among the barricades and abandoned buildings.

Works Cited

Bartle, R. "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDS."  The Game Design Reader, ed. Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman.MIT Press:Cambridge, MA, 2006. 754-787.

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 Lessons 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, Winter 2006.

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser.

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

Say "MMORPG" Five Times Fast: Social Dynamics in Virtual Worlds & MMOs

I'll admit it: I don’t like MMOGs. I’ve done trials for World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Maple Story, and EVE Online. I’ve also played Second Life, Habbo Hotel, and Kaneva. I find them to be repetitive and time-consuming, and I use that as my means to justify not playing them even though I'm currently addicted to iPhone Sudoku, which probably embodies those traits more than any online game.  Hopefully I'll figure it out one of these days and get the full MMO experience, but as a designer, I'm already excited about the breakthroughs this genre has made in our medium. MMOs and virtual worlds present social dynamics that simply aren't found in other types of games. In the words of T.L. Talyor, "Chatting, connecting with other people, forming relationships and maintaining them are all aspects of the interpersonal pleasure MMORPGs afford and multiuser games have benefited by drawing in this component of online life." Although MMOs and virtual worlds may seem similar at face value, the way players interact with them turns them into completely different online experiences. I'll examine the games from each side that I have the most experience with: City of Heroes and Habbo Hotel.

NCSoft’s City of Heroes is an MMORPG that allows players to live the fantasy of being a superhero. It features an extensive character creation system that allows players to design their costumes and choose their powers before setting out to fight evildoers. The entire game takes place in Paragon City and its outskirts, where players can meet up with each other and form “supergroups” to complete missions together. Missions primarily consist of raiding hideouts, knocking out all the villains inside, and retrieving items such as stolen cash or secret weapons.

In Sulake’s  virtual world called Habbo Hotel, players are not given any sort of arbitrary goal or aspiration. There is no "leveling up." Rather, they chat with other players, play mini games with them, and visit their virtual rooms in the hotel. Habbo is free-to-play, but players who want to add furniture or decorations to their rooms will be subjected to microtransactions. The game compulsions take a backseat to social networking and personalization akin to The Sims. There's no fighting or killing at all.

Players of both types of games may play them as a means to "escape" reality and relax, but virtual worlds offer an escape that resembles reality in many ways. Sure, players can fly in Second Life, but they can also participate anonymously in many of the same social activities they would in real life. Mnookin relates virtual worlds to "the utopian possibility, the notion of a virgin place in which we can wash off the mistakes of the past and begin anew...there have been those who have believed in the possibility of transforming humanity by moving to a new space, an untouched place." (Mnookin) People in virtual worlds are judged based on their clothing and what they have in their rooms. Without any other preconditions to be judged upon, it's an environment where people can socialize in ways that maybe they want to in real life, but can't for one reason or another.

It can be difficult to understand how a simulation of everyday social activities can be desirable for players in virtual worlds. Pearce says "we need only look at the history of hobby culture in the United States and elsewhere to see that for many, productive leisure is a welcome escape from the regimen of being productive at someone else’s behest." (Pearce) Although some of the in-game interactions may be similar to real life, their motives can be driven by self interest. This is a stark contrast to the players of MMOs. In another article, Pearce notes that in MMORPGs "players are not simply spectators, but rather take the roles of elves and orcs fully engaged with the narrative and conflicts of the game." (Pearce)  In City of Heroes, players create heroes to represent themselves while fighting crime, but the players themselves don't do any such thing in real life. Personalization and communication with other players  are simply means to complete the game's predefined narrative.

Virtual worlds and MMOs are designed with this difference in mind. "For the designer of an ordinary game or simulation, human diversity is not a major problem, since he or she gets to establish the goals and motivations on the participants' behalf...[a virtual world] provided a broad palette of possible activities from which the players could choose, driven by their own internal inclinations." (Farmer) Beyond gameplay design, the level design between the two differs significantly as well. MMOs feature hub cities or hangouts where players can always find other players to talk to or group up for a mission. Outside of the hubs are large worlds where they can explore for long periods of time without even encountering another player. Virtual worlds are made up almost exclusively of these hub cities - any area that doesn't have players in it is generally considered a failure.

Players in MMOs are working towards reaching the maximum level, completing every dungeon, and making other players envious of their accomplishments. To die in an MMO is to lose experience, money, pride, and valuable time. Player versus Player (PvP) combat is intense because of the stakes. When engaged in battle, players don't want to talk to each other because it's a serious brawl. Virtual worlds could not be any different. "The permissions systems...generally prevent any player from having any kind of permanent effect on any other player...players can annoy each other, but not in any long-lasting manner." (Curtis) Players cannot truly fight each other, and the only damage they can receive is emotional.

This presents another issue altogether. Emotional damage is generally a bigger problem in virtual worlds than MMOs because players are much more invested in their characters and personas. There are no heavy game mechanics or objectives to distract them from regular interaction with other players. Emotional damage includes name-calling and griefing on one side, but it also includes serious problems like threats and sexual violence. Julian Dibbell recalls an incident where a player wrote a script for a MUD that allowed him to control the speech of other players. He used to it to cause the other players to perform outrageous sexual acts. Most significant is that the players affected by the incident  experienced real emotional trauma, even though no physical altercation had occurred.

Players are more likely to cause emotional damage in virtual worlds as well. In an MMO, any inappropriate conduct by a user could be grounds for terminating an account - resulting in a loss of progress in the game. A player would have to level up all over again, redo all their missions, and find all new items. In many virtual worlds, though, players can change their identities with ease. Taylor quotes one designer saying "Although we wanted people to experiment with their self-image, we knew that making it very easy to change allows people to avoid social responsibility." (Taylor) In other words, the presence of this problem in virtual worlds does not mean that they have a perverted audience, but rather that it's easier for players to get away with despicable behavior because they can simply change their identities.

City of Heroes could be viewed as a virtual world with a game tacked onto it, or Habbo could be viewed as a stripped-down MMO. It doesn't matter because they offer very different experiences because of player behavior. Some MMOs have the technical capacity to do everything that a successful virtual world can in terms of player interaction, but the players aren't as interested in those features. Players of virtual worlds may not enjoy the best MMOs for the same reason.

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Works Cited

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace." http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

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. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html

Curtis, P. "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/MOO_MUD_IRC/curtis_mudding.article

Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991) "The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat." http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html

Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming," Convergence, Vol. 9, No.1, 21-46, Spring 2003. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/CourseReadings/TaylorMultiplePleasures.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." International Journal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1. www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf

The Social Life of Networked Play: Second Life and Myst Online

Virtual worlds, especially those of the 1990s, have historically been classified as either social worlds or adventure/game worlds (see Reid 1999; Watson 2008: 1), the former focusing on space, creativity, socialization and emergent behaviour while the latter has the character of a competitive, multiplayer video game with structured goals and stats.  The same distinction applies to modern graphical VWs, with World of Warcraft and EVE Online being classified as MMOGs while Second Life and There.com are counted among the social virtual worlds (i.e. don’t call them games, at least not where any of their users can hear you, or you’ll get a lecture).

But obviously there’s a significant amount of crossover between the genres, with social worlds incorporating structured gameplay, while game worlds provide spaces for social interaction.  I’ve chosen to compare Second Life (SL), which I classify as social world, and Myst Online: Uru Live (MOUL) (the now-defunct 2007-08 iteration), which was technically a game but in reality inhabited a unique and unprecedented hybrid game/social space not before seen in MMOGs.  This is because although MOUL was a game, it was a puzzle and exploration game, free of grinding and stat-building.  New content was released every couple of months, and in the interim, players who had already solved all the new puzzles would still log in regularly to hang out, play mini-games, or attend cultural events.  For example, someone actually put together a “Cavern Choir” with singing avatars performing in front of a live audience – proof that “productive play” (Pearce 2006) can emerge out of MMOGs and not just in social worlds.

Taylor (2003: 25) and Curtis (N.d.) both argue that the affordances offered by a virtual world structure that world’s society, while those affordances are themselves determined by hard-coded design choices.  Such choices may be intentional as expressions of a particular design philosophy, or they may be inadvertently limiting or hegemonic constraints that, due to the structure of VW design and production, are difficult to fix (Taylor 2003: 26-27).  It’s clear that the respective designers of SL and MOUL had different goals in mind for the character of their world and the sort of society it created.  Consider the differences between the avatar creation process in the two worlds:

In SL, the user has a great deal of control over the avatar’s appearance.  He/she chooses a gender, which provides a basic shape, and then adjusts some 30 different sliders to customize that shape into just about any configuration imaginable (at least for a realistic body).  Textures can then be overlayed on that shape to give it visual definition.  Users can also purchase or create shapes, skins and clothes in theoretically infinite combinations, giving them near complete control over their virtual embodiment in their avatars.  They don’t even need to choose a gender or a humanoid shape (I’ve seen users embodied as featureless, floating geometric shapes).  In other words, SL hearkens back to the days of social MUDs where embodiment was fully customizable through description and numerous alternate gender choices like “spivak” were available (Curtis N.d.).

By contrast, MOUL offered players limited control over their avatars.  Players were offered the choice of basic adult male and female shapes, and given fifteen or so sliders to modify appearance and textures, with no other options for customization of basic form.  A wardrobe of standard clothing was offered, and while there were dozens of choices, there was nowhere near the endless variety in attire offered by SL.  As they advanced through the game, players did not design or purchase new articles of clothing, but rather found them – certain specific items that were offered as rewards for completing puzzles.

Then there’s building, and customizing the world itself.  SL takes after LambdaMOO in that players are encouraged to create and program their own environments and their own objects (Curtis N.d.; in fact, every SL user has by default the “programming privileges” that in LambdaMOO were bestowed by wizards only on request to those players deemed experienced enough with the basics).  MOUL, like most MMOGs, offered a themed, professionally designed, static world with which players could interact, but which they could not modify or expand in any significant way.  The visual difference between the two worlds is striking.  MOUL was a beautiful, self-contained, living, lovingly designed, centrally planned and thematically consistent world adored by its inhabitants, while SL is a stark, often empty, occasionally attractive world of odd angles and jarring thematic juxtapositions that calls to mind the unplanned, sprawling suburban wasteland.  William Gibson has some harsh words about SL:

It's deserted. It seems like functionally it has to be deserted. If it's not deserted it crashes. So there's all this empty, empty architecture. There's whole cities where there's only one other person and they don't even want to get close to you. (Nissley 2007)

I’d argue, then, that MOUL is Disneyland while SL is the city (Pearce REFERENCE; I recall that the Disneyland/city distinction was also echoed by a member of the CCP design team at the September meeting of IGDA Atlanta, where it was cast in terms of theme park vs. sandbox).  SL seems like it should be empowering because it gives the individual user so much creative agency, but it might really be precisely the alienating suburban space that Disneyland was conceived to resist (Pearce 2007: 204).  MOUL provides the “human-scale pedestrian fantasy of Disneyland, a respite from the modern, homogenous, cookie-cutter reality of suburban sprawl” (Pearce 2007: 204).  And while Disneyland’s pedestrian fantasy was a kind of nostalgia for a simpler time, MOUL is also very much about nostalgia – for serene and surreal worlds, free exploration, and (more specifically) for the themes and stories that came out of the first four Myst games that preceded it.

It’s worth saying a few words about governance and conflict resolution.  Both SL and MOUL have a ToS that defines guidelines for basic human decency, and all users are expected to adhere to said ToS.  But in my experience, harassment and griefing are much more common in SL.  I suspect that social worlds generally have more conflict than game worlds, because game worlds provide a structural outlet for conflict: griefers in Ultima Online were more often petty newbie-killers rather than creepy perverts.  Nevertheless, MOUL seemed to have an unusually low level of griefing, perhaps because MOUL players, like the users of PernMUSH, are “single-minded” (Curtis N.d.) and united in a common interest.  As one friend puts it, “From the start, Myst just seemed to be covered in this magic spray that kept all the idiots away.”

Perhaps I simply wasn’t aware enough of the hot-button issues, but it almost seemed to me like governance was a non-issue in MOUL.  By contrast, SL has all manner of contentious issues and the administrators tend to take a fairly laissez-faire attitude, establishing a few ground rules and otherwise allowing users to run amok.  SL has its share of formalists and resistors (Mnookin 1996).  For example, there are formalists who would like to see rules that would stop the spread of ad farms (miles-long strips of great big ugly billboards) in the narrow spaces between larger properties, or the use of automated bots to buy up cheap land so that nobody else can ever get a “good deal” on real estate.  Anarchists and libertarians, on the other hand, don’t think that this kind of exploitation of structural factors in the world should be actively prevented.  They instead advocate local and community-level solutions.  And local solutions do exist – I talked to one designer and landowner who was part of her region’s virtual equivalent of a home-owner’s association.  Collectively, they pooled their resources and bought up most of the tiny ad-farm parcels surrounding their properties.

When it comes down to it, MOUL was as much a social world as it was a game.  The fact that it bears little resemblance to more conventional social worlds like SL, however, suggests that it was a new kind of hybrid social/game space – something I hope we’ll see more of in years to come.

REFERENCES

Curtis, P. "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/MOO_MUD_IRC/curtis_mudding.article

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace." http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

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. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html

Nissley, Tom. 2007. “On Second Life and In Second Life: William Gibson Q&A.”

Omnivoracious’ Amazon Blog (Weblog). Retrieved 29 April 2008.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKKANW2CY4P1GE

Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf

Reid, Elizabeth. 1999. “Hierarchy and power: Social control in cyberspace.” In Communities in Cyberspace, ed. Mark A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge.

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." International Journal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1. www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf

Watson, Nic. 2008. “Our Second Lives: Social Reality and Fantasy in an Online Virtual World.”  http://sites.google.com/site/hleakey/Home/nwatson_secondlives_unabridged.pdf