A7EdwardsWisneskyLilly

A7EdwardsWisneskyLilly

To Do

• please work as a group (3-5 members) and submit one answer as a group (clearly identifying the members of your group)
• Be prepared to give a 5-10 minute presentation about your project in class so the other students and the instructors are aware of your plans

Task

Please post in the Wiki:

• the project chosen and your description of it
• initial objectives
• why is the project of interest to you?
• how do you plan to approach the research?
• what do you expect to find out?
• what do you consider the major challenges?
• references identified
• questions you might have

Group response

1. Members of the Group

Pierce Edwards, Jacob Wisnesky, Joe Lilly, Colin Rieger, Janusz Strzepek

2. Project Description

Our project is to look into the social systems and communities that occur in Massively Multiplayer Online games. Having taken some inspiration from Mark Dubin's presentation on Second Life, we intend on focusing on the communities that form in these online game spaces. Initial objectives may include, but are not limited to, looking at the kind of people that play these games, how communities form between players and how they evolve, the goals of these communities, relationships between players in communities, relationships between different communities, and even relationships between the communities of different games. Some emphasis will be placed on what brings these users together, and how they benefit from their social experience. Of course, not all experiences are positive, and we also intend on examining negative aspects of these communities as well. (For example, people raiding a funeral for someone who died in real life in World of Warcraft.)

This project is interesting to all of us because it takes a look at an enjoyable recreational activity and examines the underlying social framework that is often overlooked. It investigates the nature of these human connections that occur without face to face communication all within the context of extraordinary worlds. Furthermore, all three of us have had at least some positive experience in these MMO games, and researching something we enjoy will make the project all the more interesting and fun for us.

The research methods used will most likely evolve as the research proceeds. However, this topic is interesting enough that there is actually quite a wealth of statistical and psychological information about MMO players and communities that can be obtained from online sources such as the daedalus project. As with any social system, the views of the participants themselves are also important, and so their opinions will be taken into account as well. Collections of player stories, blog posts of individual players and guilds, and online forums all provide user input and allow users to speak for themselves. And finally, perennial news articles in gamer magazines and websites about MMOs should provide additional source material.

If we knew exactly what we'd find out, we probably wouldn't be researching this, would we? However, if we must speculate, we expect that many different motivations and different social and clique groups will come to together to form communities in these game spaces. The social strengths of each group will most likely vary with community purpose and possibly game environment.

The biggest challenge we will face will most likely be putting all the information together into a coherent picture. Sorting through all the information available to find truly insightful pieces of data may be tricky. Some smaller, lesser known communities may not have a lot of information available. Blogs and other resources might not be well indexed and building a coherent picture of a particular game's communities could prove difficult.

Some questions we may develop as time goes on include how one could use all this research to better improve existing MMO products, online communities, and possibly turn them into bigger revenue generators for both current and upcoming companies.

3. Empty Field

Some of the better resources identified:

• Daedalus Project
• Terra Nova