Bridging new possiblities: Multi-platform
April 21, 2008 at 3:30 am | In MMORPG Research, Multiple Platform Research | Leave a CommentComputer Mediated Communication is reaching new heights in the coming days as the need to stay in touch through the internet is increasingly popular among urban folks as well as those in the rural areas. But more so interestingly is the connectivity between the different internet spaces and the dynamics that are currently in play. Social Networking, MMORPG, Instant Messaging and many others used to exist as a stand alone space that allows users to interact differently and even different levels of disembodiments over the internet. Blizzard Entertainment, the producers of the world’s most played MMORPG, World of Warcraft has more than 10 million subscribers and growing each day. But the move to introduce a social networking site for World of Warcraft users is seeing the giant game producer moving in to a different avenue of internet space that could see domination but yet bridging the possiblities of a standardized identity over different internet spaces.
http://www.warcraftsocial.com/
The possiblities of bridging the different internet spaces could in the future lead to the concept of complete virtual homogenization whereby one single identity is lived out throughout the internet. A future that might not be that far away.
Facebook app building existing mmo community
April 10, 2008 at 3:00 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentI started to look into the logistics around building facebook apps and came up with these handy resources
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/07/03/tips-for-building-your-facebook-app-from-the-maker-of-quizzes/
http://developers.facebook.com/
http://docs.widgetbox.com/developers/app-accelerator/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_stanford_learned_building_facebook_apps.php
http://www.stevetrefethen.com/blog/FacebookNETStarterKitUpdate.aspx
Also did a search of some mmo related apps already out there the most comprehensive and popular seems to be
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2359644980&b&ref=pd
While I also found http://www.warcraftsocial.com/ to be in the same vain.
Facebook and Microsoft: Partnership that affects Virtual Identity?
April 9, 2008 at 2:37 am | In Multiple Platform Research | Leave a CommentA few hundred million is a steal for your identity, they’ve got plenty of money.
Microsoft and Facebook are in partnership, but what’s at stake? Three things:
1) Facebook knows who you are: your name, your gender, where you live, your martial and political status, sexual preference, age, where you work, the list goes on. The funny thing is, you’ve voluntarily given that information up.
2) The Graph: They also know who you connect to, who you talk to, and what you say to them (you don’t own those private message ya know).
3) Gestures: Sure, up to one third of all profile information is bogus, but what about those unsaid gestures: What people do is more important than what they say. What apps you use, how frequent, what and who you click on.
Great, but why does it matter? Because the new partner likely will have access to this very precious data.
[We once rejected Microsoft’s Passport identity campaign, but we’ve potentially and unknowingly just handed it over]
Are they mining this information? With Facebook being a company of about 700 folks, it’s hard to imagine that they will. Their new advertising partner, (experienced pros) have the tools, process, and sophistication to do this.
Does Microsoft have access to all this information in day two after the deal? Not likely. But will they? Here’s a few reasons why it makes sense: Advertisers are all about margins and accuracy, the more accurate the ad, the less waste and more efficient the spend is. If Microsoft can target these ads right down to Jane in Santa Clara who is conservative and likely to buy X gidget then it could work.
How else can the data be used? For Marketers there’s a bunch of clever things they can do, if their community is in Facebook, why would you ever have them sign up for a registration form again? Just friend them or create an event page. What if you had the ability to export your network contact list via CSV?
Google still relevant?
What about Google? The killer in online advertising and search. There are millions of people using Google, and yet the Facebook audience is much smaller, and North America focused (for now). What matters is growth curves, it’s taking off near vertically.
[Google sells ads based on keywords, FaceSoft can now sell ads on something far more accurate: people]
What’s the next generation of online advertising look like?
What will these ads look like? At first, it will be the traditional forms we know, the banners, skyscrapers. Then they’ll move closer to the newspage, then the sponsored groups. The biggest untapped opportunity? Microsoft can bring the big name advertisers to the geeky kid in the garage who created that popular food throwing app. Geeky kids lack the sophistication to manage a big name advertising relationship or negotiation, but MS can.
[Don’t be surprised if the popular Food Fight App in Facebook starts to include Chicken McNuggets, Pepsi’s latest drink, and ‘the Big Meaty’ pizza from Domino]
Upside to users
Ads could become very targeted, very relational, and very social, the savvy brands will let go of the ads, and let the control move to the users. We’ll embrace them.
The takeaway
While the internet has rejected ‘forced’ identity systems from big brands, we willingfully (and often unknowingly) hand over incredibly detailed information about our precious identity. We’ve never seen an advertising system as potentially as sophisticated as this one. There’s many opportunities for the web to become more targeted, more accurate, and more relevant, but with that comes the risk of giving up some control.
Harvard’s Berkman center fellow Doc Searls has responded to this post, and gives a very user-focused perspective. He points out that Facebook’s users are not it’s customers, and that we should review the 7 rules of identity. Great to be all user-focused, there’s got to be way where all parties can work and benefit. Movements happen at the consumer level and most are sheep.
Two thoughts.
First, Microsoft had a very instructive failure with Passport, and the “Hailstorm” effort of which it was a part. One guy leading that instruction is Kim Cameron, primary author of the Seven Laws of Identity and creator of the Identity Metasystem concept (among other things), all which we made a cover story in the September 2005 issue of Linux Journal. To the best of my knowledge, that was the first time a Microsoft effort made the cover of the magazine — and it deserved to.
In brief, the Seven Laws are:
- User Control and Consent
- Minimal Disclosure for a Constrained Use
- Justifiable Parties
- Directed Identity
- Pluralism of operators and technologies
- Human integration
- Consistent experience across contexts
Second, many independent developers at companies and organizations large and small (including many individuals their own) have joined together (guided to a significant degree by Kim and his Laws) as in informal Identity Gang (now a working group of Identity Commons) with the shared purpose of empowering individuals to control their own identity-related information in the networked world. “User-centric identity” is still new, and we’re all still in the early stages of Whatever This Will Be; but already much technical progress has been made, most of it in the form of open source development.
excerpts from….
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/category/identity/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1002828
A Physical Body And A Virtual Body
April 9, 2008 at 2:18 am | In Multiple Platform Research | Leave a CommentTo exist in the real world, one has a physical body in which is representative of a presence of a being. One which others identify as the same or as different from one of themselves. An identity attached to that physical body in then forms personalities, individuality frame of mind and even life values. Similarly as we focus in on the development of the internet as a medium, it has given us authoritative methods in which we are able to carve a dimensional “space”. Again to exist in this virtual “space” one has a virtual body and a virtual identity to keep in tact a presence over the internet. The disembodiment of a real self in to a virtual self has aroused public interest for a period of time and even more so as virtual “spaces” over the internet are growing. Yet the journey of defining the virtual entity has driven many researchers to look in to different angles and cross disciplines, it is for certain that internet has redefined the way we perceive ourselves and others.
Instant Identity?
April 9, 2008 at 1:26 am | In Multiple Platform Research | Leave a CommentThe development of Computer Mediated Communication or C.M.C has pushed the internet realm to the different possibilities of communicating with one another, breaking the barrier of distance, racial and even cultural difference. Communication tools such as MiRC, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype and many more are taking communication from instant to real time space. The evolving cocoon of C.M.C is creating a space in the cyber realm that allows not only communication to take place but also a safe environment both emotionally and the physical body as well. However having said that, in this created space, identities of who we are are also ever-changing due to this occurrence, the dynamics of relationships, the way we communicate, the persona we attach and many more.
Conversations in Virtual Worlds
April 9, 2008 at 12:22 am | In Multiple Platform Research | Leave a Comment10 Things About Conversation in Virtual Worlds…
Although massively multiplayer virtual worlds have made great strides in achieving visual realism (i.e., through detailed 3D models, lighting and physics simulation, motion capture, etc.), they are much less sophisticated in terms of interactional realism, or the simulation of face-to-face interaction. Developers of MMOs are starting to grapple with fundamental questions of how ordinary conversation works as a system and how it should be modeled.


As a player of MMORPGs and virtual worlds, I routinely experience a state of immersion and connection when interacting with other players. However, there are many occasions on which this immersion is broken when the system seems to do the wrong thing. There is some slippage or awkwardness in the interaction that draws attention to the limitations of the system and reminds me that I’m not in a real-life conversation. The following are 10 features of avatar interaction systems that reduce interactional realism, plus 10 tips for increasing it.
Avatars…
1. Stand and do nothing
2. Don’t speak in real time
3. Use telepathy
4. Look the wrong way
5. Stare at each other
6. Hide the player’s gaze
7. Lack free gesticulation
8. Gesture for fixed durations
9. Don’t tightly coordinate gestures and talk
10. Lack usable facial expressions
Avatars could…
1. Display embodied actions
2. Speak in real time
3. Give IM busy signals
4. Look at the speaker
5. Look away when speaking
6. Reveal player’s gaze
7. Gesticulate freely
8. Hold gestures
9. Tightly coordinate gestures and talk
10. Have visible facial expressions
Each of these points are elaborated below.
Avatars…
1. Stand and do nothing: Many ordinary activities–looking through a bag, consulting a map, reading a book, trading items, talking with a friend remotely–are hidden from the public eye. This makes avatars appear lifeless even when the player is quite active. It also makes it difficult for players to manage these private activities with joint activities (e.g., looking through a bag and leaving the scene together with another player).
2. Don’t speak in real time: Text-chat systems in virtual worlds, with the exception of There, hide the composition of a turn from the public eye. As a result, players cannot predictably achieve one-speaker-at-a-time, one-topic-at-a-time, or tight coordination (minimal gap and overlap between turns).
3. Use telepathy: Players can chat with anyone in the world at anytime. At times a player can be bombarded with multiple messages at the same time (“tell hell”). There’s no way for a remote “caller” to know it a recipient is already engaged in a conversation(s).
4. Look the wrong way: Some interaction systems don’t enable avatars to turn their heads semi-independently of their shoulders. Consequently avatars cannot be made to use eye contact in a multiparty conversation in a natural way.
5. Stare at each other: In the better eye gaze systems (e.g., EverQuest II), avatars tend to make eye contact at the right times, but they also tend to stare at each other. (In real life, people stare at each other in order to either threaten or flirt.)
6. Hide the player’s gaze: Most avatar systems enable the player to decouple her view from the avatar’s. The players can zoom out and pan 360-degrees. While this helps mitigate problems with the lack of peripheral vision, it also means that you never know what another player can see or where she is looking. This can make the coordination of gestures difficult.
7. Lack free gesticulation: All avatar systems I’ve seen in games implement gesture by giving players a list (short or long) of pre-defined gestures from which to choose. As a result, some forms of gesture are not possible, such as, those that are used to describe objects by simulating their shape, spatial relationships, and motion (“iconics”). Also, long lists of gestures are hard for players to learn.
8. Gesture for fixed durations: All avatar systems I’ve seen in games limit the duration of the pre-defined gestures to a fixed period. This makes it difficult for players to coordinate gestures with other players. They cannot “hold” a gesture until they can see that the recipient has seen it and has understood.
9. Don’t tightly coordinate gestures and talk: In current avatar gesture systems, most gestures and text chat must be done as separate turns. As a result, gestures cannot be precisely timed to coincide with particular keywords in the chat. While this is not a problem for gestures that can perform an action on their own (“emblems” such as waves, nods, and shrugs), it makes gestures that are dependent on talk for their meaning difficult to perform. These include gestures used for referring or pointing (“deitics”), emphasizing (“beats”), and describing (“iconics”).
10. Lack usable facial expressions: Some avatar systems implement no facial expression at all. Others offer a wide array of facial animations; however, these are often too difficult to see because players tend to zoom out their view. Yet zooming out itself is critical since it is the only way to really know what your avatar is doing.
Interactional realism in current MMOs could be increased by having avatars…
1. Display embodied actions: player opens bag, avatar looks through a bag; player opens map, avatar studies a map…
2. Speak in real time: post chat on a word-by-word or character-by-character basis (There is the model)
3. Give IM busy signals: when player is in a conversation, private messages from new speakers receive an automatic “busy” message
4. Look at the speaker: player clicks on other avatar to establish eye contact (as in Star Wars Galaxies or EverQuest II)
5. Look away when speaking: when typing, avatar looks at recipient(s) only intermittently
6. Reveal player’s gaze: “not looking” indicator appears when player’s view is too divergent from avatar’s
7. Gesticulate freely: real-time motion capture using a camera enables players to use their own bodies to gesticulate freely
8. Hold gestures: player can ‘hold’ a pre-defined gesture by holding down the enter-key upon executing the gesture (user-controlled duration)
9. Tightly coordinate gestures and talk: player can tie a gesture to a particular word in the chat
10. Have visible facial expressions: a close-up view of an avatar’s face appears when selected
For more on the organization of talk, gesture, eye gaze, and facial expression in real-life face-to-face interaction, see the following scholars: Paul Ekman, Charles Goodwin, Gail Jefferson, Adam Kendon, David McNeill, Harvey Sacks, and Emanuel Schegloff.
Author: Bob Moore, Nic Ducheneaut & Eric Nickell. “10 Things About Conversation in Virtual Worlds that Remind Me that I’m NOT in the Real World: Improving Interactional Realism in Massively Multiplayer Persistent Worlds.” Austin Game Conference, Austin, TX, October 28, 2005.
Rising Dilemmas in MMORPG
April 8, 2008 at 11:58 pm | In MMORPG Research | Leave a CommentSocial dilemmas in multiplayer games
Multiplayer gaming, like most human interaction, involves situations or dynamics that seem both unintended and unwanted by the involved parties. While conflict is endemic to the enjoyment of most games (being intended) certain types of conflicts are detrimental to that very same enjoyment.
To be more precise about this distinction we must introduce two perspectives that are unfortunately all too often confused: We must distinguish between the game as rule system and the gaming situation(see also Hughes 1999).
In the former case we approach any game formally, directing our attention towards the reward structures embedded in the game rules. By doing so we are considering the game as an abstract system bracketing for a moment the actual experiences of concrete players. This analytical activity corresponds roughly to classifying novels by genre or to attempt to tease out the intended (or preferred) reading of a text. Under certain conditions such an approach can be extraordinarily problematic (see also Taylor Forthcoming), while in others it is merely a way to be analytical about the structure of the artefacts being studied [2].
When focusing on the gaming situation, on the other hand, we are specifically acknowledging that this corresponds only loosely to the formal properties of a game. The experience of playing a game cannot be determined (at least not fully) by an examination of the game rules, no matter how rigorous. It is determined in part by the culture surrounding the game, the concrete gaming context and the experience and personality of the player. At the extreme end of the spectrum a game may of course also be entirely “subverted” as players exploit a game structure for playing entirely different games or for artistic expression. When, for instance, Anne-Marie Schleiner worked within Counter-Strike to achieve the provocatively peaceful phenomenon known as Velvet Strike[3] she was using the game system in ways afforded but not intended by the game designers. These different levels of analysis are exactly that – each is appropriate to the study of certain game-related phenomena but neither can answer every relevant question we may have. It is the responsibility of the game researcher instead to be clear about his or her level of analysis and to be acutely aware of which game elements are obscured by the choice of perspective.
Following this advice, we can note that whereas the game rules (as stated, for instance, in a Chess rulebook or in the code of Pong) set the scene for conflict, to actually engage in an enjoyable gaming situation the players must collaborate on upholding a large number of implicit rules. Pong (Atari, 1972) players, for instance, must agree (tacitly at least) not to push each other physically, to share the expense of playing the game etc.(Sniderman 1999). In other words: Pong as rule system is a non-collaborative activity while the gaming situation surrounding Pong rests upon mutual coordination and the goodwill of the players. If we don’t normally consider it in this way it is merely because coordination and mutual trust is so relatively easy to achieve in physical settings like arcades.
Trust formation in darkened arcades is largely out of the game designer’s hands. For online games requiring players to form teams and find opponents, however, this is decidedly not the case. In fact, since the matching of players preceding the actual clashes in online games largely takes place within structures fashioned by the game developers (or their subcontractors or partners) we can consider these structures part of the game rules. Or we can at least acknowledge that they fall squarely under the responsibility of the developers.
In the following I will show that three conflict-heavy aspects of multiplayer gaming (cheating, grief play, and responsible participation) may be understood as social dilemmas.
Cheating as a social dilemma
Many online gamers go to great length to tip the scales in their favour. As one design manual dryly puts it: “It may seem weird that a significant portion of the player base is willing to do anything to win, but that’s the reality of the situation” (Mulligan and Patrovsky 2003). When such activities take place outside the original game rules or outside the generally accepted implicit rules of a game, it would fall under most dictionary definitions of cheating. The cheater herself, of course, might not always share our opinion. Or she might consider herself a cheater while not agreeing that such behaviour is morally reproachable. She is, she might argue, merely playing a different game than the rest. No matter what she thinks, however, cheating is often reported as a problem by players and developers..
Accounts of cheating in games almost always invoke the eloquent example of Blizzard’s Diablo (Blizzard Entertainment, 1996), among the first truly successful commercial online games. It is generally acknowledged that the gaming experience was seriously affected by the amount of cheating apparent among many participants. In a somewhat informal survey conducted by the gamer magazine Games Domain (Greenhill 1997), 35% of the Diablo-playing respondents confessed to having cheated in the game (n=594). More interesting, however, were the answers to the question of whether a hypothetical cheat and hack free gaming environment would have increased or decreased the game’s longevity and playability. Here, 89% of the professed cheaters stated that they would have preferred not being able to cheat. This response distribution clearly tells of a social dilemma. Arguably, the players queried are tempted to cheat but understanding that this temptation applies to other players as well, would prefer that no-one (including themselves) have full autonomy.
More formally, each individual realizes that mutual honesty is the most rewarding strategy one can hope for (in an ideal world, of course, each individual would be the only one cheating) and express their wish for structural circumstances that support this choice of strategy. The existence of cheaters sparking a desire for structural changes can be witnessed on many game forums. In a thread on an Age of Kings (AoK) discussion board[4], for instance, a resurgence of cheating inspired a victim to urgently contact the game developers to have them put a stop to the undesired activities through technical means. Many sympathised. One player supported the original poster by declaring that “it’s scum like them that make the Zone [where AoK players go for online play] a miserable place to be. Hacks can be used to give yourself inordinate ratings… This makes me feel like hitting someone.” Apart from the request for a technical fix, two other solutions were suggested. One was to write down the names of cheaters to avoid facing them again and to warn others of their low moral fibre. The other was to play people who are clan members or only play against friends. In other words: Do not interact with strangers unless they have institutional backing (a third party vouches for them).
We must acknowledge, however, that cheating is anything but an unambiguous term. First of all cheating comes in different forms. The easiest form to categorize is cheating that works on the code level. When a code-savvy player modifies a client application against the explicit rules of an end-user-licence-agreement or other document his behaviour is somewhat comparable to a chess player moving his pieces into a more favourable position while the opponent is distracted. This is a violation of the original game rules.
Other forms of in-game activities invite more discussion as to their classification. A player may discover an aspect of the game which, although unplanned for by the developers, grants him an advantage. If non-destructive to the gameplay experience such features are often considered signs of sophisticated game design in single-player games. In multiplayer games, however, such creativity is sometimes labelled “exploits” and often considered unfortunate if not downright punishable[5]. An exploit then is an activity aimed at intentionally achieving an advantage afforded but not intended by the game design. Notably, though, the player is working within the framework of the game code and arguably cannot always determine if a certain phenomenon is intended or not. This ambiguity is obvious from many virtual world discussion boards as well as from official administrator statements. For instance, the official Star Wars Galaxies Knowledge Base states:
“A Good General rule of thumb is: If you are doing something that gives you an uneven advantage over a MOB a player or the game system. You are most likely exploiting.
Knowingly exploiting is a serious offence and can cause disciplinary action to be taken against your account up to and including banning.” (Sony 2004)
Clearly, this leaves room for interpretation. Arguably, a sensible combat tactic is to attempt to gain any and all advantage over MOBs or other players (and it is hard to imagine an ‘even’ advantage). And the word “knowingly” obviously leaves even more room for discussion[6]. Since exploits are game mechanics unintended by the designers the verdict of “exploitation” requires an impressive act of two-way mind-reading. The player must somehow guess what the designers indented and the administrators must decide if the player acted “knowingly”.
While less than clear-cut which actions should be categorized as cheating we can understand the heart of the problem. Cheaters, by unbalancing the game, may ruin games based on competition (but not for players who do not engage in competition, of course). Thus, the collective good in question is the even battlefield and the social dilemma builds on the temptation to cheat. We should note however, that cheating is often not a “pure” social dilemma, since the case where “everybody does it” might just lead to an alternative game (i.e. one that is still even). Often though, it will destroy much of the game’s appeal, particularly if the game relies on carefully balanced units and game terrains such as many real-time-strategy games.
Grief play as a social dilemma
In the physical world some types of behaviour are considered deviant and destructive to a community. Smoking in meeting rooms would often fall into this category, as would damaging the environment, be it by littering in city streets or dumping chemical waste on playgrounds. Such behaviour may not always be technically illegal but would nevertheless often lead to sanctions by other community members. Of course, such sanctions are not necessarily just by any external ethical standard. For instance a community might react repressively towards someone expressing an opinion which runs contrary to some conventional wisdom (e.g. Galileo advocating a heliocentric cosmology in a highly religious environment). Thus, we should not accept any community verdict as inherently “good”, but neither should we ignore that some types of behaviour can be destructive to a community or a collective resource.
Deviant behaviour in multi-player games is often referred to as “grief play” (Foo and Koivisto 2004; Foo 2004). Definitions vary, but usually grief play refers to behaviour which is intentionally harmful to others without resulting in direct personal gain for the “griefer” or which seriously (and with intent) violates an implicit community rule. Thus, killing an armed player character in combat is not usually considered grief play (since the killer is working within the game to maximize his score) whereas the case of a high-level warrior preying on inexperienced newbies would qualify (as this usually does not increase the high-level character’s score). An example of an implicit rule violation is the phenomenon known as kill-stealing. Here, a player will make others expose themselves to danger and hardship by taking on a monster (for instance) and then – just before the monster perishes – jump into the fray and “steal the kill” by dealing the final blow thus getting experience points or other rewards. This example highlights a long-standing ambiguity of MMORPGs. For while the player group whose efforts were taken advantage of may well feel cheated, the kill stealer could make the case that his behaviour was perfectly consistent with his character’s background and motives. Thus, he could argue that playing an explicitly evil thief, he (the player) cannot be blamed for acting immorally in the game world. Such arguments reveal a conflict between player attitudes and usually result in agreements (or compromises) that the player character can or should be punished, as opposed to the player.
Grief play exists in other genres as well. Many shooters, for instance, have been plagued by team killers, players who do not play the “official” game but rather see it as their goal to eliminate their team mates. For players looking for a competitive game based on skill, such behaviour is clearly destructive. However, since the game admin is typically involved in the game himself, team killers are usually given short shrift. Also, team killing in shooters is far more manageable on the code level than many types of MMORPG grief play, and shooter players can choose game settings that suit them the best (for instance they can disable the possibility of shooting one’s allies)[7].
Grief play can be seen as non-cooperative behaviour. The collective good in question is the enjoyable game environment and the social dilemma rests on the temptation to not spend the effort needed to maintain the value of the game. Again we see that if all caved in to the temptation the collective resource would not necessarily be destroyed. There would be no kills to steal however, and if all chose to be team-killers a Counter-Strike battle might have all the attraction of a soccer match were players did their best to place the ball in their own goal and did not care for the score assigned by the official game rules (which could be entertaining but which tellingly hasn’t emerged as a popular pastime).
Irresponsible participation as a social dilemma
Different game genres are affected by different social issues. A special problem is shared by games in which actually playing involves a large time investment and where one player’s behaviour directly affects everyone else. Both are true for real-time-strategy games. Let us return, then, to the case of Age of Kings. Imagine that you have an important appointment later but would like to play one game first. Your appointment starts in 90 minutes and you know that a game usually takes anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, sometimes more. If you choose to participate knowing that in case the game drags on you will be forced to quit at a certain point you’re arguably exposing allies and opponents to an unpleasant experience. Particularly if a game is evenly matched (and thus interesting) one player quitting will tip the balance rendering the game more or less inconsequential.
Or imagine a somewhat different situation. After 30 minutes of playing you throw most of your resources into a bold strategy to eliminate your opponent. He repels your attack. You estimate that you are now in a somewhat weaker position than your enemy. The situation isn’t hopeless but chances are that somewhere down the line you will pay for your failed strategy. You resign.
In an important sense there is nothing immoral about resigning. It corresponds to knocking over your king in chess. The winner of the Age of Kings battle, however, is likely to consider it a cowardly move tied to your desire to control the game (if you can’t have it exactly your way, you’re not even going to play anymore). Age of Kings players look for competition and are often looking forward to the actual battle phase of the game rather than taking pleasure in the careful construction of their nation. To many players, then, you have just violated the implicit rules of the game [8].
In both cases you are not cooperating to make the game entertaining and pleasant for all involved. The temptation here is towards personal gratification or mere selfishness, which runs counter to the interest of the other players. The collective good is again an enjoyable gaming environment and here it is clear that if all chose to ignore the norms for responsible participation the value of the game would be greatly diminished.
Solutions to collective action problems
In the previous section I have outlined three social dilemmas which affect multiplayer gaming. The motivation was two-fold: To argue that multiplayer gaming, with certain qualifications, is comparable to real-life social interaction and to enable the problems identified to be framed as social dilemmas which have been studied explicitly for decades and less formally for millennia.
In the following I will discuss the solutions developed in the literature on cooperation to social dilemmas. Subsequently I will discuss these solutions as they apply to games.
How could the commons be saved? Was there any way to counter the alleged tendency for collective goods to invite tragedy? Although rarely formalized with the rigor displayed by Olson, we are in fact now touching upon a core concern of centuries of political theory. This should not surprise us, since after all, one rather notable solution to this problem is the state itself. The state (or government) solution has been advocated by those convinced that a powerful neutral party was a requirement for constructive social relations (e.g. Hobbes 1997 org. pub. 1651). This neutral party, the state, would eliminate the temptation to exploit the contributions of others by means of surveillance and punishment. Those who felt disinclined to contribute freely (say, by paying taxes) would simply be threatened to do so. And those who did not wish to contribute unless everybody else did, could now rest assured that no-one (or very few) could unjustly enjoy the fruit of the labour of the righteous. Hardin himself sympathised enthusiastically with this approach.
Another influential solution to the larger problem of social order has followed the thinking of Adam Smith, arguing that given certain conditions the market (mainly through surplus value derived from specialization) could govern itself. In a capitalist system, even the selfish contribute to the general wellbeing since, as the famous example goes, the baker (wanting nothing but your money) will produce bread the purchase of which will serve your own interests. This solution, however, is not directly compatible with the special circumstances surrounding collective goods. Here, as we have seen thanks to Olson, individual rationality may run counter to the greater good. In this tradition the solution to the problem of collective action is rather radical: Abolish the tragedy-inviting commons by privatizing collective goods such as roads, fisheries or even the environment. In the case of Hardin’s commons a private owner would have no incentive to over-graze and in case others could make more efficient use of the land, the owner could merely rent or sell. The market, the theory goes, creates incentives for the maintenance and construction of privately owned goods compatible with the interests of the larger public (the slogan being ‘Everybody’s property is nobody’s property’).
Finally, what might arguably constitute a third way has been proposed[9]. Political scientist Elinor Ostrom notes how many observers describing collective action problems wish “to invoke an image of helpless individuals caught in an inexorable process of destroying their own resources” thus ignoring the possibility of “an adequately specified theory of collective action whereby a group of principals can organize themselves voluntarily to retain the residuals of their own efforts” (Ostrom 1990). In other words, under certain conditions, people are able to govern themselves. Scholars who have taken the time to study real-world communities have found that even the much-feared-for fishing grounds can be managed in such ways as can common farming or lumber grounds. Ostrom and others have identified a number of criteria that are usually fulfilled in communities able to arrive at durable solutions. Of these a certain degree of permanence, the possibilities of monitoring the actions of other community members and the prospect of future interaction stand out as essential.
Studies of the self-organization of natural resource management are informative. However, as we are concerned with games, let us briefly examine a few more closely related phenomena as way of examples.
Imagine, first, a hypothetical website offering tools for trading objects between users. A would-be buyer is merely put into contact with a would-be seller and the website provides nothing more in terms of features. Potential buyers asked to pay before receiving their goods might not feel totally secure. The same goes for sellers asked to send their goods in advance. It is telling at least that the world’s most successful trading website www.ebay.com, offers significantly more than our hypothetical example. Ebay makes use of a reputation management system, allowing traders to rate each other in the wake of each interaction (e.g. Resnick and Zeckhauser 2001). Ratings and reviews are attached to user profiles to be browsed by future would-be interactors. This radically changes the dyadic relationship between buyer and seller as both can consider the other person’s history of honesty (or dishonesty) and are able to affect that person’s future potential within the system. In our first example, each person is likely to feel insecure as there is a temptation for the other party to cheat. Not so on eBay (which also has other measures to the same effect). Thus, to the extent that the system works as intended, eBay users effectively govern themselves.
This is not too dissimilar from the social life of www.slashdot.org. On this largely user-organized news and community site, users contribute news and comments to the news items. Others are then able to rate other people’s contributions and the average rating determines the prominence of the post and affects the “karma” of the poster through what one commentator has called “a pricing system for online civics” (Johnson 2001). The result is a self-governing system in which community-destructive behaviour is strikingly difficult and where the tasks of central management are quite modest.
Now, neither eBay nor Slashdot are user-generated systems at their structural level. Thus, they are not cases of individuals coming together to settle upon the very core rules of communal existence. But when comparing to the “natural” communities surveyed by Ostrom this is not so much a difference as a question of the level of analysis. Even the most self-organizing real-life community does not control the ground rules of gravity, visibility of nearby space or the sound-carrying capacity of air so any assembly of people will be working within a structure which is not for them to decide upon or radically change.
Features facilitating the emergence of swift trust (Meyerson, Weick, and Kramer 1996) such as the ones described here can clearly be remarkably conducive to constructive social interaction in systems otherwise vulnerable to free rider problems. In the following, I describe solutions to social dilemmas as they apply to games.
excerpts from “Tragedies of the ludic commons – understanding cooperation in multiplayer games” by Jonas Heide Smith
Case Study: MMORPG
April 8, 2008 at 11:32 pm | In MMORPG Research | Leave a CommentConfessions of an MMOG Cross-Dresser
Hello, my name is Bruce, and I like to play female characters in online games.
It wasn’t always this way. I had my first exposure to internet gaming in 1989, while I was attending Purdue University. Oh, I had been playing computer and videogames for years before then, and I had even done my share of time in the BBS scene, but the revelation that the internet allowed me to connect, in real time, with complete strangers thousands of miles away, for free, was truly staggering. My discovery of the various tools of early net communication progressed rapidly, from email to Usenet to finger to talk. By 1990, I had fully immersed myself in the growing phenomenon of TinyMUDs, an offshoot of the original line of Multi-User Dungeons that had started back in 1978 with Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw. We didn’t care that we were limited to just text. We were making virtual worlds! We were engaged in a cyberspace revolution!
My early characters were universally male and, perhaps out of ego, usually looked just like myself, albeit an idealized and empowered version of the computer geek I actually was. But like many nerds of that era, I was a social outcast even among my peers and lacked the adequate social skills to communicate effectively in the real world, let alone a virtual one. But in those virtual worlds were girls, real girls, and they actually wanted to talk to me. At least, they did until I fell into the hidden, precarious traps of social communication, the plethora of unknown and unavoidable faux pas that inevitably led to making a bad first impression. Still, I muddled through and actually did manage to make some friends and even find romance, in the wild whirlwind of those early days. Soon, I had even become involved in the practice of TinySex, a TinyMUD version of what later internet generations would call “cybering.”
But there was one woman, in a virtual world named Islandia, who enchanted me more than any other. Her character went by the name Faerie, and she was everything a man could want: mystery, beauty, charm, intelligence and devastatingly sharp wit. And if the rumors were true, she was the best of the best when it came to TinySex. I was completely smitten with her, but due to my earlier social fumbling, she would have nothing to do with me. She had many other friends on the MUD, though, including a few from real life who went to the same college, and one of them had recently changed his character’s in-game gender from male to female. I was partly to blame for it; since MUDs were text-based, when you entered a room of people all you saw was a list of names, not each individual description of each character, and I had kept mistaking him for female since he had a very feminine-sounding name. We all had a good laugh, and he adopted the female persona in game as his “sister.”
Faerie, as it turned out, actually preferred the company of the fairer sex, and with my recent exposure to the idea that men could actually pretend to be women in the game, I began to hatch a plan. I would create a new, female character, one that would not have the historical baggage my male character had. I would carefully craft her to behave and act like just the sort of woman Faerie would lust after. She was designed, specifically, to seduce Faerie, and to allow me to experience a new social relationship I would never have otherwise been able to enjoy. I decided, for the sake of ethics, that I would not lie about my new character’s player; I would simply say I preferred to keep it a secret.
And thus, Lorianna was born, and in due time she and Faerie had become quite the item, just as I had planned. We were both enjoying each other’s company, and Lorianna had become quite popular MUD-wide. But I was not prepared for how those virtual experiences were becoming increasingly substantive. Could I actually turn our virtual relationship into a real one? What if she had a boyfriend? Would she still accept me once I told her my terrible secret? What chance would a long distance relationship between two teenagers have, anyway? I had to find out more about who Faerie really was.
I put my newly acquired internet-fu to work. I knew that Faerie’s real life friends and fellow MUDders went to Berkeley, and so I began my search there. Back in those early days, the UNIX finger command could be used to see who was logged into a machine, even from across the internet. I got the names of a few undergraduate machines at Berkeley and began monitoring them. Whenever Faerie would log into the MUD, I would see what accounts were logged in on the servers, paying close attention to which ones that had just recently done so. When Faerie would log out, I would check the list of accounts again, looking for who was logging out. After only a couple of nights, I had narrowed the list of potential candidate logins to just one: Trip.
I was shocked. Was Islandia’s most renowned femme fatale actually a guy? It was almost inconceivable. Sure, the high frequency of virtual cross-dressing had become an accepted fact on TinyMUDs by then, but Faerie? After days of nervous tension, I couldn’t take it anymore – I had to tell Faerie the truth, and the whole truth. That night, we had a long talk online, wherein I revealed to her who really was, and what I had done, and how I had discovered who she really was, too. And then she told me about her player, Trip, and how he enjoyed playing female characters, and how this sort of virtual gender bending was just another exercise in roleplaying.
Trip and I remained friends, both online and off, for many years thereafter, and I even got him a job where I worked. But as a result of that early experience, I began to play female characters more and more frequently, and my male ones less and less. With the rise of Massively Multiplayer Online Games in 1996 and 1997, virtual worlds had finally become graphical, and once again I dived right in. But I soon found that there were noticeable differences in how male and female characters were treated in online games, even when everyone knew there was a good chance the female’s player was really a guy.
Female characters are often given free stuff, either from males looking to impress them, or from females looking to help out their own. They’re more likely to receive help and assistance in game when they ask, and less likely to get ganked by fellow players. Male characters, on the other hand, are often viewed with more suspicion by females, and as a competitive threat by their fellow males. And there are other forms of more subtle gender discrimination. The true extent of these elements in virtual worlds, and their psychological origins, are a subject of frequent debate. I can only speak for myself when I have found them to be generally true in my experience.
But there are other, far more visible reasons for males to play female characters in modern graphical MMOGs. Let’s be blunt – female video game characters are frequently hot, and a sexy girl on the cover of your retail box can help sell your videogame. And it’s not just games like Tomb Raider and Dead or Alive – look at the box covers for the MMOGs EverQuest, Lineage II, Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, not to mention those notorious Anarchy Online ads. Who doesn’t want their character to look good? As one fellow player once put it to me, “If I have to stare at an ass in game for hours and hours every day, it might as well be a female ass.” And don’t the game developers know it. This year at E3, while playing the upcoming MMOG title Soul of the Ultimate Nation from Webzen, I was positively giddy to discover that the half-skirt on the female Elementalist character actually flips up when she jumps into the air, exposing her shiny panties underneath. Talk about your fan service!
Of course, playing a female character in an MMOG is not without its drawbacks. Sometimes I have to fend off the clumsy, amorous desires of young males with no social skills – the very same sort of people I once was, so many years before. More frequently, though, I have to deal with the accusation by a fellow player that I’m really male. How to handle such situations? Trying to take the high road and claim you want to keep your real life private or that real life shouldn’t matter only makes your status even more questionable. A protest of innocence and a little white lie about one’s true gender can work in some situations, but is it ethical? Often requests for proof can escalate, from questions about bra size to solicitations of pictures to requests for phone calls. And a straight-up admittance of the truth can just as frequently lead to jibes, insults, and bruised emotions.
And virtual cross-dressing is becoming ever more difficult. Many guilds now use third-party voice software to coordinate and communicate during their raids, and an increasing number of MMOGs are shipping with integrated voice chat. Will fellow players accept the busty dark elf babe who sounds like Pee-Wee Herman? For how long will the response “Uh, I don’t have a microphone” be an acceptable excuse? Perhaps I can lie and claim I’m a mute. Some people have pointed to voice masking as the answer, but unless voice masking is mandatory, people can still request that you turn it off for proof of real gender. Not to mention the fact that a lot of voice masking makes it difficult to understand what the other person is actually saying.
But still, I soldier on, playing my female characters and enjoying every minute of it. Oh, sometimes I like to switch things up and play a studly male Paladin, but more often than not, I’m watching the virtual world from behind a shapely feminine form. And I am not ashamed. But the next time you wonder if that girl in your party is really hot irl, do everyone a big favor and don’t ask.
Just sit back and enjoy the view.
Bruce Sterling Woodcock is a computer and videogames industry analyst, researcher, consultant and author, focusing on massively multiplayer online games. He is best known for his ongoing tracking and analysis of MMOG subscription numbers on his web site, MMOGCHART.COM. He enjoys going to the mall, cuddling, and long walks along virtual beaches.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_77/439-Confessions-of-an-MMOG-Cross-Dresser.3
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