MMORPG Guilds as Online Communities - Power, Space and Time: From Fun to Engagement in Virtual Worlds
10 Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2012
Date Written: August 28, 2008
Abstract
MMOs emerged, over the last few years, as a central topic of ongoing world-wide conversation about online activities. An increasing number of people spend an increasing number of their online time in synthetic worlds (Castronova 2005). Many of the endless activities that people can do in Virtual World involve (or even require) collaborating with other players. Within this perspective Virtual Worlds seem to solve the fear of some media scholar that the spreading of online realities could lead toward a more isolated society made of people “bowling alone” (Putnam 2000). This huge social side of MMOs led many scholars to observe these worlds in terms of online communities and social capital (Steinkuehler, Williams 2006). It has been observed that while MMOs at large are a very viable third place for informal sociability within guilds activities this social capability seems to fade as players are more involved into long-term social network and their activities become more “hardcore” (Steinkuehler, Williams 2006). While not providing a so good environment for social capital and social networking (guilds are far more viable for bounding existing communities than bridging with new people) guilds are able to create specific in-game emergent cultures (Taylor 2006). This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing debate about emerging culture in MMOs by describing a specific aspect of guilds culture in World of Warcraft: conflict and how guilds can deal with it. By exploring how a guild manage to face and solve game related problems this paper aims also to contribute understanding how concepts like power and leadership emerge from the players-game interaction in World of Warcraft and in Virtual Worlds.
Keywords: games studies, virtual communities, MMO, virtual world
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