MMORPG Guilds as Online Communities - Power, Space and Time: From Fun to Engagement in Virtual Worlds

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Space And Time

Gaming as a Woman

2013 ◽  
pp. 106-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen B. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Rock Band ◽  
Affinity Groups ◽  
Males And Females

This chapter reports the findings of two surveys taken by players of the video game Rock Band. The purpose of the surveys was to determine what differences, if any, exist between the ways that males and females learn to play the game, are motivated to improve, interact with other players both online and in real life, and interact with other players in online communities for the game. This study suggests that while females do not appear to learn to play this game much differently from males, they are motivated differently and interact with other players differently, and ultimately they have a harder time than males finding a place in the affinity groups that exist for the game, and these findings provide starting points for teachers who intend to use video games and virtual worlds for educational purposes in guarding against creating a “gender gap” between males and females.

scholarly journals Teens and Virtual Goods: The Fun, Useful and Affordable Luxuries that are Driving the Virtual Economy

1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maura Welch
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Real World ◽  
Personal Networks ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Third ◽  
Virtual Economy

Virtual worlds are quickly becoming a popular way for teens–especially younger teens 13-16 years of age–to spend time connecting with existing friends while searching for new contacts. According to KZero, in the third quarter of last year alone, 92 million new, unique users joined virtual worlds. However, as virtual worlds grow, teens are looking for more opportunities beyond just building their personal networks. Enter virtual goods–items users can earn or purchase to express themselves creatively or to gain status among their peers in a community. Those who have not spent time in online communities and worlds find it difficult to understand the motivation for purchasing virtual goods. But buying them or completing tasks to earn them is fun and challenging, in the exact same way shopping or playing games in the real world is fun and challenging. For example, some virtual goods provide an immediate advantage in games or contests, some help express your personal styles and interests, and some can be sent as gifts to friends. Sometimes people buy virtual goods because they’re impatient or competitive and don’t want to wait the number of days it would take to earn them for free. But fundamentally, virtual goods are entertainment–they make it fun to interact with friends and express personal styles.

scholarly journals Virtual Goods: Good for Business?

1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nic Mitham
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
User Experience ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Good For ◽  
Mini Games

Whilst 2008 saw the emergence of the virtual worlds sector, 2009 has to be called the year of the virtual good. With online destinations such as social networks seeing a creation of brand-new revenue steams and virtual worlds ‘giving the users want they want’, the virtual goods sector is one of the fastest growing areas of the Internet. In its most popular form, virtual goods relate to accessories for avatars–clothing, hair and other person-related apparel. These are purchased by users to customize their appearance and are popular across all types of virtual worlds, from kids and tweens right through grown-up worlds and also apply across all genres. There is an incumbent demand for users to want to change andcontrol how they are seen in virtual worlds. But virtual goods don’t just include avatar appearance customization. Online communities are learning how to monetize all aspects of the user experience, including the ability, for example, to buy a bespoke user name or access specific areas inside a virtual world. On the SocNet side, virtual goods are being used to great effect with social/mini-games, providing ‘tools’ to complete a game faster/level-up.

Creative Collaborative Virtual Environments

2019 ◽  
pp. 461-473
Author(s):  
Luís Eustáquio ◽  
Catarina Carneiro de Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Collaborative Virtual Environments ◽  
Digital Communities ◽  
Collaborative Creativity ◽  
Creative Agency ◽  
Collaborative Models ◽  
The Social ◽  
Agents Of Change

The authors propose to define creative collaborative virtual environments (CCVEs) as platforms for collaborative and distributed creation in online communities. This will be established by examining virtual worlds as agents of change towards new creative and collaborative models. CCVEs are grounded on three key elements: creation, collaboration, and distribution. These relate not only to the technical but also to the social layers of virtual online communities. Shared creativity and distributed authorship are approached as examples of specific dynamics rooted upon these three elements. The concept of CCVE is important to the design of emerging virtual worlds, specifically regarding the preservation of affordances for collaborative creativity. Discussion based on these observations demonstrates how collaborative creation of new content and meaning takes place in CCVEs, and how they transform communicative and creative agency in digital communities.

DIGITAL TOURISM COMMUNICATION AND DEMOCRACY

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Social Web ◽  
Political Citizenship ◽  
The Stranger

Political philosophy is applied to analyze the democratic potential of tourism social media. This study shows that while these media have deliberative potential, they also reflect the post-political and post-democratic condition in tourism digital communication. This analysis is illustrated through the discussion of three metaphors: the menu, the stranger, and the tourist-light. The menu represents the increased invasion of lifeworlds by the commercialization and corporate regulation of the tourism social Web. The stranger symbolizes the weak accountability of online communities. The tourist-light embodies the relevance of hedonism in virtual worlds. Social media contributes to digital narcissism and support consumer centricity. Digital communication produces a sanitized version of tourism and entails a subtle constraint of political citizenship.

Increasing Capital Revenue in Social Networking Communities

2011 ◽  
pp. 1720-1737
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bishop
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Return On Investment ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Economic Capital ◽  
Bulletin Board ◽  
Economic Returns ◽  
Goods And Services

The rise of online communities in Internet environments has set in motion an unprecedented shift in power from vendors of goods and services to the customers who buy them, with those vendors who understand this transfer of power and choose to capitalize on it by organizing online communities and being richly rewarded with both peerless customer loyalty and impressive economic returns. A type of online community, the virtual world, could radically alter the way people work, learn, grow consume, and entertain. Understanding the exchange of social and economic capital in online communities could involve looking at what causes actors to spend their resources on improving someone else’s reputation. Actors’ reputations may affect others’ willingness to trade with them or give them gifts. Investigating online communities reveals a large number of different characters and associated avatars. When an actor looks at another’s avatar they will evaluate them and make decisions that are crucial to creating interaction between customers and vendors in virtual worlds based on the exchange of goods and services. This chapter utilizes the ecological cognition framework to understand transactions, characters and avatars in virtual worlds and investigates the exchange of capital in a bulletin board and virtual. The chapter finds strong evidence for the existence of characters and stereotypes based on the ecological cognition framework and empirical evidence that actors using avatars with antisocial connotations are more likely to have a lower return on investment and be rated less positively than those with more sophisticated appearing avatars.

Potentials of Information Technology in Building Virtual Communities

2011 ◽  
pp. 836-841 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isola Ajiferuke ◽  
Alexander Markus
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Bulletin Board ◽  
Digital Subscriber Line ◽  
Message Boards ◽  
Mailing Lists ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
E Mail

In recent years, virtual communities have become the topic of countless books, journal articles and television shows, but what are they, and where did they come from? According to Preece, Maloney-Krichmar, and Abras (2003), the roots of virtual communities date back to as early as 1971 when e-mail first made its appearance on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which was created by the United State’s Department of Defense. This network would lead to the development of dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) which would allow people to use their modems to connect to remote computers and participate in the exchange of e-mail and the first discussion boards. From these beginnings a host of multi user domains (MUDs) and multi-user object oriented domains (MOOs) would spring up all over the wired world. These multi-user environments would allow people to explore an imaginary space and would allow them to interact both with the electronic environment and other users. Additionally, listservs (or mailing lists) sprang up in 1986, and now, almost two decades later, they are still in use as the major method of communication among groups of people sharing common personal or professional interests (L-Soft, 2003). Since then the Internet has exploded due to the development of Web browsers as well as the development of communications technologies such as broadband, digital subscriber line (DSL), and satellite communications. Groups of people from as few as two and reaching to many thousands now communicate via email, chat, and online communities such as the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) and such services as MSN, Friendster, America Online (AoL), Geocities, and Yahoo! Groups. Other examples of online communities are collaborative encyclopedias like Wikipedia. Web logs (Blogs) like Slashdot.com and LiveJournal allow users to create their own content and also to comment on the content of others. They also allow the users to create identities and to make virtual “friends” with other users. The definition of virtual community itself becomes as convoluted as the multitude of technologies that drives it. Are e-mail lists, message boards, and chat rooms online communities or are they virtual communities? Virtual communities might be persistent worlds as those found in popular online games (Everquest, 2004, Ultima Online, 2004) or virtual worlds (such as MUDs and MOOs) where the user is able to explore a simulated world or to take on a digital “physicality” in the form of an avatar. It becomes clear from the literature that the terms are still used interchangeably.

Multi-Modal Investigations of Relationship Play in Virtual Worlds

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmin B. Kafai ◽  
Deborah Fields ◽  
Kristin A. Searle
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Individual Variation ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Striking Contrast

Millions of youth have joined virtual worlds to hang out with each other. However, capturing their interactions is no easy feat given the complexity of virtual worlds, their 24/7 availability, and distributed access from different places. In this paper, we illustrate what different methods can reveal about the dating and flirting practices of tweens in Whyville.net, a virtual world with over 1.5 million registered players in 2005 between the ages 8-16 years old. We compare findings from analyses of tweens’ newspaper writings, chat records, and logfile data. Our analysis demonstrates the mixed attitudes toward flirting on Whyville and the pervasiveness of flirting as a whole, as well as the breadth and selectivity of tweens’ adoption of flirting practices. We discuss how our multi-modal investigation reveals individual variation and development across practices and suggests that player expertise might contribute to the striking contrast between formal writing about dating and the frequency of it on the site. Finally, we discuss the limitations of our methodological approaches and suggest that our findings are limited to a particular space and time in the existence of Whyville and the tweens who populate it.

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