This is not the first time I mentioned this online community of mine, but it really serves as a perfect example for many of the group-related topics in this class.
In this virtual social network (it's not facebook or anything like that; it's an online coordination forum for a MMPORG), the obvious common ground we all share is our involvement with the game we all play. We all use abbreviations that we assume everyone in the forum would know (like PKing- player killing, RPing- roleplaying, VSB- very strongly barricaded buildings). The role-playing is an important commitment we all accept as a part of the community. Any intentional break from the role-playing without a good reason and without the proverbial double parentheses that we use for OOC ((out of character)) dialogue would generally earn you an "arched eyebrow."
Because the members of the forum all operate in different parts of the actual game world outside the forum, we often ask each other for favours in other parts of the virtual world (reciprocity). We ask other players to come to our locations to give us a hand against "zombies." We don't exactly "expect" other players to return the favour, but we certainly would feel a bit angry if we ask someone whom we have helped in the past and they turn us down flatly. I guess the more appropriate way to put it is that we establish friendships where we positively help each other.
The social structures of the network is also interesting because we have strong ties and weak ties. We know really well a small group of people who work in zones around us. Then there are the people a bit further away that we don't know as well, but may be tied to the people we know. These weak ties provide us with information from places far away. For example, if one ammo restocking site was swarmed with zombies, we can tap into our weak ties to find out where another restocking site further away may be relatively safe.
So yes, even in this little space (it's not facebook, it's not some internet dating site), we have quite a thriving social network that matches many of the attributes of the SNA. Though we don't have any interactions offline (no online/offline synergies), we still have really close connections everyday as we go to the gaming world.
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2 comments:
As I’m not so familiar with or regularly exposed to gaming communities, it was really great to read your post. You make an interesting point about how much of your friendships within the community center around how helpful you are to each other in context of the game. Other than reciprocity and location, are there any additional factors that would create strong ties among players? Additionally, I’m curious to know to what extent this community goes beyond the gaming world online, if at all because you said that members “operate in different parts of the actual game world outside the forum”. It might be interesting to contrast the forum community in context of the bigger gaming world.
Hey Yang,
I found your post and community to be very interesting especially since there is no face-to-face communication. I think Hannah was making this point as well, but why do you think your gaming friends and you have such strong ties? Is there a benefit in-game to helping someone else beat zombies, I mean, doesn't the other guy have his own zombies to worry about?
You mention how breaking out of character is frowned upon and you also say you have strong ties with other members. Do you think you actually know the person, if there is a constant selective self-presentation, then Hyperpersonal would argue that you don't really know them.
Vaishal
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