Player Communities in Multiplayer Online Games: A Systematic Review of Empirical Research

This systematic review synthesizes 31 selected empirical publications from 2000 to 2010 on player communities in multiplayer online games, drawing on multidisciplinary databases and game studies journals. The authors justify the period by the rise of graphical massively multiplayer games such as Ultima Online and EverQuest, which shifted scholarly attention away from the earlier text-based MUD era. Of the sources examined, 17 were retained for detailed analysis, and the review's purpose is to map the research methods, conceptual definitions, and aspects studied in this body of work.

Ethnography and participant observation emerged as the dominant methodology, appearing in 13 of the 17 publications, while quantitative approaches such as data mining, surveys, and network analysis were less common. The sample sizes varied considerably, from a handful of players to several thousand, and the most frequently studied games were World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and Lineage. Data-mining work, exemplified by a study of more than 640,000 World of Warcraft avatars, represented a notable exception to the qualitative norm, and fieldwork durations ranged from a few months to several years.

Substantively, the literature consistently found that player communities develop both written and unwritten norms, often characterized as either "militaristic" cultures that emphasize competition and hierarchy or "casual" cultures that value fun and egalitarianism. Social structuring, rationale, culture and norms, information and communication technology use, membership size, and community lifespan were the most frequently examined aspects. However, the terms community, guild, and group were used interchangeably and were rarely defined explicitly, and the 18 identified operationalizations varied widely, which limits comparability and generalization.

The authors conclude that the field would benefit from a more generalizable theory of player community social dynamics, greater methodological transparency in describing ethnographic procedures, and broader coverage of non-Western populations and games. These gaps define the principal agenda the review sets for future empirical work on online player communities.