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Role Theory: The Line Between Roles as Design and Socialization in EverQuest
This paper applies sociological role theory to the massively multiplayer online game EverQuest, examining how character classes are functionally designed into the game and then reshaped through player socialization and individual appropriation.
- Role theory is applied to EverQuest, arguing that character classes are first functionally designed, then refined by community norms, and finally individualized through each player's personality and style of play.
- The paper finds that the relationship between game structure and player socialization is reciprocal rather than simply oppositional, challenging the expectation that player interaction would deconstruct rigid structural roles.
- Using the cleric class as its main example, the paper shows that design prioritizes the stability of the class role over any individual player, so any competent cleric can fill the position in group play.
Law, Order and Conflicts of Interest in Massively Multiplayer Online Games
This paper examines how conflicts and social norms operate in massively multiplayer online games, using the fantasy MMORPG Everquest as its case.
- Rules in large online games like Everquest arise from two sources: the publisher's formal rules and the norms players develop among themselves over time.
- Based on roughly 400 hours of ethnographic gameplay (February–April 2004), supplemented by in-game interviews, event logging, and analysis of two Everquest forums including Sony's official forum, the authors identify recurring objectionable behaviors such as kill-stealing, train-pulling, camping, twinking, power-leveling, macro-driven automated play, and real-money item trading.
- Most objectionable behaviors are regulated through informal social sanctions rather than formal enforcement, and their effectiveness depends heavily on how susceptible each individual player is to social pressure.
Studying Games in School: A Framework for Media Education
Pelletier's paper argues that digital games deserve to be studied in schools as a subject in their own right, not merely as tools for teaching other disciplines.
- Pelletier et al. argue that digital games should be studied in schools as a subject in their own right, not merely as tools for teaching other disciplines.
- The proposed framework analyses games through an integrated combination of design, play, and culture, adapted from Buckingham's three-part media education model of text, audiences, and institutions.
- Young people's informal game literacy is uneven and shaped by unequal social access, which the authors argue makes structured classroom study and practical game-making valuable.
Information Behavior and the Formation and Maintenance of Peer Cultures in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games: A Case Study of City of Heroes
This paper offers a conceptual framework for a planned study of how players in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) form and sustain small peer groups such as guilds, clans, and teams, using the massively multiplayer game City of Heroes as its case.
- The paper is an early-stage conceptual framework for a planned study, not a report of empirical results; its claims rest mainly on existing literature rather than new data.
- It proposes that play theory and information behavior theory (especially meaning-making) together can explain how MMORPG players form and sustain guilds, clans, and teams with their own rules and mores despite anonymity and missing offline social cues.
- The framework treats MMORPGs three ways: as games, as 'virtual sandbox' play spaces, and as cultures where knowledge, behavior, and artifacts are learned and negotiated.
Addressing Social Dilemmas and Fostering Cooperation Through Computer Games
This paper examines how the concept of social dilemmas, situations where individual self-interest conflicts with collective benefit, can be addressed through computer games, with particular attention to identity formation and cooperation.
- The paper's central thesis is that cooperation in games is best fostered by increasing trust and by making individuals explicitly aware of their choices, and that in-game communities should develop their own norms rather than have them imposed from outside.
- A prior three-researcher study using a custom Neverwinter Nights module with pre- and post-gameplay surveys found that players experimented with alternative strategies, but this did not measurably change their real-life choices in a hypothetical social dilemma, though it did prompt deeper reflection on real-world situations.
- The earlier study's authors attributed the null behavioral result to the game's limited depth and the absence of interaction with other real people, and concluded that identity is more complex than anticipated, shaped by individual differences.
Growing Complex Games
Growing Complex Games, a 2005 DiGRA conference paper by Nicholas Glean, argues that strategy and "God" simulation games such as SimCity, Civilization, Children of the Nile, and Rome: Total War should be analyzed as complex systems using concepts drawn from complexity science.
- Glean's 2005 DiGRA paper argues that strategy and 'God' simulation games such as SimCity, Civilization, Children of the Nile, and Rome: Total War should be analyzed as complex systems using concepts from complexity science.
- Although fully deterministic, these games generate emergent, unpredictable, and novel play patterns arising from interacting agents and player decisions.
- The paper frames such games not as accurate predictive models of real-world phenomena but as 'transitional objects' that enable experimentation and reflection.
The Ability of Branded Online Games to Build Brand Equity: An Exploratory Study
This exploratory study examines whether advergames, online video games embedded with brand imagery, can build brand equity more effectively than banner advertisements.
- An M&M's advergame achieved 32% unaided recall and 57% aided recognition, versus 3% and 14% for a banner ad, with 68% combined recall compared with 16% for the banner.
- In a paired comparison, the advergame produced significantly higher brand recall than the banner ad (t=4.53, p=0.0009), supporting the view that advergames can outperform banners in building brand awareness.
- The study's sample was small and non-representative: 37 completed responses out of 108 registrants, recruited from online game community forums.
Immersion in Game Atmospheres for the Video Game Heritage Preservation
This paper proposes a method for preserving the atmospheres in which video games are played, arguing that while virtual museums and emulators now preserve game software, copies, screenshots, and commentary, the physical environment of play, its lighting, furniture, sounds, and social context, remains largely unarchived despite…
- The report argues that the physical atmosphere of play (lighting, furniture, sounds, social context) is largely unarchived even though players often remember it as one of their strongest experiences, while software preservation through emulators and virtual museums is comparatively well developed.
- The author positions video games as a major cultural form, noting the industry has surpassed cinema economically and has existed for more than thirty years, yet physical game exhibitions remain rare because hardware and software are fragile and scarce.
- The proposed method has three stages: forum-based player narratives about place and sensory perception, synthesis of recurring elements (lights, sounds, furniture, people) into representative atmospheres, and documentation of each atmosphere with date, description, element list, layout picture, permitted interactions, and associated games.
Motivational Factors in Game Play in Two User Groups
This study examines motivational factors in game play among two university populations, computer science students and MBA business students at Dalhousie University, with the goal of informing the design of educational games and activities.
- Computer science students (n=59, median age 22) ranked electronic games as their second most favorite activity and played roughly six titles, while MBA business students (n=111, median age 26) ranked gaming sixth of seven activities and played about two titles, favoring board and card games.
- The two groups diverged most sharply on engagement and social factors, which the authors attribute largely to differences in technology exposure; a validation sample of 17 high school students resembled the computer science group more closely, supporting this interpretation.
- Computer science students favored frequent, often daily, online and multiplayer play with strangers, whereas business students preferred infrequent play with acquaintances in the same room.
Spontaneous Communities of Learning: Learning Ecosystems in Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Environments
This doctoral research proposal examines how spontaneous communities of learning emerge within massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), using City of Heroes as its primary case.
- Massively multiplayer online games such as City of Heroes act as informal learning ecosystems where globally dispersed players self-organise to master complex environments.
- The authors argue that because mastery typically requires collaboration, players form symbiotic learning relationships that extend beyond the game into forums, chat channels, and face-to-face meetings.
- The framework draws on legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger), connectivism (Siemens), and distributed intelligence (Levy), positing that learning is best studied in naturally occurring contexts rather than formal classrooms.
New Design Methods for Activist Gaming
This paper, authored by Mary Flanagan, Daniel C. Howe, and Helen Nissenbaum and presented at the 2005 DiGRA conference, proposes a practical methodology for embedding social and ethical values into the design of games and other technical systems.
- The paper proposes a three-phase, iterative methodology (Discovery, Translation, Verification) for embedding social and ethical values into game and technical system design, positioned as an augmentation of existing game design and HCI practices rather than a replacement.
- Discovery identifies values from four sources: definition values stated in project goals, collateral values arising from specific design choices, designer values rooted in team members' backgrounds, and user values revealed through prototyping and usability testing.
- Translation converts identified values into concrete design specifications, illustrated by a code-sharing and reward mechanism in the RAPUNSEL game that operationalized cooperation.
Realistic Agent Movement in Dynamic Game Environments
This paper addresses the challenge of realistic agent movement in computer games, particularly pathfinding in dynamic environments where the game world can change in real time.
- The paper argues that traditional pathfinding methods such as A and navigation meshes rely on static, pre-processed map representations, which become inadequate once physics middleware lets players and agents alter level geometry in real time.
- The authors propose giving agents real-time awareness via four ray-casting sensors spanning a 90-degree field of vision, feeding an artificial neural network that controls movement, with weights evolved by a genetic algorithm guided by reinforcement-style scoring.
- The approach was implemented as a test bed on the Quake 2 engine using a custom C++ AI library, with graphical tools allowing users to adjust evolution and network parameters during training.