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Part I
Social Aspects of Digital Gaming
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1 Introduction
Multiplayer Gaming as Social Media Entertainment
Thorsten Quandt and Sonja Kröger
For many years, digital gaming has been portrayed as being on the fringes of media and communication studies. While there were always some more or less diverse forms of digital games research, even in the early days of digital gaming, most of it was only loosely connected to traditional media and communication research. The existing social-scientific research has arguably focused on problematic uses and stereotypical user groups. The interest in problematic aspects of new media is not uncommon, and it follows the logic of protecting society from the harmful effects of yet unknown (media) influences.
However, in the past decade, digital games have become a widely accepted form of media entertainment, even outside the traditional core gamer segment. In tandem with this shift into the mainstream media market, we have seen an increasing interest in social multiplayer gaming activities from three directions: the gaming industry, the audience, and academia.
Indeed, the gaming industry itself has been flourishing rapidly in terms of economic relevance in comparison with other sectors of the creative industries, and has become a central part of the global entertainment industry in recent years. Since the first appearance of digital games for the public in the early 1970s, there has been a dramatic change in the hardware and software technological innovations for digital games. In the context of technology convergence, digital game manufactures currently develop digital games for different platforms, such as PCs and consoles, or for mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablet PCs. The emergence of new technologies and the development of new digital game types, such as social network games (e.g., Farmerama), serious games for (school) learning environments, or even digital games for health education, promote new ways for consumers to use digital games. Consequently, the audience for digital games has increased, and besides the traditional young male core gamer, new user groups, such as seniors and women, have been captured by the digital game industry.
Likewise, these economic developments and socio-cultural changes based on the emergence of digital games are of great academic interest. As is so often the case when researchers analyze the complex interdependencies of new technologies and social changes, filling in the blanks takes time. Ongoing research from different research disciplines helps to uncover multiple aspects of these phenomena to understand the role and impact of digital games in people’s everyday lives. Studies have been initiated to investigate the social foundations of virtual worlds, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), multiplayer shooters, e-sports, and social cooperation in party-oriented console gaming, yet digital games research remains a relatively new field. Despite an explosive growth in the field over the past decade, many aspects of social gaming still remain largely unexplored. For that reason, this edited volume will take a closer look at the various forms of social interaction in and around digital (multiplayer) games to fill in the blind spots on the digital games research map.
About This Book
This volume is loosely based on an international conference, with a focus on the social side of gaming, that was organized by the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) Temporary Working Group on Digital Games Research, held at the University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart, Germany) in July 2011.
Coming from a social-scientific perspective, the objective of the volume is to provide a platform for the latest research findings in the field of digital games studies, alongside an overview of the discussion in the field. However, the book is not intended to be a simple “proceedings” volume, but a more general introduction to the field. Therefore, we added well-known games researchers as authors to widen the focus of the book, and to give an overview of past and present debates regarding the topic. With its 19 key articles, the book is unique in its intention to bridge the gap between digital games research and social-scientific communication research.
The aim of this edited volume is to present theoretical and methodological approaches to contemporary digital game studies with a focus on the social aspects of digital multiplayer gaming. The volume brings together articles from many countries, and the authors come from different backgrounds, such as media and communication studies, educational science, psychology, and game design.
Structure of the Volume
In this volume, we distinguish between five different perspectives on multiplayer gaming. Each part of the book consists of between three and five selected articles.
Part I, Social Aspects of Digital Gaming, provides a starting point for readers and lays out the challenges for science and research. This part of the book focuses on both online-multiplayer gaming with co-players in virtual life, such as MMRPGs, and offline-multiplayer gaming with co-present fellow gamers in real life, such as party console games. The first part of the book strives to explain why a deeper understanding of the social aspects of online gaming and virtual worlds is needed.
Following this introductory text by the two editors, unique cross-national research is presented in the chapter by Thorsten Quandt, Vivian Chen, Frans Mäyrä, and Jan Van Looy. The authors offer data from large-scale surveys to allow for a comparative view of digital gaming between countries, which reveals striking differences between various world regions, and some obvious research gaps that need to be addressed in future studies.
The chapter by Richard A. Bartle—co-author of the first virtual gaming world, MUD, and considered by many as a key thinker in game design—discusses the principles of designing multiplayer games. He also draws on his theories on multiplayer gaming in general, including the Bartle typology of gamer types in MUDs.
Part II, Social Interaction in Virtual Worlds, takes a closer look at the social structures in virtual environments. Computer gaming is not a hobby for isolated persons. Gamers share their thoughts and experiences with others, both in game-related communities (either off- or online) and in their “other” everyday communities. Clans and guilds are just one type of game community, but there are also gaming boards, electronic sports leagues, specific game-related subcultures, and so on. Thus, this part of the book focuses on questions regarding the emergence of such groups, their social order and interaction rules, as well as how they are embedded into real-life contexts.
From the perspective of media psychology, the research group of Georg Valtin, Daniel Pietschmann, Benny Liebold, and Peter Ohler reports on exemplary research on the role of avatar attractiveness in prosocial behavior using in situ experiments. In doing so, the authors give insights into the use of experimental methods in virtual environments from both the methodological and the practical points of view.
Lotte Vermeulen and Jan Van Looy explore how social interactions as a motivator differ across genders. The study is a significant contribution to the ongoing debate as to whether gender plays an important role in this context. In contrast to the stereotypical view, the results suggest that female gamers are less attracted to social communication features and interaction during digital game play.
Based on the theory of subjective quality assessments, Christina Schumann investigates a mixed-method research design to give a better understanding of how social interaction with non-player characters (NPCs) should be designed to enhance the game experience of players. Her research gives fruitful hints for scholars and practitioners as to how NPCs should be designed in the future.
Another approach to social interactions between players and NPCs is presented by Magnus Johansson, Björn Strååt, Henrik Warpefelt, and Harko Verhagen. Applying an experimental design, and based on the assumptions of different rational agency models, the authors present a conceptual model of agency for NPCs with the addition of social dynamics.
Part III, Online Gaming, is concerned with the experience of online gamers in real-world and game-world environments. Thus, chapters included in this part of the book deal with (primarily PC-based) digital online games—where thousands, and in some cases even millions of people interact—as a new type of social environment in which people meet and socialize. In contrast to single-player games, online games are much more (socially) complex, as they usually include some modes of communication and human interaction. However, players cannot only exchange items and thoughts—they can also interfere with the actions of others, leading to complex action–reaction patterns.
This part of the book starts with the chapter by Rachel Kowert and Julian A. Oldmeadow, who take a closer look at the stereotype of the socially inept (online) gamer. Focusing on the social skills approach to social competence, their chapter examines the current state of empirical understanding of the relationship between social competence and online gaming. The overview illustrates promising but also inconsistent findings in this field, and shows that further research is needed to help uncover the exact nature of the relationship between social competence and online gaming.
Jeffrey Wimmer is interested in gamers of the fast-growing online gaming networks such as Steam, Xbox LIVE, and the PlayStation Network, and how these systems support social interaction among their users. Wimmer chooses a quantitative approach and takes Oldenburg’s concept of so-called third places into account. In line with Oldenburg’s assumptions, the author understands online gaming platforms as social meeting points, creating new socio-culturally and politically relevant spaces for interaction. The analysis concludes that, to a limited extent, several characteristics of real-world third places can also be found in the virtual space of these gaming networks.
Based on participant observation, Torill E. Mortensen analyzes the use of phasing in the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) World of Warcraft (WoW) (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004). By taking time as an example, the author explores what impact phasing can have on the continuity of the gaming environment. Her contribution gives insights into how MMOs pose serious problems for game designers, and how the implementation of phasing can lead to various forms of togetherness and parallel play.
Nelson Zagalo and Aníbal Gonçalves also probe the question of game design, but by drawing the concept of social interdependency, they take a broader perspective on the design of MMOs. They discuss how game designers implement game mechanics tha...
