Psykoboy2
08-10-2009, 11:19 AM
In one of our more recent episodes of In-Game Chat, listener (and newly joined CoG member) Michael Moore (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/member.php?u=7059), wrote to tell us that while listening to The Dedicated Server Episode (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=4951), he was inspired to write a paper on the subject for his Online Communities/Identity class. When he asked if we'd be interested in reading his paper, there was no doubt or hesitation.
Being that Michael is a new member, he can't create a thread just yet and asked me to post his paper. Here it is:
Michael Moore
Dedicated Servers: Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Ray Oldenburg outlined in his book The Great Good Places that people have three "places" in which they reside. The first place being the home, the second being work, and then a third place which is a person's anchor of community life. An example of a person's third place might be something like a bowling league, where they are able to be a part of a community of people sharing a similar interest, in this case bowling, that exists outside of their normal spaces.
These third places for people were typically based around real world places like bowling alleys, or bars, but with the advancements in telecommunications and social networking technologies on the internet these third places have begun to exist in the forms of online communities rather than being communities based in the real world. Although much has been written about this, including a good amount about video games as this third place for people, but even so much of that has been in relation to one specific kind of game, the massively multiplayer online game. While other games, specifically the online team based first person shooter game (which will be analyzed in the following,) are ignored to some extent due to the nature of the community being somewhat less structured and more organic in creation. This makes it in some sense harder to notice that it is in fact just as much of an online community as anything else.
Online communities (sometimes referred to as virtual community,) have been growing rapidly over the past few years, with the development of sites and services like Facebook, Twitter, and others. Concurrently there has also been a lot written on the subject of these online communities, and how similar they are to real world communities in the relationship and trust building that occurs in them, even though the people online may not be geographically close to those people in their community.
Communities, online or not, are based around a collection of connections between people within a given group. Those connections are relationships between the people within the group are maintained through the exchange of social capital between those in the group. In the introduction paper to a panel called Communities and Technology: An Approach to Foster Social Capital, they define social capital as, "a set of properties of a social entity (e.g. norms, level of trust, and intensive social networking) which enables joint activities and cooperation for mutual benefit. It can be understood as the glue which holds communities together.” As the definition implies you need this social capital to exist in order to maintain a community, because without it you are unable to create or maintain the connections that are needed for the community to form and maintain itself.
Howard Reheingold in his book The Virtual Community says that an online (or virtual) community is, “when people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationship.” This seems to indicate more a way in which people are able to establish connections rather than a description of how an online community is formed, but what it is saying is that a community can be formed through communication if there is some emotion by the people in the conversation. The emotion bit is important, because what the feelings and emotion refer to is that the people in the conversation care about the conversation. If they did not care about it then they would not be able to establish a connection of relationship with the others in the conversation, which in turn would prevent the community from being formed.
Now this notion of online community though does not merely exist on websites, or chat rooms, and more recently people have begun to look into the online communities that can form within certain internet enabled video games. Most often the games that are written about are of the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game variety, since these games (as the name suggests,) contain a large number of people in the game at a given time. Usually, due to the design of the game, players are forced to work together in groups in order to complete certain aspects of the game.
For instance in World of Warcraft, one of the world's largest massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG,) players are divided into two main factions, Alliance and Horde, depending on the race of the character they wish to play. Players can then work together with the other players in their faction to complete certain quests, or in some cases they can compete directly against members of the other faction. Within a faction though there is a sub-faction that players can choose to become a part of. These sub-factions are called guilds, and allow players to organize into groups more easily so that one is able to organize with their friends, or perhaps with people who have similar interests or have similar goals for playing the game.
In a study of the game Everquest, Mikeal Jakobsson and T.L. Taylor, found that “the production of social networks and circulation of social capital proves to be one of the most important aspects,” (cited in Kolo and Baur.) Meaning that building up these connections and relationships with others in the game is crucial to the gameplay the player experiences as they play the game. Of course the best way of creating and maintaining such relationships is through a central social organization, online community, or what in WoW is called a guild.
The online communities that form in these MMORPG's like WoW, tend to center around these guilds and the people in them. Since much of the guild experience is about helping people enjoy the game, as well as helping them with the game. This makes the building of connections and relationships with the guild very important, as well as the building of reputation, which are all important aspects of community building. Because these aspects are so apparent in the guilds of these MMORPGs it's not too far of a leap to talk about them as online communities. Unlike in other internet enabled games where the framing of the game space as an online community is perhaps more difficult, but not necessarily any less valid. Specifically looking at online team based first person shooter games where these same relationship and reputation building aspects can occur between players on dedicated servers on which the game is played.
Online team based first person shooter games are games like Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Call of Duty 4, and the like, where players are divided into two teams and compete against the other team directly. For example in Counter-Strike one team plays as a group of terrorists, with the other team playing as a counter terrorist squad, and the objective of the map (or level) is for the counter terrorists to either rescue a group of hostages being guarded by the terrorists, or kill all the terrorists. Obviously because of the nature of the game players on a team are forced to work together to achieve the objective, which means communicating strategies and tactics with their teammates. Communication in these games is either done verbally through a player's microphone (if they have one and the game supports voice chat in game,) or done through a text chat that can either be directed at only the people on a player's team or to everyone on the server playing the game.
Now these sorts of game mechanics do not breed the online community aspects in and of themselves, but thanks to an interesting phenomenon that arose in these games as they became popular and more competitive it starts to take on aspects of the online community. This phenomenon is the dedicated server, which are servers that players can rent, buy, or setup themselves, to handle the heavy lifting in the networking of the game. So rather than have one of the player's hosting the game, this sort of third party computer is the one that everyone connects to when playing the game. This setup has a number of advantages including better game performance, but it also acts a virtual meeting place for players since they are always there.
The In-Game Chat podcast spoke a lot about dedicated servers as these virtual meeting places in their aptly named, "The Dedicated Server Episode." They describe the episode as such on their website saying: We find that what we miss most in the otherwise very respectable world of online console gaming is the dedicated server - but as a function of community, instead of performance. Peer to peer systems work well enough for the business of matching player to group, but the “Cheers” dynamic is largely unknown.
Visiting a named server is alike to visiting a known locale, with all of the rules and idiosyncrasies and (most importantly) personalities found to apply in that sovereign space. We’re not offering suggestions on how to migrate a generation of hardware away from peer-hosting, of course. We’d just like to give a nod to the differences, and to point out how nice it is when everybody knows your name.
In a sense the server becomes what Oldenburg called a third place, becoming something of a anchor to a community. In this case it’s a community of people who play a videogame together (cooperatively or competitively.) Although he main focus of the community is to play the game, over time however bonds begin to form that bring the players together not just in the game and on the server, but also outside of the game entirely.
This is what usually leads to the creation of clans, or people joining clans that were already established. Clans in turn tend to have websites, message boards, and other ways for the members to communicate in turn strengthening the bonds of their clan’s community even when they are not engaged in the game itself.
In a blog post about an article he wrote for the Guardian’s Gamesblog, Keith Stuart poses four questions about the online societies of online team based first person shooters which he posed to some videogame journalists and clan members for the blog post. However the first three serve as a good way to look at, and deconstruct the online community aspects of these games. “What do you think catagorises the relationships gamers form with each other in online games?” “Do you think those odd, two-minute allegiances that you form with other gamers in quick Battlefield/Counter Strike sessions are a kind of unique for of social interaction?” and, “How important do you think social interaction is to online shooters?”
In regards the types of relationships gamers have within an online game you have to first look at the kinds of players that there are. Richard Bartle separated players into four main types: achiever, explorer, socialiser, and killer. Achievers are players that are always aiming to accomplish the next thing, whether it is gaining another level in an MMORPG, or winning the match in a game of Counter-Strike. Explorers are not just about exploring the game world, but also learning the intricacies of how the game works. In an FPS game this would be a player who learns not only the details of a map to take advantage of them, but would also know how accurate and damaging each weapon in the game is.
Socialisers are about communicating with other players, the game itself serves as merely a medium for them to socialize with these people. These are players who spend more time talking to other players in the game, than actually playing the game. Finally killers are players who play to fight, with the goal of killing or defeating, other players.
None of these types are mutually exclusive, each one must participate in the other three’s activities in order to better achieve their goal in playing the game. An achiever must be social at times to acquire help from other players to achieve their next goal, just as the killer must act as an explorer at times in order to obtain the knowledge they need to be better at killing the other players.
Because of the nature of the types of players that there are it becomes clear that each type, in one way or another, needs help from one of the other types from time to time. Although a killer player could spend the time to do the exploring aspects of the game themselves, it is both not their reason for playing and enjoying the game in the first place, as well as being highly inefficient. The best solution for the killer player is to be social with an explorer player in order to get the information that they require. Likewise with the other types the achiever may need a killer to assist them in completing some task, or a socialiser may serve as a leader to gather a number of players under a banner to do something or to better work together.
Thus what categorizes the relationships between gamers in team based FPS games is about creating temporary allegiances with the other players on ones team, so that each player is able to work as best they can toward the goal of the game, or to prevent the other team from accomplishing their goal.
This then leads into Stuart’s second question about these temporary allegiances, and if they are a unique form of social interaction. When Stuart posed the question he received two answers that had differing opinions. Deadmeat from the MPUK clan said, The short-term interaction with other gamers is no different to the interactions we all have during our everyday lives. They are no different to you walking through a busy high street and making eye contact with approaching shoppers to "negotiate" who goes what way. No different to standing in a bus queue and making smalltalk about the weather or the lateness of the bus with a perfect stranger, albeit taking place in an imagined world where getting killed is not necessarily The End.
While he received an answer from Tim Edwards of the PC Gamer magazine in which he said, Yes, definitely. I think it's interesting that I've never never made any attempt to follow up a relationship outside of a server, but always feel remarkably happy when I see familiar names playing. Why should I feel joy when someone I don't know is around? Because I know he/she has got my back, and that we're going to have a great time together.
Deadmeat seems to think that there is not any connection at all, that there is no exchange of social capital (as it were) between him and the other players he is playing with. But Tim Edwards’ answer is probably more apt in regards to what is actually going on with most players in these games. What happens is that in order for a player to work together with a team of other players, they must in some sense bet on their teammates. What they are betting is social capital, specifically trust. Trust that by working with the other players he will be better off then they would be if he were to go off and try and play on their own. For Deadmeat he is likely a player who is more likely to go off on their own, and as such probably fits into the killer player type.
What Edwards also says in his answer is very similar to what the In-Game Chat guys talked about in their podcast, that there is something about going back to a server and seeing the same person or people over and over again. What he describes is the building of reputation, which is an important part of establishing one’s identity both online and in the real world. By these players building up a reputation with each other they are able to establish identities with each other, which then leads to the creation of connections between them. Which is further helped along with the fact that they are sharing social capital in the form of trust in order to cooperatively play together.
So then how important is this social interaction in these online FPS games? Well in these team based games the social interaction is both important and not important at all. Although it can help with a player’s enjoyment of a game to establish these sorts of connections with players, it’s not something that is necessary to make the game fun for a player. Although it can be difficult to organize a team without the communication tools that you are provided in these games, it is possible to play and enjoy a game without them.
Most team based FPS game servers are populated by players who are not serious clan players, they enjoy the game for the sake of the game. So they do not tend to play on the same server over and over again, and likewise they do not explicitly organize themselves and their teams while playing. Any sorts of planning or tactics occur somewhat organically as they observe other players on their team and what they are doing. They may try to stay close to other teammates, and follow them and what they are doing, or they may choose to go off on their own.
Which is to say that most players fall into the achiever, explorer or killer types, with not as many falling into the socialiser type. Socializing for most players does not occur until they find themselves drawn into the game more, to the point that they are unable to achieve the goals they want by themselves and require the help of others. This help can either be in game by making contact with other players in order to better their play through teamwork, or outside of the game in order to gain a better understanding of the game itself so that they are able to play the game more intelligently by forming better strategies for when they play, or better tactics while they play.
Stuart’s fourth question does not serve to be helpful in deconstructing the relationships of players in an online team based FPS game, unlike the other three questions. It does however serve as an interesting question as to where this sociability in online games is going. Specifically he asked, “How do you feel the social side of online gaming has developed over the last few years?”
Most of the answers he got were in regards to voice chat, and how that has changed the dynamic of social interaction and communication while playing. A gamer named Cobra from the RAAB clan answered, Originally we had all the forums and websites, but now with the introduction of head-sets and the ability to speak to each other real-time via things like TS2 the social side has improved vastly. You can recognise someone's voice and know who they are and how they behave whilst talking to you. They are no longer a name and a message on the side of your screen like in the olden days.
Voice chat has the potential to take what was there in these games originally in regards to building connections and making it stronger, and making it occur a lot faster. This is because with only text chat players can still feel a sense of being removed from the other players, as if they are not necessarily real people, but suddenly attaching a voice to a name in a game suddenly makes that person far more real to the player. It also allows for better communication of tactics during a game, allowing for better team work. Thus making it much easier for the social capital/trust bet to pay off, because now players are not forced to stop playing to type in the chat but rather can continue to play while also communicating what it is they are trying to do.
In addition to the implementation of voice chat in games, companies like Valve have begun to include social and community tools in their games for players to take advantage of. With Valve the tools work across all their games, as well as any games offered on their Steam store. The tools allow for the easy creation and organization of groups, clans, and friends lists. Since these tools exist across multiple games it allows for clans or groups to no longer be centered on a specific game, but now they can more easily be made up of people who enjoy different games. This has the potential to make the dedicated server no longer the third place, but rather making services like Steam the third place for people to gather, and the games become more the thing that one does with the people they know who are in that space.
Works Cited
Ackerman, Mark, et al. Communities and Technologies: An Approach to Foster Social Capital? CSCW ’04, 6 Nov – 10 Nov. 2004. Chicago: CHI Letters, 2004.
Bartle, Richard. “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs.” MUD.co.uk. 25 April 2009 <http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm>
James. “The Dedicated Server Episode.” Podcast. In-Game Chat. 1 Jan. 2009. Colony of Gamers. 25 April 2009 < http://www.ingamechat.net/?p=378 >
Kolo, Castulus and Timo Baur. “Living a Virtual Life: Social Dynamics of Online Gaming.” Nov. 2004. Game Studies. 25 April 2009. <http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/kolo>
Krzywinska, Tanya. “Being a determined agent in(the) World of Warcraft: text/play/identity.” Videogame, Player, Text. Ed. Atkins, Barry and Tanya Krzywinska. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2007. 101-19.
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1989.
Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1995.
Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community. MIT Press. 25 April 2009 <http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html >
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody. New York: Penguin Group, 2008.
Stuart, Keith. “All human relationships are on the servers.” Weblog post. Gamesblog. 22 June 2006. Guardian.co.uk. 25 April 2009 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/jun/22/games.guardianweeklytechnologysection>
Stuart, Keith. “How to make friends and kill people: relationships in first-person shooters.” Weblog post. Gamesblog. 22 June 2006. Guardian.co.uk. 25 April 2009 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2006/jun/22/clanlife>
Being that Michael is a new member, he can't create a thread just yet and asked me to post his paper. Here it is:
Michael Moore
Dedicated Servers: Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Ray Oldenburg outlined in his book The Great Good Places that people have three "places" in which they reside. The first place being the home, the second being work, and then a third place which is a person's anchor of community life. An example of a person's third place might be something like a bowling league, where they are able to be a part of a community of people sharing a similar interest, in this case bowling, that exists outside of their normal spaces.
These third places for people were typically based around real world places like bowling alleys, or bars, but with the advancements in telecommunications and social networking technologies on the internet these third places have begun to exist in the forms of online communities rather than being communities based in the real world. Although much has been written about this, including a good amount about video games as this third place for people, but even so much of that has been in relation to one specific kind of game, the massively multiplayer online game. While other games, specifically the online team based first person shooter game (which will be analyzed in the following,) are ignored to some extent due to the nature of the community being somewhat less structured and more organic in creation. This makes it in some sense harder to notice that it is in fact just as much of an online community as anything else.
Online communities (sometimes referred to as virtual community,) have been growing rapidly over the past few years, with the development of sites and services like Facebook, Twitter, and others. Concurrently there has also been a lot written on the subject of these online communities, and how similar they are to real world communities in the relationship and trust building that occurs in them, even though the people online may not be geographically close to those people in their community.
Communities, online or not, are based around a collection of connections between people within a given group. Those connections are relationships between the people within the group are maintained through the exchange of social capital between those in the group. In the introduction paper to a panel called Communities and Technology: An Approach to Foster Social Capital, they define social capital as, "a set of properties of a social entity (e.g. norms, level of trust, and intensive social networking) which enables joint activities and cooperation for mutual benefit. It can be understood as the glue which holds communities together.” As the definition implies you need this social capital to exist in order to maintain a community, because without it you are unable to create or maintain the connections that are needed for the community to form and maintain itself.
Howard Reheingold in his book The Virtual Community says that an online (or virtual) community is, “when people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationship.” This seems to indicate more a way in which people are able to establish connections rather than a description of how an online community is formed, but what it is saying is that a community can be formed through communication if there is some emotion by the people in the conversation. The emotion bit is important, because what the feelings and emotion refer to is that the people in the conversation care about the conversation. If they did not care about it then they would not be able to establish a connection of relationship with the others in the conversation, which in turn would prevent the community from being formed.
Now this notion of online community though does not merely exist on websites, or chat rooms, and more recently people have begun to look into the online communities that can form within certain internet enabled video games. Most often the games that are written about are of the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game variety, since these games (as the name suggests,) contain a large number of people in the game at a given time. Usually, due to the design of the game, players are forced to work together in groups in order to complete certain aspects of the game.
For instance in World of Warcraft, one of the world's largest massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG,) players are divided into two main factions, Alliance and Horde, depending on the race of the character they wish to play. Players can then work together with the other players in their faction to complete certain quests, or in some cases they can compete directly against members of the other faction. Within a faction though there is a sub-faction that players can choose to become a part of. These sub-factions are called guilds, and allow players to organize into groups more easily so that one is able to organize with their friends, or perhaps with people who have similar interests or have similar goals for playing the game.
In a study of the game Everquest, Mikeal Jakobsson and T.L. Taylor, found that “the production of social networks and circulation of social capital proves to be one of the most important aspects,” (cited in Kolo and Baur.) Meaning that building up these connections and relationships with others in the game is crucial to the gameplay the player experiences as they play the game. Of course the best way of creating and maintaining such relationships is through a central social organization, online community, or what in WoW is called a guild.
The online communities that form in these MMORPG's like WoW, tend to center around these guilds and the people in them. Since much of the guild experience is about helping people enjoy the game, as well as helping them with the game. This makes the building of connections and relationships with the guild very important, as well as the building of reputation, which are all important aspects of community building. Because these aspects are so apparent in the guilds of these MMORPGs it's not too far of a leap to talk about them as online communities. Unlike in other internet enabled games where the framing of the game space as an online community is perhaps more difficult, but not necessarily any less valid. Specifically looking at online team based first person shooter games where these same relationship and reputation building aspects can occur between players on dedicated servers on which the game is played.
Online team based first person shooter games are games like Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Call of Duty 4, and the like, where players are divided into two teams and compete against the other team directly. For example in Counter-Strike one team plays as a group of terrorists, with the other team playing as a counter terrorist squad, and the objective of the map (or level) is for the counter terrorists to either rescue a group of hostages being guarded by the terrorists, or kill all the terrorists. Obviously because of the nature of the game players on a team are forced to work together to achieve the objective, which means communicating strategies and tactics with their teammates. Communication in these games is either done verbally through a player's microphone (if they have one and the game supports voice chat in game,) or done through a text chat that can either be directed at only the people on a player's team or to everyone on the server playing the game.
Now these sorts of game mechanics do not breed the online community aspects in and of themselves, but thanks to an interesting phenomenon that arose in these games as they became popular and more competitive it starts to take on aspects of the online community. This phenomenon is the dedicated server, which are servers that players can rent, buy, or setup themselves, to handle the heavy lifting in the networking of the game. So rather than have one of the player's hosting the game, this sort of third party computer is the one that everyone connects to when playing the game. This setup has a number of advantages including better game performance, but it also acts a virtual meeting place for players since they are always there.
The In-Game Chat podcast spoke a lot about dedicated servers as these virtual meeting places in their aptly named, "The Dedicated Server Episode." They describe the episode as such on their website saying: We find that what we miss most in the otherwise very respectable world of online console gaming is the dedicated server - but as a function of community, instead of performance. Peer to peer systems work well enough for the business of matching player to group, but the “Cheers” dynamic is largely unknown.
Visiting a named server is alike to visiting a known locale, with all of the rules and idiosyncrasies and (most importantly) personalities found to apply in that sovereign space. We’re not offering suggestions on how to migrate a generation of hardware away from peer-hosting, of course. We’d just like to give a nod to the differences, and to point out how nice it is when everybody knows your name.
In a sense the server becomes what Oldenburg called a third place, becoming something of a anchor to a community. In this case it’s a community of people who play a videogame together (cooperatively or competitively.) Although he main focus of the community is to play the game, over time however bonds begin to form that bring the players together not just in the game and on the server, but also outside of the game entirely.
This is what usually leads to the creation of clans, or people joining clans that were already established. Clans in turn tend to have websites, message boards, and other ways for the members to communicate in turn strengthening the bonds of their clan’s community even when they are not engaged in the game itself.
In a blog post about an article he wrote for the Guardian’s Gamesblog, Keith Stuart poses four questions about the online societies of online team based first person shooters which he posed to some videogame journalists and clan members for the blog post. However the first three serve as a good way to look at, and deconstruct the online community aspects of these games. “What do you think catagorises the relationships gamers form with each other in online games?” “Do you think those odd, two-minute allegiances that you form with other gamers in quick Battlefield/Counter Strike sessions are a kind of unique for of social interaction?” and, “How important do you think social interaction is to online shooters?”
In regards the types of relationships gamers have within an online game you have to first look at the kinds of players that there are. Richard Bartle separated players into four main types: achiever, explorer, socialiser, and killer. Achievers are players that are always aiming to accomplish the next thing, whether it is gaining another level in an MMORPG, or winning the match in a game of Counter-Strike. Explorers are not just about exploring the game world, but also learning the intricacies of how the game works. In an FPS game this would be a player who learns not only the details of a map to take advantage of them, but would also know how accurate and damaging each weapon in the game is.
Socialisers are about communicating with other players, the game itself serves as merely a medium for them to socialize with these people. These are players who spend more time talking to other players in the game, than actually playing the game. Finally killers are players who play to fight, with the goal of killing or defeating, other players.
None of these types are mutually exclusive, each one must participate in the other three’s activities in order to better achieve their goal in playing the game. An achiever must be social at times to acquire help from other players to achieve their next goal, just as the killer must act as an explorer at times in order to obtain the knowledge they need to be better at killing the other players.
Because of the nature of the types of players that there are it becomes clear that each type, in one way or another, needs help from one of the other types from time to time. Although a killer player could spend the time to do the exploring aspects of the game themselves, it is both not their reason for playing and enjoying the game in the first place, as well as being highly inefficient. The best solution for the killer player is to be social with an explorer player in order to get the information that they require. Likewise with the other types the achiever may need a killer to assist them in completing some task, or a socialiser may serve as a leader to gather a number of players under a banner to do something or to better work together.
Thus what categorizes the relationships between gamers in team based FPS games is about creating temporary allegiances with the other players on ones team, so that each player is able to work as best they can toward the goal of the game, or to prevent the other team from accomplishing their goal.
This then leads into Stuart’s second question about these temporary allegiances, and if they are a unique form of social interaction. When Stuart posed the question he received two answers that had differing opinions. Deadmeat from the MPUK clan said, The short-term interaction with other gamers is no different to the interactions we all have during our everyday lives. They are no different to you walking through a busy high street and making eye contact with approaching shoppers to "negotiate" who goes what way. No different to standing in a bus queue and making smalltalk about the weather or the lateness of the bus with a perfect stranger, albeit taking place in an imagined world where getting killed is not necessarily The End.
While he received an answer from Tim Edwards of the PC Gamer magazine in which he said, Yes, definitely. I think it's interesting that I've never never made any attempt to follow up a relationship outside of a server, but always feel remarkably happy when I see familiar names playing. Why should I feel joy when someone I don't know is around? Because I know he/she has got my back, and that we're going to have a great time together.
Deadmeat seems to think that there is not any connection at all, that there is no exchange of social capital (as it were) between him and the other players he is playing with. But Tim Edwards’ answer is probably more apt in regards to what is actually going on with most players in these games. What happens is that in order for a player to work together with a team of other players, they must in some sense bet on their teammates. What they are betting is social capital, specifically trust. Trust that by working with the other players he will be better off then they would be if he were to go off and try and play on their own. For Deadmeat he is likely a player who is more likely to go off on their own, and as such probably fits into the killer player type.
What Edwards also says in his answer is very similar to what the In-Game Chat guys talked about in their podcast, that there is something about going back to a server and seeing the same person or people over and over again. What he describes is the building of reputation, which is an important part of establishing one’s identity both online and in the real world. By these players building up a reputation with each other they are able to establish identities with each other, which then leads to the creation of connections between them. Which is further helped along with the fact that they are sharing social capital in the form of trust in order to cooperatively play together.
So then how important is this social interaction in these online FPS games? Well in these team based games the social interaction is both important and not important at all. Although it can help with a player’s enjoyment of a game to establish these sorts of connections with players, it’s not something that is necessary to make the game fun for a player. Although it can be difficult to organize a team without the communication tools that you are provided in these games, it is possible to play and enjoy a game without them.
Most team based FPS game servers are populated by players who are not serious clan players, they enjoy the game for the sake of the game. So they do not tend to play on the same server over and over again, and likewise they do not explicitly organize themselves and their teams while playing. Any sorts of planning or tactics occur somewhat organically as they observe other players on their team and what they are doing. They may try to stay close to other teammates, and follow them and what they are doing, or they may choose to go off on their own.
Which is to say that most players fall into the achiever, explorer or killer types, with not as many falling into the socialiser type. Socializing for most players does not occur until they find themselves drawn into the game more, to the point that they are unable to achieve the goals they want by themselves and require the help of others. This help can either be in game by making contact with other players in order to better their play through teamwork, or outside of the game in order to gain a better understanding of the game itself so that they are able to play the game more intelligently by forming better strategies for when they play, or better tactics while they play.
Stuart’s fourth question does not serve to be helpful in deconstructing the relationships of players in an online team based FPS game, unlike the other three questions. It does however serve as an interesting question as to where this sociability in online games is going. Specifically he asked, “How do you feel the social side of online gaming has developed over the last few years?”
Most of the answers he got were in regards to voice chat, and how that has changed the dynamic of social interaction and communication while playing. A gamer named Cobra from the RAAB clan answered, Originally we had all the forums and websites, but now with the introduction of head-sets and the ability to speak to each other real-time via things like TS2 the social side has improved vastly. You can recognise someone's voice and know who they are and how they behave whilst talking to you. They are no longer a name and a message on the side of your screen like in the olden days.
Voice chat has the potential to take what was there in these games originally in regards to building connections and making it stronger, and making it occur a lot faster. This is because with only text chat players can still feel a sense of being removed from the other players, as if they are not necessarily real people, but suddenly attaching a voice to a name in a game suddenly makes that person far more real to the player. It also allows for better communication of tactics during a game, allowing for better team work. Thus making it much easier for the social capital/trust bet to pay off, because now players are not forced to stop playing to type in the chat but rather can continue to play while also communicating what it is they are trying to do.
In addition to the implementation of voice chat in games, companies like Valve have begun to include social and community tools in their games for players to take advantage of. With Valve the tools work across all their games, as well as any games offered on their Steam store. The tools allow for the easy creation and organization of groups, clans, and friends lists. Since these tools exist across multiple games it allows for clans or groups to no longer be centered on a specific game, but now they can more easily be made up of people who enjoy different games. This has the potential to make the dedicated server no longer the third place, but rather making services like Steam the third place for people to gather, and the games become more the thing that one does with the people they know who are in that space.
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