Destroying community in MMORPGs: How groups are undermined

25/04/2010 Barnes 15 comments

This paper will examine how communities form in Massive Multiplayer Online Real Player Games (MMORPGs) through the formation of alliances/guilds. An argument will be put forward that the strength of communities in MMORPGs can be measured by how well they withstand the undermining influence of spies/moles working to destroy them. Strong and weak community ties will both be examined along with the role and importance of each type within a community. The reasons people try and destroy these communities will be considered and the effectiveness of this undermining force on different types of communities will be discussed. First we will start with a crucial definition of community.

There is no precise definitive definition for online community; rather the definitions available are varied in their complexity and specifics. Many authors define it as the sense of strong reciprocal camaraderie, empathy and support amongst members (Preece & Maloney-Krichmar, 2005). Other authors consider online communities to be groups with shared goals (Katz, Rice, Acord, Dasgupta & David, 2004, p315-328; Wellman & Gulia, 1997, p.1-3). Specifically for the purpose of this paper Roberts (1998) definition of community will be utilised. Roberts (1998, p361) describes online community as having various properties including cohesion or a sense of belonging, members giving and receiving help, where group members form individual relationships, a specialised language exists and the group self regulates. This describes the sort of community that exists in MMORPGs

The design of MMORPGs usually includes a background story and goals for players that provide a common goal for communities within the game to work towards (Koivisto, 2003; Rice, 2006). In most MMORPGs players need to band together in groups called alliances or guilds in order to be able to achieve the game’s goals or succeed in quests. This is the case for games like ‘World of Warcraft’, ‘Travian’ or ‘Everquest’. As a result of these game structures alliances/guilds form where a group achieves cohesion by working towards a common goal, members help each other out with goal attainment, use language related to the game, and members both self regulate and form more complex individual relationships. Additionally the game design in MMORPGs normally has features that allow for players to band together into self run groups or communities (Koivisto, 2003; Rice, 2006). As such it can be seen that these alliances or guilds are in fact communities. For the remainder of this paper the word community will be used to refer to guilds or alliances within MMORPGs

Communities within MMORPGs can vary greatly in size from small groups with less than 10 members through to massive groups with over 150 members (Williams et a;, 2006, p343). The purpose of individuals becoming members of these communities varies from socialisation (with those groups which last more than a month having members develop a caring relationship towards each other) through to goal attainment, with goals often being centered around the war like elements of the game such as battling or raiding other players (Williams et al. 2006, p.344-346). Furthermore the goals of the community would often be multiple and include aspects of social and war outcomes, with the most common reason individuals become members of MMORPG communities being to achieve game goals (Williams et al. 2006, p.346). This shows that the communities in MMORPGs form for a variety of reasons, and as such have varying levels of longevity and strength within the community.

These communities will often have explicitly stated goals as well as utilise recruitment and exclusion procedures (Williams et al. 2006, p.348). These recruitment procedures contribute towards the growth of the community and often result in players joining the community after an existing community member invites the player into the group. Often when a player becomes part of a community, the game becomes secondary to the community and the community itself is what keeps the player online (Koivisto, 2003). In some groups the sense of community becomes that strong that players will move between games or onto new servers in the same game as a group, with individuals conforming to whatever allows them to be a continued member of the community rather than selecting modes of play that are the best for their own personal needs (Pargman & Erissson, 2005, p.6). As a result it can be seen that for many of these communities the strength of communities ties become stronger then the needs of individuals within the community.

According to Rheingold (1988, p6) words on a screen can create strong emotions that lead to the creation of community amongst those who were previously strangers. The strength of ties between individuals within that community can be described as strong or weak. Weak ties involve less investment and are more prevalent online where strong ties usually reinforce existing beliefs and are less prevalent (Götzenbrucker & Köhl, 2009, p.312). According to Wellman and Gulia (1997, p.7-8), weak ties online are an important means for sharing information and the variety of backgrounds of people within the group is more important in determining the quality and quantity of information than the number of people. For this reason it is conceivable that smaller communities with a variety of people will be better at reaching community goals than larger communities full of like minded individuals. Due to these differences in how the strength of ties can affect the types of relationships within a community it can be seen that the strength of ties within a community is related to the durability of the community.

Weak ties can allow individuals to receive more varied and higher quality resources than strong ties due to the ability of weak ties to reach a wider social network than strong ties (Katz et al. 2004, p.349). Individuals support the formation of numerous weak ties by making their efforts online public or possible for others to see, thus allowing others to initiate assistance and start the formation of a weak tie (Aguiton & Cardon, 2007, p.51). Sometimes weak ties can develop further into strong ties. Strong ties “encourage frequent, companionable contact and are voluntary” (Wellman & Gulia, 1997, p.10), furthermore these ties have a reciprocal nature, provide mutual support and often include long-term contact. When people know each other in multiple contexts strong ties form more readily, however the formation of these strong ties online can take longer than offline, due largely to the asynchronous nature of much online communication (Katz et al. 2004, p.352). In MMORPGs often the ties within a community are strengthened through help and support, beginning as weak ties initially and only becoming strong ties through shared experiences over time. As a result communities that have been together for a long time are more likely to have a lot of strong ties between members.

Wellman and Gulia (1997, p.9) argue that while many individuals are less inclined to offer help and support to others in an online environment, especially to those with who they only have weak ties, many other individuals will still assist others in this situation for purposes such as improving self-esteem and gaining respect and status. Rehingold (1988, p.8) further argues that within a community those who freely give assistance to others find that when they require assistance they receive it more quickly and more thoroughly than those that do not assist others freely. Wellman and Gulia (1997, p.11) go on to discuss how over time weak ties between those in a community strengthen and become strong ties. So even though the community may be made up of predominately weak ties, reciprocity of assistance emerges and helps to strengthen the community as a group. As a result of ties strengthening with longevity of a community, those MMORPG communities that have been together for longer should have stronger ties that are harder to break apart than newer communities. Williams et al (2006, p.340) states that with ongoing play many people favour working with those they come to know as they learn they can depend on them and predict their actions. As such those communities with strong ties should be harder for dissenting forces to tear apart.

As a community grows in size the types of ties within the MMORPG community usually become a mix of strong and weak ties. In groups that are too large for players to know each other well, players tend to form subgroups within the larger group, where the overall community works towards game play related goals, yet the subgroups have stronger and more social ties amongst members (Williams et al. 2006, p.346). Pargman and Erissson (2005, p.5) also state that players can form smaller groups with strong ties while still being part of a larger community with weak ties between themselves and members that are not part of their small group. In these groups community members most commonly see the community as a blend of strong and weak ties, with positive feelings towards most other members of the community yet only strong attachment to some of the other community members (Williams et al. 2006, p.351). As a result of this dissenting forces may at times destroy a large community, while leaving smaller nodes or groups within that community intact, therefore not destroying all relationships within a community.

Furthermore ties are generally stronger across the whole group in small communities than in large communities with these smaller groups often being more selective about community membership (Williams et al. 2006, p.347). As a result of this more selective process, undermining forces would have more difficulty penetrating the smaller MMORPG communities and as such would often have to work on destroying these communities from the outside, a much trickier proposition.

Many MMORPG communities fall apart and do not last more than a month due to the players leaving. One reason for this is that some groups are only created to serve a temporary purpose and as such these shorter lasting groups can not always be considered to be communities (Koivisto, 2003). In groups that are not temporary, the reasons for newer groups falling apart are largely social and include things like social distance, the group being too serious or not serious enough, and conflict within a group (Williams et al. 2006, p.349). When groups fall apart this quickly they have not had enough time together for strong ties to form.

In MMORPGs there are often those who try and destroy communities that are established either for personal gain, or to help another community that they are part of. This is especially the case in those MMORPGs where users can not micromanage battles as information becomes an important part of winning battles and meeting game objectives. For communities in these situations propaganda, deception, infiltration and other forms of information warfare become central to how the community works towards it goals (Chamberlain, 2008). Chamberlain (2008) further states communities try and place spies or agents into other communities help with undermining the communities they are in opposition to. Those seeking to destroy or undermine a community are a destructive force within the community and the impact of this destructive force within a community can vary depending on the strength of the ties within the community.

The work of those trying to undermine online communities is made easier by the ease at which misunderstandings arise in the online environment. According to Rheingold (1988, p.9) the ambiguity of online communications, due to the lack of physical signals such as body language and facial expressions, means that misunderstandings arise far more readily than through other modes of communication, and these misunderstandings escalate far more readily. Further “the asynchronous nature of most conversations hinders the immediate repair of damages” (Wellman & Gulia, 1997, p.12). As such an undermining force can sometimes destroy a community through only placing the seeds of a problem and then allowing the issue to fan its own fire, growing into rifts within the community with little further help from the person trying to destroy the community.

When a hostile force emerges within a community those community members who have the most valuable contributions to make will often keep silent and not participate freely within the community (Rheingold, 1988, p.8). This is especially true in communities with very few strong ties between members and often the contributors who become silent are the ones who would have had the best chance at repairing the dissent before it tears the community fully apart. However when these key people do not remain silent as is the case in larger, strong communities, they often utilise propaganda as a tool within the group to help steer off undermining forces by improving group cohesion, keeping morale and sense of purpose high and to also create doubt amongst those creating the problems (Chamberlain, 2008). Therefore the strength of ties within a community can be used to predict the impact of destructive forces within that community.

In summary, players in MMORPGs form into communities with common goals where those in the community work towards the same end goal. Each community can be made up of a mix of strong and weak ties and the mix of ties varies dramatically from one community to the next. These communities stay together for varying lengths of time from very short durations through to years, with the enduring communities having more significant strong ties between their members. When the communities fall apart it can sometimes be because the community is no longer needed by its members, however most of the time it is due to dissenting forces undermining these community ties. The undermining can come from players outside the community placing doubt into the minds of some community members or also by spies/moles working their way into the community and undermining the community ties from within. Communities with many significant strong ties tend to hold up to this undermining effect far more readily than those with only weak ties, even though the community with strong ties will also often have weak ties between some members. As such the strength of the strong ties within a MMORPG community can be determined by how well the community holds up to the undermining forces of those trying to destroy the community.

References

Aguiton, C., Cardon, D. (2007). The Strength of Weak Cooperation: an Attempt to understand the Meaning of Web 2.0. Communications & Strategies. 65(1). Retrieved March 11, 2010, from http://www.idate.fr/fic/revue_telech/696/CS65_AGUITON_CARDON.pdf.

Chamberlain, P.R. (2008). Information Operations in and around EVE Online. Retrieved March 30, 2010,from http://arkem.org/io-eve.pdf.

Götzenbrucker, G., Köhl, M. (2009). Ten Years Later. Towards the Careers of Long Term Gamers in Austria, Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 3 (2), p. 309-324

Katz, J. E., Rice, R. E., Acord, S., Dasgupta, K., & David, K. (2004). Personal Mediated Communication and the Concept of Community in Theory and Practice. In Kalbfleisch, P. (Ed.), Communication and Community: Communication Yearbook 28 (pp. 315-371). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Retrieved March 6, 2010,from http://www.comm.ucsb.edu/faculty/rrice/A80KatzRiceAcordDasguptaDavid2004.pdf.

Koivisto, E. (2003). Supporting Communities in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games by Game Design. Paper presented at the Digital Games Research Association Conference. Retrieved March 11, 2010,from: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05150.48442.pdf.

Pargman, D., Erissson, A (2005). Law, order and conflict of interest in massively multiplayer online games. Proceedings of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views – Worlds in Play.

Preece, J., Maloney-Krimcher, D., (2005). Online Communities: Design, Theory and Practice. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4). Retrieved March 30, 2010, from,http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/preece.html.

Rheingold, H. (1988). A slice of life in my virtual community. Whole Earth View. Retrieved March 6, 2010, from http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/bdgtti/bdgtti_18.html.

Rice, R. A. (2006). MMO Revolution. Published by Lulu.com. Retrieved March 30, 2010, from Google Books.

Roberts, T.L. (1998). Are Newsgroups Virtual Communities? In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, Los Angeles.

Wellman, B., Gulia, M., (1997). Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities. In Kollock, P., and Smith, M., (Eds.), Communities and Cyberspace. New York: Routledge. Retrieved March 6, 2010,from http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/netsurfers/netsurfers.pdf.

Williams, D., Ducheneaut, N., Zhang, L., Yee, N., & Nickell, E. (2006). From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft. Games & Culture, 1(4), 338-361.

This work is licensed to Ann Barnes, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

Communities and Web 2.0 community, MMORPG, Online Communities, Strength of Ties

Edit in Admin

Comments

Written by Barnes about 2 years ago.

Thanks Carolyn for your thoughts. The two MMORPGs you have mentioned are both ones I have not played, so it is good to get an opinion from someone who has played different MMORPGs. The issue of spies/moles has been the one that has been most debated in regards to my paper and one where my own experience and research indicates that they are a problem in many MMORPGs. That said, I can see how in some MMORPGs they would play less of a role, or not be as prevalent. I think this is due to the specific structures of the MMORPG, as some are designed in a way where undermining other groups can improve outcomes for your own group, where others may be structured so there is no benefit from impacting on other groups.
Written by Barnes about 2 years ago.

Thanks for the positive feedback
Written by CarolynS about 2 years ago.

Hi,

An interesting and well researched paper!

I have been an online gamer for a few years now, and can support your statement that “players tend to form subgroups within the larger group”, and “may at times destroy a large community, while leaving smaller nodes or groups within that community intact”. In one of my larger ‘communities’, a misunderstanding led to the break up of the group. However, the strong ties in the communities stayed together, and broke into numerous smaller communities themselves.

One disagreement with your paper however, I think that the occurence of spies or moles in these communities depends on the game being played. I have only ever played Final Fantasy XI and Champions Online, but have never witnessed any sort of infiltration of the groups, and cannot think of a reason why the breaking of a community would benefit another. Just my two cents.

Carolyn.
Written by Nat about 2 years ago.

Barnes I will confess that I am not a gamer, however your paper clearly indicated to me that ‘team work and cohesion’ is a very important factor in guilds/alliances success within MMORPGs. Thus it appears Chris K’s use of MMORPGs as a closing example maybe under rated whilst trying to advocate that online cooperation and community shapes web 2.0. From an outsider to MMORPGs I consider that you have clearly demonstrated your argument as outlined in your opening paragraph making the paper enjoyable to read.

Ref: Participation in forms of community Shapes The Web 2.0 (stream 2).
Written by Sky about 2 years ago.

Thanks – that makes sense to me, particularly your point about the frequently-asynchronous nature of online communication.
Written by Barnes about 2 years ago.

Good questions Sky.
I would say that some of the dynamics discussed would still occur in offline environments, just not to the same degree when considering the problems. The Wellman & Gulia (1997, p.12) article referenced above discusses how the asynchronous nature of online communications adds to the severity and on flow of issues that arise from misunderstandings. Due to offline communities and groups being more face to face and synchronous in their communications, misunderstandings would be less likely to occur in the first place and easier to clear up quickly when they do occur.
Most offline groups and communities would also not be formed for a purpose where they are in conflict with other groups (though I can think of exceptions to this statement), meaning that usually offline groups would not need to worry about spies and the like, making this part of the dynamics discussed irrelevant.
Due to both of these factors I don’t think the arguments in the paper could be carried over to offline communities or applied more generally.
Written by Sky about 2 years ago.

An interesting paper! I don’t have enough experience with MMORPGs to add to the existing comments on group dynamics, all of which are very illuminating.

My question is whether you feel that the arguments made in this paper about the resilience of online communities could be applied to offline communities? Are the trends that you note here more generally applicable?
Written by Michael N about 2 years ago.

Agree, the other papers in other streams caution the disclosure of details but there seems to be a relaxing in society of what we are willing to broadcast to millions of people. In your paper feeling confident to express the self is a benefit and one that should not be disgarded despite the need to exercise caution with what one posts.
Written by Barnes about 2 years ago.

From my own experience with MMORPGs I have seen two separate alliances fall apart as a result of spies. In one case the spy used information gained to assist another group with destroying the alliance I was part of, and the other time they caused dissent within the alliance though misinformation. I have seen spies fail as well, in the case of one alliance that was strong when I joined and was part of for over two years, we had a few occasions where spies tried to undo the alliance, yet each time it only grew stronger still. I have however seen a greater number of alliances fall apart from misunderstandings, though again most of these were newer and not very strong to start with.
Written by Barnes about 2 years ago.

Thank you for the positive reply, Michael, and for the link to the Dibble article, it is one I had not come across before. Communities with strong ties obviously can be torn apart (like in your example), however it is far harder for someone to purposefully destroy communities with strong ties.

Your comment on Web 2.0 making people more inclined to give help online than I stated in the paper, is one I would personally agree with. Mainly as I think Web 2.0 platforms are making people feel more confident in expressing themselves online. However as this would have been getting off track from the papers topic, and is enough of a topic to be a paper in its own right, I did not research if Web 2.0 increases willingness to give online help.
Written by Barnes about 2 years ago.

I would agree with you where you say that weaker groups can fall apart for reasons other than social distance, though I disagree that social distance is not a factor. You mention people from different countries working together and using software such as Ventrillo to communicate. Yes it is true that people in different countries can be socially close with adequate communication. The comment on social distance is about people (regardless of physical proximity or distance) not having sufficient ongoing communication or interaction, be that with VoIP or other means, to develop close social ties. Also you mention specifically WoW and Ventrillo as a means of gaining social closeness, though this paper is about a wider range of MMORPGs, not just the one. From personal experience of playing MMORPGs, not all of them use Ventrillo, and social distance does indeed develop in alliances at times.
Written by TrinaW about 2 years ago.

Only on one point do I disagree with what you have written and that is that disintegration of communities is often due to the deliberate action of spies/agents. I cannot speak for all of the MMORPG games but I have been playing WOW for 2.5 years now and I have not seen the disintegration of any of my guilds due to spy/agent action.

I have had 3 guilds disintegrate but in all 3 cases it was due to the misunderstandings you mentioned between a few of the older members. I have seen individuals bagging guilds in the general Trade chat and 2 of my guilds have had to deal with the result of someone hacking in and clearing the Guild Bank but in my experience these only strengthened the community relationships.

We did have one member who was kicked due to ignoring the guild rules who rejoined the guild after creating a new identity but he did not act subversively and when he told us who he was he was allowed re-entry for all his identities due to the good behaviour he had demonstrated.

I totally agree with all the other points you have raised as I have seen them demonstrated over and over during my time in the MMORPG.
Written by Michael N about 2 years ago.

Excellent paper you have argued very well with evidience. I would like to give a reply to several points, somewhat long.

Before I do so, my experiences are with two chat lines rather than a MMORPGS, however the same things you have researched I have experienced.

For some reason it has become generally more acceptable to do things for strangers online, without a physical presence. If I gave you a bunch of flower simply because I liked you, for example, but was not seeking a relationship or even further contact you would think that is strange. Yet, if I email you information or a greeting card it is more likely to be greeted with a thank you and nothing more is thought about it. You write about Wellman and Gulia (1997) stating at the time they wrote the article that people were less likely to give help and advice online. I might argue that with Web 2.0 this is now different. The motivation to do so is driven by self-esteem and status issues. But I would say the willingness to give online has increased since they wrote this article.

Secondly, communities with strong ties can be torn apart. In my case, we migrated two years ago from one chat site to another because of the re-vamp. A few of the trolls came over and tried to destroy the new chat site by posting flaming but this new site had an ignore feature. Hence, it was easier to ignore people.

However, because many of the group were living in Brisbane and the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, some of the offline venues resulted in gossip and mis information being spread. Therefore, whilst this did not damage the site, it is still there and thriving, it did destroy the community. The individuals ended up not talking to each other, taking sides or just stonewalling others. As a result the networks of friendships have been destroyed. What was interesting was, this had happened two years ago with another group using the same chat channel. The he said she said Chinese whispers can be very powerful and what is said online is taken off line and vice versa. This I believe can make it possible to destroy community as at least 5 people including myself refuse to go back to the chat line.

The most interesting and true point of your paper is your discussion of misunderstandings destroying community. This is true and depends on the community but generally misunderstandings seem to not be able to be cleared up fast. In face to face interactions you can talk to the person that has caused or one caused the offence to and it can be sorted out. Online I argue this cannot occur as well. What happens is, one person says something but others join in. They either have a stake in making the issue worse or are simply disinterested and make a passing comment about who said what. When the two players or chatters do not address it directly it is easy to just ignore someone. Ignoring them, like banning someone off your Facebook, seems to be taken offence to. The misunderstanding is a huge part of destroying communities, again maybe not the environment but certainly the relationships in them.

To conclude have you read a paper that, whilst not academic, was influential in academic research in this area by Julian Dibbell called A Rape in Cyberspace? The wiki entry is a not too bad summary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_in_Cyberspace but the full paper is here:

http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/stuff/dibbelrapeincyberspace.html

It served as an example that a community, in this case a MUD, can be destroyed by the thoughts and comments. Some express well they are just words on a screen, but that of course is not true as flame wars get personal. Whilst the community did not collapse, it damaged relationships and trust within it. Dibble (1993) descibes the scene well:

“Certainly whatever civil society now informs LambdaMOO owes its existence to the Bungle Affair. The archwizard Haakon made sure of that. Away on business for the duration of the episode, Haakon returned to find its wreckage strewn across the tiny universe he’d set in motion. The death of a player, the trauma of several others, and the angst-ridden conscience of his colleague JoeFeedback presented themselves to his concerned and astonished attention, and he resolved to see if he couldn’t learn some lesson from it all. For the better part of a day he brooded over the record of events and arguments left in *social, then he sat pondering the chaotically evolving shape of his creation, and at the day’s end he descended once again into the social arena of the MOO with another history-altering proclamation.”

Dibble, J. (1993). A rape in cyberspace. Retreived 29 April, 2010, from http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/stuff/dibbelrapeincyberspace.html

Wellman, B., Gulia, M., (1997). Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities. In Kollock, P., and Smith, M., (Eds.), Communities and Cyberspace. New York: Routledge. Retrieved March 6, 2010,from http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/netsurfers/netsurfers.pdf.
Written by atleeit about 2 years ago.

and i can relate this back to my paper because as MMORPG players use Ventrillo as a industry gaming standard communication utility this ties directly inside the web 2.0 platform.
Written by atleeit about 2 years ago.

Just regarding one thing you have said “Many MMORPG communities fall apart and do not last more than a month due to the players leaving.” “In groups that are not temporary, the reasons for newer groups falling apart are largely social and include things like social distance, the group being too serious or not serious enough, and conflict within a group”

Well with this one I would have to disagree to some degree because temporary groups do not fall apart because of social distance, this game was built so everyone from all the way around the world could participate and my sister has played this game for over 6 years and plays with Americans in her huge guild now this being said There is a big time zone difference between the US and Here but she manages by staying up late and also there is a huge social distance but all these problems are fixed by using a popular software called Ventrillo which is used by millions and millions of MMORPG players. (Connor, L. 2010) is just one example of why Ventrillo works in a group either small or large and guilds use it worldwide to stay in contact so virtually The social distance is not seen anymore.

I would say the reason why smaller weaker groups or groups in general have weak ties can be many things but not due to social distance, these things can include some people have completed hard quests over other newer members and this will mean sometimes they may want to go their own ways. Others could be because of conflicts but that can be due to skill levels, But I can tell you it’s definitely not the distance factor because that’s what World of Warcraft is all about.

I would also say regarding your thoughts on spys and agents that it is no different from our real world, size and money = power.

References:

Connor, L. (2010). Ventrilo For Communication For The Chronically ill. atmac.org. Retrieved April 28, 2010, from http://atmac.org/ventrilo-for-communication-for-the-chronically-ill/

Comment Pages:

Online Conference on Networks and Communities

Destroying community in MMORPGs: How groups are undermined

Comments

Categories

Tags

Latest comments

Meta