Multiplayer Online Games

In this article, based of qualitative methodology, was carried out the analysis of the content dynamics of communicative interactions in online games is. The article considers the motivation for communication in the game and also interpersonal communication in the space of network interactions. communitys of gamers in the game are analyzed through the theory of social groups of Charles Cooley.

Елютина М.Э., Неруш А.А., Бирюков Д.И. Содержательная динамика коммуникативных взаимодействий в онлайн-играх//Материалы научно-практической конференции Дыльновские чтения «Общество и личность в условиях информационно-цифровых трендов»: - Саратов: Изд-во «Саратовский источник», 2019. – 373с.: ил. ISBN 978-5-91879-923-9 Входит в РИНЦ®

Mit diesem Titel liegt eine veröffentlichte Magisterarbeit vor, deren redaktioneller Beschreibungstext auf dem Buchrücken einen „Blick über den Tellerrand hinaus“ verspricht. Dieses Versprechen soll sich durch drei Leitaspekte einlösen, die den Einfluss von virtuellen Welten auf das menschliche Verhalten fokussieren, zweitens das Suchtpotenzial und die Isolation von der Außenwelt thematisieren und drittens die neuen sozialen Komponenten beleuchten, die durch die ‚Begehung’ virtueller Welten ermöglicht werden.

A mobile gaming device may be a player's own personal tablet, smartphone, PDA, etc., with an application program installed via the internet for carrying out a remote gaming session. All gaming functions are carried out by a stationary gaming terminal communicating with the mobile device, such as by using WiFi. The mobile device operates as a user interface The games involve a plurality of players.

With their increased popularity, games open up possibilities for simultaneous learning on multiple levels; players may learn from contextual information embedded in the narrative of the game and through the risks, benefits, costs, outcomes, and rewards of the alternative strategies that result from fast-paced decision making. Such dynamics also contribute to building relationships and sharing/delegating authority with others, in other words, acquiring leadership skills. Games and simulations have long histories as tools to facilitate learning and training, especially in formats such as board games, role-playing games, and real-life simulations. However, multiplayer online games are rarely used outside military training for leadership development. With its emphasis on transformational leadership skills in distributed teams (DTs), this study presents several findings on leadership in multiplayer online environments, such as INFINITEAMS and EVE ONLINE. To cope with globalization, techn...

Por meio da compreensão do ativismo de fãs como uma forma de resistência cotidiana cultural, econômica e criativa, o objetivo deste capítulo busca problematizar as relações entre participação, resistência e consumo de fãs do jogo on-line League of Legends (LoL). Enquanto suporte empírico, apresenta-se um mapeamento sobre algumas práticas do ativismo de fãs-jogadores no antigo fórum oficial de LoL no Brasil, a partir de uma triangulação metodológica com destaque para o uso de inspirações etnográficas. Após as reflexões teóricas e as análises, propõe-se uma tipologia das práticas de resistência cotidiana na comunidade de LoL baseada em quatro modos. Os resultados desta abordagem indicam que a diversidade do universo das produções digitais e práticas de parte dos fãs de LoL ressignificam as compreensões sobre resistência e participação, questionando a dualidade existente entre a cidadania e o consumo da cultura pop, agindo como catalizadores que reinterpretam e excedem os limites do fandom.

This book is about the three identities of the videogame, the gamer, and Game Studies. I write that there are no definitive truths but rather discourses and constructions; ideas, actions, beliefs, and practices related to videogames are discourses that merge and shape our perception of videogames as an area of study of its own right. These discursive responses meet and clash creating what we call truths, which are temporary and negotiable.

This perspective is inspired by Foucauldian ideas and present few questions about videogame-related identities in and outside of academe. Does Game Studies have a conceptual core? What makes game studies difficult to be disciplined in academe? What do we learn from the scholarly and popular discourses on videogames that would help understand the identity questions related to games?

I go on to describe what makes the videogame identity according to game studies: aesthetics, fictions, meaning-making, performance, transformation, etc. and what makes it difficult for game studies being an open market of ideas and an academic "un-discipline". This leads me to the gamer's identity: an aficionado first, and a connoisseur of fictional worlds.

The popularity of multiplayer online games has nowadays reached millions across the globe capturing the attention of both researchers and practitioners. Unfortunately, this kind of applications has still to deal with the limitations imposed by some unresolved issues. Interactivity, consistency, fairness, and scalability are the major requirements that need to be efficiently addressed in order to provide an appealing product to a huge number of potential customers all over the world. Answering to this demand, we describe a holistic ...

Two Chapters in this book -

Chapter 2: “Never Such Innocence Again”: War and Histories in World of Warcraft.

This chapter examines the treatment of warfare in (vanilla) World of Warcraft, tracing the ways in which early discourses of war as heroic are used to displace some of the more uncomfortable themes in the game. Players are always 'at war', yet how does the game narrative justify this?

Chapter 12. Role-play vs Gameplay. The difficulties of playing a role in World of Warcraft
(with Justin Parsler, University of Brunel)
This is our first attempt to investigate how role-playing functions in online worlds (later continued in the Digitale paper and also the LOTRO reader). here we argue that despite the name, palyers find actively performing the characterisation of their avatars is difficult - and often restricted by the game itself.

Toxic behavior is pervasive in every online environment and consists of verbal expressions and behaviors that serve to destabilize groups.  Studies have documented antisocial behavior and toxic speech in most digital platforms (O’Sullivan & Flanagin, 2003).  Whether considering flaming on 1980s and 90s USENET forums, social media fueled outrage on contemporary politics, or in-game, text-based conversation in multiplayer games, toxicity can be motivated by emotional, intellectual, political, or other causes and as such correlates strongly with the modes and consequences of offline hate speech.  Understanding online toxic behavior in ways that allow for moderation of its causes and effects first requires an understanding of how to study the concrete manifestation of this behavior—the text produced by users of a system. 
situational.  These behaviors are necessary to address because they are a key factor in the outright hostility of online gaming environments to those perceived as other.  This destabilization maps on to offline models of gender, race, class, ethnic, national, linguistic, and abelist-based hate speech. 

Studying this phenomena at webscale and in the ephemeral environments of multilingual online chat systems is complex and requires a multidisciplinary approach.  Our presentation describes four areas of fruitful sociolinguistic research and potential sociolinguistic and NLP-based responses to those areas.  Each points to the unique features of CMC that both exploit the meaning-making potential of its platforms and respond to the constraints within them and which also largely suggest the feasibility of developing tools to collect and analyze text from multiplayer gaming platforms.  Those areas are orthographic variation of standard spelling, discourse structure not reliant on punctuation, the difficulty of disentangling conversational threads, and the predilection of CMC for multilingualism and code-switching.

This thesis is based on an empirical study of the BBC’s Muddle Earth multiplayer online game. It is a study of game production in the context of cross-media strategies, and follows the adaptation journey of the Muddle Earth IP from a book, into a TV series, and finally into a game.

At a time when cross-media strategies have become an established part of the children’s media landscape, staying ‘on brand’ across different media is an essential factor to maximise audience benefits. In order to provide seamless cross-media experiences, game adaptations are required to live up to the expectations set up by their source materials – brand consistency becomes an essential target for production.

Brand consistency, however, is a fluid concept with floating meanings, often only defined in operation when producers provide feedback in processes of revision leading to the approval of new content. Furthermore, it can be found at different levels, from surface form (visual elements, game assets), to deeper content (tone, style and effect). The research investigates both, and makes use of narrative concepts and models to assess brand consistency at the more complex level of content.

Game adaptations are also required to meet the expectations of game players. Adapting into a new medium includes some level of remediation, but also entails the use of new devices and conventions, which offer different kinds of pleasures. This study looks at the ways in which these were translated, continued and modified in Muddle Earth.

The research looks at the text and its production, drawing on empirical data from game-playing, interviews with producers and the analysis of design and production documents. The theoretical framework is derived from game studies, adaptation studies, intertextuality and narrative theory, and political economy.

This article examines the democratic potential of online communities by investigating the influence of network heterogeneity on social tolerance in an online gaming environment. Online game communities are potential sources of bridging social capital because they tend to be relatively heterogeneous. Causal analyses are conducted using structural equation modeling with survey data collected in a three-wave panel of online game players in Japan. Results show that the heterogeneous composition of online community causally enhances social tolerance toward community members within the online gaming setting. Furthermore, results show that enhanced social tolerance toward online community members is generalized to offline settings. This causal process suggests that online communities provide access to bridging social capital by gathering heterogeneous populations around shared contexts.

The present study aims at examining in-game language usages of students playing online games. It was conducted with the case study design of the qualitative research methods. The study group consisted of 10 participants who were determined by using criterion sampling method. Semi-structured interview form, observation notes and voice recordings were used in the data collection process. The collected data were analyzed by content analysis technique. In the application part of the research, two game environments were designed, in which the use of language was not restricted and then the use of expressions of foreign origin was prohibited. During the first game, it was revealed that the participants playing League of Legends produced mixed expressions in Turkish and English and used them frequently in the in-game communication. In the second game, the participants continued to use these expressions voluntarily or involuntarily, although the use of expressions of foreign origin was restricted. The observations of the researchers supported these data, as well. Although the game was designed entirely in Turkish, the participants thought that it was very difficult to use merely Turkish for in-game communication. In addition, it was emphasized that the Turkish-English mixed expressions used in the game process were important for comfortable communication and this communication style became a pattern.

Game industry professionals are frequently implementing new methods of addressing ethical issues related to in-game toxicity and disruptive player behaviours associated with online multiplayer games. However, academic work on these behaviours tends to focus on the perspectives of players rather than the industry. To fully understand the ethics of multiplayer games and promote ethical design, we must examine the challenges facing those designing multiplayer games through an ethical lens. To this end, this paper presents a reflexive thematic analysis of 21 in-depth interviews with games industry professionals on their ethical views and experiences in game design and community management. We identify a number of tensions involved in making ethics-related design decisions for divided player communities alongside current game design practices that are concerned with functionality, revenue and entertainment. We then put forward a set of design considerations for integrating ethics into multiplayer game design.

Il contributo descrive la particolare tipologia di narrazione collettiva realizzata nei Giochi Di Ruolo (GDR) testuali, i cui partecipanti si ritrovano online per raccontare e vivere una storia: all'interno di una chat ogni utente interpreta un personaggio, ne recita il parlato e ne descrive le azioni in maniera coerente con la caratterizzazione scelta; l'agire è dunque prettamente verbale e si realizza all'interno di un mondo creato dalla fantasia e dalle parole dei giocatori stessi: tutto è racconto, e l'intrecciarsi dei messaggi inviati dagli utenti produce, in tempo reale, una storia scritta a più mani.
La narrazione nei GDR testuali non segue alcun canovaccio, e non sono ammessi riferimenti alla realtà esterna al racconto; pertanto, i testi non solo sono prodotto di una autorialità plurima ma si espandono attraverso l'accumulo di materiale narrativo composto in assoluta autonomia, senza il supporto di alcuna riflessione metanarrativa condivisa e di una successiva revisione. Spinti da tali considerazioni ci siamo posti il seguente interrogativo: come può una storia coerente scaturire dalla semplice giustapposizione di messaggi sincroni che si susseguono senza alcuna guida? La questione è stata affrontata attraverso una disamina delle strategie impiegate dagli utenti per conciliare l’improvvisazione nella scrittura con la necessità di un risultato coeso e coerente.
Nello specifico si è esaminato il ruolo cardine del ciberspazio, capace di trasformare la scrittura collettiva in una condivisione di esperienze e quindi in grado di offrire alla narrazione una significativa componente di spontaneità. Tra gli elementi che contribuiscono alla creazione di un mondo virtuale persistente ci siamo focalizzati da un lato sulle schede luogo e personaggio, dall'altro sulla serialità della narrazione; abbiamo inoltre approfondito l’uso della anafora quale ponte tra l’immaginario dei singoli autori.
Successivamente la ricerca ha messo a fuoco le norme, rigide e rigorose, che regolano l’ordine di invio dei messaggi da parte degli autori. I meccanismi di turnazione sono di capitale importanza in quanto loro è il compito di garantire che non vi siano prevaricazioni tra gli autori e che la consequenzialità logico-narrativa dei contributi sia rispettata, così da ridurre al minimo contraddizioni e incomprensioni.
Infine l’analisi si è rivolta alla descrizione degli indicatori metanarrativi, particolare tipologia di segnale discorsivo che realizza, sotto il livello letterale del testo, un costante confronto tra i giocatori; peculiarità di questi usi è la loro capacità di mascherarsi da passaggi descrittivi così da soddisfare la necessità da parte degli autori di veicolare e ricevere dei feedback, al tempo stesso non incrinando il senso di immersione nel mondo virtuale del quale i giocatori sono parte.

How do social ties in online worlds evolve over time?
This research examined the dynamic processes of
relationship formation, maintenance, and demise in a
massively multiplayer online game. Drawing from evolutionary
and ecological theories of social networks, this
study focuses on the impact of three sets of evolutionary
factors in the context of social relationships in the
online game EverQuest II (EQII): the aging and maturation
processes, social architecture of the game, and
homophily and proximity. A longitudinal analysis of tie
persistence and decay demonstrated the transient
nature of social relationships in EQII, but ties became
considerably more durable over time. Also, character
level similarity, shared guild membership, and geographic
proximity were powerful mechanisms in preserving
social relationships.

Roblox is a famous gaming stage where individuals can get the best experience while playing the game. This play station contains numerous flexibilities. On this stage, the client can make their own games with different ideas and those recreations can play by another client. At the same time, a client can build up another character.

In this article I propose an approach to a new model of audiovisual representation call virtual playful (MRVL). For this, I rely in part on modeling that focuses on Hollywood cinema, proposed by Jesús González Requena. But, because the object of study I propose is more comprehensive, as it covers various audiovisual media beyond the cinema as deduced from the corpus of work chosen-the Youtube platform, the videogame Stalker and the music video Dancing Anymore - I refer also to other theories and modeling that come from the called game studies. The problem with these studies is that, in general, do
not focus on the substance of the narrative experiences (of which the MRVL assumed its contemporary approach): the emotion and experience of the desire on the part of the
viewer (or better would be called user) through a symbolic horizon full of significance. From this base, I reflect on the type of user who draws this MRVL, for which I have taken the concept of Virtual Self proposed by Ben Agger. For this it would be a person connected to the world through the technological interface; but I redefine it as a user experience that would live within this MRVL that would prevail in a strong narcissism and that, therefore, conclude in an experience empty of sense.

Online games are increasingly popular and present in people's lives, especially those of young adults. The literature indicates that the excessive use of online games by young adults can bring several losses such as the weakening of their relationships and social circles, sleep dysregulation, school failure, marital failure and job loss. In addition, some studies have found a strong relationship between Internet Gaming Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder - although it is difficult to establish a linear causal relationship between them. Despite the negative aspects mentioned above, studies indicate that there is a correlation between video game expertise and fluid intelligence and that the time spent playing daily is associated with an improvement in the accuracy and speed of performance in working memory tests. As it is a relatively new technology, studies in the area are still recent and there is no systematization of these findings. Given this scenario, it is important to understand the impact of these games on the lives of people in this age group. To this end, this study aims to conduct a narrative review on the topic. Articles, books and epidemiological data published between 2005 and 2020 were examined using the Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Scopus databases and websites using the descriptors [Young AND Adults AND Online AND Games AND Cognition AND Social OR Isolation OR Social Relations]. The results indicated that, in general, online games do not harm cognition, and may even bring benefits. However, online games are associated with behavioral problems in young people who spend a lot of time playing. There was also a difference in how online games impact men and women, although the reasons for this difference are still unknown. It is suggested that future studies address other age groups in order to offer a broader picture of the effects of online games.

Keywords: Online Game; Adults; Internet Gaming Disorder; Social Relations; Cognition.

The paper makes some remarks about the language variety spoken and written in online gaming communities through a quantitative analysis of the lexicon composition, subsequently discussing the role of common words, toponyms, and anglicisms. Furthermore, the study highlights the extension of the technical terminology and the importance of the jargon: the technical terminology is needed to distinctly denote a large group of complex and exclusive referents, while the role of jargon words is to define and preserve the group identity; the combination of these two elements makes texts written by gamers hard to understand, and it forces new members of a community to follow a learning process based on prolonged social interactions.
The broadest part of the article consists of a glossary that gathers a selection of unique terms extracted from Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games chats. Each entry contains information about the meaning of the associated word, its formation, its distribution and, in some cases, a list of its variants and synonyms. The glossary exhibits a large amount of loanwords, both integrated and non–integrated, and calques, whereas derivatives and compound words are rare. However, the more common word–formation processes are the verbalization of English nouns and the contraction of words that causes a considerable linguistic variation.

In order to fully understand and interpret gamers’ behavior it is important that we investigate long-term user experience. When taking such a focus, we shed light on how the user experience and relationship with a system/product evolves over time. Such an understanding is critical especially in the context of Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) where gamers usually have a long lasting relationship with the game. In this study we propose an alternative version of UX Curve which is a retrospective method for assessing long-term UX proposed by Kujala et al. Targeted modifications are made along UX dimensions and the method is tested in an empirical study with nine gamers. Findings revealed that this alternative version can be an effective method to document and explain temporality of gamers’ experiences

This ethnographic study examines the belief system, social and political organization of Gaiscíoch, an online gaming community that exists within the simulated world of a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). It provides an ethnographic account of an online gaming community that is open to any player without skill or time commitment requirements, but still maintains high status within the game world. This project identifies eight elements that make this inclusive, friendly, and casual community successful in virtual worlds that tend to be dominated by communities that have a competitive, strict, and exclusive approach to online gaming. Lastly, this project inquires about the nature of the border between the virtual and the physical spaces and establishes that gamers can be considered pseudo-border-inhabitants that are in control of the community they place adjacent to them in the cyber world.

Games have intruded into popular, academic, and policy-maker awareness to an unprecedented level, and this creates new opportunities for advancing our understanding of the relationship of games to society. The author offers a new approach to games that stresses them as characterized by process. Games, the author argues, are domains of contrived contingency,capable of generating emergent practices and interpretations, and are intimately connected with everyday life to a degree heretofore poorly understood. This approach is both consistent with a range of existing social theory and avoids many of the limitations that have characterized much games scholarship to date,in particular its tendency toward unsustainable formalism and exceptionalism. Rather than seeing gaming as a subset of play, and therefore as an activity that is inherently separable,safe,and pleasurable,the author offers a pragmatic rethinking of games as social artifacts in their own right that are always in the process of becoming. This view both better accords with the experience of games by participants cross-culturally and bears the weight of the new questions being asked about games and about society.

Most game studies research on ethics and games examines the ways games encode, express, and encourage ethical reflection and ideas through their systems, mechanics, and representational elements. However, not much attention has been paid to the ethical aspects of games as/when they are played by more than one player. In this article we use literature from the philosophy of sports to discuss how competition can be framed as an ethical activity and how doing so allows us to examine commonly used value-laden terms such as ganking, spawncamping, and trash talking. We propose the idea of the ideal moral competitive game: a game in which the best moves or plays are coincidentally those that result in the best possible degree and type of challenge for my opponent. From this baseline we then articulate a preliminary ethics of play, centered on competition that can be productive for examining and understanding the ethics of inter-player interactions.

In recent years, there has been a great deal of research and pedagogical experimentation relating to the uses of technology in second and foreign language education. The majority of this research has usefully described and examined the efficacy of in-class and directly classroom-related uses of technology. Many important and consistently corroborated findings have emerged from this literature (for recent reviews, see Chun, 2008; Kern, 2006; Kern, Ware, & Warschauer, 2004; Thorne, 2008a; Thorne & Payne, 2005). This article broadens the scope of inquiry to include second and foreign language-related uses of technology that extend into the interstitial spaces between instructed L2 contexts and entirely out-of-school, non-institutional realms of freely chosen digital engagement. Two demographically and sociologically significant phenomena are examined in detail; the first focuses on participation in Internet interest communities such as fan fiction and virtual diaspora community spaces; the second describes a continuum of 3-D graphically rendered virtual environments and online games. A review of research in each of these areas reveals extended periods of language socialization into sophisticated communicative practices and demonstrates the salience of creative expression and language use as tools for identity development and management. In the final section of the article, we suggest a number of possibilities for synergistically uniting the analytic rigor of instructed L2 education with the immediacy and vibrancy of language use in digital vernacular contexts.

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso (TCC) que investiga como se dá a relação dos jogadores com os jogos através de um Estudo de Caso do League of Legends. Com isso, busca-se entender as práticas de consumo dos jogadores e entender como a relação de jogador-consumidor pode evoluir para uma relação de jogador-fã.

Stereotypical portrayals of race are common in many modern video games. However, research on games and
game environments has often overlooked race as an important consideration when evaluating games for their
educational potential. This is particularly true of the educational literature on online games, which has tended
to emphasize virtual game spaces as intrinsically exemplary learning environments while deemphasizing the
narrative content of the games themselves. This article addresses this oversight. Through a close reading of
game communications and fan-created content, the authors examined how developer-produced racial narratives
influence players’ experience of the game world. The authors find that players and player communities
reproduce and reinforce narrow developer-produced interpretations of race during in-game interactions as
well as in player forums and virtual communities beyond the confines of the game world. Because the game
environment is not conducive to players’ critical examination of race, the authors conclude that the game does
not intrinsically provide a means for players to engage critically with game content. They further conclude
that as educational environments these games must be situated and contextualized within the ideologies and
discourses of the physical world.

Abstrak Pada penelitian terpisah, penulis merancang sebuah sarana berupa MOBA Game Center yang merupakan fasilitas bagi pemain game online, tempat konsultasi para orang tua yang mengikuti perkembangan permainan game online anak-anak mereka, maupun sebagai sarana untuk mengarah positif permainan game online menjadi kegiatan edukatif atau membangun. Peneliti kali ini khusus mendesain sebuah meja yang dikhususkan untuk mendukung permainan game online, yang berjudul Mobile Legend Bang-Bang (MLBB), yang lagi marak dimainkan kalangan kaum muda maupun yang sudah berusia. Meja desain khusus ini merupakan furnitur dengan system knockdown, yang dapat dibongkar pasang dan dapat ditempatkan di lokasi yang diinginkan. Meja Komputer dengan spesial desain ini diperuntukkan 5 orang pemain, sehingga diperlukan sarana dengan jarak dan dimensi khusus untuk menfasilitas saat bermain secara online bersama. Abstract In a separate study, the author designed a MOBA Game Center facility that is a facility for online gamers, a parent's consultation place that follows the development of their children's online games game, as well as a mean to lead positive online gaming into educational or building activities. This time researcher specifically designed a table that is devoted to support the online game, entitled Mobile Legend Bang-Bang (MLBB), which rampantly played among young and aged. This special design table is a furniture with knockdown system, which can be assembled and can be placed in desired location. This computer desk with special design is intended for 5 players, so it takes the mean with the distance and special dimension to facilitate when playing online together.

Tesis doctoral Cum Laude - Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.

Esta tesis trata precisamente sobre cómo interactúan diferentes factores. Se estructura en tres partes diferenciadas. En la primera parte de la tesis, se establece el marco teórico
y metodología. En la segunda parte se profundiza en el estudio comparado de dos empresas pioneras: Zynga y EA Playfish. La tercera parte trata sobre el contenido paralelo desarrollado por los jugadores a partir de los juegos y la aplicación de las técnicas de investigación. Las metodologías aplicadas son varias, destacando principalmente la netnografía.