Sopranos Meets EverQuest

After doing the Jakobsson and Taylor reading, I learnt that there is more to MMORPGs than just levelling solo and killing monsters. There is a whole culture of socially interacting with other players, pretty much like in the physical world. People who play the game with ‘Real Life friends’ are actually more at an advantage because the community then becomes very similar to the physical world where you know who you can depend on for certain tasks to be complete.

For instance, if members of your guild get treated badly, other guildmates would be able to stand up for him/her and go about alternate methods of policing, punishment and enforcement to ensure that members within their guild are treated properly.

It’s not unusual to find people within the same guild that are related to one another. Offline ties between players are an important component of the game where trust no longer becomes an issue. Players in-game form guilds where the leadership structure is hierarchical. In these guilds, players are expected to be committed to playing and reaching goals that are put in place by the guild’s leader. It is obvious that power relationships exist within guilds. One of my objectives in conducting this documentary is to investigate these power relationships, especially in guilds where players are related to one another.

week 3 tutes transient spaces

Just before the tutorial for this week, I started rethinking my options for the documentary. I know I should probably have a solid idea on what I’d like to by now but judging by how I have so many ideas, I keep thinking ‘how about…..’. Well all that has now officially been put to rest. I know I’ve said this before but this may very well be it. =D *hopefully*

At the beginning of class I was torn between the idea of either doing the documentary based on an aspect of gaming in the virtual world (as I mentioned previously) or an issue within the Brunei Students Society in Melbourne. I reopened the idea of doing the idea based on BSSMelb because I thought it would be perfect opportunity to showcase my skills where Bruneian officials monitor. I felt that I’d have better access to the people involved in BSSMelb (since I previously was an office bearer) and I knew the issues that normally took place within the society.

After speaking with Jenny, however, I decided to go with the online virtual community idea instead. This is because I realised that I was too close to the issues and the conflicts that are experienced by the student’s society and that no good could come out of ‘airing the committee’s dirty laundry’ for government officials to see. So yea, there is such a thing as too much conflict in a documentary. Jenny suggested that instead of doing this documentary in the participatory/reflexive mode, I should do it in an expository manner. But by doing so, I’d most likely be ostracised from the Bruneian community and I wouldnt be able to create a good documentary because of the lack of support that I’d get from the local community.

So now I’m permanently settling on doing a documentary based on the online virtual community. I was thinking about this last night (before actually laying eyes on the Fraser Allison and Harry Milonas documentary entitled Griefing and you )and I was considering choosing an issue that followed the same path as bullying in the virtual world. I think I should look for an alternative conflict now.

Jenny suggested that I should look at the Jakobsson and Taylor reading entitled “The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Social Networking in Massively Multiplayer Online Games” to get ideas on the sort of conflicts that arise in online virtual communities. So I’ll start there. I also think I should do some reading into online subcultures, maybe I’ll get ideas from there as well.

I still think that this documentary will conducted in a participatory and reflexive manner considering I make up a part of the online virtual community and my avatar may make an appearance in the documentary (I have yet to decide what sort of angle the documentary will take).

After I come up with solutions to my current problem, I’ll have to answer the questions below as homework for this week. This seems like another version of Adrian’s four sentence abstract.

a. One sentence defining your community,

b. One sentence defining the issue you want to explore,

c. One sentence defining the conflict,

d. one sentence outlining the social theory that is relevant.

Anyways, expect another post before next friday with answers to these questions.