Analysis: Reading Week 16
Reading Week 16:
"Player Commitment to Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG): An Integrated Model"
An MMORPG is a
communal World online where many players can participate in different
activities to further their goals and exploration. The players share the same
world with other players and can move about or converse with one another.
A main characteristic
of an MMORPG is that the player can control an avatar which they are able to
make or are given a choice of premade avatars.
Some other aspects of
the MMORPG genre of games includes a community grouping often known as a “guild”
or “clan”. These groupings consist of players who often play through the game world
together. There are special allocations for these guilds such as messaging
between the guild privately, there are also more achievements that can be acquired
only through guilds.
Some examples of
popular MMORPG’s include, Club Penguin, World of Warcraft, Black Desert Online,
Habbo Hotel and Second Life.
As MMORPG’s are
online they can usually be played internationally, allowing players to
communicate with people of different countries.
As players invest
more time and energy into their experience they can create a better bond with
their characters and therefore achieve more immersion into the world and more
loyalty to the MMORPG.
The MMORPG genre can
produce a type of feeling related to social Identity which means that the
individual’s knowledge that they belong to a group and community keeps them
loyal to said community, for MMORPG’s this is essential to the success of the
game. Players will be capricious of the game feels uncomfortable or is too slow
paced to play, therefore the MMORPG game style can be very competitive and full
of new things to do every so often to keep players engaged within the game
world.
" Play Time: An Overview of the
MMORPG Genre"
MMORPG’s can be
traced back to the seventies where Pen and Paper RPG’s were the origin. An
example of a Pen and Paper RPG is Dungeons & Dragons. Pen and Paper RPG’s
are played in the minds of the player with story based gameplay which is dictated
by the “gamemaster” who has the role of narrator throughout the game, dictating
what happens next in the overall plot of the game for the players to tackle.
Previous to the beginning of the game the gamemaster creates the locations and
has an idea of the overall world and it’s rules along with the theme of the
world. This form of game is made so that there is not specifically winning or
losing, just enjoying the general game and being emersed in the world using imagination.
In around 1975 the
first text based adventure game was created by a man named William Crowther.
These text based adventure games played through typing a command which was two
words and having your character carry out those commands all through text in
response to a prompt from the game. The aim was to win the game by doing all
the right actions in order to progress the story to the final, correct outcome through
a series of puzzles. This style of game was not necessarily considered a
roleplaying game due to the fact that you could not alter your characters or develop
your character usually.
After this form of
game came MUD’s which stand for Multi-User Dungeon. These were computer games
that had the player reading text and responding with there own text. This
differs from the Text based adventure games because MUD’s had implemented
multiplayer. In this way the machine was acting as the gamemaster of the
players story. Much of the gameplay involves solving puzzles during questing. Players
can also develop characters with their stats, which is short for the statistics
of their character.
"Massively Multiplayer
Online Role Playing
Games (MMORPGs)"
Now that we know a bit about the history of MMORPG’s we can
delve into the activities that players undertake when hopping into an MMORPG
first.
When entering an MMORPG game server players will need to first
make an account to host several of their avatars or simply just one. Many of
the servers are hosted by area, time zone or language groups. General gaming
activities include dungeon crawling, character expansions and improvements and interacting
with other players. Two classifications in the activities and play styles of
the game are known as (PvE) which stands for Player versus Environment and
(PvP) which stands for Player versus Player. In Player versus Environment games
the player will generally be battling against (NPC’s) which stands for Non Playable
Character’s which are controlled by the game. The NPC’s may include monsters
that are in quests or the background characters to the game. Player versus
player is different in the fact that the majority of the time will be spent battling
other players with their own play style. Some games will have PvP orientated
servers and PvE orientated servers while some may be exclusively played one way
or the other. PvP is the driving force to why players quarrel, in this way if
players quarrel between guilds it is expected that the whole guild takes action
to fight alongside their guild partner.
Players may have different play styles, due to this there is
generally different attributes involved in picking your character for MMORPG’s.
Some standard examples include class, gender, general appearance and
profession. When choosing a class players can play with defensive style classes,
like healers or offensive style classes, like warriors. These class types help
to contribute to a party system where different skills are needed to band
together. Some players will like to play multiple classes with different roles,
these secondary accounts are known as alt accounts, short for alternate accounts.
"A study on trading scams in massively multiplayer
online role-playing games and risk mitigation
techniques"
Some reasons why MMORPG’s might be negatively impacted by there players can be traced back to scamming.
Because MMORPG’s are online and generally have trading systems with real money it is widely known that there are a few people who try to scam other players out of there money. When scams are taking place there are many ways to execute the crime. Some scammers can take advantage of the game itself by looking for a weakness within the game and targeting that weakness for there own objective.
Scammers can also use the environment of the game in order to tempt players into falling for their trap. Scammers may attribute their wealth through using certain software for putting other players at a disadvantage. There are many ways for a scammer to attack a player or the game itself in order to acquire what they want, however what they want could be a vast option of choices.
Some scammers wish to acclaim in game item, currency or rare items and some scammers may be looking for real money. This proves as a big problem for game developers who need to constantly update their method of preventing scams that may occur. There are three main categories for which a developer needs to focus on in order to stop scams.
Developers need
to first focus preventing the scams when caught, then they need to put in place
certain protocols which will lessen the effectiveness of the scam, lastly they
need to make sure they put more secure measures in place to prevent the same
thing from happening again. Generally when a game is started there will be a
few security measures put in place such as a password and an email in order to
identify the user is a legitimate person.
"Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in the new media classroom"
Since the rise of MMORPG’s some theorists have inquired about
the learning potential behind these games. Aaron Delwiche of the Department of
Communication in Trinity University, San Antonio under took an experiment to
see if students could learn through the experience of MMORPG’s. Delwiche’s discovery
concluded that MMO’s are a safe learning environment that wouldn’t put a students
person at risk of danger. This safety
was useful in the work with anxiety-related disorders and would be important
for future educational systems as safety is necessary for learning. The
nurturing of safe environments when compared with risky environments concluded
that when in a risky environment, students would cooperate less and refuse to
talk. Students could also visualise themselves in the role of game developers
and scientists due to the independence of safe environments.
The students from Delwiche’s research were found that they received
strong scores from their work when working in the testing ground of virtual
worlds created in common MMORPG’s. The students explored a range of topics to
do with the online worlds and were given the task to create virtual spaces
within different games. They used perseptive analysis skills in which they
learned in doing their readings and had all learned greatly from their course
material.
The author had three recommendations in his findings that they wanted to share with the reader. Delwiche wrote to be cautious of the possibility of becoming addicted to the games, to do your research on several MMO’s before finding the one that best suits your course curriculum and teaching outcomes, and lastly to integrate your students properly on how to interact with the game and the goals that should be achieved during their play.
"Building an MMO With Mass Appeal: A Look at Gameplay in World of Warcraft"
Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Nickell, E. and Moore, R.J. (2006) 'Building an MMO with Mass Appeal: A Look at Gameplay in World of Warcraft'. Games and Culture, Vol. 1 (4) 281-317.
One of the main games associated with the MMORPG genre is
called “World of Warcraft”. The game has been running for 17 years in 2021, and
after it’s launch in November of 2004 it was immediately apparent that the game
was unlike any other at the time. The game has many unique features that make
it stand out. Some features like across the eight available races a player can choose
from the game also has “hybrid” characters that are the combination of two or
more races and their abilities. When starting the game you must also choose
from two factions, the Alliance or the Horde. Some races are free to choose
either however other races are bound to one or the other. A feature that
consists in the game is how factions cannot communicate between each other. If an
Alliance tries to communicate to a member of the Horde it will promptly be turned
into gibberish to keep up the realism of the world. However players can still
emote to convey a sentiment to some accord. In World of Warcraft or (WoW) for
short, the servers are divided into PvP and PvE.
The research found and attributed to Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nick Yee, Eric Nickell and Robert J. Moore, shows that many
players enjoy playing more action based characters and can play as a single
player or with a group. This is what widely appeals to the players as the play
style is very open and not limited by the rules or regulations. There is also
several role-play servers for those who would like to stay in character. This can
hark back to the first forms of MMORPG as in pen and paper games where players
would immerse themselves in the world through imagination, actively having a
role in their characters story.
Extra:
Some useful sites for gathering your academic articles for research.
RefWorks: Refworks does all the work for siting your papers. It's very handy.
ResearchGate: ResearchGate is a good place to start if you're stuck on finding the right papers in google scholar.
Internet Archive: You can find everything from papers to books that you really can't find anywhere else on Internet archive, even if stuff has been removed.
This was my work process for this week, I found that having them both open at the same time meant that I could read over a paragraph whenever I wanted to and make sure I was on the right track for what I was trying to say. I'll remember to work this way next time as well.
I was also taught how to use adobe acrobat to highlight the bits that made sense to me which made this reading task so much easier.
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