The Stereotype of Online Gamers: New Characterization or Recycled Prototype?


Kowert Rachel Oldmeadow Julian
2012 DiGRA Nordic '12: Proceedings of 2012 International DiGRA Nordic Conference

The stereotypical online gamer is a socially inept, reclusive, male, with an obsession for gaming. This characterization is shared with a number of other groups too, suggesting it reflects a set of behaviors and concerns common to a range of groups. This study examines the content of the stereotype of online gamers in relation to other similar groups in an attempt to identify the core behaviors or characteristics upon which the stereotype is based. By comparing the similarities and differences in the stereotypes of a range of related groups it is possible to identify the shared and unique features of online gamers that are being reflected in stereotypes about them. Results show similarities in stereotypic content between online gamers and other social groups, including other kinds of gamers. Additionally, the characteristic of social ineptitude, which is a key trait in the stereotype of this group, did not emerge as a distinctive feature for online gamers alone, questioning the unique role that mediated socialization plays in these spaces. Implications for future research within the online gaming population are discussed.

 

Interaction Forms, Agents and Tellable Events in EverQuest


Klastrup Lisbeth
2002 Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings

This paper focuses on forms of interaction and agents in a virtual world and how one may apply an understanding of these to an actual analysis of a virtual world. First, it proposes a distinction between 4 basic agents in a world: players, NPCs, objects and world rules. These agents are involved in 4 basic forms of interaction: navigating, manipulating, social interaction and information retrieval. Looking more closely at how these different forms of agents and actions forms are employed can help us think more closely about the construction of tellable events (emergent narratives) in a multiuser environment.

 

Playing your network: gaming in social network sites


Rossi Luca
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Recently the use of social network sites have emerged as one of the most important and time-consuming online activities. In the large and diversified social network scenario Facebook emerged as one of the most important sites at least in the United States and in Europe. In the Facebook-based gaming scene Playfish, a UK based company, has recently gained a leading position with more than 50 million registered players. The paper will analyze these five games, observing, starting from Playfish’s games, how Facebook games use the social network site and the social relationships between players as a core element for the game experience. In SNS several different contexts of life seems to exist one near the others and eventually overlapping. Closest friends with co-workers, relatives with ex-schoolmates: the paper will present how the new SNS environment can be used for gaming and how gaming activities change when they enter the collapsed context of SNSs.

 

Let Me Entertain You: Designing for Surveillance and Online Gaming


Devers Deirdre Wilson Stephanie
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Multi-player online gaming environments are designed with the intent of providing entertaining experiences to players that not only foster re-playability but also to cultivate an ongoing allegiance or loyalty to the game publishers’/developers’ brand or various assets (e.g. Master Chief, Grand Theft Auto etc.). Design elements such as webcams, activity monitoring between players, and online presence cues make possible player practices within online game-based environments that, though surveillance-oriented, become the key ingredients that work to construct entertaining online encounters. Yet when similar features are transposed to other less playcentric spaces (e.g. workplace), whether online or offline, they can be perceived as threatening or unwanted. The surveillance networks created by the online games themselves and associated ‘meeting places’ [9] (e.g. Facebook) as well as surveillance activities in these digital spaces are vehicles for creating and sustaining entertaining experiences. The presence of surveillance-oriented design features and their subsequent and on-going use by individuals, create a more entrenched level of engagement and intimacy through repetitive contact. . The aim of this paper is the analysis of various online games and meeting places that comprise a surveillance network in order to identify the various design features and the player activities they give rise to which can constitute various types of surveillance (e.g. participatory, mutual). Building on the idea of surveillance having an entertainment function, I argue that in terms of the expression of a user experience (UX) in these particular digital spaces, surveillance-oriented mechanisms and practices are fundamental to the creation of enduring entertainment experiences which would not be possible without the reliance on the necessity of exposure in both places and of individuals.