Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games - Report Example

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games Massive multiplayer Online Role Playing games allow players to assume different online roles and identities, and to use the attributes and qualities of that particular identity to achieve a victory in the game. During the process of game playing, the player may be required to interact with several other players and there is a complex, online social environment that is created. Such an environment offers both advantages as well as advantages. It allows individuals to freely explore aspects of their personality that they would hesitate to explore when they are inhibited by the real life social context within which they live. However the games can also encourage individuals to express negative qualities as well, since the anonymity of the online medium allows them the freedom to be rude, mean and manipulative of other players without being held responsible for the consequences. Therefore, the way a person acts in real life may be very different from the way he or she behaves within the anonymity of an online environment. Turkle(1997) states that with the Internet, people are able to join online communities that exist only by virtue of computer assisted communication channels, and allow the facility for a user to create multiple roles or identities. MUD or multiple user domains are virtual communities, where people are able to create and project various personae into cyber space and are endowed with the ability to move through various domains through the facility of distributed processing offered by windows. The presence of windows enables a user to be present in different online environments simultaneously and therefore allows for the existence of the self as a distributed self which can exist in several different worlds and play several different roles at the same time. Turkle (1997) describes the case study of a thirty year old graphics designer named Case who plays a series of Katherine Hepburn like, assertive characters in MUDs. As Turkle points out Erikson (1963) has suggested that the period of adolescence is like a “psycho-social moratorium” or a time out period, where the consequences of significant actions are not likely to be se severe and one’s actions are not likely to be counted as seriously as they will be in later life. According to Erikson (1963) this period of time out therefore enables the individual to experiment and develop a sense of one’s core self which is one’s identity. Case himself was a non assertive, diplomatic male in real life who fell into the Jimmy Stewart mould, because of the general perception of society that an assertive male is an unsavory character. However, by adopting the multiple assertive female personalities on the Net, he was able to express the assertive side of his nature and function in the online environment in a manner completely different from real life. Turkle discusses another case study where a 43 year old man who was married was in an online relationship with a person whom he thought was a gorgeous 23 year old woman from Florida.(Interview, No date). The reality however was that the so called 23 year old woman was actually an 80 year old man in a nursing home and the so called “affair” between the two was being avidly followed by others in the nursing home. The online environment therefore allowed the old man to function as a completely different person from what he actually was in real life and to experiment with multiple role identities online; being people they could never successfully be within the constraints of the real life environment. Turkle offers the view that the facility of adopting multiple personalities enables people to live out their fantasies and experiment with themselves in a manner that is not possible in the real world, where they will have to face the consequences of such experimentation.(Interview, No Date). According to Yee (2004), the fact that the online environment offers the facility of anonymity encourages people to be different from what they would be in real life and encourages them to share more personal and intimate issues than they would in their actual lives. The MUD environments have rapidly evolved into a series of complex online environments characterized by Massively Multiple Online Role Playing Games, where people meet, play and actively interact with each other. However, the facility of anonymity may offer some advantages in that it enables people to explore aspects of their personalities they would otherwise be unable to tap in the real world, and also allows them to discuss deeply personal issues with other online players. But the flip side of this is that players may use the same anonymity to reveal the more unpleasant side of their nature. Since they are anonymous and therefore not held accountable for their actions as they would be in real life, people may often resort to anti-social or undesirable behavior (Griffiths et al, 2004) MMORPG is a series of online video games where a large number of players from 100 to 5000 interact with each other in a virtual world and by creating multiple roles for themselves. The user assumes the role of a fictional character and is in control of the character’s actions (Tobold, 2003). This character becomes a representation of a person on the computer and is called an avatar. Such a character is to be created at the beginning of the game and the type of character would depend upon whether it is a medieval or science fiction or other kind of game, with historical games being such that a person is limited to playing human characters. Each character has a set of statistics, setting out how strong he is, how intelligent he is, what special skills he possesses, etc and one of the objectives that must be achieved during the game is improving upon those skills with the help of experience points, gained by particular actions, which in turn accumulate into value levels.(Tobold, 2003). The significant aspects in which MMORPG differs from other online games is that once the level treadmill has been mastered and the players arrive on the board with multiple players, each player finds himself or herself playing with several other players at the same time. The players can then begin chatting with a graphical avatar, they can chat about the game, play together or against each other and online relationships are formed between people.(Tobold, 2003). Nick Yee (2004) has pointed out that many people have fallen in love or made good friends during the course of the game. He points out how the environment of the game is conducive to people forming close associations with each other. Since the players are repeatedly thrown into crisis together whether they must interact and cooperate in order to survive, this encourages them to form trusting bonds with each other and to confide personal secrets that they would normally keep to themselves in real life. A relationship in the online environment progresses along a reverse path as compared to a relationship in real life, where people get to know each other causally before intimate details are shared, while in the online environment, the facility of anonymity encourages people to share intimate secrets much earlier and the fact that crisis situations occur makes people develop intimate bonds of trust and share intimate details first, as they play the game together. Therefore, a person who is cautious and reserved in his or her relationships in the real world could turn out to be an intense individual in the online environment, sharing his or her innermost thoughts and feelings with other online players. The online environment within which the games are played therefore offer scope for an individual to shed his established personality and identity and adopt a new identity. This allows plays to share a more intense and intimate association with other players than that which would be possible in real life(www.ocf.berkeley.edu). Since the various non verbal cues available for communication in real life are not available within an online context, the content of the verbal messages becomes more personal and articulate. Moreover, since people do not have to worry about how they behave or how they look, and the online environment afford anonymity, players can also shed their normal social inhibitions and may become more rude and aggressive, especially in using the game as a medium to manipulate other players for their own satisfaction, such as deceiving, scamming, taunting or dominating other players.(www.ocf.berkeley.edu). This is one aspect of the online community that has also been pointed out by Griffiths (2004). MMORPGs offer an opportunity for social interaction within an online environment, where the anonymity causes many people to shed the inhibitions created by the mores of society which may control their behavior and ensure that it falls within accepted social parameters. When their identities are concealed, people may shed their moral inhibitions as well, and engage in uncharacteristic behavior under the shelter of the online environment. For example, Hof (2006) has discussed another multiple player game – Second Life – which allows its players to create a variety of objects from scratch and even allows them to retain rights over what they create and allows for exchange of real world money for virtual goods, which has resulted in some players generating revenues that are in excess of $100,000. There is much more potential afforded in the online environment for the exercise of negative qualities such as greed, manipulation and domination, which would be considered unacceptable in real life. From the foregoing, it may be concluded that player dynamics in the online environment could play a significant role in the expression of latent features of personality in those people who participate in and play these games. In the real world, there is a set of circumscribed social rules and context within which people operate; their identities are discernable and there are certain standards of conduct that are expected of people in various age groups and the different genders. Relationships proceed along a prescribed course, from causal to more intimate and it takes a real life crisis before people realize who their true friends are. Moreover, most people may behave in a restrained manner in real life, due to the pressures of the surrounding environment. However in the online environment, all this changes. The anonymity afforded by the online medium is a potent encouragement for the players to explore the dynamics of various roles that they would never freely adopt in real life for fear of the negative consequences that could result. MMORPG allows individuals to assume multiple identities and to explore and express various aspects of their personality under the shelter of their anonymous assumed roles and identities. According to Esther Dyson (no date), a new kind of community is evolving within the cyber medium. This differs from culture in that culture may be absorbed by reading or watching, however a person is required to invest back into the community. But online communities are different in that people share content and send messages to each other and it is this time spent together that successfully builds these online communities. (www.edge.org). These online communities allow individuals to experiment with themselves and their personalities. Experimentation with gender roles also becomes possible, as females in real life assume male identities and males assume female identities. It allows individuals to explore themselves and gain a deeper understanding of the varying shades of their own personalities. It also provides a forum where people are able to make friends more easily, because they do not have to worry about how they look or behave. Neither do they have non verbal cues to assist in the process of communication, therefore the verbal communication between the players becomes more intense and personal. The anonymity also helps several players to more freely discuss deeply intimate and personal issues, which they would hesitate to divulge to anyone in real life, for fear of intrusion on their privacy. Hence, the game playing environment affords several advantages in the degree and nature of expression it permits. However, there may also be significant disadvantages, as pointed out by Griffiths et al (2004) and Hof (2006), since the very anonymity that is beneficial for some individuals may also cause other players to resort to mean, manipulative behavior in the online environment, since they cannot be held accountable for their negative actions. The facility for use of real world money for virtual goods may stimulate negative qualities such as avarice, greed and manipulative behavior, since individuals are able to shed the moral inhibitions they have in real life and adopt negative behavioral patterns without the fear of consequences. The online environment therefore, does not necessarily reduce or stunt the social interactions among people. On the contrary, multiple player games offer a complex, social environment where people interact during the course of playing out a game in a particular role as a character with certain attributes. It also offers a rich and diverse environment where there are no geographical constraints and therefore people can interact with others from a wide variety of backgrounds, age groups and beliefs. It allows people to enjoy a forum where they can express themselves more freely and explore a more wide ranging base of attributes. However, in some instances the characteristics of the online environment may also be harmful, because it may encourage the development of negative aspects of personality. Individuals can shed their moral inhibitions and not be held accountable, therefore they may become mean and manipulative while role playing in the games. Turkle (Interview, no date) has also mentioned how this could also have negative consequences if the persons involved in online role identities are children. While the online environment affords flexibility and scope in personality development and expression, the negatives must also be taken into consideration and cannot be avoided. References: * Dyson, Esther, No Date. “The pattern recognizer” [online] available at: http://www.edge.org/digerati/dyson/index.html * Erikson, E.H., 1963. “Childhood and Society” (2nd edn) New York: Norton * Hof, Robert D, 2006. “My virtual life” Business Week [online] available at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm * Griffiths, M.D., Davies, M.N.O. and Chappell, D, 2004. “Online computer gaming: a comparison of adolescent and adult gamers.” Journal of Adolescence, 27: 87-96 * “Social appeal: Why do people play MMORPGs?” [online] available at: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~malikami/social2.htm * “Transcript of Sherry Turkle Interview” Silicon Valley Radio [online] available at: http://www.transmitmedia.com/svr/vault/turkle/turkle_transcript.html * Tobold, 2003. “What is MMORPG actually?” MMORPG Blog [online] available at: http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2003/07/what-is-mmorpg-actually.html * Turkle, Sherry, 1997. “Computational technologies and images of the self.” Social Research, 64(3): 1093-1112. 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