Category — Online Gaming

It’s been over 2 years now since my masters thesis was published in the Georgetown Library, but I’m finding that it’s relevance is only increasing. When I was doing my research back in 2004-2005, Massively Multi-player Online Gaming Communities were a very new phenomenon - even online social networking giants like Facebook and MySpace were just starting to establish their base communities. Virtual gaming communities like Blizzard’s World Of War Craft and SecondLife since have seen an exponential leap in their popularity and online social significance. Both of these communities, along with several others, have recently been the subject of scrutiny by popular publishers like The New York Times, Business 2.0, Wired and MSNBC. And, as the focus on the social and commercial significance of online communities intensifies with large publishers and businesses, I’ve been receiving more and more emails from online-goers and researchers requesting copies of my thesis, so I’ve included a link to it below. Thanks, by the way, to those of you who have shown an on-going support for my work - I’ve enjoyed talking to each and every one of you. I wish you all luck in your academic endeavors. And, please, stop by this site frequently for updates - I’ll be posting more articles on Gaming In Cyberspace in the future!

You can download a copy of my thesis here - Gaming In Cyberspace: How Interactive Entertainment Is Changing Communication & Identity On The Net. Happy Reading!

Abstract of Gaming In Cyberspace: How Interactive Entertainment Is Changing Communication & Identity On The Net:

Currently, several million people around the globe have accounts in the virtual worlds of massively multiplayer online video games. The overall population of these virtual worlds has grown rapidly since 1996. This thesis offers an insight into interaction forms available in massively multiplayer online games by analyzing their communicative and social aspects.

The thesis aims to provide a deeper understanding of how virtual environments may be used in the future to overcome the limitations of current text-based communication, which are classified by a reduced set of intuitive non-verbal cues. The work is conducted using conceptual analysis, by applying a theoretical model that translates the perceivable interaction forms that human beings use in face-to-face interaction in the real world to virtual worlds.

This thesis will argue that that the richness of interaction within computer-mediated environments (CMEs) varies depending on the available medium, and that CMEs structure the processes of identity presentation and communication in significant ways. Additionally, it argues that the number of channels (e.g. speech, gesture or posture) and their dynamics (e.g. the simultaneous use of multiple channels) affect the overall level of richness of communication that takes place between users within computer-mediated environments that support communication. Finally, it will argue that the increased range of communicative channels that support interaction within massively multiplayer online video games can be used to overcome the limitations of current text-based communication in cyberspace, and that, as virtual worlds become an increasingly common phenomenon, they will influence the processes by which internet users communicate and present their identities online in the future.