Guest Blogging

Guest Blogger

Today Sharonda is guest blogging for me, she is a classmate is is writing her own blog on Cosplay Ethics, I suggest you check out her blog.

Now I will hand this over to Sharonda:

“Government under the control and direction of the inhabitants of a political unit rather than by an outside authority; broadly:  control of one's own affairs” Merriam-webster.com, 2014This is the definition of self-government, well the definition according the Merriam Webster’s dictionary.com. If we learned anything from history class or game of thrones, it’s that if one person has all the power, the chance for a tyrannical ruling increases immensely. Now let’s look at the online gaming community and the problems that are within it that could be an obstacle in self-governing online community.Trolling and bullying is big problem we still face in the U.S. and the internet has been prevalent medium for racial, sexist and cognitive bullying via media. In fact we experience so much of this on set bullying that we have invented two new terms for it. One in which is:

1. Trolling, According to urban dictionary trolling is “being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it's the internet and, hey, you can.” Urban Dictionary, 2014

2. Cyberbullying which “happens when kids bully each other through electronic technology. Find out why cyberbullying is different from traditional bullying, what you can do to prevent it, and how you can report it when it happens.” Stopbullying.gov, 2014Although the cause of the self-governing community seems legit, because having a government run by the people means that you will have a government made like how the people want it to run.  Take into consideration the people within the community, and the ways people can manipulate who they are, what they believe and how they will be punished by hiding behind a computer screen. This is a problem we still are still trying to solve. 

Creating Self Reliant Communities

Podcast

Experiences with negative online players

Players who play online games, have run into at least one negative player. These players ruin other players experiences, and sometimes causing other players to quit the game entirely. For people who have had the fortune to not encounter a player such as this, my friend Kyle and myself discuss some of our personal experiences. We both play many different online games, and in just about everyone, have encountered a negative player souring a fun experience intentionally or unintentionally.

Link to SoundCloud for audio podcast:
https://soundcloud.com/alan-morrison-toaster/discussing-negative-online

Thanks to Kyle for allowing me to have him on this podcast.

Examples

My thoughts and ideas are blurring into each other on this topic. Again my idea is that a community can manage itself with proper tool or mechanics provided by a game developer. The community creates the rules, judges, and enforces punishments or rewards players.

Some examples of this system are known in current games today such as GarrysMod, a sandbox game where players can build structures with props or mechanisms, posing tools, etc. Players can create servers with modification to create different game modes like shooters, building modes, role-playing, mini games etc. Specifically these RP servers is where this system exists, players can select jobs to play as, and each job has different pay, prerequisites, or limitations to the number of players in the server with that job. These jobs are not like real jobs where you must clock in and do work, you simply earn money every 10 min or so. These jobs simply give you items or perks that this job only can do. Such as a cook can purchase microwaves where you can purchase food. Players have fun messing around doing weird things in their roles. A player could get a job as a drug dealer and go around whispering at people if they want drugs all while avoiding the cops. Players could mug other players for their cash in alley ways, or rob shop dealers. Players could RP a police officer which enforces the rules that the mayor (another player) creates. This little world can have some crazy fun experiences you may never get any other game, this is due to the players having more freedom, customizing game mechanics, balancing, rules and such. Players don’t like random killings so they created rules and admins to enforce them to prevent this. The player community is capable of managing themselves, they don’t need a developer to create mechanics limiting players because a few players exploit and ruin other players experiences. Although greifing can be entertaining when it happens every so often.

another example, DayZ, a survival game where players simply try to survive as long as they can hording gear and having to collect food and water and medical supplies to sustain injuries. The goal is to survive so when players encounter each other some may kill the other player to take all his gear. This can ruin a players experience if they keep dying too much, but players learn to not trust people so easily and be cautious. The community then established that these players who murder are called bandits, this spurred some players to help other players fight the bandits or provide supplies to new players, this was then named by the community as Hero players. The community reacted to the bandits with heroes, this turned into an interesting game-play element that is apart of the DayZ experience. If developers did not like how these bandits ruin players experiences, they could prevent players from hurting each other, which eliminates the problem but restricts players and eliminated that interesting game-play element that the community created. Give the community the tools to solve problems they see but without restricting players. Players even created modified DayZ servers where bandits have red dots on their wrists, this allows players to recognize bandits, but at the same time players have to get close enough to see the dot, this creates a sense of balance so bandits still have a chance to continue their spree but gives non bandit players the knowledge of an enemy of not. So they know if they should engage a gun fight or avoid them all together. This is to help remedy players who get murdered too much and continue to have a poor experience.

Give the community the tools and they can solve the problem in game and make it an interesting part of the game play experience. The option to break the rules is there but it is deterred enough for the rules not to be broken too often.

Community Self Management

As crazy as it might sound, players can organize themselves to create rules, guidelines, punishments, basically a small constitution. But why would this be better than the way developers create current games?

Why community self management will work

This system works best for games with a large amount of players in a sandbox-like environment, so its difficult to implement into other types of games, although League of Legends found an effective method. But for sandbox games such as:

• DayZ
• Arma RP servers
• Minecraft servers
• Garry's Mod RP servers
• and just about any MMO game

These games can use this system to allow players to play the game longer, by establishing a commitment with the community by helping create and amend rules of play. When the rules continue to change, the play-style of the game continues to change, giving the game strong replay-ability.

If the community can decide the rules in which players should behave, then the rules will have the potential of becoming far more balanced than any developer could achieve. Players can adjust the rules when they find an exploit or new in-game content that may change play styles.

When players are the ones enforcing the rules, it will still be possible for to break the rules, but with that comes the high risk of getting caught and receiving harsh punishment. High risk keeps the game entertaining, griefing can be an entertainment factor for players; so breaking the rules is an option, but it cannot be done frequently.

Possible Downside

It could be difficult for players to collaborate to establish their own governing system, so developers could use some tools such as the behavior modification examples used in League of Legends to reward and punish players to achieve this system.

Negative Behavior within Online Communities Continued

Current strategies to fix bad behavior

Recently developers are beginning to realize the problem of negative player behaviors and are working on solutions to reduce these toxic behaviors. Developers are exploring game mechanics that will reward good behavior and or punish bad behavior.

Examples

Riot Games the developers of one of the most popular competitive online games, League of Legends, hired a team of psychologists to help solve behavior problems in their game. League of Legends and other well known multiplier online battle arena (MOBA) games suffer from a steep learning curve, and a competitive player base that will yell at any player for inhibiting the teams success. (Madigan, 2013)

To help remedy this issue Riot Games implemented a new game mechanic called the Honor system to reward good behavior. Players may commend teammates and opponents for being helpful, friendly, or being an honorable opponent. Players are limited to certain number of commendations that can be given per day so as to add more value to the commendations. Riot is looking into providing special in game rewards such as skins or badges to players with a high amount of honor.

For the MOBA game Prime World, the developer team Nival took an interesting approach to solve player behavior. The team decided rather than creating the rules of the game themselves, to let the players vote on rules they wanted implemented in the game. The Nobles Pact, is a short list of rules and guidelines voted on by the players, players proposed rules in the forums and as a community changed the wording and purpose of those rules. The community established rules that would be enforced by the game's support team or become non punishable guide for player to follow.(Graft, 2013)

Obviously Nival had to moderate the rules in the best interest of the community, so trolling was kept to a minimum. The Noble's Pact is to be a living document, every 6 months or so players to will get another chance to revisit the document and vote on changes.(Graft, 2013)

References:

Graft, K. (2013, October 17). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/202594/Some_players_break_the_rules_In_Prime_World_players_make_them.php

Madigan, J. (2013, January 23). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/184806/Modifying_player_behavior_in_League_of_Legends_using_positive_reinforcement.php

Revisiting the Goal

So what is my goal again?

As I gather information on player behaviors and the rising solutions to solve it, I realize developers have made more progress than I had initially thought. Although, game developers could take it even further.

When you play a game, be it a video game, board game, or a physical activity, there are rules that must be followed to make the game challenging or fair. In a video game, developers create the rules, which can be restrictions or features within the game code. A normal player cannot physically break these rules or the game itself would be broken.

Now think of a game of tag children play at a park, the rules are simple: one person is chosen to be "it" and that person must tag another player who will then become "it" continuing the cycle. The person who is "it" must close their eyes and count to 10 to give the other players a fair chance to hide. The player who is "it" can potentially cheat by peeking to see where the other players are hiding, giving that player an unfair advantage.

After all the kids realize that person is a cheater they might give the cheater a second chance to redeem themselves, but if that does not work then the cheater is shunned, chastised, and maybe even exiled from the game. At the very least people think of the cheater poorly, and will remember that person as a cheater.

This is what I consider to be a harsher punishment, especially if implemented in large multiplayer games such as MMO games(Massive Multiplayer Online). If everyone in the server could easily recognize the behavioral history of other players, then bad behavior would be discouraged. Rather than the developers of the game restricting players with too many rules, allow the community to create rules and judge players breaking the rules within the game-play.

Negative Behavior within Online Communities

The Affect of Negative Player Behaviors

Most players who play online games know to expect negative behavior from other players. These behaviors affect a players overall online experience which might cause players to quit playing the game. If a community is populated by this negative behavior players spread the word and avoid the community, which will eventually kill the community. For a developer making games, a toxic community for your game means the loss of money and time spent working on the game.

What are the different types of negative behavior?

Griefing

Griefing is a play style used by players to intentionally disrupt or inhibit other players for their own personal enjoyment. Research collected by Yang Foo and Koivisto (2004), found evidence of a small percentage of players are griefers, about 3% of players as quoted in the Game Developer Conference in 2002. However this small percentage of griefers affect a large amount of players.

Greed Play

Greed play is very similar to griefing with the exception that the player did not intend to disrupt other players, but did so unknowingly. A player who is the only one benefiting among other players which could potentially upset or harm other players (Yang Foo & Koivisto, 2004).

Elitism

Elitism is when experienced players are forced to match up with new inexperienced players that inhibit the success of the team. Experienced players get upset and begin to harass the inexperienced player or simply quit the match out of rage. The inexperienced players can't learn the game properly when players leave the match and experienced players are not rewarded when playing with the inexperienced player (Busold, 2014).

References:

Busold, C. (2014, February 09). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CarstenBusold/20140109/208282/Game_design_and_toxic_player_behavior.php

Foo. , & Koivisto, (2004). Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology. Defining Grief Play in MMORPGS: Player and Developer Perceptions, 245-250.

What does a community provide to its members?

Why are people attracted to communities?

Catherine Ridings and David Gefen found research in social psychology that revealed peoples motivations to join non virtual communities. Humans feel the need to belong, to be needed and build relationships with others, communities are able to fulfill this role. Ridings and Gefen explain in detail the benefits a community provides. “Because groups provide a source of information and help in achieving goals, give rewards, and according to social identity theory, people form a social identity of values, attitudes and behavioral intentions from the perceived membership in distinct self-inclusive real or imagined social groups. An individual's self-identity typically results from the membership in a preexisting self-inclusive social group, including vocation and avocation.” (2006). Based on these findings, we seek face-to-face groups for exchanging information, reaching a goal, and to establish our own identity.

Exchanging information

People choose to join communities to access information from other members, an online community thrives on member-generated content. The content needs to be worth exchanging between members, and if there is compelling content the community will be self-sustaining, more content created by members draws more members who produce more content.

An online community is a great place to ask strangers or acquaintances for useful information, with relationships between members focused mainly on information exchange. Members are able to easily express views, provide and request information, express feelings, and suggest solutions.

Defining Communities

What is a Community?

Merriam Webster defines the word community as:

• A group of people who live in the same area
• A group of people who have the same interests, religion, race, etc.
• A group of nations

Using this definition, a community is a group of people who all have at least one interest in common, and are physically in the same location. For example:

• Individual countries such as the United States, where the citizens believe democracy is the preferred method of government
• Individual states within the United States, where the citizens in the state believe in a slightly different democracy
• Individual cities within the states, where the citizens living in the city concern themselves with government that affects them directly, such as schools, new roads, etc.
• Individual neighborhoods within the cities, where homeowners want a happy environment to live in

What is an Online Community?

An online community is a community that is not limited by physical location, with access to the Internet people can communicate and exchange information across long distances. Because of this new technology, the definition for the word community is in need of amendments. The strength and nature of relationships between individuals is what researchers are considering to be a useful way of defining community rather than physical proximity (Preece & Krichmar, 2006).

The subreddits within the Reddit website is a great example of an online community actively exchanging information. Subreddits are pages created by users to share content among themselves, each of these subreddits develop their own rules and culture. Users may post pictures, videos and information, with other users having the option to comment on the posts and up vote or down vote the content.

YouTube is an example of an outlet for communities to use to create and distribute content through videos and receive feedback through the comments section. Users creating videos may even build up a strong fan base, then that user could potentially influence the community they are apart of.

References:

Preece, J., & Krichmar, D. (2006). Online communities: Design, theory, and practice. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), 00.

Understanding Online Gaming Communities

What is the goal of this blog?

Communities exist around many different subjects, ranging down from countries, politics, neighborhoods, YouTube, and games. Some communities are established intentionally with a form of leadership involved, while others grow from a common interest. While in a community, the people involved tend to establish rules and unspoken rules which are not enforced and sometimes not directly stated.

With the main focus on gaming, a game developer who creates a game with online interactions is also creating an online community. Since the game is the common interest for a community, could the design of the game influence the behavior and actions of the community?

The goal of this blog is to explore the possibility of designing game mechanics to influence an online community.

To do this I must answer these questions:

• What is an online community?
• How is it created?
• Why do people like them?
• How can a community establish unwritten rules?
• How does it affect the game?
• How can a developer make an impact?

What to expect out of this blog

This blog will consist of: 12 blog posts, 2 interviews with individuals with different levels of knowledge, a guest blog post with a classmate, a podcast, and an infographic.

Resources

To find this information I will be searching the net for any credible information relevant to my purpose. My goal is to get information directly from a designer in a developer company, a player actively participating in an online gaming community, and other professions that can provide a 3rd party perspective.

Some information about myself

I am a student at The University of Texas at Dallas, I love playing games so much that I decided to pursue a career in game design. While I was thinking of ideas to use in in future games, I discovered most of my ideas rely heavily on player behavior. Thinking of in game restrictions ruined the vision I had for this game, so I thought why not have the players create these rules instead of myself?