Search results

Role is an under-studied topic in research on virtual game worlds, despite its centrality in the ubiquitous term “massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).” In this article, we report on a study of the role concept and its relevance to virtual worlds, with emphasis on the MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW). In particular, we focus on the concept of structural role, a term introduced to delineate a certain kind of social actor that carries greater-than-average responsibility for facilitating the diffusion of culture across interlocking groups. Beginning with a brief discussion of structural roles, this paper draws on ethnographic research in a raiding guild and interviews with hardcore WoW players to investigate the roles of guild and raid leaders in building and maintaining collaborative group play. Our study explores not only the expectations and obligations for players in key structural positions, but also specific processes through which they are embodied in everyday life online. Data show that an interest or willingness to learn the intricacies of gameplay, to take responsibility for players’ emotional well-being, and to manage a shared definition of the situation are all basic components of the guild and raid leaders’ roles, and guild or raid success is often reducible to the extent to which leaders master these components.

This paper aims to describe the World of Warcraft (WoW) experience, where students in a graduate English seminar played WoW to ground their learning about digital literacies. Through the experience, students developed their own digital literacies and learned to enter academic discourse about games and digital literacies.

In the paper, the instructor and eight students describe the purpose, design and outcomes of the experience. Over the course of a month, the group coordinated logistics and roles, each person created a character, each character reached the threshold level for low-level dungeons, the whole class played several dungeons together and the class engaged in metaconversation about the experience.

The instructor reflects on the problem of practice that the WoW experience addressed and the instructional organization of the experience. The students, who came into the WoW experience with a range of prior knowledge about games and Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, reflect on what challenges they faced while learning to play and develop their own digital literacies, how they assembled resources to overcome challenges, how their views of digital literacies and games shifted from the experience and how the experience helped them rethink teaching first-year composition.

As the WoW experience illustrates, finding ways to connect games to advanced graduate courses can create fun, frustration and powerful learning experiences for students as they maneuver complex content.

One can read the history of MMOGs as a history of the development of the body (avatar) in the internet. To make the classical terms of sociology of the body fit the field of MMOGs, this chapter builds on the social world perspective to leave the dichotomy between real (offline) and virtual (online) behind. MMOGs are seen as one of numerous social worlds (rooted in the here and now) and not as distant planets. In the Here and Now the body is an everyday matter of course. According to Goffman’s interaction order Face-to-Face interaction is the prototype of interaction and the influence of technical artifacts (pen and paper, telephone, etc.) negates its constituting elements – immediacy and reciprocity. Immediacy and reciprocity are interrelated with the body. Although MMOGs are technical artifacts, MMOGs re-establish elements constituting the body. The avatar becomes a key artifact and an inescapable necessity in experiencing the world of MMOGs. Therefore compared to other online-places, MMOGs expand the accessibility that is typical for the internet with the possibility of “physical” presence. But this physical presence is rather a semiotic body (or body-social), than a body in physical terms. The avatar therefore seems to be an intersubjective accomplishment pointing to group affiliations. Applying to the body, it is therefore not just skin and bones it is also socially constructed. The avatar is expressed or embodied society.

This paper aims to investigate the phenomenon of active escapism – a unique form of experiential consumption that engages fantasy and role-play as a means of coping. In contrast with passive forms of escapism, whereby consumers act as observers (e.g. watching a movie), active escapism provides consumers with the opportunity to directly interact with mediated realities, whether constructed in a virtual space (e.g. a video game) or the real world.

Within the context of video game consumption, a conceptual framework for active escapism comprised antecedents, processes and consequences is established through literature review, depth interviews and naturalistic inquiry.

The findings suggest that active escapism functions as a coping mechanism when consumers are confronted with external stressors that threaten either their sense of identity or control. While other forms of emotion-focused coping relieve stress through psychological avoidance (i.e. refocusing of attention away from stressors), active escapism provides the benefits of affirmation and empowerment through projective fantasy (i.e. role-play) and presence (i.e. immersion into a mediated reality).

The conceptual framework established by this analysis gives insight into the structure of active escapism as a theoretical construct, providing a foundation for future research. Managerial implications for consumer escapism (e.g. branded in-game content) are discussed.

Recently, researchers have begun investigating the learning process that occurs within computer games (learning to play), as opposed to studying games that support explicit learning for educational purposes (playing to learn). With the increasing popularity of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), some research has begun to look beyond individual play and is now focusing on social play. By conducting a 30 day virtual participant observation in an MMOG, namely World of Warcraft (WoW) this paper aims to identify and provide a theoretical explanation of the process of learning that takes place in such an open‐ended virtual world.

Through the lens of activity theory, the paper focuses its analysis on the tool, the goal, the activity of game playing and contradictions.

It was found that social learning could occur through intrinsic and extrinsic play. Intrinsic play is play oriented toward goal completion while extrinsic play is directed toward reflection and expansion of intrinsic play. WoW is designed with tools that facilitate these types of play, and therefore learning that emerges from them. Furthermore, learning involves not only the process of acquiring knowledge and skills to accomplish certain goals, but also the process of defining the goal, thus shaping the learning process.

The results could be used to inform game design either for social play or for social learning.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the research of games as information systems. It illustrates how significant parts of massively multiplayer online role-playing function like information retrieval from a library database system.

By combining ideas from earlier contributions on the topics of game environments as information systems, the paper explores how gameplay connects to information retrieval, restricted content access, and information system structure. The paper then proceeds to examine this idea through an ethnographic study conducted in World of Warcraft during 2012-2016.

By discussing how multiplayer digital game play is a form of information retrieval, the paper shows that players enjoy the well-restricted access to information that is a constitutive element of gameplay. Examining controlled access, procedural literacies and emphatic keywords, the paper finds that content relevances and system use may be influenced by hedonic concerns rather than task efficiency.

The study of retrieval issues related to gaming enriches our knowledge on inferences in retrieval. It shows that people may prefer that their access to information be limited, in order to make system use more interesting.

Since the prevalence of virtual worlds in society has grown exponentially in recent years and virtual worlds have demonstrated an incredible power to engage participants in ways in which traditional education has not, virtual worlds provide us an excellent opportunity to create engaging, collaborative, and academically challenging learning situations. Also, given the new media literacy of many of younger students, we in higher education are in many ways meeting them where they already are …or should be. By integrating virtual worlds into instruction, the Virtual Education Research Group (VERG) at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts provides students with these collaborative experiences. Through a sustained community of practice and experimentation with a variety of virtual world platforms including ActiveWorlds, World of Warcraft, Warhammer, City of Heroes Architect, Forbidden City, and Second Life, some general principles and specific learning activities emerge for instructors integrating virtual worlds into the classroom. The basic concepts of connecting with technical and administrative support, choosing a world with thematic connections to your subject, creating scheduled opportunities to play and learn together, and committing to providing a strong online presence have been expanded upon to create a flexible model that can be applied across disciplines. Through the work of VERG at Middlesex Community College, virtual worlds are now used in a variety of instructional disciplines, ranging from humanities to psychology to business. Several case studies illustrating unique and effective practices are provided.

Prior studies on virtual product purchase have focused on external technological factor but have paid less attention to internal user factors. Thus, drawing upon the social presence and user engagement theories, the purpose of this paper is to develop a research model considering both technological factors and user factors and empirically examine the validity of the proposed research model.

A survey from 214 World of Warcraft players was conducted to test the proposed research model, and structural equation modelling approach (specifically, PLS) was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The data analysis results suggest that both social presence and user engagement positively influence the intention to purchase virtual products. Furthermore, two technological factors, interactivity and sociability, are found to affect social presence, and two social factors, social ties and social identity, are found to affect user engagement.

This study proposes a dual factor framework (i.e. technological and user factors) to investigate the factors influencing the intention to purchase by integrating the social presence perspective and user engagement perspective. The findings would be beneficial for service provider of massively multiplayer online role-playing games to recognize that triggering user demand is of equal importance with offering better technologies and suggest new ways to promote users’ virtual product purchase intentions.

Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are representative metaverse games that are thriving in academia and the industry. This study aims to develop an integrated model based on Yee's motivations and the Proteus effect to explore individuals' intentions of playing MMORPGs.

The data were gathered by conducting an online survey (n = 441) for the players of World of Warcraft, an MMORPG. The collected data were analyzed with a structural equation model.

The outcomes of this research reveal that the Proteus effect positively influenced the intentions of the players to play the game via mediations of social, immersion, achievement motivations and enjoyment. Furthermore, the players influenced by the Proteus effect, which enables avatar embodiment and identification, exhibited a stronger intention to play MMORPGs.

This research is one of the first attempts to establish a theoretical framework involving the Proteus effect and Yee's motivations. In addition, the findings of this study imply that the Proteus effect should be considered when investigating the individual experience of metaverse games.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Tolkein has a lot to answer for. While his millions of devotees still consume his books, films and other spin‐offs with the appetite of a hungry Orc, many more millions are left cold by the elves, wizards and hobbits that filled his imagination. His brand of fantasy has inspired yet more characters and worlds, but not all are the sole preserve of pale teenagers who spend too much time indoors. Gaming has taken these worlds not only into the dimension of internet gaming, but also virtual learning environments (VLEs).

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.