Four million active bloggers. 25 million Usenet users. 10's of millions of online gamers. Millions of MMOG players (e.g., see Sir Bruce's numbers). Do these mediums differ by their social networks? Do MMOGs bring something special to the social software table (see Christopher Allen's Tracing the Evolution of Social Software for a historical perspective)?
Adina Levin recently asked "why do we need another term" (reprinted Oct 18 on Many2Many). Implicit to this question is another question, how are the different incarnations of social software, different?
People who’ve been pioneering online collaboration say that they’ve seen this all before: on Plato, in MUDs, on the Well, in Usenet, in academic writing for decades... Is there anything new ...The answer, I think, is yes. And the measure of the answer is the internet and the web.
One difference may lie with the composition of their "network of networks" - as Adina points out it isn't just about scale, it is that different sized communities can co-flourish and overlap within a single interconnected system. Another might involve a links-based culture ("addressability and groupforming") that worships - on the one hand - the freedom of content combinatorics, yet which structures it by way of an individual instinct towards the shiny and the attractive: from nest-primping comes our decorative and social boundary defining impulses.
Adina then thrusts the question of the experience of multiplayer games and MMOGs into the social software scene:
There’s a generation of innovation and experimentation that is new, that’s going on around us, and that’s worthy of a name. The language would be poorer if we didn’t have a way to group Flickr, LiveJournal, del.icio.us, Technorati, and Audioscrobbler, or to tell these things apart from earlier generation mainframe and LAN-based hothouse systems.
...I know that multi-player games are an integral part of the story, but someone else will have to work on that chapter. The things that speak to me intellectually and emotionally are those that build relationships (LiveJournal), build shared art and culture (Flickr, AudioScrobber, Wikipedia). Shoot-em-ups and D&D fantasies don't speak to me, so I don't know the communities or vocabulary.
Perhaps the contribution of multiplayer games is a particularly promiscuous and pervasive content creation culture. A culture where modding is more than just about content creation, but is the product of community, collaboration, and a shared value system of production spanning inspiration through validation.
Another difference, perhaps, may lie with a comment Ted made over on The Better Mousetrap, there he mentioned:
At last year's SOP, Alex Macris pointed out that there are only three things to reward: player skill, player time, and player external resources (dollars). Tim's pointing out that you can also reward luck.
Is there a fifth reward? Do MMOGs reward a social stickiness: socialization charged by game play? Is there a qualitatively different kind of cooperation and interaction that takes place in MMOGs than in other kinds of social software systems? Perhaps spiked with a powerful mixture of acting and imagination.
Are there noteable differences in terms of social network impact between these mediums?
I've written software that's used in a Second Life Wiki -- not THE SLWiki, but a Wiki. I became a Taxibot in City of Heroes because of their LiveJournal, I've yet to meet any of the original Taxibots on Virtue. My answer to the difference is a resounding "no."
Other thoughts?
I think this post exemplifies the problems pervasive through Second Life; the idea that MMOG's are somehow different or removed from the Internet and community dynamics in general. The language won't be poorer if we don't create another word for "community."
Posted by: Andrew | Oct 20, 2004 at 12:05
Forget about the MODding part. 90% of the games I got in the late 80s were MODded (cracked and otherwise tuned and changed). Games have always been social software and part of a networks of networks. Nothing really new there.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Oct 20, 2004 at 12:16
MMORPGs, or any MMOGs, really, are not, in and of themselves, interesting as social software. Their primary possibility space lies in providing the potential for a different and heretofore unknown social software.
They are, and have always been aspiring to, a new form of the same old.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Oct 20, 2004 at 12:44
I'd say one new thing in MUDs/MMORPGs is the ability of Devs to structure the interconnections. EQ has groups of six, DAOC has groups of eight. Both games have all of their users obsessed with gaining a construct, "experience points." This ability to incent the user, leveraged off the user's desire to have fun, is a genuine innovation.
Gawd that was a lot of business-book babble, wasn't it?
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Oct 20, 2004 at 12:47
The only genuine about it is the ability to get people into tight interaction with complete strangers which they incidentally might dislike in their spare time. This I agree is a an accomplishment, perhaps not a valuable thing, but nevertheless an achievement... The rest is just D&D?
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Oct 20, 2004 at 13:01
The only genuine about it is the ability to get people into tight interaction with complete strangers which they incidentally might dislike in their spare time.
That's not new. Join a social organization, like the Elks Lodge, and you'll find yourself working with, talking to, and having fun with people you'd never give a second thought to in the rest of your life. MMOG's just take physical distance out of the equation, and Usenet was doing that decades ago.
I see no difference in my helping sell Elk's BBQ tickets and my Taxibot teleporting people around Paragon City -- I pay a regular fee for the priveledge of volunteering to help people out in both arenas -- except that my Taxibot is a lot cuter than I am. ;)
Posted by: Andrew | Oct 20, 2004 at 14:26
Andrew, I'd agree with you on the Usenet part, which is a place where people spend time with strangers they dislike in their spare time, although that is different... Low on interaction, high on communication. MMO-teaming-with-people-you-dislike is high on interaction and low on communication...
No idea what Elks Lodge is.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Oct 20, 2004 at 14:38
Ola Fosheim Grøstad> "No idea what Elks Lodge is."
They're like Odd Fellows.
Posted by: Flatfingers | Oct 21, 2004 at 19:14
Yeah this is nice. After I get done playing the online first-person realistic shooter counter strike I just want to go outside and pwn some noobs with an ak. This game actually drove me to join the Marines, and than US army infantry. WOOT! HAXOR!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward | Oct 21, 2004 at 20:28
Ola>
the ability to get people into tight interaction with complete strangers which they incidentally might dislike in their spare time.
I wonder if this could tie back to Ted's point about "devs structuring connections." Connections are constraints that could also be interpreted more liberally as "rule sets".
So then, perhaps, we find ourselves with social networks that are quite different than ones based on purely individual communication. Another factor: shapes of these networks change with the game transitions. E.g., consider the discontinuities forced by level banding: transition into different social sets.
WRT the Elks Lodge: I can believe that people are often forced to cooperate on many more (and different) levels than they would in other systems (and RL). E.g. in a zone at 2am when there are only 5 other folks around...
Now, whether these differences translate into a qualitatively different kind of structure than other social software systems... ?
Posted by: Nathan Combs | Oct 21, 2004 at 21:26