UNIST

Living in the Virtual World: Player Experiences in MMORPGs

“I’m a 50-year-old grandmother of five and an award-winning journalist with a respectable job at a local newspaper. My days are spent writing stories about the town I live in, telling people what their local government is up to or who was arrested the night before… But every night i sit on my computer, and my second job begins(…)In UO, I’m forever young and beautiful. My name is Skye Wolfbane and I’m governor of The Free City of Trinsic.” – Alyssa Schnugg (Schnugg, 2018)

Introduction

As I mentioned in my previous article, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) offer players a new world with new narrative techniques. In MMORPGs players create their own stories by shaping this new world by themselves and builds a strong connection with their characters and game enviroment. The purpose of this article is to explain the players’ experiences and motivations in these virtual worlds.

MMORPGs are not just games, at the same time they are social systems. (Raph Koster, 2004; Cited by Foo & Koivisto, 2004). As Nick Yee (2007) suggests, MMORPGs allow new forms of social identitiy and social interaction. (Cited by Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007). Due to anonymity of gameplay, players feel more comfortable in virtual worlds than the real world. Thus, they can challenge their social anxiety and withstand the difficulties of real life. Also, during gameplay, players are getting into a “flow state” and losing their sense of time. (Chen, Huang, & Lei, 2006) And even if MMORPGs have addictive naturallity, researches suggests that players are not acting addictive behaviour. Also, in time some MMORPGs may lose their attractiveness, in this situation players may “immigrate” to another MMORPGs or other servers istead of quitting. (Hou, Chern, Chen, & Chen, 2011).

The first step in an ordinary MMORPG is to create characters. Firstly, the player chooses the appearance of the character; like hair type, skin color, gender, race etc. This is important for many players because the characters are the graphical representations(ie. avatar) of the players. But customizing character’s physical appearance is limited due to the game engine unlike tabletop role playing games(e.g. dungeons and dragons) (Tyschen, Tosca, & Brolund, 2006). According to Andres Tyschen(2006) customizing the character is one of the main motivations of MMORPGs, especially by female players (Tyschen, Tosca, & Brolund, 2006). In contrast of tabletop role playing games, writing a background story is not obligated in MMORPGs during creating a character.

(Source: Westworld, 2016)

Second step in character creation is choosing the starting class or skills. Once the character creation process is completed, player enters the virtual world and usually starts to develop their characters (i.e. leveling up or training the skills). For this purpose the player takes quests from friendly non player characters (npcs), fights with hostile npcs, or uses their abilities (e.g. in order to increase their skillpoints, an alchemist practices his/her ability to craft potions or a thief practices his/her ability to steal).

Usually character developing phase takes a lot of time than other game types and according to Shang Hwa Hsu, Ming-Hui Wen and Muh-Cherng Wu (2009) this results players to attach their characters emotionally (Hsu, Wen, & Wu, 2009).

Many MMORPGs are designed in a way that players are interact and help each other such as quests, raids(i.e. large player versus environment battles) or player versus player (pvp) combats. Although some players prefer to play by themselves, because of the nature of the game, players often prefer to be united, and therefore they create in-game communities such as guilds or clans. This and similar cases lead players to be involved in a social environment in the virtual world. In addition, in-game trade is also one of the factors that increase socialization.

In his research, Nick Yee (2005) examined Richard Bartle’s player types for MMORPGs. Bartle divides the players to 4 type: Achievers, Socialiazers, Explorers and Killers. According to Bartle, each type of players have different motivations; for example Explorers are interested in understanding the game mechanics and rules as well as mapping of the virtual world, Socializers are interested in chatting, interacting with other players and roleplaying. But in Bartle’s model, players cannot be in both types of any. Nick Yee’s reseach suggest that there is 3 main components and 10 subcomponents. And a player can be more than one in same time. (Yee, 2005) These main components are The Achievement Components (Advancement, Mechanics, Competition), The Social Components (Socializing, Relationship, Teamwork) and The Immersion Components (Discovery, Role Playing, Customization, Escapism) (Yee, 2005).

Virtual Society

According to Steinkuehler and Williams (2006) one of the major draws to MMORPGs is that apart from wide single player ingame content, its feature of provide players a place to socialise and play together with friends and strangers, either as allies or as competitors (Steinkuehler and Williams 2006; Cited by Christou, Law, & Ang, 2013). The most important aspect of MMORPGs is not the playing itself, but the ability to form strong friendships (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007; Cited by Martoncik & Loksa, 2015)

According to research of Helena Cole and Mark D. Griffiths, MMORPGs are provides socially safe environment for users. So players can feel and behave more like themselves in virtual world than real world (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007). Due to anonymous nature of communication via Avatars, players are not judged by their appearances, gender, age, nationality or other personal informations. This situation allows players to establish more stronger bonds. Cole and Griffiths’ research (2007) suggest that the players, especially females, can discuss sensitive topics with their ingame friends more easily than their friends in real world. Their research also finds that the male players are make more friends online but females are more likely to go on a date and get into a relationship with their online friends. (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007) Gaming Entrepreneur Susan Wu explains this by psycology. She states that in mmo’s, players feeling same emotions during their victories and defeats thus, this results them to develop strong feelings and even love to each other. (Wu, 2011)

Anonymity also helps players with social anxiety and loneliness. As I mentioned earlier, players feel more comfortable in virtual worlds. In virtual world, lonely people are behaving more open, friendlier to other players, experiencing more entertainment and accepted by others more easily (Martoncik & Loksa, 2015). Marcel Martoncik and Jan Loksa’s research(2015) results that: the players who are unable to ﬁnd satisfying social contacts in real world, more likely to turn into virtual world; and in this way, they not only experience less loneliness, but due to being accepted in online world, feeling less social anxiety (Martoncik & Loksa, 2015). Helena Cole and Mark D. Griffiths’ research also suggests that %21 percent of female players and %13.4 percent of male players play MMORPGs for “therapeutic refreshment” (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007).

In MMORPGs many players creates their characters as new ideal identities of themselves. For instance; a young player may create a more mature, brave, stronger character than himself/herself (Bessiere, Seay, & Kiesler, 2007) or an unemployed player may obtain richness in virtual economy. Katherine Bessiere et al.(2007) suggests that even if many players creates virtual alternative selves, players with high depression, rates their characters more ideal than their actual selves in contrast to players with lower depression (Bessiere, Seay, & Kiesler, 2007).

Griefing

In MMORPGs “griefing” or “grief play” refers to a playstyle where a player intentionally disrupts another players (Foo & Koivisto, 2004). Mulligan and Patrovsky explain that a griefer is: “A player who derives his/her enjoyment not from playing the game, but from performing actions that detract from the enjoyment of the game by other players.” (Mulligan & Patrovsky, 2003, Cited by Foo & Koivisto, 2004) According to Foo and Koivisto, for defining an acting as a grief, the act should be intentional, it should cause other players to less enjoyment, and griefer should enjoy the act. (Foo & Koivisto, 2004)

Foo and Koivisto’s research(2004) suggests that, for some participants if an activity is a part of in game mechanics by design, it is not considered as a grief tactic. Also if the activity is unintentional, many players are more tolerating and not consider the act as a griefplay. But if that action repeated, players will consider it as griefing even if it is unintentional (Foo & Koivisto, 2004).

Foo and Koivisto(2004) suggests four types of griefing such as: harassment, power imposition, scamming and greed play. Some acts of griefing are not considered as grief by developers and some players. However the victim can believe he has been griefed. A play style that is disallowed and used as a method for grieﬁng in one could be regarded as an acceptable game tactic in another. (Foo & Koivisto, 2004)

(An example of griefing in Ultima Online. Normally player killing in guard protected towns are not considered as griefing. However in this situation griefer uses area of effect spells to instantly kill newbie players who develops their characters.)

The griefplay leads to this paradoxical consequences: while it generates moral outrage, it encourages victims to band together as trusted comrades against griefers (Kim, 1998; Cited by Foo & Koivisto, 2004). For instance: in Ultima Online, some players are kills and loots miner players repeatedly. Game developers and some players are not see this act as a griefing. But others consider this as a grief, due to miners inability to defend themselves. Eventually some players are start patrolling around mines together for defending miners against griefers even if they don’t know each other before.

Virtual Ecology

Nick Yee (2006) describes MMORPGs as follows: “…they are places where people fall in love, get married, elect governors, attend poetry readings, start a pharmaceutical business, and even commit genocide…” (Yee, 2006; Cited by Martoncik & Loksa, 2015). During development of Ultima Online(1997), Richard Garriott included a code for building game environment more realistic. In this code, there was growing plants, herbivorous npcs such as deers and rabbits and carnivorous npcs such as wolves and bears. Herbivorous npcs were roaming around the map and eating plants and reproduces. Carnivorous npcs were living far away from herbivorous npcs, tracking them down and hunting them for food. In time, plants were growing and both herbivorous and carnivorous animals were respawning again, thus creating a virtual ecolocigal system. There was a small problem about this code: in time, carnivorous npcs could produce faster and wipe herbivorous npcs. Game developers predicted that the players would hunt the carnivorous npcs when they were involved in the game environment, thus solve the balance problem. To make sure of this, developers had made carnivorous npcs more valuable than herbivorous npcs. However the players approached this environment unexpectedly. Instead of fighting with carnivorous npcs, players were killing every living thing in the enviroment like swarm of ants. The rate of massacre was so high, that neither herbivorous nor carnivorous npcs respawning rate was able to catch up with this. Developers tried to solve this problem for months, they tried to increased the value of carnivorous and decreased the value of herbivorous. They also increased the spawn rates and tried to make them be so plentiful that players couldn’t kill them all. But eventually they had given up and ripped of the code. (Garriott, 2017)

Immersion

Another characteristic feature of the MMORPGs’ is The Immersion Effect. During gameplay, players usually loses their sense of time and gets into a “flow state”. And unlike other game genres, there is no mechanism that forces players to take a break (Chen, Huang, & Lei, 2006). A study in Japan (2005) suggests that %20 of the MMORPG players spend more than eight hours continuously during gameplay (Gametrics weekly Korea MMORPG population survey, 2005; Cited by Chen, Huang, & Lei, 2006). According to Kuan Ta Chen, Polly Huang and Chin-Laung Lei (2006), sense of immersion in a virtual world is one of the main attractions of MMORPGs because it entices players into a flow experience; just like a mood-changing substance (Chen, Huang, & Lei, 2006).

According to Koivisto and Wenniger (2005) many players considers virtual world as a place to forget about reality (Koivisto & Wenninger, 2005). Nick Yee’s research (2005) has revealed that one of the motivations of users is “escapism” (Yee, Motivations of Play in MMORPGs, 2005). Flow experience has a significant impact on the detachment of players from the real world. Therefore MMORPGs are mostly preferred by escapists. Chen et al (2006), states that if players interrupts by lots of network lags, they lose their flow state, therefore get back their sense of time in real world (Chen, Huang, & Lei, 2006).

[An example of Immersion in Ultima Online. In this 20 minutes long video, 4 different guilds (approximately 60-70 players) fights over for taming a special beast called Nightmare. The battle of Nightmare took about 13 hours from 8 pm(Sunday) to 7 am(Monday). (Date and time can be observed in bottom right corner of the screen)]

Addiction

Due to the long hours of character development, high engagement, immersion, sociability and open-ended gameplay, players may develop addictivity to MMORPGs. Many researchers are believes MMORPG addiction is a kind of internet addiction. Just like others, it is believed MMORPG addiction affects people’s daily life socially and psychologically.

In virtual worlds, players can become fixated on their virtual characters, striving to obtain the best armour, experience, and reputation in the game, ignoring that their grades are dropping and their friends have drifted away from them (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007). College students may develop compulsions for MMORPGs more easily thus it can lead to social isolation and poor academic performance (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007). However according to Cole and Griffiths (2007) many hard-core players are goal-orientated and high-achieving students (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007).

Several attemps have been made for preventing MMORPG addiction. E.g. in 2007 Chinese government has developed a fatigue system for monitoring and preventing long hours of play. In this system, after time limit has reached, player characters are temporary loses their powers and experiences. However this system didn’t worked. After players gets fatigue state, instead of logging off, they have logged in to another accounts. (ChinaTechNews, 2007; Cited by: Hsu, Wen, & Wu, 2009). Another attempt was to identify potential addicts and giving warning signs. However this approach was limited in practical use due to it require to give personal information (Hsu, Wen, & Wu, 2009). The other approach was about designing games less addictive by changing users’ game experiences. Unlike the others, this approach was successfull in action and strategy games (Hsu, Wen, & Wu, 2009). Changing the game design did not applied to most of MMORPGs, however Hsu et al. argues that this approach can prevent the MMORPG addiction.

Hsu et al.’s (2009) findings suggests more time people spend playing, they get higher level of addiction. Also, “curiosity”, “role playing”, “belonging”, “obligation” and “reward” are main predictors of addiction (Hsu, Wen, & Wu, 2009). However Hsu et al.’s research is limited with 18-25 years old Taiwanise college students and it doesn’t distinguish between high-engagement and addiction.

On the other hand several studies (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007; NG & PETER WIEMER-HASTINGS, 2005; Kuss, Louws, & Wiers, 2012) suggests there is a thin line between high engagement and addiction. And even if many players spends most of their times per week for gameplay, they do not get irritated if they skip playing for a some time. For this reason they can’t be considered as having addictive behaviour. Researches (2005; 2007; 2012) suggests, most of these players are just introverts that chooses playing instead of doing social activities such as going to bars, parties etc. (Helena Cole & Mark D. Griffiths, 2007; NG & PETER WIEMER-HASTINGS, 2005; Kuss, Louws, & Wiers, 2012)

Virtual Immigration

When the players gets highest levels, achievements and best items in the game, they starts to lose their interests. In that state game becomes boring and some players decides to switch to another mmorpg or another game server. In Christou et al.’s research (2013) several participants mentioned that in this state they continue to play due to the other players on the server and community (Christou, Law, & Ang, 2013). Yet another research by Hou et al. (2011) is examines mmorpg switching behavior by human migration teory.

In their research Hou et al. (2011) discuss there is pull, push and mooring effects applies for switching to another mmorpg or server as like to human migrations. Push effects are issues in current game that includes low enjoyment, low service satisfaction and perception of insufﬁcient participants (i.e. lesser players). Pull effects are defined as attractiveness of alternatives. Mooring effects are the reasons that people keep playing such as switching costs, social relationships, need for variety and prior switching experinces (Hou, Chern, Chen, & Chen, 2011).

Hou et al.(2011) examined 21-30 years old Taiwanese World of Warcraft players. %83 of participants were male player. %78 of participants were students, and the others were mostly white collar workers. Their research resulted in this conclusions: Firstly, Push effects are not significantly influences switching intentions. Most of the players are keep playing their current mmorpg while affected by push forces. And if they get estranged they simply stop playing game until they desire to play again (Hou, Chern, Chen, & Chen, 2011).

Secondly, Mooring effects are strongest drivers of switching. Yet, only three out of four components of Mooring effects had significal influences switching intentions which is: switching costs, need for variety and prior switching experience. In contrast to Christou et al.’s (2013) research, their study (2011) could not find a remarkable effect on social relationships about switching. Their research suggets the most important factor is switching costs. Because players are unable to transfer their characters, ingame currency or items and they have to start from scratch. Prior switching experience is also an important factor because if a player has satisfied with his/her previous switching experience, they more likely to switch again (Hou, Chern, Chen, & Chen, 2011).

However Hou et al.’s (2011) research is limited with Taiwanese World of Warcraft players and their survey may get different results in another MMORPGs or another player groups.

Conclusion

MMORPG players are highly immersed into virtual worlds and lives in there such as a second life during their gameplay time. During their virtual life they overcomes challenges, establishes new social bonds and achieves properties and victories. Just like their real lifes, they spend lots of time and effort for improving their avatars. Due to these reasons virtual enviroments of MMORPGs are highly engaging.

Researches on MMORPG addiction phenomina are insufficent. In addition, as the society of real life has changes over time, the virtual society of MMORPGs are also likely to change. Therefore, various studies on Player Experiences might be outdated.

In the next research, I will try to find Player Motivations by interviewing with players. I will use qualitative methods for my research.

References

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Publish Date: 13 December 2018