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Some online video games found to promote 'sociability,' researchers say
Andrea
Lynn, Humanities Editor
217-333-2177; andreal@uiuc.edu
8/16/2006
|
CHAMPAIGN, Ill.
— Hang in there, parents. There is some hopeful news on the video-gaming front.
Researchers have found that some of the large and hugely popular online
video games – although condemned by many as time-gobbling, people-isolating
monsters – actually have socially redeeming qualities.
In theory, anyway.
After examining the form and function of what’s known in the trade
as MMOs – massively multiplayer online video games – an
interdisciplinary team of researchers concludes that some games “promote
sociability and new worldviews.”
The researchers, Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams, claim that
MMOs function not like solitary dungeon cells, but more like virtual
coffee shops or pubs where something called “social bridging”
takes place. They even liken playing such games as “Asheron’s
Call” and “Lineage” to dropping in at “Cheers,”
the fictional TV bar “where everybody knows your name.”
“By providing places for social interaction and relationships
beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function much
like the hangouts of old,” they said. And they take it one step
further by suggesting that the lack of real-world hangouts “is
what is driving the MMO phenomenon” in the first place.
The new conceptual study was published in early August in the Journal
of Computer-Mediated Communication under the title, “Where Everybody
Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘Third Places.’
” Steinkuehler is a professor of education at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison, and Williams is a professor of speech
communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The term “third places” was coined in 1999 by sociologist
Ray Oldenburg to describe the physical places outside the home and workplace
that people use for informal social interaction. Steinkuehler and Williams
argue that online spaces, such as those found in MMOs, should also count
as third places for informal sociability, “albeit new and virtual
places.”
MMOs are graphical 2- or 3-D videogames that allow players, through
their
self-created digital characters or avatars, to interact with the gaming
software and with other players, to build “relationships of status
and solidarity.” While still in-game, players can hold multiple
real-time conversations with fellow players through text or voice.
The games the researchers studied – “Asheron’s Call
I and II” and “Lineage I
and II” – represent “a fairly mainstream portion of
the fantasy-based MMO market,” the authors wrote, where rewarding
players for cooperation and the formation of long-term player groups
or “guilds” is part of the game.
Game play in MMOs is not a “single solitary interaction between
an individual and a technology,” the researchers wrote, “but
rather, is more akin to playing five-person poker in a neighborhood
tavern that is accessible from your own living room.”
Steinkuehler and Williams also found that participation in such virtual
third places “appears particularly well suited to the formation
of bridging social capital – social relationships that, while
not usually providing deep emotional support, typically function to
expose the individual to a diversity of worldviews,” they wrote.
“In other words,” Williams said, “spending time in
these social games helps people meet others not like them, even if it
doesn’t always lead to strong friendships. That kind of social
horizon-broadening has been sorely lacking in American society for decades.”
Over the last few years, Williams has published a number of studies
that have challenged the common and mostly negative beliefs about game
playing.
For his work on online games as third places, Williams drew on an earlier
study of “Asheron’s Call,” for which he combined survey
research and experimental design and focused on “issues of social
capital and real-life community,” he said.
He even played the game and conducted 30 random interviews, asking players
about their motivations for playing, their in-game social networks and
their life outside the game.
“There were both positive and negative outcomes,” he said.
In her earlier study of cognition and learning in MMOs, Steinkuehler
conducted a two-year ethnography of the “Lineage” games,
her goal being to explore the kinds of social and intellectual activities
in which gamers routinely participate, including individual and collaborative
problem solving, identity construction, apprenticeship and literary
practices. She conducted repeated interviews of 16 key informants throughout
the study.
Their overall conclusion in this newest study: “Virtual worlds
appear to function best as bridging mechanisms, rather than as bonding
ones, although they do not entirely preclude social ties of the latter
type.”
While they continue to draw fire from many critics, MMOs attract more
than 9 million subscribers worldwide, who spend on average 20 hours
a week “in-game.”
“To argue that their MMO game play is isolated and passive media
consumption that takes the place of informal social engagement is to
ignore the nature of what participants actually do behind the computer
screen,” the authors wrote.
Still, they suggest that heavy game play might not be healthy in the
short term for people who need strong connections, since it could take
the place of strong offline relationships.
“It’s really a question of what kind of balance the person
has in their life,” Williams said. “For that reason, online
spaces are not a one-size-fits-all phenomenon that can simply be labeled
‘good’ or ‘bad.’ ”
The authors suggest that now may be a good time to reconsider how new
media are affecting people.
“Perhaps it is not that contemporary media use has led to a decline
in civic and social engagement, as many have argued, but rather, that
a decline in civic and social engagement has led to a ‘retribalization’
through contemporary media.”
