Numerous researchers have written about the social dynamics of player communities in multiplayer online games. Following a systematic review of refereed empirical research publications from 2000-2010, this article synthesizes the key methods and concepts researchers have used to study and characterize player communities, as well as the aspects and operationalizations they have concentrated on. The analysis shows that qualitative approaches have been more popular than quantitative. The concepts used to characterize player communities were often not clearly defined or overlapped in meaning. Yet they revealed a prevalence of micro (groups or teams), meso (guilds or organizations) and macro (communities and networks) perspectives. Eighteen different aspects and operationalizations of player communities were identified. Six of these were clearly most popular, i.e. social structuring, rationale, culture & social norms, used ICTs, number of members and time of existence. The article concludes with several perspectives and suggestions for future research.
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Numerous researchers have written about the social dynamics of player communities in multiplayer online games. Following a systematic review of refereed empirical research publications from 2000-2010, this article synthesizes the key methods and concepts researchers have used to study and characterize player communities, as well as the aspects and operationalizations they have concentrated on. The analysis shows that qualitative approaches have been more popular than quantitative. The concepts used to characterize player communities were often not clearly defined or overlapped in meaning. Yet they revealed a prevalence of micro (groups or teams), meso (guilds or organizations) and macro (communities and networks) perspectives. Eighteen different aspects and operationalizations of player communities were identified. Six of these were clearly most popular, i.e. social structuring, rationale, culture & social norms, used ICTs, number of members and time of existence. The article concludes with several perspectives and suggestions for future research.
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The social dynamics of player communities in online games have been the subject of much research during the last decade. Following a systematic review of empirical research publications from 2000–2010, this article synthesizes the key methods and concepts researchers have used to study and characterize player communities. It also synthesizes the key aspects and operationalizations researchers have concentrated on. The analysis shows that qualitative approaches have been more common than quantitative ones. The concepts used to characterize player communities were often not clearly defined or overlapped in meaning. Yet they revealed a prevalence of micro (groups or teams), meso (guilds or organizations) and macro (communities and networks) perspectives. About 22 different aspects and operationalizations of player communities were identified. Six were most common, i.e. culture and social norms, social structuring, rationale, number of members, used information and communication technologies and time of existence. The article concludes with several suggestions for future research.
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Providing users with a sense of place – related to a specific geographic location in which one is situated, or linked to a faraway place, or even giving place-like qualities to virtual spaces such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games – has been deemed central for several forms of digital interactions. In the past decade, studies from human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work have specifically addressed this theme, but the scarcity of works of place specificity focusing expressly on interactive TV suggests a gap in the current research, whereas the latest developments in mobile TV would seem highly coherent with such topic. To contribute to closing this gap, some initial directions are suggested here by pointing at compatible treatments of the notion of place in related fields, for example, the design of pervasive urban games. Game designers and game scholars might provide operational concepts that help understanding the role and the potentialities of places for interactive TV. Two general types of artifacts are selected here: works that are anchored to the experience of faraway places and works that leverage the physical location in which the user is. Their analysis yields three design strategies (experience anchoring, place permeability, and distributed storytelling), offered here as “objects to think with” and to spur further research and design. By pointing at them and at other similar strategies, similarities between digital games, ITV products, and other similar artifacts emerge and allow us to speculatively trace possible future convergences.
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Objectives: Aiming to reduce distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks by alerting the consciences of Internet users, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of four warning banners displayed as online ads (deterrent—control, social, informative, and reorienting) and the contents of their two linked landing pages. Methods: We implement a 4 x 2 quasi-experimental design on a self-selected sample of Internet users to measure the engagement generated by the ads and the pages. Engagement is measured on the ads as the ratio of clicks to impressions, and on the pages as percentage of page scrolled, average session duration, video interaction rate, and URLs click rate. Results: Social ads generate significantly more engagement than the rest with low to medium effect sizes. Data reveal no differences in engagement between both landing page designs. Conclusions: Social messages may be a better alternative for engaging with potential cyber offenders than the traditional deterrent messages. Correspondence: Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), De Boelelaan 1077, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: AMoneva@nscr.n This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Experimental Criminology. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-022-09504-2
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Learning and acting on social conventions is problematic for low-literates and non-natives, causing problems with societal participation and citizenship. Using the Situated Cognitive Engineering method, requirements for the design of social conventions learning software are derived from demographic information, adult learning frameworks and ICT learning principles. Evaluating a sample of existing Dutch social conventions learning applications on these requirements shows that none of them meet all posed criteria. Finally, Virtual Reality is suggested as a possible future technology improvement.
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On the internet we see a continuously growing generation of web applications enabling anyone to create and publish online content in a simple way, to link content and to share it with others: wellknown instances include MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia and Google Earth. The internet has become a social software platform sailing under the Web 2.0 flag, creating revolutionary changes along the way: the individual, the end-user, comes first and can benefit optimally from an environment which has the following keywords: radically user-oriented, decentralized, collective and massive. ‘An environment in which each participant not only listens, but can also make his own voice heard’: the Social Web. This document describes a brief exploration of this Social Web and intends to gain insight in possible fundamental changes this phenomenon is causing or might cause in our society. Particular attention will be paid to the impact of the Social Web on learning and education. For how do two apparently contrary developments touch and overlap? On the one side we have the rapid growth of technologies bringing individuals together to communicate, collaborate, have fun and acquire knowledge (social software). And on the other hand we have the just conviction within the world of education that young people should not only acquire knowledge and information, but should also have all kinds of skills and experience in order to meet social and technological changes deliberately, and prepare for a life long of learning.
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