sociality in MMORPG - The Creative Me! Developing My First Video

Behaviour & Information Technology, 2013
Vol. 32, No. 7, 724–734, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2012.754497
Challenges of designing for sociability to enhance player experience in Massively Multi-player
Online Role-playing Games
Georgios Christoua∗ , Effie Lai-Chong Lawb , Panayiotis Zaphirisc , and Chee Siang Angd
of Computer Science and Engineering, European University Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus; b Department of Computer Science,
University of Leicester, Leicester, UK; c Department of Graphic Arts and Multimedia, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol,
Cyprus; d School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Kent, UK
a Department
(Received 04 November 2011; final version received 26 November 2012 )
Massively Multi-player Online Role-playing Games (MMORPGs) have become a popular leisure activity. It has been suggested that the reason for their popularity is that they offer a new ‘third-place’ for people to socialise. However, designing for
sociability in these games has been shown to be a challenge. In this article, we discuss the results of an online survey that was
directed towards game design researchers and professionals. We then present a subsequent discussion on the results of the
survey at a Special Interest Group (SIG) held at CHI 2011. Through analysis of the findings of the survey and the discussion,
we propose six requirements that facilitate the design of MMORPGs: In-game Communication, Off-game Communication,
Empathy, Grouping and Rewards, World Design, and Designed Relationships. We state that it is not necessary to add all the
proposed requirements in the design of such games, but we also caution that a game that does not include any of the requirements presented here cannot belong to this genre. We discuss limitations of this work, and offer future research directions
that result from this work.
Keywords: game design; user experience; player experience; MMORPG; sociability; social games
1. Introduction and background
The overarching goal of this article is to further the understanding of the challenges in designing for sociability
in Massively Multi-Player Online Role-playing Games
(MMORPGs), and to begin a discussion on the requirements of sociability design in these games. As playing
online games (of which MMORPGs are a part) is the second
most popular activity among today’s Internet users (Nielsen
Wire 2010), it is important to look at this topic and examine
how better design can enhance sociability without being so
intrusive as to impede the overall Player eXperience (PX),
which can be regarded as a specific manifestation of User
eXperience (UX)1 focussing on games. Amongst a range
of qualities for PX, fun is a common as well as critical one
(Nacke 2009, Drachen et al. 2010). Thus, many questions
require answers if we are to move further in the science of
designing social games, questions such as: How do existing
MMORPGs provide a social experience to players? What
does it mean to have a social PX? How does one optimise sociability design? Which structures actually support
sociability, and how does one evaluate the game structures
that support sociability? To investigate some of these questions, we created an online survey that was directed towards
researchers in computer games and game industry professionals (but not to game players) to gather opinions on
∗ Corresponding
author. Email: christoug@acm.org
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
the challenges of designing for sociability in the context
of social games to enhance PX. The survey was created
in the form of probing interview questions to understand
the thinking process of experts in the field of social game
design.
Researchers have started to address various questions
on topics as diverse as social impact (Seay et al. 2004),
ethical questions (Warner and Raiter 2005), design (Ducheneaut et al. 2004), presence (Ravaja et al. 2006), and
game experience (Fisher 1995, Clarke and Duimering 2006,
De Kort and Ijsselsteijn 2008, Zaharias and Papargyris
2009), and the way these manifest in the online communities within MMORPGs. In fact, social cultural studies
on computer games are gaining much popularity recently
because player–player interaction, both collaborative as
well as competitive, plays an important role in MMORPGs.
Also, the notion of sociability is central to the field
of computer-supported collaborative work and of humancomputer interaction (HCI) and is concerned ‘with developing software, policies and practices to support social
interaction online’ (Preece 2001). According to Preece
(2001), three components contribute to good sociability:
purpose (i.e. reason for belonging to an online social group
or community), people (i.e. individuals’ needs and roles in
such a group), and policies (i.e. formal and informal rules
Behaviour & Information Technology
govern interactions in the group). Whether this generic 3-P
sociability framework, which has been operationalised into
some general success measures (Preece 2001), is applicable
to specific online communities such as MMORPGs remains
an empirical question.
It has also been demonstrated that designing for sociability in MMORPGs is a difficult process. Many MMORPGs
are created, but only relatively few have succeeded commercially. An example of sociability design backfire can
be observed in Star Wars Galaxies, an MMORPG which
tried to pressure the players into socialising through its
designed relationships between avatars, and eventually
pushed the players away (Ducheneaut et al. 2004). In addition, the social implications of moving third-places (i.e.
social surroundings)2 from the real world to the virtual
world are only beginning to be understood. All the while,
this move requires the development of virtual third-places
that draw people to them and promote the same types of
sociability (Simmel and Hughes 1949), just as real-world
third-places do. There have been several attempts to create
such virtual third-places, with various degrees of success
(Ducheneaut et al. 2004, 2006). Still, one of the major draws
to MMORPGs is that in addition to the single-player game
content, they provide players the ability to socialise and
play together with friends and strangers, either as allies
or as competitors (Steinkuehler and Williams 2006). In
observing that, as mentioned earlier, certain game features
purportedly designed for sociability may backfire (Ducheneaut et al. 2004, Eklund and Johansson 2010); we need
to examine the ways in which MMORPG design can affect
sociability, which in turn affects the success or failure of the
game.
Therefore, the relevant question that we try to answer
in this article is how do we design for sociability in
MMORPGs so as to enhance fun – the key experiential quality of games? As designing for social interaction in games
is challenging, and this is a key differentiator from solitary digital games, a design method is required that takes
into account the social aspects of a game as well as any
other considerations that would normally go into creating a
single-player game. The social aspects need to be defined,
presented, and even promoted by the game itself, so that its
users may begin to play them.
The rest of the article is organised as follows: First,
we present a study using an online survey aimed at game
researchers and professionals who have had research or professional experience in the study and design of MMORPGs.
The responses of the survey enabled the development of a
three-factor model. Then we present a discussion and brief
application of the model during a SIG at CHI 2011 (Conference of Human Factors in Computing Systems). The results
of the survey and the model were presented at the SIG, and
through discussion with the participants the model was further defined and elucidated, leading to a six-factor model.
We conclude by discussing the limitations of our approach
and the consequences of our model on social game design.
2.
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The study
2.1. Aim
The study aimed at gathering the thoughts of people who
have worked in the field of game design, either professionally or as researchers, to create a common understanding of
what sociability is in the context of MMORPGs. The goal
of this process was to delineate the structures that can be
used in game design to support sociability, thereby providing relevant PX. Once the structures were identified,
a discussion could follow to explore design choices that
promote sociability in a way that is not forced upon the
players. This would enable players to socialise as well as
play. Such design would also promote the games’ social
features to first-time players, so that they understand how
to use these from the outset. The result from the discussion
is then framed as three requirements that form the basis of
the model for social game design.
2.2. Method
The study was divided into two parts. The first part consisted of a survey that was placed online between February
and May of 2011. It was further opened to receive more
answers between March and August of 2012. The survey
was publicised in several HCI- and Game Design-related
mailing lists. During these two periods of time, a total
of 102 replies were received of which 12 were excluded,
because the respondents had not completed any questions
other than the demographics. Therefore, the results presented here are from a total of 90 answers. The reason for the
relatively low response rate was that the survey was specifically aimed at researchers and game designers/developers
with experience in MMORPGs. Their desired experience
should be either in designing or developing social games or
in researching the social structures of MMORPGs. Hence,
this study was not aimed at game players.
The survey was designed as a mini-interview aiming to
gather qualitative responses rather than as a survey aiming to gather quantitative data and not to measure any
kind of psychometric properties. As such, the questions
were designed to gather the practices of practitioners and
the ideas of researchers about the design for sociability in
MMORPGs. Towards this end, we believe that the richness
of the data retrieved as a result outweighs the small number
of replies.
The questions of the online survey are shown in Table 1.
The survey consisted of two parts: the first set of questions aimed to understand how researchers and practitioners define sociability in MMORPGs, and asked them
to state their belief as to whether today’s MMORPGs
promote sociability, and in what ways. The second part
asked participants to state ideas about how sociability
may be hindered or improved through game design practice. The survey resulted in the identification of three
structures that are necessary to create a social PX in an
MMORPG.
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G. Christou et al.
Table 1.
Survey questions.
Survey questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
What is your primary occupation right now?
Have you ever played any MMOG?
Which ones? (conditional on the previous question)
For how long have you been playing MMOGs?
How do you define sociability in MMORPGs?
Which perceived qualities of the following do you
believe contribute to sociability in MMORPGs?
How does sociability influence other perceived qualities
of MMOPRGs?
Mention any design methods that you have used to
specifically design for sociability in MMORPGs
Mention any evaluation methods that you have used
to specifically evaluate sociability constructs in
MMORPGs
Which design/evaluation methods could be considered
uniquely applicable to MMOPRGs?
Which specific features of MMOPRGs entail such
specific methods of design/evaluation? (conditional
on the previous question)
How can individual players’ UX be related to group (or
social) experience in the context of MMORPGs? Is
a whole greater than the sum of its parts, if they are
additive at all?
How important is sociability to the overall experience of
the game?
How is sociability promoted in MMORPGs?
The second part of the study was a discussion on the
results of the survey and the topic ‘Designing for sociability to enhance player experience in massively multiplayer
online games’. This discussion occurred in the context of
the SIG at CHI 2011 (Christou et al. 2011). The results of
the survey were presented to the SIG participants to enable
the discussion. The SIG brought together researchers and
practitioners from various disciplines such as sociology,
anthropology, computer science, HCI, and psychology, to
discuss the challenges of creating social games. The format
of the SIG was both structured and open. It was structured
because it systematically set a stage which presented sociability issues and challenged the participants to come up with
solutions through discussion on some specific sub-topics,
and it was open because any person interested in this area
could attend and contribute. For the purposes of our analysis, we first present the results of the survey, then the results
of the SIG discussion, and finally we synthesise our findings into six requirements that may be used to facilitate
the creation of MMORPGs. The whole process, together
with the results from each part of the study, is shown in
Figure 1.
The online survey was open between February and May
2011, and between March and August 2012. We publicised it in various academic and game industry forums
and mailing lists, such as the SIGCHI, Usability News,
and the Digital Games Research Association. During the
second round specifically, we personally invited experts in
game design and development, both from academia and
industry, to ensure that the sample also included respected
professionals who have worked on the creation of successful MMORPGs. After both rounds, we gathered 90 valid
responses. The survey questions are shown in Table 1.
The first four questions aimed at understanding the demographics of the respondents. Specifically, questions 2 and 4
asked participants whether they had any experience in the
more general field of Massively Multi-player Online Games
(MMOGs). The reason was to retrieve the experience of the
participants as broadly as possible on online social games.
Questions 5–7 aimed at understanding the respondents’
views on what sociability is in MMORPGs. Questions 8–11
were design-specific, questions 12 and 13 asked about the
role of sociability in shaping game experiences, and finally
In-game
communication
Online Survey
In-game
communication
Off-game
communication
Off-game
communication
SIG
Discussion
Empathy
Grouping and
rewards
Sociability through
grouping
Survey-derived
requirements
Figure 1.
The research process and the findings from each phase.
World Design
Designed
Relationships
Survey + Discussion
Requirements
Behaviour & Information Technology
question 14 asked about structures that are used to promote
sociability in MMORPGs.
2.3. Results and discussions
2.3.1. Demographic data
The first four questions of the survey dealt with the demographic data. The 90 replies came as follows: 61.11%
researchers/academics, 14.44% graduate students, 4.44%
undergraduate students, and 20% game industry professionals. From these respondents, 54% had not only worked
on but had also played MMORPGs, with World of Warcraft (WoW) being the most popular among the participants
(40%) and the second choice being Lord of the Rings
Online with 6.15%. Participants reported playing in total
36 different MMORPGs.
2.3.2. Definitional issues
Question 5 aimed at understanding how participants defined
sociability in the context of MMORPGs. This response
was free text, thus giving respondents the opportunity
to write about their thoughts freely. We then gathered
all the responses and categorised them according to keywords that emerged through analysis. To extract themes
from the responses to the free questions of the survey, we
used thematic analysis (Miles and Huberman 1994). Thematic analysis is by nature iterative. We read through the
responses to each question several times, each time creating a category or adding each response to one or more of
the existing categories. Then, we went through the categories created and simplified the categories, either uniting
categories where needed, or creating new categories and
only stopped when saturation was reached (i.e. all items
could be placed in existing categories). Through successive iterations of this process, three major categories, which
can be seen as requirements, were identified (Table 2). The
same process was followed for all the other questions that
required free text replies. Responses such as ‘being able to
Table 2. Sociability requirements derived from the responses to
the online survey.
Requirements
In-game
communication
Off-game
communication
Sociability through
grouping
Explanation
Sociability as it is perceived by players,
i.e. through chat, grouping (short and
long term, persistent or ad-hoc, etc)
Define sociability not only in terms
of in-game experiences, but also
structures and artefacts that support it
out-of-game, such as forums, wikis, etc
Sociability through content that requires
more than one player to complete, and
the provision of structures that allows
players to create groups
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communicate with other people (in-game and externally),
form groups and experience (appropriate) content together,
and also having an infrastructure for the group available
(e.g. guilds in WoW)’ straddled categories. In this case, the
response fits into all of the categories. Other responses were
more direct towards defining sociability as direct interaction, such as ‘where directly interacting with other humans
is a meaningful part of the game’. However, all responses
focussed on direct or indirect interaction between players.
Table 2 summarises the three categories that emerged
from the survey’s responses. The first category ‘Sociability
through communication’, accounts for any in-game structures that allow players to communicate or that support
the ability of players to communicate. Players communicate through in-game global chat, private chat between two
or more players, or through channels reserved for shortand long-term groups that may be persistent or ad-hoc in
MMORPGs. On the other hand, grouping mechanisms that
allow players to create persistent or ad-hoc groups with any
kind of longevity are structures that support the ability of
players to communicate.
The second category is also about communication, but
which is not situated in-game. Rather, it comes from interactions through structures that are external to the game.
This communication could be just information transfer from
the structure to the player, with no reciprocity mechanism,
but most of the time, such structures offer various mechanisms through which two-way communications may occur.
The structures that we refer to here are, for example, wikis,
forums, reference sites about the game, and even real-life
groups, either official or fan-created. Such structures take
the social aspects of a game one step further, creating a community that not only lives in-game, but also has significant
substance outside of it.
The third category encompasses the structures that allow
players to join forces against game obstacles that cannot be
tackled by a single player. There are various mechanisms
of grouping. These could be ad-hoc or semi-permanent,
long term and short term. However, grouping mechanisms
do not presuppose that players belonging to a group will
automatically communicate. In fact, it has been suggested
(Ducheneaut et al. 2006, Eklund and Johansson 2010,
Christou 2011a) that many times players do not communicate when in groups. But the act of grouping together
presents a social action, and together with helping others
even instrumentally to achieve a game goal can be viewed
as social.
2.3.3. Quality attributes contributing to Sociability
The sixth question, as shown in Table 3, provided several
choices to the survey participants. Table 3 also shows the
distribution of answers. The quality attributes were selected
from traditional software quality models as well as from
emerging UX research. Some of these attributes overlap and
some differ from Preece’s (2001) ‘determinants of success’
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G. Christou et al.
Table 3. Perceived qualities that contribute to sociability in MMORPGs.
Quality
Responsiveness
Privacy
Credibility
Desirability
Security
Beauty
Branding
Percentage of participants
28
19
18
13
11
7
4
(p. 352), which cannot be generalised to MMORPGs. For
instance, the measure ‘number of messages’ is not relevant
to online game environments whereas ‘trustworthiness’
(i.e. ‘credibility’) remains applicable. Subsequently, we
elaborate each of the quality attributes and the associated
findings.
Amongst the list of quality given, responsiveness is
perceived as important for sociability by 28% of the
respondents, the highest percentage obtained. The concept
‘responsiveness’ can be defined as the specific ability of a
functional unit to complete assigned tasks within a given
time (Weik 2000). As the temporal aspect (i.e. speed) is
the basic requirement for most, if not all, games, especially
MMORPGs, it can explain the relatively high rating (though
low in an absolute term) for responsiveness. About one-fifth
of the respondents consider that privacy can contribute to
sociability. At first glance, being private and being social
seem antagonistic. But if we understand sociability in terms
of Preece’s (2001) definition, then this finding makes sense.
Setting policies to decide who would be allowed to join a
community and how easy it would be can affect social interaction in the community and address individual members’
concerns about privacy. However, the relationship between
privacy policy and perceived trust is somewhat ambiguous
(Fogg et al. 2003), and the latter is closely related to credibility, which is regarded as important for sociability by 18%
of our respondents, as described below.
Credibility is a trait that indicates the degree to which
a person is perceived as believable, trustworthy, and competent (McCroskey and Young 1981). In avatar-mediated
online interaction, credibility is determined by an avatar’s
gender and anthropomorphism (Nowak and Rauh 2006);
such findings are relevant to the perceived sociability of
MMORPGs. Besides, according to Preece (2001), trustworthiness (or credibility) is a critical determinant of sociability,
and can be classified into three types with one of them being
closely related to security policy. The relationships between
credibility, risk, and security have been studied by a number of researchers (e.g. Corritore et al. 2003). Only about
11% of the respondents think that security can contribute
to sociability. This finding is not so surprising, given that
MMORPGs normally do not involve any material transaction that needs to be protected in terms of security policies.
However, this may change with a new trend started by Diablo III (Blizzard Entertainment 2012) where real money can
be used to trade virtual goods and the in-game currency on
the game’s virtual auction house (Tassi 2012).
While it is not surprising that the respondents do not
perceive credibility and security as particularly important
to sociability, what is unexpected is the very low percent
of our respondents agreeing on the relevance of desirability, beauty, and branding. In the emerging field of UX,
these non-instrumental qualities have already captured quite
some research efforts (e.g. Hassenzahl and Tractinsky 2006,
Law et al. 2009). A product is desirable if it is seen as worth
having or seeing (cf. Hassenzahl’s (2004) hedonic attribute
of identification), as being useful, beneficial, or pleasing
(Benedek and Miner 2002). Apparently, our respondents do
not see the teleological value as relevant to the sociability in
MMORPGs. Besides, unlike fashion or dress up games, for
games like MMORPGs, fun and challenge are the salient
qualities that players typically appreciate; aesthetic quality
could be a nice-to-have but not an essential quality. Furthermore, branding shapes a user’s expectation about the quality
of a product/service. What can account for our findings is
that most MMORPGs are not ‘branded’ applications; they
are not ‘marketed’ in the way the commercial worlds do.
Thus, viewing this from a player’s perspective, we surmise
that the players will only continue playing a game if they
find it desirable to do so. The respondents may see these factors as preconditions for playing a game and therefore not
relevant after the players decide to continue playing. In summary, none of the seven qualities proposed are perceived as
critical for sociability in MMORPGs. More research work
is called for to identify such system qualities.
2.3.4. Three consequences of sociability
Question 7 asked how sociability interacted with other
perceived qualities of MMORPGs. This was again an openended question. We analysed the answers in the same way
we did question 5. The perceived experiential qualities identified by respondents as positively affected by sociability
were Motivation, Fun, and Relatedness. Motivation refers
to the observation that the players remain interested in the
game and continue playing it. Relatedness refers to the
observation that the players feel that the game world is as
real as the real world, thus relating the game experience
to their real-world experience. The respondents mentioned
that:
after playing a game for a longer time it become boring, what still
attracts players to stick to the game is the community/the other
players. In the long run sociability is the most important factor
for many players to stay in an MMORPG (or they even decide to
migrate as a group to the next one).
Fun and Relatedness were subjective qualities that were
mentioned by many of the respondents in conjunction with
the ability to play with other people whom players know
are real and not interactive game artefacts. One respondent
Behaviour & Information Technology
mentioned that ‘the more people playing and interacting
in quality ways in an MMORPG the more fun the game
is. Without people, or when people begin to leave an
MMORPG, it dies off’. Another mentioned ‘it adds to the
“reality” of the game by making the other players more
“real” as persons’. Such perceived realism enhances the
feeling of relatedness. For the respondents, socialising with
other real players increases the game’s enjoyment, making it more fun. One of the respondents even stated that
‘a good sociability factor can let people continue to play
games that do not meet their expectations in a game without sociability’. Finally, another respondent mentioned that
‘I think sociability is an integral part of the MMORPG
experience, as opposed to single player games. Lack of
sociability deprives one of the main features of MMOGs’.
This respondent hints at the fact that sociability is one of
the distinguishing features of MMO[RP]G games.
To question 7 respondents conveyed the feeling that
sociability is an added value to a game that makes it unique,
one that makes the game’s perceived value to players
greater, and a value that works towards the retention of players because players have a place to socialise with friends,
thus agreeing with Steinkuehler and Williams (2006) in that
MMORPGs are virtual ‘third-places’.
2.3.5. Design methods for sociability
Questions 8, 9, 10, and 11 were aimed specifically at matters
of designing sociability structures and evaluating them in
the context of MMORPGs. On the issue of specific design
methods used for MMORPGs, all the respondents stated
that they did not use specific methods for designing sociability structures. The respondents’ answer reveals a gap in
game design methodology, opening up a large area for future
research.
On the other hand, they did specify methods for
evaluating sociability structures. The methods mentioned
were: semi-structured interviews with players, third-party
analysis of video recordings of game episodes, forum
and discourse analysis and hermeneutic deconstruction,
social network analysis, virtual ethnography, and Structured
Expert Evaluation Method ‘returnance’ measuring survey.
Of these, the methods suggested the most were those of
virtual ethnography and interviews. All the respondents
agreed that these methods were not only directed at evaluating sociability structures in MMORPGs, but they have
equivalents in other research areas, such as ethnography
and literature. The respondents also mentioned that because
MMORPGs are largely closed worlds (with the exception
of out-of-game structures as mentioned earlier) and because
of the ease with which chat logs and virtual trails can be
obtained, the analysis of sociability characteristics in games
is more convenient than in the real world. Therefore, the
evaluation of sociability structures in MMORPGs becomes
more convenient than the same practice in the real world.
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2.3.6. Social experience versus individual experience
Question 12 asked how the individual player’s UX was
related to the social UX in a MMORPG. This question
brought the most variance of answers and opinions by the
survey respondents. One respondent answered that ‘it is
intrinsically connected. There is no “non-social” mmog’.
However, as research shows, a large part of the PX in
MMORPGs is experienced individually (Ducheneaut et al.
2006). Another responded with:
it is near impossible to measure an individual player’s experience
correctly. Trying to measure a ‘group experience’ is a question
of definitions. my definition: no such thing as a group experience exists. a group is not a single mind, but individuals trying
to get along and having individual experiences. if anything like
group experience exists, it is the mean experience between all
participants. So the group experience is less than the sum of its
parts.
Yet another respondent stated that:
The whole is greater than the sum, due to the shared experience,
evolution of culture (traditions, specialized language, etc.), and
permeability of that culture into mainstream culture.
And another brought up Durkheim’s (1982) work as
relevant to this question:
I think this is one of the situations where Durkheim’s idea of analyzing the social by just the social very much applies, i.e. the individual
experiences, summed up and given the context, will explain much
of what is taking place during, and around (on e.g. game fora), play.
Most respondents agreed on the fact that it is individual
experiences that shape the social experience. However, they
do not agree on the nature of the experience. This has important implications for social game design, especially when
combined with the answers in the previous questions about
how the respondents design the social attributes in their
games. Once more the ‘social’ in social games is shown
to come from experience and current practice than from an
understanding of the social structures and how they affect
the game experience in social games.
2.3.7. Engaging in social behaviour
Question 13 intended to uncover how players are encouraged by MMORPGs to exhibit social behaviour in their
play. The respondents highlighted the need for content that
requires cooperation, with appropriate rewards for playing
the game socially rather than solitarily: ‘Voice and text chatting, customizable avatars allowing projection of identity,
group affiliations (clans), shared adversity (quests and enemies), laws/rules, ownership of land and objects, economic
exchange, etc’. Again, out-of-game community structures
were mentioned: ‘Guilds (as in WoW), group content (for
different group sizes and different levels of difficulty), communication abilities, community building activities like
contest outside the game’. One respondent’s view was
that ‘… sociability does not need promotion’. From what
we understand, this respondent’s position is that to play any
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G. Christou et al.
Table 4.
Importance of sociability in MMORPGs.
Importance
Extremely important
Very important
Important
Slightly important
Not at all important
Participants’ selection (%)
31.03
27.59
20.69
17.24
3.45
MMORPG effectively, a player is required to engage in all
the behaviours mentioned by the other respondents, which
are inherently social. We also believe that this is the case.
The features that promote sociability in an MMORPG are
exactly those that make the game an MMORPG. Sociability
is weaved into the fabric of MMORPGs.
Finally, question 14 asked participants to rate the importance of sociability in games, in general. The answers
are shown in Table 4. More than 75% of the respondents
agree that sociability is at least an important structure in
MMORPGs.
The survey allowed us to create a preliminary model
of which social structures should be considered as standard
content when designing an MMORPG. It also allowed us to
discover that there are several open questions about how to
design social games. The next step was to discuss the results
with another set of experts, with a more varied background.
For this reason, we organised a SIG at CHI 2011. This set
of experts only commented on the results received from the
survey up to April 2011.
3. The Special Interest Group
The SIG was organised to further discuss the results of the
aforementioned survey. At the SIG, there were 23 participants. A SIG slot at CHI is 80 min long. From the allocated
time, we took about 10 min to present the results of the survey and to acquaint ourselves with the participants. Then,
the participants were placed into three groups, according to
the table at which they were seated. After the presentation
of the survey’s responses, the participants were asked to
discuss the three requirements for designing for sociability (shown in Table 2) that stemmed from the survey, and
add anything that they felt was important. This process took
about 15 min. The groups were then given 20 min to distil certain design ideas that may work towards promoting
sociability in MMORPGs through design practices. Finally,
for the remaining time, the groups were asked to brainstorm
about an MMORPG they would like to create, explain sociability features, and discuss how they would evaluate those
features. For each of the questions posed to the groups, each
group had a few minutes to present their ideas and all the
participants could comment. The groups were also given
paper and markers to write notes and present their ideas to
the rest of the participants. These posters were gathered at
the end by the organisers, and their content was published
on the blog page of one of the organisers (Christou 2011b).
3.1. Additional requirements
The SIG participants agreed that the three requirements
(Table 2) given by the survey respondents were truly part
of what makes an MMORPG. The participants argue, however, that the list shown in Table 2 may be incomplete.
Thus, the aim of the initial discussion was to add to the
three requirements that came from the survey so that a more
complete set of requirements would emerge. The participants augmented the initial three requirements of Table 2
with the following:
• Sociability through Grouping and Rewards: grouping was one attribute that was identified while going
over the survey’s responses, particularly those to
question 13. However, rewarding grouping behaviour
adds an extra incentive to push players to socialise
through grouping. Several MMORPGs use rewards
to encourage social behaviour. For example, both
WoW and Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR)
awards different types of points to players if they
engage in collaborative Player-versus-Player (PVP)
or Player-versus-Environment play. In fact, SWTOR
has a specific mechanism through which players
earn ‘social points’ when they complete any in-game
challenges (many of which can also be completed
solitarily) as a group.
• Sociability through Empathy: a second requirement
brought up by SIG participants is a clearly defined
enemy. The enemy’s identity defines the goal of the
group that players belong to, thus creating a strong
community that wants to stand against this enemy.
An example of this, brought up during the discussion, is two factions in WoW, one of the most successful MMORPGs today: ‘Alliance’ and ‘Horde’.
This distinction clearly defines for each player who
their enemies are, and through PVP structures, the
game provides direct confrontation between the twoplayer communities. To further the in-game animosity, WoW also provides a rich lore that explains why
this animosity exists between the two communities,
further defining the reasons of the conflict.
• Sociability through World Design: SIG participants
suggested that creating a world that puts together
players of similar experience, especially at the beginning levels, may provide the opportunity for socialising and grouping together to more easily get past the
initial difficulties of getting to know the game. This
is common practice in AAA3 MMORPGs, such as
SWTOR and WoW.
• Sociability through Designed Relationships: the
game play should also be designed to encourage some
Behaviour & Information Technology
dependence on other players. Things such as buying and selling of game items between characters
should be designed into games. However, we must
also be cautious not to push these ‘designed relationships’ too far, as some players prefer playing alone
in MMORPGs. Even social players would like to
go solo sometimes. Thus, ‘designed relationships’
should not be implemented as the only way to proceed in the game. Instead, they can be built as a more
productive means of playing, without forcing certain
players to engage in collaborative play.
3.2. Designing for sociability
Once the requirements for designing for sociability in
MMORPGs were set, the SIG participants were asked to
apply them by coming up with preliminary MMORPG
designs with the main goal to promote the sociability aspects
of their proposed games. Each group was allowed to work
for about half an hour, and then a representative from each
group presented the group’s ideas.
The first group proposed the building of a sports game
that would allow its players to take the role of coach,
player, cheerleader, or spectator. Each player would be
allowed to socialise with other players in certain locations,
namely the Clubhouse, the Locker room, the Arenas, and
the Fields. The group suggested that social interactions
would be encouraged by giving social points to players,
which would be earned for the following actions: helping
team-mates, recruiting, doing things in the game as a group,
playing with more than one role, scoring/winning, and for
gathering fans. The group did comment that they could not
Table 5.
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come up with ways of attributing points to the in-game role
of audience.
The second group did not come up with a specific game
concept, but rather focussed on the aspects of any game
that wants to promote sociability. This group stressed that
any social game should include an advanced chat interface, which would allow holding conversations with several
people as well as include channels for general chat. The
group also stressed that of great importance are the social
norms that should be instilled in the game. These norms
would define how players can interact with each other,
either by helping or through conflict. On the matter of conflict, the group insisted that ‘griefing’ (Chesney et al. 2009)
could be avoided by regulating the way that players can
attack each other. The group finally argued that because
of their social aspect, these games should provide realworld meeting opportunities, so that the sense of community
created through game-playing would become more tightly
knit.
The third group came up with the notion of a Car Enthusiasts’ MMORPG. For this group, promoting socialisation
would come from creating specialised roles for the players
and creating role dependencies. The group also proposed
that in the game there should be ways of creating incentives
for players to create a community, through extra features,
such as sharing stories and photos of game artefacts, thus
allowing players to create their own stories, and giving the
opportunity to the players to get to know each other’s game
personas, thus creating in-game ties through understanding
of personal histories.
Each group’s proposal is shown in Table 5, crosstabulated with the requirements for design for sociability.
Summary of the sociability requirements against the proposed games.
Requirements
In-game
communication
Sports game group
Specific places designed for
socialising
Off-game
communication
Empathy
Nothing proposed (but implied
empathy towards own team and
animosity against other teams)
Grouping and
rewards
Points for specific social actions.
Players must group together into
teams
All the places are designed
around specific social activities
(collaboration, chatting, and
competing)
Roles created are co-dependent
(except spectator that was not
clearly defined)
World design
Designed
relationships
No-game group
Car enthusiasts
game group
Advanced chat interface that
Dependencies between roles that can
supports chatting with one or
be taken on by players, to increase
more people privately and through
interaction
public channels
Real-world meeting opportunities
Provision of extra features (forum,
set up by the people/company
wiki) that support the community
producing the game
Specific ways under which conflict Understanding of player personas
between players will be regulated,
through the creation of personal
specific ways in which players
histories and of sharing them
may interact
Players need to group together into
teams
Special space where groups can
display their achievements and
in-game persona histories
Mentioned that roles need to blend
together, but no further thought
was recorded
732
G. Christou et al.
If a cell is empty that means that the group did not include
that particular requirement in their preliminary design.
4. General discussion
The survey yielded several results that may potentially be
useful in the design and development of MMORPGs. Starting with the last question, the survey showed that both
academics and practitioners believe that sociability is somewhat important in any kind of game. Even for games that
are traditionally played by a single player, there should be
structures that support socialising. In fact going back to
the 1980s and 1990s, the arcade was a place where solitary games were played in a social context (Fisher 1995).
Hence, playing ‘together alone’ (Ducheneaut et al. 2006)
is not a concept that only fits MMORPGs. Nevertheless,
it is clear that different design and evaluation approaches
are required for co-located and computer-mediated ‘social’
games with the goal of enhancing game experience (e.g.
De Kort and Ijsselsteijn 2008). Question 5 provided information about specific requirements that MMORPGs need to
have so that they can be characterised as MMORPGs. Communication structures, both in- and off-game, together with
grouping mechanisms are requirements proposed by the
survey respondents. To question 13, however, the respondents suggested that to engage players in social play such
as grouping, the players must be rewarded.
The respondents agree that adding social structures in
a game can shape different perceived qualities. Motivation,
replayability, fun, relatedness, and the sense of presence
are amplified. On the other hand, the perceived qualities
that affect the sense of sociability in an MMORPG are
responsiveness and privacy. In other words, the games are
so designed that they can respond to players’ actions in a
timely manner, contributing to fun and immersion, and there
should be good policies regulating the membership of the
community, enabling them to feel safe in their in-game identities. And once the players engage in this type of play, the
respondents suggest that the players will ‘become hooked’
in a sense to the social aspects of the game, which will
increase their fun and sense of presence, which in turn will
increase the replayability value of the game. To evaluate
sociability in MMORPGs, it was evident from the answers
that current approaches from disciplines that perform social
research in the real world are relevant. The respondents,
however, disagree on the nature of social experience. It
needs to be stressed, however, that the respondents did not
provide any method or framework that they used to design or
to think about how to create social structures in MMORPGs.
The survey helped initiate thinking towards structures
that give an MMORPG its identity. While the survey
touched upon several topics related to the design for the UX
of sociability in MMORPGs, the time constraints made it
impossible to discuss them all during the SIG. Therefore, the
SIG emphasised the design aspect more than the evaluation
of the UX. In the end, six design features emerged that may
help game designers to think about how to design for the UX
of sociability in MMORPGs. These are: In-game Communication, Off-game Communication, Empathy, Grouping and
Rewards, World Design, and Designed Relationships.
The SIG participants argued that an MMORPG does
not have to include all the requirements, either the ones
from the survey or the ones that were proposed during the
SIG. However, it was suggested that the more requirements
designed into an MMORPG, the better the UX of sociability becomes. The requirements aim to support the building
of communities around and inside a game, and to encourage people to participate in these communities. Building
communities comes from providing structures to support
communication, both inside and outside of the game. Ingame chatting and out-of-game forums are very important
for community building (Preece 2001). And to increase the
cohesion of these communities, empathy towards people
in the same community and animosity against a common
enemy can be used. Finally, players should be rewarded
when joining these communities, and they should be motivated to stay in them, otherwise the concept of a community
will not be woven seamlessly into the game’s mechanics.
The results of the survey combined with the SIG discussion produced a list of specific requirements that when
followed will guide designers into creating social experiences for their users, and will make the social structures of
the game more accessible to players. However, as shown by
the game designs created by the three groups during the SIG,
the requirements do not have to all be designed into every
game created to provide the desired social experience. Nevertheless, during the discussion, it was agreed that if none of
the requirements are designed into a game, then one cannot
talk about sociability in a game and the social PX it affords.
The six requirements that were suggested during the SIG
provide a starting point for the game designer to think about
how to create an MMORPG, something that is shown by
the preliminary designs that were created during the SIG,
in a relatively small amount of time. We, therefore, do not
believe that the requirements that are provided here are
a definite answer to how to design social structures into
MMORPGs. However, we believe that they are a helpful
starting point for game designers of MMORPGs who, up to
this point, do not have any formal frameworks upon which
to base their work.
5. Limitations
This work is not without limitations. One limitation is the
small sample of respondents for the survey. However, the
survey was used more as an online interview of experts
in the field of social game design, rather than as a survey from which we would extract statistically significant
results. In this sense, we believe that the survey fulfilled
its role in allowing us to start the process of understanding how experts perceive the sociability in MMORPGs and
experiential qualities it engenders.
Behaviour & Information Technology
Another limitation is the limited time we had during
the SIG session. We believe that more time would allow
discussion on structures for the evaluation of the sociability
and the associated experiential qualities.
6. Future work
Through the survey answers, it became evident that there
is a need for a comprehensive framework for informing the
design for sociability in MMORPGs. While the concept of
sociability has been studied in depth, there is still a void in
design guidelines for social structures.
Another open research question is the impact of the
current practices of supporting sociability in MMORPGs.
Again, research exists on how sociability occurs and how
it is expressed in MMORPGs (i.e. Ducheneaut et al. 2004,
2006, Steinkuehler and Williams 2006). However, we still
do not have any specific methods for evaluating how structures and artefacts that are designed into a game to support
sociability impact particular experiential qualities such as
fun, relatedness, flow, immersion, challenge, tension, and
other affective responses.
There is still further work that needs to be done in evaluating the results of this study as well. Further iterations of
the proposed guidelines may lead to a framework that will
include in-game, off-game, structural, and socio-cultural
aspects of MMORPGs, thus creating a comprehensive
framework for informing the design of sociability that can
support a range of targeted gameplay experiences.
7. Concluding remarks
In this article, we have presented findings from a survey
and subsequent discussion on the topic of designing for the
UX of sociability in MMORPGs. First, we presented findings from the survey, and then we described how the survey
results were used to inform the discussion during the SIG.
Through these exercises, we came up with a basic structure
for sociability design for MMORPGs. The resultant structure that was created helps with the design of sociability in
MMORPGs. This structure was implicitly used during the
SIG discussion with the SIG participants creating their own
preliminary designs of MMORPGs.
We believe that further work needs to be done in this
direction to expand the model, either by adding more
sub-requirements which highlight more detailed sociability design features that will cater to other types of online
games, not only to MMORPGs. Through this, the model will
become more useful not only for academics, but also practitioners. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis based on
the proposed model can be carried out on commercially successful and unsuccessful games to extract sociability design
features that succeeded or failed to provide practical design
patterns. Given that the scope of sociability spans across ingame and out-game, structural and socio-cultural aspects of
games, such analysis should improve our understanding of
733
PX at the holistic level as well as at the finer-grain, component level, thereby enabling us to gain insights into the
relationships between game features and experiential qualities. Finally, it is evident that there is a need for the creation
of a framework for the design of the social experience in
MMORPGs as well as methods for evaluating the impact
of the designed structures.
Notes
1. While the notion UX does not yet have a canonical definition, it is
commonly recognised as highly subjective, contextual, and dynamic
(Law et al. 2009). According to ISO 9241-210 (2010), UX is defined
as ‘a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use
of anticipated use of a product, system or service’. UX encompasses a wide range of experiential qualities, including sociability,
and associated evaluation approaches (Bargas-Avila and Hornbæk
2011).
2. The term ‘third-place’, which is central to community building, is
defined as social surroundings separate from the first-place – home –
and the second-place – workplace (Oldenburg 1989). However, one
may argue that the dividing lines between these places are getting
blurred.
3. AAA (triple A) games are those that have a large development and
production budget, and usually are considered high-quality games by
the trade press.
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