Weeks 3 reading. Only a week late. Almost there.
Design Principles for Online Communities
I belive the rules for building on-line communities is changing as the types and prevalence of technology is being dispersed in an ever greater amount throughout our society.
I have 2 children who play on-line multi-player games. My daughter is not as game savvy as my son but she seems to be getting better. My son on the other hand is quite good and has a large community of people he knows which he plays on-line games with on a continual basis. I am going to focus on my son and try and relate his community building to the article.
My son has been using a computer since he was 1 1/2 in fact his first three letters were WIN (for those that remember Windows 3). He liked to use the paint brush. He has grown up with computers and is always on the constant upgrade cycle (I always get his hand me downs).
My son plays three main on-line game arenas Battle.net (Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo), Sierra (Counter-Strike and Homeworld) and Microsoft (Mechwarrior).
All the gaming chat environment have at least minimally a text-based environment either within the game or outside the game. In some cases like Counter Strike voice can be used and in fact the in game characters will even mouth the words. So there is some form of communication. All the games you can create game names and alias which allows for identification of the individuals.
In some of the games Clans or groups are formed and the individual maybe invited to join based on some criteria which is different for each game. You can still play the game without joining the game. One of the interesting things is there appears to be very little monitoring of games and language used in the games. Some games can be quite brutal in terms of how each player interacts and then some can be quite supportive. My son says most of the language and game play is dependent upon the type of game. The Battle.net is played by younger players while the Microsoft games are played by older and Sierra is sort of the middle of the road.
My son has been able to play games with people from all over the world and in so cases has become friends with many. He has a friend in Korea he plays regularly with. The one interesting thing I noticed is even though the physical body of the person is absent the on-line name takes on the physical presence. The on-line name becomes the embodiement of the person ala Katherine Hayles how we have become disembodied.
In my days we went to arcades and only had one of two really good physical friends we would go with. My son still has friends he goes out with but he also additionaly has friends all over the world something I didn't have when I was young. I kind of feel I missed something when I grew up. Mind you a lot of my observations are based on my son and daughter interaction with the Internet and on-line games, which is a limited sample size.
What appears to be common is the requirement for community is that most players are there to play the game. Community grows by association to the game and how you play the game. In some cases my son finds someone that plays similar either on opposing sides or not and then will play additional games. If they enjoy each others game play they add to friends list (which maybe contained in the game like Battle.net Steam) or add them to MSN, AIM or ICQ.
The Design Principles for Online Communities appears to be changing as the population as the PC and Internet becomes and embedded and accepted fact of society (at Western society). I have bracketed Western society since my son has a number of on-line friends
In regards to the Virtual Communities I am not sure the atomization of the individual is occuring as claimed. Since the paper was in 1995 the use of the Internet has changed as the society has adopted the technology into everyday use. The paper discuss about the kill function about inappropriate behaviour in an IRC channel. From what I can see most people behaviour has changed and in most cases has adapted to the technology forming "netiquette". What I believe are the corporate users and marketeers which may need to refine their use of the Internet.
Virtual Communities states that the virtual community is just a concept which I believe is quite true. Depending on the person concept they will gravitate to the various types of communities such as the gaming community or others whate ever will fit what they feel they need to associate with. Maybe even what is lacking in the physical world.
I can go without saying something about Virtual Communities politics, power and discourse of the Internet. I agree what a lot is said regarding the growth of communities and power and authority that some communities will have more power than those. I loosely agree with the barriers to widespread use since the paper was written in 1995 the times have changed. I believe the second requirement of intellectually accessible may has been reduced by enhanced software tools which the Virtual Communities paper did mention as a requirement needed to replace the the second barrier.
I do believe that the Internet is more of an additive to community that a detractor. What probably is important is determining how an individual will take advantage of the various virtual communities. I do believe the younger generation has been able to adopt the various community features and technology required to access the community. Case in point my children suggested I get MSN so I can chat with them when they are not with me (I am separated and they live in Hamilton). So now I can chat with them when they are on-line (they still have dial-up and only one phone line). I still talk to them on the phone though. I still talk to them in the person.
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