494 research outputs found

    Building Community and Collaboration Applications for MMOGs

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    Supporting collaborative activities among the online players are one of the major challenges in the area of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), since they increase the richness of gaming experience and create more engaged communities. To this direction, our study has focused on the provision of services supporting and enhancing the players' in-game community and collaboration activities. We have designed and implemented innovative tools exploiting a game adaptation technology, namely, the In-game Graphical Insertion Technology (IGIT), which permits the addition of web-based applications without any need from the game developers to modify the game at all, nor from the game players to change their game installation. The developed tools follow a design adapted to the MMOG players' needs and are based on the latest advances on Web 2.0 technology. Their provision is performed through the core element of our system, which is the so-called Community Network Game (CNG) Server. One of the important features provided by the implemented system's underlying framework is the utilization of enhanced Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology for the distribution of user-generated live video streams. In this paper, we focus on the architecture of the CNG Server as well as on the design and implementation of the online community and collaboration tools

    Living City, A Collaborative Browser-Based Massively Multiplayer Online Game

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    This work presents the design and implementation of our Browser-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game, Living City, a simulation game fully developed at the University of Messina. Living City is a persistent and real-time digital world, running in the Web browser environment and accessible from users without any client-side installation. Today Massively Multiplayer Online Games attract the attention of Computer Scientists both for their architectural peculiarity and the close interconnection with the social network phenomenon. We will cover these two aspects paying particular attention to some aspects of the project: game balancing (e.g. algorithms behind time and money balancing); business logic (e.g., handling concurrency, cheating avoidance and availability) and, finally, social and psychological aspects involved in the collaboration of players, analyzing their activities and interconnections

    Measuring social dynamics in a massive multiplayer online game

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    Quantification of human group-behavior has so far defied an empirical, falsifiable approach. This is due to tremendous difficulties in data acquisition of social systems. Massive multiplayer online games (MMOG) provide a fascinating new way of observing hundreds of thousands of simultaneously socially interacting individuals engaged in virtual economic activities. We have compiled a data set consisting of practically all actions of all players over a period of three years from a MMOG played by 300,000 people. This large-scale data set of a socio-economic unit contains all social and economic data from a single and coherent source. Players have to generate a virtual income through economic activities to `survive' and are typically engaged in a multitude of social activities offered within the game. Our analysis of high-frequency log files focuses on three types of social networks, and tests a series of social-dynamics hypotheses. In particular we study the structure and dynamics of friend-, enemy- and communication networks. We find striking differences in topological structure between positive (friend) and negative (enemy) tie networks. All networks confirm the recently observed phenomenon of network densification. We propose two approximate social laws in communication networks, the first expressing betweenness centrality as the inverse square of the overlap, the second relating communication strength to the cube of the overlap. These empirical laws provide strong quantitative evidence for the Weak ties hypothesis of Granovetter. Further, the analysis of triad significance profiles validates well-established assertions from social balance theory. We find overrepresentation (underrepresentation) of complete (incomplete) triads in networks of positive ties, and vice versa for networks of negative ties...Comment: 23 pages 19 figure

    MMOGs as Emerging Opportunities for Research on Virtual Organizations and Teams

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    Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) offer new promising opportunities to research virtual organizations and teams. The characteristics of MMOGs allow researchers to obtain objective data from a large and multi-national population. Lasting over months or even years, MMOGs facilitate longitudinal studies and ensure a high involvement of participants. Moreover, collecting data from online surveys and game servers keeps the costs of MMOG studies low. In this paper, we illustrate how research in MMOGs can utilize these opportunities to overcome some limitations of traditional research environments. Further we discuss the diverse information and communication technology (ICT) usage in MMOGs and therefore argue that research in MMOGs can provide a glimpse into the future application of ICT in real life organizations

    Every Day You Are Improving: How College Students View the Educational Impact of World of Warcraft

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    The purpose of the study was to explore college students’ experiences with playing World of Warcraft (WoW) and their views on the application of WoW in educational settings. A qualitative case study design was used to interview three participants who were selected purposively from a Midwestern university. Findings revealed that players thought that playing WoW was fun, relaxing, motivating, but sometimes almost to the point of addiction. The findings also support student perceptions of generalization of teamwork, cooperating, socializing, academic skills, and time management skills learned and practiced in playing WoW to academic settings. Playing WoW games can provide an important link between the virtual world and the real world as players develop academic, time management, collaborative, and critical thinking skills

    CGAMES'2009

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    Open software to innovation: the critical success factors of massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) in China and Ireland.

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    This project investigates the factors leading to the success of China’s Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) market and gives an analysis of how Open source has contributed to these success factors. It then will look at how the use of open source is mirrored in Ireland’s market for example, the software sector to see if the same factors are apparent or there are indicators of these. Knowledge Management plays a very important role for fasten the innovation of Open source software development in China
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