Virtual Worlds, Real Communities

Blog: http://virtualworldsrealcommunities.blogspot.com/

C-Term 2007, Hours: 11-12 Monday, 3-4 Monday, 3-4 Thursday
Location: Beckett Room
Yusuf Pisan, Office: Fuller 239 (phone 6470), Office Hours: by appointment, Email: ypisan@wpi.edu

This course examines online virtual worlds, both as game environments and as graphical chat rooms, and explores how communities form and is maintained within these environments. Using examples of virtual worlds, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, students will read, discuss and write articles on what attracts users to these environments, user demographics, elements in these virtual worlds that enable community formation and how communities formed within virtual worlds differ or are similar to other real-life communities. Students will design, implement and evaluate new tools, interface modifications (mods) or activities that can be used to enhance the user community. Reading for the course will be primarily from research journals with additional chapters from selected books as well as relevant magazine articles.

You must

1. Attend every class meeting. Sometimes class meetings may occur during times other than the scheduled class or in places other than the classroom; sometimes these meetings will replace regular class times. Make it your business to be where you need to be when you need to be there.
2. Contribute intelligently to activities and discussions in class. Bring and share your own experiences.
3. Hand in due items at the beginning of the class.
4. The reaction papers and writeup from lab exercises should be about 1 page, possibly 2 pages but aim for quality not quantity. You should write about your reaction, your experiences. I have already read the paper, so don't summarize it for me. Tell me what you like/dislike, what you agree/disagree, what matches or does not match your experience. You need to bring into your essay your own experience and outside readings (and cite them appropriately). What did the exercise/reading make you think about? What would you like to explore more about this topic? What do you agreee/disagree with and how would you test that hypothesis?
5. Maintain a sense of curiosity and humor at all times.

Assessment

A -- Show initiative, do more than what is asked and do an outstanding job at it.
B -- Complete all required exercises, consistently good effort and continuous contribution to class exercises
C -- Basic understanding of the class material and goals.

* There will be additional readings, make sure you check this web page regularly.

Additional Papers under consideration

WoW is the New Mud: Social Gaming From Text to Video

Exercises

• SL Intro Exercise
  Play 2 hours of SL (either using your existing character or by starting a new character). What was your main activity? Did you interact with any other players and if so describe the interaction. What elements of the world seemed to enable or inhibit your interaction?

• WoW Intro Exercise
  Play 2 hours of WoW (either using your existing character or by starting a new character). What was your main activity? Did you interact with any other players and if so describe the interaction. What elements of the world seemed to enable or inhibit your interaction?

• Physical Community vs Virtual Community essay
  Describe a physical community and a virtual community that you are a part of. Provide details on how big the community is, how strongly you are connected to it, whether there are any central figures or authority within this community and how community members communicate with each other.

• Bartle Exercise
  Based on Bartle's classification of player types, identify what type of player you are. Find somebody who is the "opposite" type and talk to them about what kind of online worlds they participate in. If you have any worlds in common, identify elements that attract you vs your opposite to that game. How you'd you modify the world to make it more attractive to both of you. If you do not have any worlds in common, identify elements that you can import to make it more attractive for the other person.

Possible Midterm Paper Topics

1. Critics have argued that virtual communities are not real and that mailing lists, instant messaging, chat rooms and online forums actually take people away from face to face communication and reduce our chances for formming physical communities and real connections. Where do game communities fit in? Are games ways for people to disengage from real-life? What is lost/gained by being part of such a community? Take a position and define where game communities fit in. You can restrict your argument to a specific game or a game type. Make sure you support your arguments.
2. Blizzard owns the WoW servers; Linden owns the SL servers. In fact, a lot of virtual communities rely on resources that are owned by individuals or companies. Consequently, a company could ban a person from its servers and subsequently from being part of that community. Users do not necessarily have the same kinds of rights, such as freedom of speech, they would have in the physical world. Users cannot appeal decisions. Companies often do not exercise their power in a way that would alienate the established community, but they always have that option. Discuss the implications of company interference in forming, developping and maintaining virtual communities.
3. Propose your own. Contact me.

Notes for Final Paper

• Use the ACM SIG Proceedings template http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html
• Google "writing an academic paper" and make sure your paper is well taught out. http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Library/Help/Self/tutorials.html is a good place to start. In particular, pay attention to
  1. Subheadings
  2. References. You are expected to find material relevant to your topic and reference it appropriately. Material we have covered in class also needs to be referenced in a similar way. See http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Library/Help/Self/Citing/styleguide.html for a list of style guides.
  3. Main point supported by sub-points and examples
  4. Grammar, spelling, capitalization ("I" referring to first person singular is always capitalized. Blizzard is the name of a company, so has to be capitalized.)
  5. Not starting sentences with connectives (but, however, also, so, ...). You can do it a couple of times if you know what you are doing but it is not considered good writing style
  6. Paragraph -- nor arbitary line break, should have a point.
  7. Commas do not connect multiple sentences.
  8. Use a more formal language similar to the papers we have been reading. This is not a blog entry.
• Make sure you re-read your paper before submitting. A good practice is to have an early draft which you leave for a couple of days and then read again with a fresh perspective.
• The first paragraph of your paper is the introduction. Your papers main focus needs to come through in that paragraph.
• The last paper is the conclusion of the paper. Introduction and conclusion are often similar to each other.

Updates

Jan 16: Finalized lecture by Darius on Jan 22, Darren on Jan 25. May or may not have M 11-12 class on Jan 29 depending on how Darren's class goes on 25th. Will have class M 11-12 on Feb 5th.

Jan 15: Updated readings for the week of Jan 22nd. Location for Thursday Beckett Room.

Jan 11: Updating the subject outline with the new class times. We will not have the Monday 11-12 class, but we will have the 3-4pm class. Guest lectures for Jan 22 and 25 being sorted out.

9 Jan 2007 -- The course will go ahead, but with limited number of students. If you do not already have a signed ISP form, you should look for an alternate course.

8 Jan 2007 -- There is a possibility that the course may not go ahead due to some WPI regulation. I am trying to sort it out and will let you know when I can. Still meeting on Thursday Jan 11th 3-4pm at Fuller 141 and hopefully having the class in C-term as intended.

The above study outline was written for a 10-15 person class. I will modify it to suit a smaller group. This will mean that you will be able to focus on an area of your choosing, much more independent work.