Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Paper Topic

I had talked in class about my addiction to MMORPG games and how this has led to me having friends from all corners of the world and actually meeting a few of them that live relatively nearby. I want to do a paper, narrative, something about how the internet and online gaming, specifically MMORPG is more of a social network than a game. I am having a hard time creating a narrow enough topic to fit within the paper guidelines and have no idea where to start but have found significant information on the topic. Mostly the topics i found are about how the use of the internet and gaming has made the world alot smaller but many topics about dating websites that im not too interested in. Any narrower ideas would help, ideally i would like to do just talk about how these games are structured and how everyone interacts socially and reflect on the technology that makes it all possible. Does that sound significant enough??

2 comments:

Adam Johns said...

First point:

Who _doesn't_ believe that MMORGS aren't more social networks than they are games? While I'm sure there are people who care more about gameplay, I've certainly never met them. I'm hardly an authority, since I've never played one myself, but this is what everyone says, at least in my experience.

Now, look at the last thing you had to say: "ideally i would like to do just talk about how these games are structured and how everyone interacts socially and reflect on the technology that makes it all possible."

While there's no topic or thesis in here, there is certainly the possibility of generating one. Trying asking yourself questions (maybe some helpful people will post others?).

E.g.

1) Why do I (at least sometimes) prefer to socialize through technological mediation, rather than directly?

2) What is the relationship betwenen MMORPGs and interactive fiction (here's an arguable line of descent: interactive fiction -> MUDS/MOOS -> MMORGs)? What are the significant technological differences that make me addicted (your word) to one and not the other?

3) You might, since you brought up dating websites, deal with why/how a game creates an ideal social environment (presumably technologically) - more compelling to you than say, _just_ a social networking site.

Meg Patton said...

I think your idea is a very interesting start. I think you could ask something like "how do these games compare interactively to real life social situations?" I know that some people say these games and things along the lines are decreasing social skills rather than increasing them, so maybe you could find a study on that and then argue against it?