communities of practice in world of warcraft: an entry point into addiction?

cc by Karsten D. Wolf 2007

Communities of Practice in MMORPGs: an Entry Point into Addiction?

Karsten D. WolfDidactical Design of Interactive Learning Environments

Communities & Technologies 2007Michigan State University, East Lansing, USAFriday, 29.06.2007


What are MMORPG?

Massive MultiplayerOnline

Roleplaying Games


Truly massive!

Xbox live

Second Life &Sony Home

Nintendo DSWi-Fi Connection


What are MMORPG?


Roleplaying Gamesup to 20,000 usersin reach

8,000,000+ subscribers

~960,000 users online at the same time


What are MMORPG?


Roleplaying Games

Fantasy Character Quests

Levels


Hours/week spent playing

0-9 10-19 20-29 30-39 40+


on average more than 20 hours a week=

enough for a CoP


Average media usage in Germany

(9. Welle 'Massenkommunikation' 2005 ENIGMA GfK & MMA Media Markt) Analysen)

TV 225 minutes 26 h/week

Radio 225 minutes 26 h/week

Listen to music 45 minutes 5 h/week

Internet 44 minutes 5 h/week

Newspaper 28 minutes 3 h/week

Books 25 minutes 3 h/week

Magazines 12 minutes < 2 h/week


Virtual Worlds,Real Leaders


Why is this interesting for c&t research?

Do MMORPGs support the building of CoP?

If so: how? Can we learn from it for designing (learning) community environments?

Are there negative side effects?

Are these side effects related to community building, to other gameplay elements or togamer‘s traits?


Community

Domain Practice

Individual Roles and Goals of Members

- Aspiration for knowledge- Aspiration for reputation- Aspiration for community- Aspiration for power

- Being Expert vs. Layman- Being informal leader- Being formal leader- Individual interest- Duration of membership

- Common interest- Repository- Learning- Experts present- Experts known- Sub Groups

- Familiarity- Sense of belonging- Reputation- Rules- Possibility to communicate

- Communication- Mutuality / Exchange- Rituals- Sense of shared past- Participation- Rules enforced

- Trust / Openness- Management hierarchy- Informal leadership- Leadership- Boundaries / Lurking

CoPI (Wolf/Rausch 2005-7)


Individual roles & goals Mean Std.dev.

Aspiration for community 3.37 0.63

Duration of membership 3.08 0.89

Being expert (or layman) 2.64 0.77

Aspiration for Reputation 2.55 0.78

Aspiration for Knowledge 2.47 0.76

1-4 Likert scale, n=1102


Community attributes Mean Std.dev.

Reputation mechanisms 3.28 0.61

Sense of belonging 3.13 0.75

Lurking accepted 3.06 0.70

Possibility communicate 3.03 0.75

Familiarity 2.76 0.76



Practice attributes Mean Std.dev.

Mutuality / Exchange 3.25 0.60

Rituals (cronbach‘s alpha=0.589) 2.94 0.72

(casual) Communication 2.72 0.70



aspiration for community

Sense ofbelonging

Communication

Mutuality /Exchange

Familiarity

p < .0001

.575

.463

.439

.386


< 7 <14 <20 <30 <40 40+ h/w


Other findings related to playtime

Hardcore players (40+) have lower tolerance for lurking

Sense of belonging is higher for 20+ players, as is familiarity & communication for 40+ players

Players with a longer duration of membership play longer (no ease out?)

Possibility to communicate even for casual players


Playtime and being an expert


WoW Addiction Inventory

• Loss of control

• Withdrawal

• Mental focus

• Tolerance

• Negative consequences for work performance

• Negative consequences for social life


Beingat risk4,5%

Addiction1,9%

WoWAI scores


12,3% 30%

10,5%3,5%

< 7 <14 <20 <30 <40 40+

Playtime and addiction risk


CoP and addiction

Aspiration for Knowledge (rp=.175) and Reputation (rp=.176) goes together with addiction

Aspiration for Community (rp=-.079) not!!!

Lurking is not tolerated by addicted players


# of

edi

ts

authors ranked by # of edits

Wikipediholism#1 159,825#10 79,162#30 53,500#50 46,529#100 36,608#500 17,305#1,000 11,101#2,500 5,300


Ongoing integration of work & learning

Fleeting interactions

Collaboration &problem solving

Social structures

ConversationFormal Learning

Documents & Practice

Knowledge filtering

collaborative &individualized

search

Online communities

Email & Discussion

groups

Synchronousinteractions

E-Learningspaces

Social bookmarking

Projectspaces

Knowledge repositories

Collaborative news-filtering & aggregation

N2N-Publishing &Content Sharing

FOAF- and networking platforms

Tools for supporting CoP


Ongoing integration of work & learning

Fleeting interactions

Collaboration &problem solving

Social structures

ConversationFormal Learning

Documents & Practice

Knowledge filtering

Guild screen

Ingame post offices&

discussion boards

In-game chat channels& external chat tools such as Teamspeak

Actual Gameplayin WoW

Guild websites

Tools for supporting CoP

in World of Warcraft


CoP support in WoW - how?

Small set of tightly integrated tools

Support of the collaborative work (specialized interface)

Setup of worthwhile challenges and rewards

Problems to be solved need to be tackled by groups


Conclusions

WoW supports the building of CoP

Quests, collaborative action, rewards, integrated UI

Addiction exists for heavy users

Players with aspiration for knowledge and reputation are more at risk as players with community seekers

Faculty educational scienceDidactical design of

interactive learning environments

http://www.karsten-d-wolf.de/

[email protected]

http://www.ifeb.uni-bremen.de/wolf/








communities of practice in world of warcraft: an entry point into addiction?

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