For my final project, I want to look at the way virtual online communities form, as well as some of the self-imposed standards and regulations that become a part of such communities. In particular I’m rather interested in looking at gaming communities and the way that a community replicates many circumstances in real life, particularly the way in which social contracts and allegiances are formulated and evolve, as well as the way in which reputation within a virtual world can have positive or negative influences on your gaming experience and interactions with others.
The articles that we read for this week regarding the social impact gaming were interesting, yet I didn’t find them to be quite as interesting as things like communities within massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The social dynamics that occur in worlds where thousands of people can interact at once, often with tens of thousands belonging to a particular server, where the safety of real-life anonymity can influence actions and yet dependency upon others is equally important, creates in me a great interest in observing the way in which people interact with one another in a game that for some individuals can be nearly as important as activities in the real world.
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