Online Communities: Good or Evil?

Online communities have become an integral part of everyday life for much of the population of this planet.  These communities range in purpose and population as much as if not more than communities of the physical world.  The virtual worlds can introduce people who would never have met in the real world.  For an example, a single mother can play an online game with a college student.  People then found friendships based on the game that can be stronger than some friendships created in the real world.  Although they realize the world is virtual and not real, countless hours are spent in it with friends met ingame.  In some cases, more time could be spent with friends met online than with friends that a user has met in person.  Virtual communities can also be a way for friends made in real life to keep in touch even though they may live thousands of miles away.  They can still share experiences and have fun together on a regular basis without the expense of travel. 

Not only do online communities vary in types of people that play, they also vary in the types of environments that it creates for people.  Generally the worlds are created for a video game of some sort.  The worlds can be text-based or graphical.  They can be dark and gritty or brightly colored and upbeat.  The era that the world exists in can be the beginning of time or the distant future.  The environment does not only apply to the visual features of the world.  The environment created by the programmers determines if the purpose of the experience is to merely talk to friends or to kill members of the opposing team.  The purposes created by the designers provide another location for users to perform real world actions.  Games such as Second Life create a place like a virtual mall for teenagers or a cyber-club for older people to gather to socialize or even develop relationships.  The war games that have been created are not so different from kids playing cowboys and indians or a game of dodgeball on a college campus. 

The Internet has really begun to change the definition of the word “community.”  Traditionally, a community has been closely related to one’s physical location relative to others.  There was the community of one’s neighbors or the town.  One could call their workplace a community.  Although people may live some arbitrarily long distance away from one another, they are in relatively close proximity to one another for forty hours a week.  In all of these communities, individual members who know one another have met in person and know each other’s real names. 

In online communities, users are not limited to such things as location or even real names.  Online, one can easily pick up a handle, or pseudonym, that can easily identify the person but does not reveal their identity in the real world.  As far as location, in one community there are players from the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, and Australia among others.  This global community is not uncommon in an online community.

One of the largest sets of online communities is the online gaming community, which has extended its reached far and wide.  In these virtual worlds, people can gather with others from around the planet to go on amazing raids or upgrade their characters.  While online, they can make friends they may never meet in person as they immerse themselves in other worlds.  The worlds can be text-based or feature beautiful graphics.  Two such games include World of Warcraft and Cybernations.  World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, in which players create a character to upgrade and go on raids.  Cybernations is a text-based nation-building game. 

One similarity between World of Warcraft, or WoW, and Cybernations is the way in which both games join people together to achieve similar goals.  In World of Warcraft, people can temporarily create parties to help each other complete raids.  The parties can last for the length of the raid or can span multiple raids if the group dynamic is strong enough.  Characters can also trade with one another for needed goods or services.  Cybernations has a similar structure.  Nations gather together to form alliances to aid in building and protecting their own nations.  The game is also designed with a feature of tradable resources that improves one’s nation.   It forces those who want to maximize the improvements of the nation to communicate slightly with others playing the game.

Although people interact with others in these games, does it create a positive or negative reaction?  How does this anonymous interaction in artificial worlds affect the social skills of those that use it?  Finally, how anonymous is this interaction?

The interaction between those involved with online games can be either a positive or negative experience depending on the nature of the experience.  It can be a way to widen one’s world through new medium.  This new process of communication can be seen as a new, advanced version of a pen pal.  Not only can a user write back and forth, but both members have a mutual goal to attempt to reach.  Both parties can then collaborate towards that goal.  Furthermore, a large group of people can receive the same message and communicate at once.  It is as if one can have as many simultaneous pen pals as they desire.  They can then send the same message to every pen pal with one keystroke.  In this way, one can see many different personal views from all over the world in an instant.

World of Warcraft allows a player to grow and experience leadership opportunities through the guild system.  Guilds are “groups of players banded together in an in-game organization for various reasons” (Cabatingan).  The structure of the guilds can be as varied as governments in the real world.  The guild that Mr. Cabatingan is a part of, known as Prevail, has a basic leadership that fulfills the needs of the guild.  It contains a Guild Master, recruiter, raid organizer, and offensive and defensive coordinators.  The group is well organized and sociable amongst themselves.  The group has set up a forum outside of the game in addition to in game conversation to have a central location to communicate and have fun.  The board does not only include discussion about the game.  It also includes threads about random topics that amuse the users on the forum.

With Cybernations, one can learn about politics.  The alliances can act similar to any governing body except events occur at a much higher rate.  The length of terms of leaders of each alliance usually last a few months depending on the charter of a particular alliance.  However, alliance leaders are generally elected for multiple terms.  In the alliance known as the United Commonwealth of Nations, elections were recently held.  Leaders presented their views and political parties were formed for the first time. 

One leader of the United Commonwealth of Nations, or UCN, is known as the Minister of Silly Walks.  He has played Cybernations for one year and was one of the founders of the UCN.  He was recently elected the Secretary General, the highest office in the alliance.  When asked why he decided to run for the office, he responded with “[f]or kicks really… it's a game, so that's the only reasonable response one could give.” (Minister of Silly Walks).

Not only is there interaction between individual nations within a single alliance, but between alliances as well.  These alliances can spy on each other and go to war with one another.  The UCN is among a group of alliances currently finishing a war with another alliance known as the Illuminati.  The war has taken approximately two weeks, far shorter than any sort of similar campaign in the real world. 

The speed of Cybernations is faster than the real world for more actions than just war.  Before your author was a member of the UCN for a month, he had been appointed the Director of Finance for the group and completely restructured the banking system.  Although the money managed is not real, people begin to develop an emotional attachment to their nation as their nation exists for a longer and longer amount of time.  They want to see their nation grow and become stronger.  One way for this to be possible is to receive aid from allies.  Aid can also help a nation rebuild after war. 

Online games may not be an entirely useful or healthy experience.  Games such as Cybernations and World of Warcraft can become addictive.  The game can consume one’s life to the point that all other things come second to the game.  Players are willing to sacrifice times with friends and school in the real world to spend time with people they haven’t met in the digital one.  At an even greater level of addiction to the game, they will sacrifice to spend time with characters that are not even people at all but rather bits of code built to act like a person.  Mr. Cabatingan has said that at the height of his World of Warcraft play, he would spend ten hours a day engulfed in the game.  He even chose to stay in his room to play with the friends he met online rather than go with friends to a restaurant in person. 

With so much time spent in the virtual world, one may ask how the gamer’s behavior is different or similar to how they act to those they know in the outside world.  The anonymity of the games makes it an easy place to act however you wish without concern of real world consequences.  There are consequences in the game however.  In World of Warcraft, there are users known as Game Masters who are assigned to making sure that people do not overstep certain bounds such as use of profanity.  Punishments can be as severe as having the account deleted.  This could potentially destroy countless hours of gameplay improving their characters.  However, punishments may not be as severe as deletion.  The player may be reprimanded by a moderator and given a warning.

Cybernations has a similar safeguard.  In that game, the only way to talk to others within the game itself is through personal messages.  A user can report any message that they feel is harmful.  Furthermore, the alliance that one is a part of has the potential of being another safeguard against malicious behavior.  Alliances wish to look out for their own self-interest and do not wish for one of its member nations to bring another alliance’s wrath to their doorstep.  As a result, if a member decides to attack a member of another alliance unprovoked, the member must pay reparations or lose the protection of the alliance.  The nation is then on its own and at the mercy of the alliance they wronged.  That alliance will usually then order a number of its member nations to neutralize the threat and punish it for the wrong it caused.  In this way, it can give a person a chance to play war as children did before the invention of video games.  It can also show in a safe environment that hostile acts can have negative consequences.

The forums for individual alliances are monitored by the alliance that owns the website.  Generally, the elected and appointed officials of the alliance monitor the boards for malicious activity.  If this activity occurs, the player may be warned or be kicked of the boards either temporarily or permanently.

Mr. Cabatingan mentioned that “[t]he way I act in WoW reflects how I act in real life, but amplified to a degree.”  In the virtual world, his sarcastic nature is able to be expressed more freely without the risk of direct visual ridicule that would occur if the other person or people in the conversation were in the same room.  Cabatingan notes that he feels “free to act more like myself without fear.”  In this way many other introverts are able to feel more open to express themselves in a social group.  As they begin to feel more comfortable communicating and perceive that they can become accepted into a social group, the introverted gamer may learn to reach out to others in the real world and become more social.  For example, Mr. Cabatingan will be traveling to Las Vegas this year to meet a number of the people he has been playing with for approximately two years.

A common question among people who do not play video games is whether or not violent video games can cause aggression and violence in people.  The question becomes more interesting when one looks at online games such as the ones discussed earlier and first person shooting games such as CounterStrike.  In these games, the player uses graphical representations of real or imaginary, fantastic weapons to kill their opponents and complete objectives.  As the name suggests, the player views the action of the game through the eyes of their avatar as they try to stop the avatars of opposing players.  World of Warcraft is a violent video game in which players can attack one another as well as creatures in their environment.  Cybernations can be considered violent in a different way.  One feature of the game is to begin and fight a war with another nation.  Through the battle, a nation could increase its resources while depleting those of the attacked nation.  Every nation has the opportunity to purchase soldiers and other armaments.  These soldiers are merely numbers on a webpage but the number lost in a single fight could be in the thousands depending on the number of the soldiers in the battle. 

Does this sort of virtual combat desensitize children to the horrors of war by removing the human element?  Does attacking creatures and other individuals’ avatars nurture violent traits within gamers?  If one considers history, the answer may not be the definitive yes that is commonly believed by those who do not play.  History can show the brutality of mankind in many ways, shapes, and forms.  The Egyptians worked slaves to death to create monuments in the pharaoh’s honor.  The Romans put captured prisoners of war into great arenas to fight for their lives in front of the masses.  Supposed witches were burned alive at the stake based on the word of one witness and a tortured confession.  These events occurred hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years before the creation of the first video game. 

There is one advocate today known for his hatred of video games, particularly violent ones.  This man is Florida Attorney Jack Thompson.  Thompson has blamed video games for both the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University (NIU) shootings.  He has pointed at games such as CounterStrike as the reason Seung-Hui Cho and Steven Kazmierczak procured an arsenal and killed their classmates.  After Thompson claimed that CounterStrike was to blame for the NIU shooting, Kazmierczak’s dormmates announced that he did enjoy the game but so did everyone else in the dorm (Benedetti).  Despite of the mass play of the game, one player who had recently stopped taking his anti-depressant medication decided to ravage his campus.  What is very interesting is that Thompson blamed Counterstrike for Cho’s actions as well even though there was no connection between him and video games. 

Despite a possible exclusion from friends in the real world, online video games have an uncanny ability to bring people together despite differences in age or location.  In this way, these games can actually make the world seem to become smaller.  Cybernations contains users from all over the world.  The age of players contains a range from teenagers to senior citizens.  Mr. Cabatingan plays with a single mother in his guild.  With the diversity contained in this virtual world and the forums to discuss virtually any topic that the group wishes, players of these games can benefit from hearing of all kinds of views of the current state of the world.  This array of ideas can only help the player to become a more well-rounded individual.  These opportunities would not be so easily possible if it were not for the internet and the common ground of finding a game that all those playing can enjoy.

Part of the enjoyment of the games comes from the fact that it contains a set of rules that can be interpreted as laws.  The laws come from multiple sources.  The first set of laws comes from the designers of the games.  They put certain limits on the game to keep the game fun for those involved.  They establish limits so that one player cannot unfairly overpower all others.  Furthermore, they create their own laws of physics that can be realistic or completely outside the realm of possibility.  For example, an avatar can not be able to jump at all, jump a foot in the air, or be able to leap to the roof of a two-story building.  The avatar’s strength can be that of a normal person or they could be able to carry a grand piano by themselves.

The second group that creates laws for the online community is the group that manages the virtual world.  Often these people are either the original developers or are employed by them.  In either case, their goal is different than that of the developing group.  Their job is to create policy and enforce their rules as well as the rules of the developers.  Their rules can include a limit of racial slurs.  In regards to enforcing rules of the developers of the community, the virtual world is made of code and therefore can be manipulated by a hacker.  The hack gives an unfair advantage to that user and is, by definition, cheating.  It is also a corruption of the ideas created by the developers and most likely violates the license agreement made between the developer and the user.  If someone breaks these rules, their avatar can be deleted and their account closed. 

The third group to create laws for the community is the community itself.  Just like any other social group, social norms begin to develop over time.  The norms will evolve into the etiquette for that community.  The etiquette may become a written code.  Breaking the social code could cause the person to be ostracized by the community whether or not the social etiquette is formalized or not.  The harshness of the reprimand by the community depends on the length of time the user has been in the community as well as their attitude after the offense.  The mentality of the community also factors into the harshness of the punishment.  Some communities are more forgiving than others. 

Generally, if the player is new and apologizes for the infraction against social norms, the person who was wronged will assume the violation is due to lack of experience, explain the infraction, and allow the “n00b” to continue on their way.  The person wronged may ask for some sort of compensation for the infraction which the person should give.  However, just like real life, some people are not reasonable.  The player may be inexperienced at the game and act like they know how the game is played.  Another possibility is that the player may be someone who has played for an extensive amount of time and just does not care about the rules set by the community.  In either case, the punishment given by the community will be harsh.  The user may be banished from many subgroups within the virtual world.  The user’s avatar could also be attacked by a part of the community if the game allows it.  The user could lose valuable resources that took hours, days, or months to obtain.  All of the time and effort spent on building up an avatar would be lost and the player would have to start over.

The final governing body for the user is the user themselves.  In the freeform world of online games, the user can choose to create an avatar however they wish.  The can build up certain attributes while neglecting others.  They are also able to shape the personality of their avatar in any way they desire.  The user can choose to play a game that no one in their real life plays.  In this way, they can be completely anonymous and have no real world consequences for their actions.  In that environment, the user can create a completely different identity for him or herself.  The user can choose to be very similar to the person they are in the real world.  They can elect to take on a personality completely different from the one they have in the outside world.  Another option to creating the personality of one’s avatar is to exaggerate certain real life traits as they feel more comfortable with the anonymity of cyberspace.  The choice is completely up to the user.  Will they choose to taunt their other users?  Will they make agreements with players and then decide to betray them?  Or will they choose to help those around them and add to the pleasure of those around?  The choice is at the discretion of the user.

The laws created by the online communities are similar to that of the real world.  First, the laws of physics determine limits that any body can do.  Although governments do not have to enforce the laws of physics since no one can change the fact that gravity is the acceleration of an object toward the earth at 9.8m/s², it does create policy for its citizens and forces these relatively arbitrary rules.  Outside of the government, society has a series of laws that it has made that is called manners.  Manners cannot harm us legally, but if we elect to disobey them, we will be ostracized by society.  We could be removed from social situations or potential employment opportunities.  However, just as in the gaming community, the ultimate decision of the code of laws that the individual follows is themselves.  They only have to be willing to accept the consequences of their actions.

The line between the two worlds has started to blur.  Friends from the real world are playing games together.  Discussions of strategy for the games are becoming normal.  Additional communities are being formed online to aid in the organization of groups ingame.  Finally, the US government has begun to step into the realm of the virtual world. 

There are two main reasons for the legislative branch of the government’s intrusion into the virtual world to add their own rule of law to the current structure.  Firstly, the virtual world is expanding rapidly.  Thousands of people are spending more and more time involved in the online communities and the government feels that it needs to be there to litigate any possible disputes rather than allow the company who created the world to act as a mediator. 

The second reason is similar to the first.  Characters and items in the virtual world are beginning to be worth actual money in the real world.  Some people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to get the best character money can buy.  They do not want to take the time themselves to advance the character but wish to reap the rewards of another’s work.  Or they do not wish to have go looking for that one, special item.  So, they simply hire someone else to find it for them.  If either of the parties fails to uphold their end of the bargain, there needs to be a mechanism in the real world to settle the dispute.  The only problem is that the dispute is not over actual property.  Instead, the dispute is over bits of data that is housed on the server of a third party.  However, it seems that if the user puts in the time and effort to build the character and pays for the piece of memory on the server.  Likewise, if the purchaser of the avatar or item already owns the account, the user has no right to withhold the avatar.  It is just like the relationship between an employer and employee.  The employer owns the work done by the employee while he is on the job.  However, the employee has the right to be compensated for his effort.

The legislative branch is not the only part of the federal government that is interested in online communities. Agencies such as the FBI and Homeland Security are interested in looking at World of Warcraft to learn about terrorist attacks.  In the game, there are certain curses that cause a user’s avatar to explode, killing a number of others in close proximity to them.  Another curse causes the avatar to lose health and is also contagious.  Some users will intentionally infect their avatars with these curses and then teleport to a highly populated area to infect or kill as many people as possible with their curse.  Security agencies wish to study this to find the mentality of these virtual terrorists to see if they can gain a further understanding of real life terrorists.    They also wish to see how innocent users react to the incoming threat.  There are a number of models available to the different agencies to attempt to model what can happen in these types of situations.  However, models are limited.  Their behavior cannot mimic the natural behavior of a person.  People can act irrationally, especially in a state of strong emotion.  So, the different agencies were excited to think that there was a model available that had a populace of thousands of real people with their own minds that are under attack from biological terrorists and suicide bombers.  They can attempt to flee.  They can attempt to destroy the threat.  Or they can simply give up and accept their fate.  The best part of the model is that although real human minds are being tested to see how they will react, none of them are in any real danger.  If they die in the game, all they have to deal is the annoyance of having to walk from the nearest graveyard to where they died.  Once they reach this point, they come back to life and continue their game.

Some believe that the fact that there is no actual threat to the user can skew the results of the observations.  Some of the reasons for becoming a suicide bomber cannot apply to bombers in the real world.  When asked, one such bomber responded that he thought it was funny.  It would be hard to believe that a bomber would give their life and take countless other lives for a joke.  This would be more reminiscent of the Joker from a Batman comic than the act of a real suicide bomber.  The innocent people on the other hand, grow attached to their avatar.  They do not wish to see this thing that they have worked on die.  More importantly, they do not want to have to go through the hassle of traveling from the graveyard to their body.

Not all online communities share the purpose of playing a game to destroy the avatars and artificial beings around you.  Some communities are created to enhance one’s social sphere.  The enhancement could come from meeting new friends in the virtual world or by creating another way to stay in contact with friends from the real world.  Most of the communities created solely for the use of social interaction were not created as games.  However, some games have also stepped forward to also be included in this circle.  The communities that are not games include Myspace and Facebook.  The prominent game currently out that is designed almost exclusively for social interaction is called Second Life.

Myspace and Facebook have exploded with users all over the country.  People have discovered multiple uses for the sites.  The first use discovered was that it allowed users to stay connected with friends from their past.  In today’s society, people are far more mobile than they were in the past.  Although it is still an ordeal, people are now more willing and able to move farther from home than previously possible.  Young people go to college for years hundreds of miles from where they grew up and even further from where they old friends now go.  However, bonds created in youth are strong and people do not wish to break them easily.  With Facebook in particular, one can search for a name and find an old friend that hasn’t been seen in years. 

New friends can also be met through Myspace and Facebook.  Both contain options to list favorite movies, songs, games, and whatever else one may desire to say about oneself.  These items are searchable and a connection can be made based on this common interest rather than that of the goals of an online game.

  In addition to staying connected old or new friends, social networking sites are used to plan events with friends who live in close geographical proximity to the user.  One can use Facebook to plan a trip to the bowling alley with friends.  A group can form to plan a trip to a nearby city to celebrate a birthday party.  Invitations can be sent to several hundred people within a matter of moments.  Never since the invention of the telephone has communication be revolutionized in this way.

Second Life is a online community that mimics real life more than any other community.  It also blurs the line between real and virtual more than any other game.  Virtual property and clothes can be bought with real money.  Universities have bought “property” in the virtual world of limited space and some schools have actual classes here.  People have relationships with each other.

However, the reality of Second Life presents an interesting situation.  In the game, prostitution is legal and gambling is not (Myers).  At first glance, these rules seem backwards.  In the real world, gambling is legal in some locations and prostitution is not.  However, one can see why this is so.  If people were gambling in Second Life, they would be gambling with real money.  Different states require different permits to host gambling and some states do not allow gambling at all.  Mr. Myers states that Second Life was not able to obtain the right clearance to allow gambling in the game.  Virtual prostitution, on the other hand, is another story.  In the virtual world, no one is actually selling their body.  They are selling an image created by a computer.  This is no more illegal than selling the game itself.

Online gaming may have its flaws which could harm either the player or those around the player.  However, it seems that potential benefits also exist.  If these games were to be taken away due to the potential harm they could cause, then virtually every other bit of technology that we have created also needs to be removed due to the fact that it could also be harmful to a person under the right circumstances.

Online communities provide a valuable service to the new world of technology.  It allows friends to stay connected and share experiences in real time over long distances.  New friendships can be created that would never have been possible before the internet.  The economy has been boosted by the sale of avatars and items.  Finally, the government is able to use this online model to test real world theories and increase the safety of the nation.  Furthermore, the line between the real world and the virtual world is beginning to blur.  People wish to spend more and more time in the virtual world and ignore the real world.  As the technology and society that is built by the new online communities evolve, people will find a balance between the virtual world and the real world.

Bibliography

Benedetti, Winda. “Why search our souls when video games make such an easy scapegoat?” MSNBC. 18 Febuary 2008. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23204875/.

Cabatingan, Jeff. Personal interview. 16 March 2008.

F. Gregory Lastowka; Dan Hunter. The Laws of the Virtual Worlds California Law Review, Vol. 92, No. 1. (Jan., 2004), pp. 1-73. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0008-1221%28200401%2992%3A1%3C1%3ATLOTVW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M.

Minister of Silly Walks. Personal Message interview. (need to look up date of interview)

Myers, Dave. Instant Message interview. (need to look up date of interview)

Samuel M. Wilson; Leighton C. Peterson. The Anthropology of Online Communities Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 31. (2002), pp. 449-467. http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/4132888?seq=13&Search=yes&term=games&term=video&term=online&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Donline%2Bvideo%2Bgames%26gw%3Djtx%26prq%3Donline%2Bgaming%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25&item=2&ttl=730&returnArticleService=showArticle.

Schairer, Tom. E-mail interview. 7 April 2008.

Thompson, Clive. “Gamers Get Their Kicks from Dying.” Wired.com 10 March 2008. http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/03/gamesfrontiers_0310.

“UCN Internation Headquarters.” United Commonwealth of Nations. 7 April 2008 http://z7.invisionfree.com/TheCommonwealth/index.php.

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