Research paper on MMORPGs

I’m taking English composition this semester and my instructor assigned a research paper on a topic of our choice.  The catch was that he had to approve the choice from a written proposal and the paper had to deal, in some way, with “the human condition” and “people”.  He said he was tired of reading papers on gun control, abortion, global warming, and the war in Iraq.  He wanted a topic that was different and advised us that the best thing we could do was to write on a topic that he knows nothing about.  So, naturally I chose to attempt getting a paper on massively multiplayer online role-playing games approved.  I wrote up my proposal which ended up being three pages (the requirement was only a page) and presented the reasoning behind why I wanted to write on mmorpgs as well as a brief summary explaining them.

I got the proposal back and it was approved!  I’ll be writing my research paper on: “MMORPGs: What effects do Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games have on their players and our society?”  The topic in general is MMORPGs and the “issue” (something we had to identify) is how these games impact the players and society.  I’ll be touching upon everything from virtual property and recent rulings as well as how players have reacted to racial issues with “gold farmers”.  I’ll go into detail about social architecture and teamwork, altruism, consequence, self-representation, and and everything I can possibly think of writing about.

We haven’t been given any length requirements yet but the works cited must contain at least 20 academic sources and an optional 5 non-academic sources for spice.  This leads me to believe that the paper will easily be 15-25 pages in length.  Luckily, I’ve picked a topic that I know a lot about and have experience with every day.  I’ll be able to pull from my blog and you, my readers, as a non-academic source and from played like Nick Yee‘s Daedalus Project and Sherry Turkles writings for a more academic approach.

Be on the look out for coming polls and requests for feedback on certain topics.  I’ll be asking you guys to weigh in your thoughts on how certain aspects of MMORPGs have or have not impacted you and hopefully getting some quality feedback that I can use in the paper.

If this works out according to plan then it should be enlightening to myself and those who read it as well as… dare I say it… fun!

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  • at the risk of making a jerk of myself, i think you want “effects” in your title there. good luck with the paper! looking forward to contributing as you need it

  • Funny that you this happens today

    I’ve been thinking about mmo’s today while working and how it takes way too much time of my life. Thinking how it made me fail school and how it makes me wanna stay home instead of going out or w/e.

    Ok it’s not only mmo that causes those things but it’s the fact that you can’t be a casual player when you play an mmo. You always want to play more…

    Anyway I hope you talk about that in you compo.

    And ty for the fun i had in war! HFG FTW!

  • I started play World of Warcraft when I was 11, first MMO I played. I was addicted within 18 seconds of playing, or possibly before even playing. I know it sounds stupid to say but the game changed who I am. Mood, personality, view on things, changed. I can’t blame the game because I chose to play, and I am not saying that it the changes were all bad. All things come with a cost, and effect, MMOs are no different although they affect people differently depending on that persons view on them is.

    I can only express myself in that I now feel an unquenched desire to play an MMO as I did WoW, and that desire is not quenched with WAR no matter how much I want it to be. I can’t tell if I really like the game, or if I force myself into a mindset of liking it. My apologies for broken english and poor grammar and format.

  • I mistyped the title. I think the title on my proposal was “What affect do Mmorpgs have”. A common mistake I make though, mixing up those two annoying words. Fixed it in the blog entry. Thanks for pointing it out!

  • you mean what effect? affect has to affect something, effect is just the fact that something is affected. 🙂

    But yeah. I started with everquest back in the day (middle school / high school i think. And i would get 2 hours of sleep a night cause of my playing. Took a break for a few years got into WOW, that was the same deal until the only thing that kept me going was raiding – which didnt eat my time since it was more or less scheduled. And now WAR, though this week i havent played at all cause of midterms and such.

    So yeah. My theory is that any good game can be just as addictive as an MMO, but MMOs have the social/friend factor which is more conducive to addiction (think peer pressure). I mean, every Final Fantasy that i’ve ever played (minus XII, didnt really like it) definitely held my attention for at least a week straight.

    Should be an interesting topic though, you can delve into the Tipper Gore crusade against games and the rating system as well if you like.

    Good luck 🙂

  • That’ll teach me to write when it’s late. 😉 Yeah, I had it right the first time with the wrong tense. “What effect DO”. Should be right now. 😛 Okay, time to sleep.

  • Writing a paper on something you really enjoy would probably be on the top of things that will kill your enthusiasm for it…but I wish you good luck and hope what is true for many others isn’t true for you!

  • Hey, you should also check out the journal Games and Culture. It’s on SAGE and I found Simkins’s “Critical Ethical Reasoning
    and Role-Play” to be pretty interesting. Ian Bogost’s Unit Operations: An Approach to Video Game Criticism is another resource worth considering; it’s on e-brary, if your institution has access to that. Also, I can’t avoid recommending my favorite writer, Paul Virilio. Here’s a relevant interview you may wish to read: http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/vy2k/sans.cfm

  • Mmmm well i know something about this games mmorpg, and they are not good, they absorbs all our time, they make us stupid, they make us forget our duties. Because mmorpg our relationship with our family that see us sitting 5 hours x day in front of a computer playing, becomes unbearable and deteriorates.
    MMorpg destroys our mind and makes us addicted, is proved that after a long time some people lose faculty to talk properly.
    In some extreme cases, some do kame hame ha while they’re in the bathroom and nobody sees them.
    Mmorpg take us away from the real world and kills slowly the human condition to tell our experiences to our friends or family.
    Etc etc

  • @ marcus

    “In some extreme cases, some do kame hame ha while they’re in the bathroom and nobody sees them.”

    lol?

  • “MMORPGs: What effect do Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games have on their players and our society?”

    What the first response said was you wanted “effects” in there, instead of effect.

    Unless you’re trying to analyze a single effect of games on players, which I doubt, you’re probably trying to analyze all of the effects which games have on players.

    It’s picky English stuff, but you did say it was for an English composition class…

  • To me MMO’s are a perfect example of the functioning of the human ego. The ego is never happy with the present moment, instead it always wants something more, something better. The ego tells us “my life will be perfect if I only had this (fill in the blank)” and leads us to believe some future event will be better than right now.

    In your real life, you have goals but they usually take a long time to achieve, like a certain career you want, a spouse, a home etc.

    MMO’s give us more or less instant gratification. To the ego it doesn’t matter that the item you are obtaining is virtual and really just a bunch of pixels, to the ego this is an extension of reality and something you accomplished, therefore it adds to your self worth.

    The ego is abound everywhere in MMO’s, everyone wants to show off their flashy gear, their titles and accomplishments. This in my opinion is the reason MMO’s can be “addicting”, because it is much easier for everyone to gain significant accomplishments in a virtual world than it is in the real world.

    Looking forward to your research if you wish to share it.

  • Korlyth is right, you can always go the psychoanalytic route with Lacan, Žižek, Stavrakakis, et cetera. Surely there are plenty of reasons why participation in MMO games is tied with a refusal/failure to traverse the fantasy (how unfulfilling and ultimately flawed you seem to find them despite your hopes! Can you blame EA/Mythic, Funcom, Blizzard, etc. for not being able to construct for you the fully satisfying sexual object?

  • MMORPG’s are destroying the fabric of our society. SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OUT OF PEOPLE!!!

    Oh sorry I blacked out for a second. I look forward to seeing the paper, and if I can help out in any way let me know.

  • Nice to see this Keen, a good challenge.

    MMORPGs are a microcosm in so many ways, models that haven’t been studied enough academically if you ask me. Interesting that you chose the other way around with what players walk away with from the games.

    I hope your paper goes really well and I’m just going to throw out some thoughts:

    You could look at some of the more notable events that have occurred in MMO history. Maybe some are tired but still have relevance, like the death of Lord British, or the IronForge Plague (Corrupted Blood). Smaller events like RP weddings, town hall meetings (I remember those from Ultima Online).

    Plus the many in-game sit-ins, protests and activism, most of which are game-related but some are not. Examples that come to mind: The Sims Online McDonalds protest and the multiple in-game protests over gay rights in WoW.

    I’d hope you’d include how players from so many different regions and parts of the world often come together. I know most games have regional servers, but players still cross borders online to play and there’s something different between teaming up with these players than just communicating with them elsewhere on the Internet.

    Also, the stories that have floated around about how guild and raid leading has ended up on some player’s resumes and actually helped them career-wise.

    Finally, there’s the situation with RMT / gold sellers that connects the real world with the virtuals and demonstrates the disparities between them, creating all new questions of morality in our society that often puts monetary first.

    There’s tons of material to go on, lots of different directions.

  • Oh and an additional thought that just occurred:

    Many guilds and players actively avoid talk about politics, religion and other outside world influences while they’re immersed online, while others (a smaller portion I believe) do the complete opposite and use these game worlds as a platform for their beliefs.

  • Always a fun topic. Fortunately there is actually quite a bit of academic literature on this. I had a friend publish a paper on Online Communities in MUDs over 15 years ago. So you should be fine in getting your reference count.

    For RMTs and gold sellers you could also look for all the legal proceedings as well.

    Also keep in mind that interviews from actual professionals in the industries do count as academic sources. A few quotes from MJ or others would not hurt your argument.

  • Thanks for the advice all! I greatly appreciate it. 🙂

    I plan to make the paper available online in PDF form here on the blog after it’s turned in.

    I’ll definitely be researching and analyzing many of the effectS of mmorpgs including much of what you guys have suggested. I appreciate all the links and continued advice/participating that you’re willing to offer. 🙂

    Look for more soon!

  • Beware of posting it online before you get a grade. If your teacher does not know you as “Keen”, he may wonder why a google search results in your exact essay written by some blogger

  • Here is a big one: The Cyber Napolean Complex. People who make up for their insecurities by playing an MMO. I read a article on this once. It was really well done.

    Don’t forget relationships forming in a game, gold farmers (mentioned), willingness to spend RL cash on “cyber” goods beyond the sub cost, and of course how it affects grades/family life/work/etc (mentioned).

    I look forward to seeing how this turns out and responding to your polls and such.

  • I got a degree in English, yet I can only remember a single time in my life I was asked to write about anything non-literary in an English class. And that time, the basic topic was given to us.

    Anyway, good luck with your paper! Years ago, a Vanguard community site ran a series on how gaming had affected significant changes in gamers’ lives. I was one of the gamers interviewed. I hope that helps.

  • I did serveral talks on this topic and listed influences on real life, among others:

    Time spend in WoW close to worktime

    language change: lol, rofl, imba, rl, afk, afkids, etc. is used in RL as well

    Lifeplanning around WoW: 25 people Raids, people start to plan their real life around their raid times

    RL meeting with friends and foes changes view on people

    3% MMOG players loose either: girlfriend or wife, job, exams, health

    3% MMOG player gain a: girlfriend or wife, job or money

    People with having trouble gettign social contacts usually learn this in MMOG’s over time, as they learn teamwork and respecting other people. I list many examples from our guild where this worked for teens.

    If you liek I can send you the presentation.

  • Yeah absolutely send me anything you have because I’d love to have all the material possible for a paper of this length.