The first noble truth of CyberSpace: people are people (even when they MOO)
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
"Alone together?": exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
A game design methodology to incorporate social activist themes
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Lessons from LambdaMOO: A Social, Text-Based Virtual Environment
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
The rogue in the lovely black dress: intimacy in world of warcraft
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
ICTD'09 Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Information and communication technologies and development
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
10,000 gold for 20 dollars: an exploratory study of World of Warcraft gold buyers
Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
How players value their characters in world of warcraft
Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
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World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) supporting complex social interactions among over 12 million players. While the "lone gamer" stereotype still persists, there is little data on gaming with other players with whom one shares a "real life" (RL) social relationship. Our work departs from previous studies in focusing on the hybrid of online and offline sociality, rather than only one or the other. We provide perhaps the first systematic quantitative characterization of MMO play with RL friends, family and other social connections. A large online survey collected data from 2865 WoW players from the US, Europe, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The findings overwhelmingly support the view that playing WoW may often serve to enhance, not diminish, RL social interactions. In addition, we present benchmark results on demographics and WoW play practices in world regions previously not studied. The consistency of the patterns of findings across East/West and gender groupings suggests fascinating issues for further research.