Jakobsson
Mikael Jakobsson
mjson@informatik.umu.se
Once Again With Content - Applying Interactue to MMOG Game Worlds
When the graphical virtual worlds emerged on the net. It signaled the arrival of a new kind of computer systems. A kind that intuitively translocated the participants to a virtual place that still was very real in that it was persistent and inhabited by real people. These were general purpose worlds, or chat worlds, which basically meant that there was no pre-concieved agenda to what they should be used for. The idea was basically that once an arena was supplied, people would populate it and provide suitable activities spontaneously.
Although this indeed also was what happened, the general purpose worlds has not managed to measure up to the big expectations placed on them. Instead the dedicated game worlds have widely surpassed the expectations and jointly count the monthly paying participants by the millions. This genre of games, Massively Multi-player Online Games, share one common
denominator which is that they take place in graphical virtual worlds. They could be looked upon as the second generation of these systems, having a pre-defined purpose as the added ingredient. Seen from this perspective it becomes obvious that there is much to learn about MMOGs from the extensive studies made on virtual worlds, but the connection
has not always been made either by the research community or the designers. I will outline a few concepts from the interacture framework developed for virtual world design and apply them to MMOGs. The term interacture implies that social interaction structures is the fundamental building material for constructing virtual worlds. It places the focus on the people that will habituate the space and analyzes how their interaction structures differ from physical settings and how the unique qualities of the virtual worlds should be provided for in the design of the system.
Biography:
Mikael Jakobsson is currently completing his dissertation on social interaction in virtual worlds and the design of virtual arenas for education, gaming, and general purpose social activities. He has published extensively on the topic of virtual worlds including a chapter in the book "The Social Life of Avatars". He currently carries joint affiliation from UmeŒ University where he is a member of the Net-Life Research Group and Malmš University where he currently is setting up a group focusing on design oriented game studies: DOGS.
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