No More Walled Gardens: Facilitating Real Community That Extends Beyond Game Play

Lecturer: Charles F. Manning, PLAYXPERT

In real life, community is developed and maintained naturally through various dimensions or vectors. These include

• Location and association based vectors (where you live, where you work, selling to a common customer, going to the same school, frequenting a common coffee shop),
• Philosophical vectors (common belief structure, shared life goals, or common political beliefs), and
• Task based vectors (studying for a common test or serving on jury duty).

These microcosms are the medium for community based on circumstance, both planned and unplanned.   With online games, these same vectors occur, however, there are even more complex situations which bring players together or facilitate a connection.  Players end up on common servers, they quest together, they raid under common principals, they learn of one another based on forum posts or 3rd party item databases.  Indeed, community happens naturally, albeit, often times outside of the framework of the game itself.

Online gaming is an intensely social phenomenon, with millions of young adults around the globe interacting constantly, collaborating together, communicating with one another, and sharing information.

In an effort to create and maintain user communities, next generation online games and game services have to adapt to deliver integrated, mash-up experiences for players (both in and out of game).  Chat and matchmaking are no longer enough; modern users demand identities in place of anonymity, intelligent matchmaking, friendship development mechanisms, award points systems, and productivity tools to facilitate community which extends outside of the traditional gaming boundaries.

This session will explore the natural evolution of community in online games and specifically how and why ‘community’ can happen outside of the game.  In addition, this session will highlight how studios and publishers can architect their games to capitalize on mash-up philosophies which both leverage the federated community and centralize the experience for the player.

Intended Audience: Developers, publishers and advertisers who are interested in understanding the dynamics and interplay between the ‘official’ narratives provided in a game and the community driven ‘unofficial’ narrative that plays out throughout the Internet and blogosphere about a game.

Prerequisites: None

Format: Lecture

Track: Community

Date/Time: Tuesday, 9:00 AM

Room: Salon B

Manning - No More Walled Gardens.pdf