Miloš Milošević
Exchange student
Student number: 11068744
Class: CTRL C: Building Digitised Societies
Introduction
The purpose of this blog is to introduce myself and my gaming experiences as well as to give a brief introduction to online games and eSports in general. I will also pay attention to information provided in the lecture.
Online gaming has become one important part of my life. I’m not just spending my time by shooting zombies, saving the kingdom of Urgot from the evil magician Karthus or cloning famous buildings in Minecraft, but I’m also interacting with other players and friends.
Online gaming has evolved over the years. I remember exactly the day, my parents bought me my first gaming device: the Game Boy made by Nintendo. You might think this is not a device made for online gaming, but it was already possible to play with other players by connecting two or more Game Boys with the Link-cable and “use the communicative facilities and the role playing as a means of interaction with other players” (Bartle 2006), which you already knew.
So this was my first “online” gaming device. At that time, the gaming market was already flooded with other home gaming devices like the Atari VCS 2600, Nintendo’s NES or Sega’s Mega Drive.
The first "online" games I started to play were offline games on my Personal Computer. But in recent years with the development of fast game laptops and me switching from a modem connection to a faster broadband connection, I started playing online games. Before that I was an irregular participant of LAN parties.
Today, I must confess that online games are important to maintain my old friendships. I communicate with my old friends on Teamspeak (communication system) and talk about newest developments in online gaming or the last patch of our favorite game “League of Legends”. Without having online games in common, we wouldn’t have interests to share, because we live in different countries in different cities. I’m not that kind of guy who is meeting new people online, but it’s the best way to keep in touch with old friends. This is supported by the article of Steinkuehler and Williams in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. (Steinkuehler 2006: p. 904)
Online gaming?
Without going too much in detail “online gaming” means playing digital games on the internet. This is the broad definition, which lacks of details.
First of all, I want to clarify the differences between online games and “conventional” games and then define different kinds of online games.
“Conventional” games have been characterized by Avedon and Sutton-Smith like this:
“At its most elementary level then we can define game as an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition between forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.”
(Avedon 1981: p. 7)
Since this definition was published in 1981, online games are a new aspect of games and need to be redefined. Almost every game has a network and/or online modus. The games are drafted motivating the customers to play online and also to purchase new game content online.
Whereas in a conventional game the players are enforcing the rules and procedures, what also implies that the players or at least one need to know the rules, in a online game the game itself is enforcing the law. This makes it easier for players to play online games, because they don’t need to learn the exact rules and procedures of the game. Let us take chess for example. If somebody wants to play chess the conventional way, he or she needs a chess board, the chess pieces and knowledge of the rules. A cyber chess game would prohibit illegal chess movements without the player knowing why a special chess movement was not according to the rules.
The rules for conventional games usually stay untouched. However, online games are provided with patches every now and then. Patches are small software programs that fix a bug of a game or change the balance of the game.
An aspect which has changed is the outcome. Especially games like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars never reach a final goal. Temporary goals mark your way throughout the game.
Other games like Minecraft or The Sims have an open-end. Minecraft is all about placing blocks and create buildings. More than 15 million people have registered and almost 4 million people have bought the game even though the game is still in beta status. (www.minecraft.net). The Sims is the most successful PC game in the world with more than 125 million sold copies until February 2010 (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6249485/the-sims-turns-10-tops-125-million-units). It lacks a clear goal as well. Your goal is to keep your Sim happy. By which means you achieve this is your choice.
Another difference between conventional and online games is that conventional games are bound in time and location. Most online games continue to exist even if you leave the games, other players continue to play without you and make progress. (Juul 2003: 43)
Game types
Browser games
Browser games are online games, which can be played without a download or installation of the game. They use the web browser as the interface between the player and the play set. These games are usually really simple games, which don’t force the player to invest much time into it to have fun. The intention is to bring quick entertainment to the player without any obstacle. One of the most famous websites for such games is miniclip.com, where you can find hundreds of different games.
Many people think that the browser games like Farmville or Mafia Wars on Facebook or other social networks have changed and became socializing games. I don’t agree at all with this opinion.
“The extent of “socializing” in Mafia Wars is spamming strangers to join your gang. Socializing in FarmVille is limited to periodically surveying the barren dying wastelands of all your neighbors’ farms.” (http://www.industrygamers.com/news/facebook-games-from-zynga-are-parasitic-says-alex-st-john/)
They are just browser games which use the already existing interface of social networks and not a completely new type of online games.
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)
MMOGs have a complex play set. Players are playing an avatar, a personification of themselves or someone else and are interacting with other players’ avatar. A lot of MMOGs are set in fictional Fantasy and Science-Fiction play sets.
The task of the games is almost the same. You kill computer enemies and collect rare items. By doing so, you earn experience and money and can improve the abilities of your avatar and buy new items with your earned money. Their forerunners were the Multi User Dungeon or MUDs. They became popular in the 1980s.
Massively Multi-player Online Role-playing Games or MMORPGs are maybe the better known as a term, but they are just a specific type of MMOGs, which is using role-play elements and therefore I use the more general term MMOGs.
LAN Games
Local Area Network games are games that don’t need internet to be played. Computers are connected through a router or a hub to the same network. Some of them can be played online as well. Like I stated before, almost every game has an online modus and for the most part they have a LAN modus, too. The technical possibility to play the games “offline” distinguishes the games from classical MMOGs. The range of games varies from sport games like FIFA to 3rd person shooters like Counter-Strike. In the past small LAN parties in your friends’ basement as well as huge LAN parties with over thousands of participants were popular. But as the broadband connection became faster and for everybody affordable, LAN parties fell behind. The reason is that playing at home is more comfortable. No computers have to be moved, no IP conflicts have to be solved, etc.
Pervasive Games
Pervasive games are a new form of games, which are coordinated on the internet but played in real life. The player is moving through the real world while he or she is communicating at the same time with other players on the internet. Just the spreading of smartphones and the faster internet access made it possible for players to chat and to locate their position by GPS. Kristiansen calls this kind of games “mixed reality” games, because the interaction happens in two different spheres. (Kristiansen 2007: p. 7f) Borders between real and cyber life disappear.
Virtual Worlds
Virtual worlds refer to games like “Second life”. They are online-based interacting and communication spaces. The graphics and the design are similar to other MMOGs, but the rules and procedures differ fundamentally. Whereas MMOGs are based on rules (for example with a hit of the basic sword you deal to an enemy who wears armor x damage), virtual worlds are open and players are free to do whatever they want. There is no system of rewards if you do this or that.
Player types
The classification above was made by Bartle in 1996 and has been used and adjusted in the last couple of years.
Bartle’s classification of players is highly questionable. Like games, players cannot be classified in just one category. The games have been limited in the past by computer resources and the broadband connections. Recently, they have become more and more complex. Even game developers like id Software, inventors of Doom, the popular first-person shooter, added different “mechanics from multiple genres” to their new game Rage. (http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/review/25458/rage/)
As the genres of online games have changed, so do have the players’ motivations. I found this really interesting Table made by Yee in 2006.
I prefer the classification made by Yee for the following reasons:
a) Empirical test: Bartle’s assumptions were never empirically tested.
b) Suppressing motivations: Furthermore, findings indicate that there are multiple play motivations, which don’t have to suppress each other. (Yee 2006)
I would, classify myself as a player with all three motivations: Achievement, social and immersion. These motivations vary from game to game.
Let’s take Counter-Strike for example. The casual chat is unimportant to most players of Counter-Strike, because the game design doesn’t allow players to chat that long. There is a time limit in this game and therefore no time to chat and socialize. There is also no role-playing component in Counter-Strike. It is always the same story about Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists and players don’t advance by shooting more players than other players. The competition may be the strongest motivation to play Counter-Strike.
Online gaming and business
Computer and console games used to make money just by selling their games to the customers. The internet opened several new ways to earn money out of the games.
1. Basic version of the game
This still remains the main income source. Developers sell their game on a physical data medium or as a download in online shops.
2. Subscriptions
The subscription-model has become especially well-established in the MMOGs. Players pay a monthly subscription and can only play with this subscription. At the one hand this is a good solution, if players are not sure about the game and their motivation to play this game for months or years. At the other hand the game doesn’t belong anymore to the player. The player can’t sell the game, if he or she doesn’t like it.
3. Premium content
The game developers have found a new way to income by selling online content also called DLC. DLC stands for “Downloadable content”. During the “offline times”, game developers sold such extension of a game as an Add-On on a physical data medium. Nowadays, they split bigger add-ons to several DLCs to gain more money out of it. But players can also buy new items, skins or advance quicker by paying money.
4. Fees
Rare items are sold between players and the game developers noticed that money can be earned. Sony for example introduced the platform “Station exchange”. They take fees for every deal.
5. Adverts and sponsoring
Both adverts on the platforms where the games are sold is a new income source for game developers and In-Game-Advertising as well. In the game Splinter Cell a Sony Ericsson mobile phone was an important item, which was in the focus of the player. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-game_advertising)
eSports
eSports is a phenomenon which is as old as online gaming itself. The first time it was mentioned in a press release on the launch of the Online Gamers Association in 1999. (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/oga). At that time it was not clear what eSports really are. Some people tried to compare it to the original sports and failed to be recognized by the English Sports Council.
Wagner compared the sports and esports and derived an accurate definition of esports.
““eSports” is an area of sport activities in which people develop and train mental or physical abilities in the use of information and communication technologies.” (Wagner 2006: p. 3)
The players started competing in weekly leagues and big tournaments. The biggest and most famous tournaments are the World Cyber Games. The started in 2000 in South Korea and became more and more popular for players as well as for software and hardware developers. Proof for that is the promotional film on youtube-Video made by the World Cyber Games. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2TT_tRL9RA).
And Stuart Moulder, General Manager of Microsoft's Game Division said about the WCG:
"Today, computers are the most powerful communications tools which help to interconnect people. In this sense, the first World Cyber Games are a great success as it interconnects gamers of the world through computers…“ (http://www.wcg.com/renew/inside/wcgc/wcgc_concept.asp)
Today the Asian, North American and European players dominate the world considering eSports. By the time poorer African and South-American countries will gain access to broadband connections and to modern computers, this domination will disappear.
As the example of the English Sports Council showed, the eSports is not considered as real sports yet. So we won’t see players play Starcraft II on the Olympic Games in London 2012. But this opinion might change with the younger generations, which already spend their time online.
It is undeniable that these evolvements were not possible without the internet. Thank you, internet! :)
Ressources
Articles:
Avedon, E.M. & Sutton-Smith, Brian (1981): The Study of Games. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.., New York.
Juul, Jesper (2003): The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness. In Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings, edited by Marinka Copier and Joost Raessens, 30-45. Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2003.
Kristiansen, Eric (2007): From Audience to Users in Computer Gaming. The MMORPGs and pervasive games as mass media. http://www.ruc.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/Erik_Kristiasen_Denmark_Paper.pdf
Steinkuehler, Constance A. & Williams, D. (2006): Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘‘Third Places’’. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (2006) 885–909.
Wagner, Michael G. (2006): On the Scientific Relevance of eSports. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.84.82
Yee, Nick (2006): Motivations for Play in Online Games. CyberPsychology & Behavior 9, Nr. 6.
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