Project massive: a study of online gaming communities

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) continue to be a popular and lucrative sector of the gaming market. Project Massive was created to assess MMOG players’ social experiences both inside and outside of their gaming environments and the impact of these activities on their everyday lives. The focus of Project Massive has been on the persistent player groups or “guilds” that form in MMOGs. The survey has been completed online by 1836 players, who reported on their play patterns, commitment to their player organizations, and personality traits like sociability, extraversion and depression. Here we report our cross-sectional findings and describe our future longitudinal work as we track players and their guilds across the evolving landscape of the MMOG product space. Keywords MMOG, MMO, MMORPG, guilds, massively multiplayer, persistent worlds, group formation, CSCW. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces. Computersupported cooperative work.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: CHI
• Authors: A. Fleming Seay, William J. Jerome, Kevin Sang Lee, Robert E. Kraut
• Keywords: CHI 2004, Human Computer Interaction, Massively Multiplayer, Massively Multiplayer Online Games, Project Massive