An Online Community as a New Tribalism: The World of Warcraft

Massive, multiplayer online role-playing games foster rich social environments. Within the game, players can interact with other players, make friends, create and cultivate new online forms of community. Using participant observation and content analysis approaches, this study examines the World of Warcraft as an online community, and investigates the degree to which it exhibits characteristics of a new tribalism.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: HICSS
• Authors: Thomas W. Brignall III, Thomas L. Van Valey
• Keywords: Biometrics, HICSS 2007, Multiplayer Online Role-playing, Participant Observation, Rich Social Environments, System Sciences