[Question] Communication habits in online games

Hi!

I’m a graduate student writing a thesis on the communication that takes place during multiplayer online games. For part of the project I’d like to get some feedback from actual game players, and Gamingforce seems like a good place to do that. If you’re 18 or over (my university only allows me to survey adults, sorry), I’d appreciate it if you could take the time to fill out this short (10 question) survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=423502911938

(Link fixed to properly work.)

Along with that, what kind of communication experiences have you had in online games? What games do you play, and what do you notice about the way people communicate in them? Anyone can answer these, not just the people over 18.


For me, I mostly play Counter-Strike: Source right now and hope to get into Battlefield soon, but I’ve spent a lot of time playing Ragnarok Online and Silkroad. I've noticed that in CSS, on public servers, there’s not a whole lot of strategizing and most of the talk is pretty casual and laid back. In roleplaying games, I’ve noticed that people tend to talk a lot more seriously and tend to spend most of the time talking about how they need help in the game or are looking for equipment and people to join their party. I’d imagine it strongly depends on how well you know the other people and what your reason for playing is, but unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot of experience with it since I’ve only recently gotten into online gaming and usually play solo.

Thanks for your help!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I've found that the game and who you're playing with are the biggest factors.

Right now I mainly playing BF2 online with the group we have here at Gamingforce, and we seem to have a pretty even amount of in-game and out of game chatter. Usually just commenting on when something extraordinary happens or reacting to getting killed by another person from the group. Sometimes we do a bit of planning too, like having everyone spawn as a group and try to take out a point together. But overall there's a bit of goofing off since we all know eachother.

In a strategy game like Warcraft 3 when playing with strangers...most of it pretty much consists of teammates saying "rush" or "units?" at the start of the game and then maybe following up with pointing out who to hit and saying when. Even though it's a strategy game, there really isn't much communicating with anyone else aside from saying the basic units you're getting and telling everyone when to attack. Counter-Strike Source and Dystopia (another HL2 mod) seem to have a bit more general talk while you're playing. Not much about the game except for calling people noobs or saying owned, mostly it's just people commenting about how they're playing when they're drunk or about how they've lost friends to World of Warcraft.

But if you're in a clan or are playing seriously with people you know (I did for a little while in Natural Selection and to a lesser extent Planetside), everyone is MUCH more focused on the game and there isn't as much time for small talk. Sometimes they'll require voice chat even so that noone is distracted from typing. That's usually when the real strategizing and planning happens.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I've fixed your link, AlleyDog.

However, this question is rather specific and we have a forum for online gaming. I'll move this to the more appropriate forum.

Since there's an actual subject for discussion here, and not solely a plea for homework assistance, I'll leave it open.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Based on my online experiences, online chatter is pretty harmless, despite what other people say about it.

In RPGs, people tend to be helpful when new people ask questions in chat, or at least, are pointed in the right direction. Some people are pretty generous too, offering free goods to anyone, not just new people.

In other non-RPG online games, chatter is usually kept to a minimum, as people are too busy concentrating on the game itself. I never see anyone talk about real life things, just directly related to the game itself. For example, things like, "Aw crap! I didn't even see you kill me!"

It's pretty rare that I get bad experiences with online chat. Maybe I'm just not playing the right games.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Hahaha, I've played Ragnarok Online off-and-on... I've stopped for now though, being that 1. I can't afford it. 2. The free-service I liked died. 3. I'm on dial-up. Heheh... But yeah... chatting... funny thing that...

My friend Sammich and I would party a lot and go out and kill things... once we partied with this Brazilian guy. He seemed nice, but he kept criticizing us... like yelling at Sammich's acolyte for not healing him when she SAID she was out of MP, or yelling at my swordsman to "USE PROVOKE". So we got fed up, and kicked him out of the party. Then he kept bugging us, and it turned into this big stupid drama thing. He ranted to Sammich about uh... "american make my people poor". It was nuts. We laugh about it now though.

I once got tailed by some guy who really REALLY wanted a hat I had. Like... STALK, and that was UBER annoying. Ugh.

Some of my favorite spots though were when my friend got disconnected, and I ended up chatting to myself out of boredom.

Spoiler:

JammerLea : so poring
JammerLea : what up
JammerLea : you're not hungry yet
JammerLea : wtf
JammerLea : why don't you do anything?
JammerLea : you just EAT
JammerLea : And you're SO PICKY
JammerLea : Why won't you eat a BANANA or something?
JammerLea : Oh a LEMON
JammerLea : Or even
JammerLea : You could eat a lemon
JammerLea : you're a monster
JammerLea : You might implode though.
JammerLea : heheheh
JammerLea : Come on
JammerLea : Eat the LEMON
JammerLea : THE LEMON

But yeah... Sammich and I like to throw random "HEAL PLZ" and "USE PROVOKE" at each other even though we haven't played the game in months.

*edit*

Ah! Here we go... a screenshot that may relate somewhat more to the stuff...
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...nEuphRO055.jpg

I was speaking idiomatically.

Others here may or may not aggree with me but I found online gaming a weird experience for a while, my list of games online include serious sam 2, diablo 2, jedi knight, ragnarok online, final fantasy online, Gunster, Gunbound, Unreal Tournament, the street fighter series and various other retro emulated games.

Before playing online I actually considered playing games a career, but after seeing the religous playing of people who may or may not have any social life outside the game it made me think which is worse? Being beaten by someone who plays like it's their life or playing enough yourself until you're good enough to beat them, somewhere you just have to draw the line at when the amount of play time makes you a freak. The way players call themselves 'cyber athletes' now too is laughable it's a game for gods sake and anyone who worships a guy for example who looks like they're masterbating with a joystick for countless hours you have to question their sanity just a little...

I'm going to try a list but more for types of players then communication. Players tend to fall into many combinations of categories (I'll gladly change titles if someone thinks of better ones as this list leans more towards rpgs since they tend to be far more vocal games unless they use something like a voice chat teamspeak)

Quote:

elitist players have the belief they are better then everyone else, wether is is true or not and often get annoyed when they're proved wrong. From what I've seen they seem to gain a lot of joy from powertrips and talk down to anyone they think is lower then them. As a general rule these players tend to go for more damage dealing based characters and weapons

hackers either in a literal sense or just finding bugs in the game, these players either hack to get a similar powertrip to an elitist, or once they find game bugs and it becomes public knowledge everyone will exploit that same bug trick. If there is any bug in a game a player some where will find it, this is one reason in fact why rpgs in particular have become so epic, in an attempt to make any time saving bugs cut down play time less.

leechers can be either new players or players with similar traits to an elitist, in the case of novices they're more prone to begging, but more experienced players can be more sly about things. The only rule of thumb really is that these people will only engage in conversation with you if they think you have something or can help them get something they want. They can be hard to spot sometimes however because over half of all gameplay chat is to do with the game itself since it's the only garenteed subject both talkers understand epsecially if it's their first time making conversation.

I'll revise this post as I think of more...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

As far as first person shooters go (CounterStrikeSource) or Day of Defeat: Source, games I play. Usually people are only commenting on bogus things that happened like a headshot, or a knife kill, or getting spray 'n prayed (mostly to CS:S, which coined that term?) where the opposing player holds the trigger down on their weapon hoping one of the stray bullets nails their head or other luck. There is plenty of accusing of hackers in CS:S which usually goes something like:

Accuser: Redhat is fucking hacking! He got 3 headshots in a row through the wall!
The accused: I'm not hacking you dolt.
Accuser: HACKER!
Admin: Wut?
Accuser: HACKER!
Admin: Alright, I know you well here so OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
Accused: WHAT NO!

If there is a hacker, some people go out of their way to say how despicable the person is. Like how they nothing better to do, etc.

Everynow and then when I played DoD:S people would get into arguments about WWII or about the world leaders at that time. They are usually pretty dumb arguments, with one totally obnoxious guy usually. I've seen this chat take place maybe about 4 times. Maybe it says something about players talking about what the game is based on.

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Thanks for the responses everyone; you've been a big help! A lot of the responses are similar to the experiences that I've had. For instance, I also have noticed that people are a bit more hot-tempered in FPS, so maybe it's an adrenaline rush or something? There is something exciting about them, but maybe because I'm a girl I'm able to not let things get to me and I can just laugh off a bad night? On the other hand, I find RPGs a bit boring and only really enjoy them when I'm playing with my friends.

Devoxy, I found your post especially interesting. The few times I have told people I'm a girl (most often in CSS), they just didn't believe me and thought that I was just some guy trying to be funny. I was going to try an experiment where I would go on two different servers to see the reactions. On one I'd play badly and say I'm a girl, and on the other I'd play well and say I'm a girl. Unfortunately my school didn't let me do this without consent, which would have made the experiment not work anyway. If anyone has ever tried this, let me know!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?