One of the essential characteristics of a community at play is verbal communication.
According to Koivisto (2003), “communities do not exist without some kind of communication”. She affirms that online games should “provide the broadest possible ways to communicate” and their mechanics could “be designed so that it supports community forming” (Koivisto, 2003). The more often the player can contact other players, the more likely he is to actively contribute to the game’s social framework.
For example, in Travians, most of the game components induce communication between the players. Firstly, the game template has been designed such as a chat box is always shown at the right of the window. You can choose between number of discussion boxes: two for general help and support from other players, one for the town hall, one for the tavern, another one for explanations about resources the player will have to collect, etc. Secondly, in the very start of the game, while your character has to enter a village to progress in the game, the guardian of the village tell you that “You must have one friend to enter the village or try to get ten resources”. As my experience, I tried to gained ten resources, but it take so much time that I finally ask someone to be my friend. After that, I went back to the guardian and he told me “Great! Friends are very important! Welcome to the community for now!”.
Communication can be verbal or nonverbal. Examples of non-verbal communication, provided by Koivisto (2003), can be character proximity, clothing, house decorating, possible emotes, or actions such as killing. Moreover, the gamers can communicate with each other by modifying the state of the game world.
For example, in Travians, your character will have to build his own house, decorating it by choosing between many different floors, furniture, gardens, walls, or decorating objects. Moreover, during the game, your house can be visited by other players that want to wash himself, sleep, eat, or meat new people. Another example of non verbal communication in Travians is the minigames you can play to earn points.
According to Koivisto (2003), Communication can be synchronous such as face-to-face conversation or asynchronous such as leaving a message in a forum or for a character that is offline. The range of communication can vary from one-to-one to many-to-many and it can occur in the same or different locations.
As seen before, in Travians there are lot of different places to communicate many-to-many such as Forums and chat boxes. Furthermore, in the game, you can communicate one-to-one by leaving a personal message on the profile of the friends or to anybody you see during the game.
According to Koivisto (2003), “communities do not exist without some kind of communication”. She affirms that online games should “provide the broadest possible ways to communicate” and their mechanics could “be designed so that it supports community forming” (Koivisto, 2003). The more often the player can contact other players, the more likely he is to actively contribute to the game’s social framework.
For example, in Travians, most of the game components induce communication between the players. Firstly, the game template has been designed such as a chat box is always shown at the right of the window. You can choose between number of discussion boxes: two for general help and support from other players, one for the town hall, one for the tavern, another one for explanations about resources the player will have to collect, etc. Secondly, in the very start of the game, while your character has to enter a village to progress in the game, the guardian of the village tell you that “You must have one friend to enter the village or try to get ten resources”. As my experience, I tried to gained ten resources, but it take so much time that I finally ask someone to be my friend. After that, I went back to the guardian and he told me “Great! Friends are very important! Welcome to the community for now!”.
Communication can be verbal or nonverbal. Examples of non-verbal communication, provided by Koivisto (2003), can be character proximity, clothing, house decorating, possible emotes, or actions such as killing. Moreover, the gamers can communicate with each other by modifying the state of the game world.
For example, in Travians, your character will have to build his own house, decorating it by choosing between many different floors, furniture, gardens, walls, or decorating objects. Moreover, during the game, your house can be visited by other players that want to wash himself, sleep, eat, or meat new people. Another example of non verbal communication in Travians is the minigames you can play to earn points.
According to Koivisto (2003), Communication can be synchronous such as face-to-face conversation or asynchronous such as leaving a message in a forum or for a character that is offline. The range of communication can vary from one-to-one to many-to-many and it can occur in the same or different locations.
As seen before, in Travians there are lot of different places to communicate many-to-many such as Forums and chat boxes. Furthermore, in the game, you can communicate one-to-one by leaving a personal message on the profile of the friends or to anybody you see during the game.
REFERENCE LIST
Koivisto, E. M. I. (2003). Supporting Communities in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games by Game Design. Finland: Dgital Games Research Association (DIGRA) and Utrecht University.
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