Star Wars Galaxies and the Division of Labor

STAR WARS GALAXIES
and
The Division of Labor
Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I want to thank my mom and dad for all their support,
especially while I have attended college. The older I get, the more I understand and
respect what you have done for me. My college education is a gift from you that I hope I
have made the most of. Thank you, also, to my little sister, Mikki, whom I love and miss
every day! Without my roommate, Mike, I wouldn’t have found out about Galaxies, and
this paper would never have been. Domo.
Thank you, Bill, for all your advice, and especially for giving me the opportunity
to spread my wings with the Global Justice Game. You’re a great example to me of
someone who has done something meaningful in academia. Thank you to Mark, who
taught me how to write real good. And thank you to Rita, who sparked my sociological
imagination and taught me that there are other people out there who see the world like I
do.
Finally, a very special thank you to my G. You always make me smile. I love
you more and more every day. What a wonderful surprise!
Star Wars Galaxies and the Division of Labor
A Senior Thesis
by
Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia
April 2005
Boston College Department of Sociology
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license,
visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San
Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION: From Salad to Star Wars..................................................................................... 2
A Note about my Audiences ....................................................................................................... 5
1: PRE-GAMEPLAY SOCIALIZATION: Creating an Avatar and Becoming the Character .............. 6
The Making of Ehmille Durkheim.............................................................................................. 9
Learning the Basics ................................................................................................................... 16
2: WHY I NAMED MY AVATAR EHMILLE DURKHEIM ............................................................... 21
Origin of Theses........................................................................................................................ 23
Theory ....................................................................................................................................... 27
Conceptualization...................................................................................................................... 37
Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 40
Ethics......................................................................................................................................... 43
3: SOLO GAMEPLAY PHASE......................................................................................................... 45
Galaxies is about Helping Players............................................................................................. 46
The Hunt is On.......................................................................................................................... 50
Where Everybody Knows your Name ...................................................................................... 57
The Galactic Civil War ............................................................................................................. 60
This is Hardcore ........................................................................................................................ 66
Daddy’s Got a Brand New… Turban........................................................................................ 68
Do the Carbineer Grind............................................................................................................. 72
4: GROUP GAMEPLAY PHASE ...................................................................................................... 77
Joining a Guild .......................................................................................................................... 79
Committing to a Guild .............................................................................................................. 82
The Strength of Guild Bonds .................................................................................................... 88
Anomie in Galaxies:.................................................................................................................. 92
Virtual Suicide .......................................................................................................................... 92
5: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 99
APPENDIX
Overview of Combat Roles..................................................................................................... 102
Server Chart ............................................................................................................................ 103
Graphical Analysis of Survey Results..................................................................................... 104
Concepts and Measurements................................................................................................... 112
Original Survey ....................................................................................................................... 114
GLOSSARY .................................................................................................................................. 125
WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................ 132
2
INTRODUCTION:
From Salad to Star Wars
A little more than a year ago, in the small kitchen of my small dorm suite, I was
making a rather big salad and talking to my roommate, Mike, about my plans for my
senior thesis. I told him I had a great idea for testing how the layout of websites would
affect the way visitors make judgments about the factuality and reliability of information
on them. I wanted to set up a lab experiment with ten different websites, all containing
exactly the same information, but delivered with different font families, color schemes,
images, layouts, and even different domain names. I was all excited about this project
until my roommate said, “It’s kind of like market research, huh?”
Now, for the past four years, I’ve been learning from brilliant sociology
professors about how society works in the hopes that I can understand it and make
positive changes—I’ve learned about corporate hegemony from Charles Derber, about
consumerism from Juliet Schor, and about social revolutions from Sarah Babb. I’ve even
had the honor to work with William Gamson on his Global Justice Game—a sort of role
playing game that teaches players how they can make social changes. After all this, I
didn’t want my senior research project—the culmination of my college education—to
amount to market research.
“Crap, well I can’t do that now,” I complained to my roommate as I sliced
cucumbers and placed them atop the red and green leaf lettuce already in the salad bowl.
“I’ll have to think of something else.”
3
“Ok…” Mike watched me peel some carrots, and after a few minutes began to
tell me about his day. “I earned another skill in my profession tree today. I’m pretty
close to mastering Teräs Käsi Artist for my new character. Just a couple more skills.”
Mike had been playing Star Wars Galaxies all day, every day for about a month, and his
interest had spread—almost like a virus—to the other guys in the suite. I had gotten used
to these daily updates on his game experience.
“That’s pretty cool,” I said automatically as I sliced the carrots.
“My other guy has a house now, too. I finally saved up enough credits to get
one.”
“Mhmm.”
“I’m gonna decorate it with the loot and other stuff I’ve been collecting. I’ve got
some pretty cool figurines, and I bought a bunch of furniture off the bazaar,” he added,
brushing past me to fill his cup with water from the pitcher in the fridge.
“There’s a bazaar? What kind of stuff does it have?”
“It’s all stuff from other players—armor, weapons, furniture, paintings. I got a
cool painting of the Millennium Falcon,” he boasted, raising his eyebrows with pride. He
look at my hands and added, “You’re not holding the carrots right. You should always
keep your nails flat up against the blade, otherwise you’ll cut a finger off.”
I adjusted my grip and finished cutting the carrots. “So do other players make
everything in the game?”
“Except for stuff that’s looted off of corpses, yeah. Someone made my armor and
my house. My speedbike too.”
4
“That’s really cool, so there’s a whole economy, huh?” I added the carrots to the
growing salad and went into the fridge for the tomatoes. “So it’s more than just a bunch
of people killing shit together then? You actually need to rely on other people for stuff, I
guess?” It seemed this video game had some lifelike sociological aspects to it.
Mike gave a small nod. “You know, when you put the tomatoes in the fridge it
kills their flavor,” he informed me, matter-of-factly. “Next time leave them out. They’ll
be more delicious.”
“Are you a chef in Galaxies, too,” I joked, halving the cherry tomatoes and
tossing them into the salad.
“No, but I could be! It’s one of the professions.” Mike smiled and left the room.
Shaking the carton of raisins over the salad bowl, I pondered. What are the
chances the soc department is going to let me do my thesis on a video game? But it does
seem to be its own little society, complete with a player economy and everything… And if
I can convince them it’s a legitimate study, I can do field work and play video games at
the same time!
That settled it. I yelled back to Mike, who was sitting at his computer again, “I
think I’m gonna do my thesis on Galaxies. I bet there’s enough there for a research
project.” I crumbled some goat cheese over the top of the salad, and sat down to eat my
dinner.
5
A Note about my Audiences
I have essentially written my thesis for two audiences. First, my sociology
professors are brilliant sociologists, but don’t know much when it comes to computers,
let alone MMOGs. Second, the Star Wars Galaxies community includes expert players
who are many thousands of times more knowledgeable of the game than me, but who
might not know anything about sociology. Because these two audiences are so different,
I found it difficult to satisfy both. I have favored my professors for obvious reasons, and
as a results, some passages have oversimplified descriptions of technology, as well as
lofty academic descriptions.
I so hope that I have fairly represented the Star Wars Galaxies community, and
painted a picture that players will recognize and agree with. If I have done a good job of
explaining what I experienced, and have successfully balanced my writing for both
audiences, my professors will walk away with an understanding of MMOGs, and players
will walk away saying, “Well duh, I knew that already.” Sociology is—it seems to me—
common sense, after all…
6
1
PRE-GAMEPLAY SOCIALIZATION:
Creating an Avatar and Becoming the Character
Star Wars Galaxies (frequently referred to simply as “Galaxies” or abbreviated as
“SWG”) is part of a genre of computer games called massively multiplayer online games
(MMOG) that allow players to interact with one another in real time, using graphical
representations, in order to perform tasks in a communal space. While cooperative
gameplay is an important aspect of all MMOGs, Star Wars Galaxies is special because
elements of the game design promote the creation of organic solidarity in the Galaxies
community. Over the course of three phases, the socialization process integrates players
into the society and encourages them to join groups called guilds, in which players are
bonded to one another by organic solidarity.
The first phase is pre-game socialization, in which players create an avatar—a
graphical, in-game representation of players—and immediately afterwards, complete the
game tutorial. Both avatar creation and the tutorial take place before players enter the
game and interact with other players, so these are part of the pre-game socialization
process. These processes teach players the basics of the division of labor, role
prescriptions, and game mechanics, as well as introduce players to the Galactic Civil War
between the Rebel and Imperial forces.
The mechanisms and structures that socialize new players during this phase are
entirely pre-programmed, and affect players on the macro level. That is, they are
programmed by the game developers into the game itself, as opposed to social norms or
7
expectations, which players establish on their own. While players act as socialization
agents in all other phases of socialization, they are absent in pre-gameplay socialization.
In addition, every player goes through essentially the same process. As a result, all
players are socialized under similar circumstances, by the same institutions.
The first step of pre-gameplay socialization is the creation of an avatar, and the
player’s association with that character. In this phase, players extend their identities into
the online community in Galaxies through their avatar, and in the process, learn about the
division of labor and role prescriptions in SWG. To understand this process better, let’s
first look at a brief history of identity online.
When the internet was still in its infancy, one of its praises was its ability to
selectively represent a person’s identity online. This allowed people, the belief goes, to
be judged based on their ideas, rather than their race, gender, or age (Kahn). Judith S.
Donath writes that “Identity cues are sparse in the virtual world, but not non-existent”
(Smith 30). “The inhabitants of this impalpable space are also diffuse, free from the
body’s unifying anchor. One can have, some claim, as many electronic personae as one
has time and energy to create” (29). In online games of the time, called multi-user
dungeons (MUDs), players did just this. They created “electronic personae.” MUDs
were little more than chat rooms with text descriptions of “rooms” and “items” with
which players could interact simultaneously. In such environments, players’ identities
were limited to text descriptions of themselves, and sometimes markers for gender (Smith
108). In a text-based online world, information about a players’ fictional identity—their
avatars—was just as limited by the available technology as information about their real
identity.
8
In modern internet communities, users’ real identities are more visible.
Thefacebook.com, livejournal.com, and many message boards allow users to post
pictures of themselves. Even in communities that don’t allow users to post pictures, most
of today’s users are savvy enough to know what kinds of people will be posting on the
Radiohead message board, and in what ways they are different from those posting on a
Miata owners message board, or chatting in a SoulSeek music sharing room. Whether
they intend to or not, users broadcast more of their identities now than they were
previously able to.
In turn, today’s massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs)—yesterday’s
MUDs, all grown up—accommodate a multitude of ways for players to create more
complicated fictional identities than were ever possible. No longer are players limited to
text profiles and mere markers for gender. With today’s MMOGs, players create detailed
graphical representations of themselves. Any time a player buys something, kills
something (or someone), waves or smiles to someone, or even just stands in line waiting
for service, a three dimensional avatar is what others perceive that player to be. This
graphical representation forms the basis of a player’s identity, and the text profile is now
optional. The gender marker is the avatar itself.
An avatar represents more than just its player, though, since the game provides a
whole realm of new environments for the player to explore and conquer. In this realm,
the avatar becomes an organic extension of the player into the world of the game. My
avatar was more than just “my Galaxies avatar”— over time, he became his own
character, with his own personality, sense of style, and livelihood.
9
Because avatars are such an extension of a player’s identity, it makes sense for
them to be as unique from one another as possible. Just as it wouldn’t be very interesting
for people to interact with one another in a world where we all had the same face, skin
color, and suit and tie (oh yes, I’m looking forward to my post-graduation job), it
wouldn’t make sense for players to interact with one another in a game in which their
characters looked the same. Thus, avatar creation in Star Wars Galaxies is rather
involved, and is in and of itself a part of the socialization process. By choosing who their
character will be, players take the first step towards becoming functional members of the
Galaxies community.
The Making of Ehmille Durkheim
After installing the game, updating the software (for more than an hour!), and
subscribing to Sony Online Entertainment’s service for using their SWG servers, I was
finally able to start the game. First, I needed to pick which galaxy I was going to inhabit.
SOE refers to the servers that hold all the information about characters, cities, and
creatures as “galaxies.” They are completely separate from one another, so players on
one galaxy don’t affect those on another. The chart on page 103 shows this. Once I
decided to create an avatar in a galaxy, I would not be able to move him to another server
if I didn’t like the one I chose. I decided to go with the Bria galaxy because the game
indicated its population was “moderate” as opposed to “light,” like almost all the others.
10
I assumed this indicated how many players were on the server, and figured I should
choose one with more players since I was studying player interaction, after all.
Next, I had to decide which race and gender my avatar was going to be. Humans,
Wookies, Mon Calamari (who actually look more like grouper fish than squid) and
Trandoshans are a few of the eight species from which I could pick. I clicked on each of
the species, reading the information about them, while a representation of my avatar as
that species stood on the screen, breathing and shifting his weight from leg to leg. Each
species has different attributes that make them ideal for different types of professions.
Mon Calamari, for example, “are the most intelligent of all the species” (Adventure
Manual 17), so they make good artisans, since artisans use their mental abilities more
than others to craft items. I was most interested in picking a profession that would allow
me to go out and shoot things. Big things. With spikes. Wookies are big and strong, but
they look too much like dogs for my taste, so I settled on a reptilian-looking Trandoshan,
who the Star Wars Galaxies Adventure Manual advised was “strong and resilient, but
slightly clumsy and not among the brightest characters in the game” (17).
Players also choose the gender of their character in this phase of avatar creation.
There are, to my disappointment, only two choices for each species (male or female), and
the choice has no effect on the avatar’s attributes. While gender has no programmed
effect on the avatar, there are social consequences. Entertainers, for example, dance
provocatively for players in order to heal their mind damage and battle fatigue (this has
always evoked in me an image of “comfort women” that I have never truly been able to
escape while frequenting cantinas). A male character will heal damage and fatigue just
as quickly as a female, but players will probably be more likely to sit and watch the
11
female characters dance for them than the male characters, so in this case, having a
female avatar would be advantageous. I had no plans for entertaining guests in Galaxies,
so whether or not my Trandoshan had more pronounced… ridges… it would make no
difference in combat. I decided to make my avatar male to eliminate confusion and the
“gender bending” issue, allowing me to concentrate more on the social component of the
game than that of identity,1 and clicked “next.”
In the following two menus, I was able to customize every aspect of my avatar’s
physical appearance (aside from his clothing, which I would need to buy in the game). I
adjusted my avatar’s height and weight, and changed his muscle build. While it is
possible to make an avatar that is short and fat, with a big nose, and a weak jaw, such a
character will not likely command much respect from other players in the game. I made
my character tall, trim, and well built, and gave him dark green skin (since he is a reptile,
after all). As the camera zoomed into his face, and my Trandoshan blinked and smiled at
me, I adjusted the shape and color of his eyes, and other facial characteristics. For a final
touch, I was given several different ridge patterns to choose from, including a mohawk
that looked quite intimidating as a lone scalp, floating to the side of my avatar, but rather
silly sitting atop his head.
1
For a more psychological analysis of MMORPGs, check out Nick Yee’s wonderful site, The Daedalus
Project (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/). He has numerous articles focusing on issues of identity and
gender bending with avatars that can be accessed quickly from the archive section of the site, The Daedalus
Gateway (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_intro.html).
12
Next, I chose a starting profession for my avatar. Players have six basic
professions to chose from at first: artisans, who create items; brawlers, who are melee
fighters; entertainers, who heal battle wounds and mind damage; marksmen, who are
ranged weapons experts; and medics, who heal players and provide “buffs” that
temporarily increase players’ pool points. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be, but talked it
over with my roommate, who had started playing Galaxies long before I did. I wanted to
engage in frequent combat, so after discussing it with my roommate and reading the
descriptions with him, I chose marksman for Ehmille. I looked through the extra
information about professions in the Star Wars Galaxies Adventure Manual (the nearly
200 page instruction manual that comes with the game), and figured I would eventually
become a carbineer—a ranged combat profession that has special attacks to damage
specific parts of enemies. My roommate thought this sounded like fun, especially since I
13
would be certified to use some pretty neat weapons, and he added that I would probably
do well to pick up some scouting skills as well.
I was initially concerned that receiving advice such as this would invalidate my
fieldwork, making my experience with the socialization process abnormal. 41% of
survey respondents, however, indicated that they started playing the game because a
friend recommended it to them. Of those respondents, more than 65% said they see that
friend in the game about half the time they play or more. More than 38% of those who
started playing because a friend recommended it indicated that they see their friend in the
game almost every time, or every time they play. This means that a significant number of
players not only began playing because a friend recommended it, but that they have
regular contact with that friend in the game. Part of that contact was undoubtedly asking
for and receiving advice, so my fieldwork was not invalidated by receiving help from my
roommate.
The final step in creating my avatar was naming him. Characters can have first
and last names, but only the first names are required, and need to be unique. In a sort of
reverse of real life, characters are identified primarily by their first names. When doing a
search, inputting player information in the friends list, or typing commands, only the first
name is necessary (for example, the command “/tell jonny” sends Jonny a private
message). First names are player tags, similar to screen names, that uniquely identify a
character. Last names are optional, and don’t need to be unique. There can be fifty
characters with the last name Binjar, but only one character with the first name Mullit.
As it can with any of the physical characteristics, the game can generate random names,
but I chose my own: Ehmille Durkheim. I clicked next, and finished creating my avatar.
14
In about ten minutes, I took the first step in my integration into the community of Star
Wars Galaxies.
In his essay, Socialization through the Life Cycle, Orville Brim writes that
socialization teaches individuals what behaviors are expected of them, and that these
behaviors are attached to positions or statuses in society. These attachments are called
“role prescriptions,” and are “efforts on the part of society’s members to regulate the
behavior of other members so that certain consequences will follow. […] The
prescriptions are for the behavior believed by the society to be the instrumental means to
the achievement of some desired result, that is, some specified function of the social
system” (4).
In Galaxies, game developers—not society—prescribe roles to certain professions
so that characters who have mastered those professions perform specific functions in
order to achieve a goal (for example, a medic heals; an artisan crafts; a marksman
engages in ranged combat; etc.). This basic information about role prescriptions is
available during avatar creation in the profession descriptions of the profession selection
page. Players come to understand that they can only pick one profession (though they
can master up to three once they start playing), and provide for themselves only the skills
associated with that profession. They will need to find other players to provide other
essential skills for them. The act of creating an avatar begins to socialize players by
teaching them their prescribed role, and those of other professions. Before killing my
first vynock and collecting its leathery hide, I started to learn the basics of the division of
labor—who is prescribed what role.
15
To get a better understanding of role prescriptions and the functional
interdependence created by the division of labor, let’s look at an example using the roles
prescribed to two professions, the marksman and the artisan.
According to the Adventure Manual, “the artisan is the crafting profession in Star
Wars Galaxies. […] Artisans are especially important in Star Wars Galaxies because
these characters create nearly all the equipment in the game. However,” the Adventure
Manual continues, “they are not designed for direct combat confrontations” (21). While
an artisan character performs the critical function of creating weapons, buildings, armor,
and other items, such a character cannot successfully engage in combat.
A marksman, on the other hand, “is competent with all manner of ranged weapons,
[and] gains special abilities and access to a wider variety of weapons as he or she
advances” (Adventure Manual 26). Marksmen have the ability to learn different ranged
weapons, like pistols, carbines, and rifles, and use these skills to serve the specific
purpose of ranged combat in the battlefield. However, a marksman has no crafting
abilities. A skilled artisan alone on the battlefield is hardly a match for even moderate
threats, but with a marksman at his side, he has a rifleman, a pistoleer, or a carbineer to
protect him. At the same time, the marksman can’t make his own weapons or armor, but
an artisan can supply these for him.
Add a medic to this example, and it more accurately represents functional
interdependence in the game. A medic is “vital to groups involved in combat,” and “truly
shine[s] when patching up wounded allies” (Adventure Manual 28). When fighting an
enemy stronger than oneself, a medic is necessary to heal players’ damage as they fight.
16
Without this, players engaged in combat will be incapacitated, and if they’re unlucky,
they’ll be killed (though not permanently).
Although this example is a simple one, it represents functional interdependence
quite well. According to survey data, respondents said the three most essential skills to
their avatars that they did not themselves possess are healing and buffing, crafting, and
combat skills (both melee and ranged). The three professions respondents associated
with these skills are medic, artisan, and combat professions (such as marksman). The
simple addition of a medic to the example group provides the most essential skill—
healing—and demonstrates a kind of minimal functional need in the game.
Learning the Basics
After creating my character, I begin the second step of pre-gameplay
socialization—the game tutorial. In any game, a tutorial begins to transform the “raw
material” of inexperienced players into “good working members” of the game (Brim 5).
This is true of the Galaxies tutorial, which teaches a basic understanding of game
mechanics, such as movement, conversing, and combat. What is interesting about the
Galaxies tutorial is that at the same time it teaches players this functional knowledge, it
also transfers social knowledge by adding a role playing element to the tutorial. Players
not only learn how the game works, but how the Galactic Civil War impacts them.
While the Galaxies program (called the client) loads the tutorial—this usually
takes a minute or two—a brief text introduction to the game unfolded the first bit of plot:
17
Ehmille was a ticketed passenger on a freighter ship that was suspected of harboring
criminals, and was boarded by the imperial army. The tutorial finished loading, and I
started the game in a room containing imperial troops and commanders, as well as other
passengers from the ship. I wasn’t the only human player on the ship, so although I was
playing the game, I wasn’t yet affecting and experiencing the Bria galaxy that I had
joined. The tutorial walked me through the space I inhabited, asking me to move around
and converse with characters around me. By clicking on an imperial officer and selecting
the “converse” option from the menu, I learned that my affects and ship were destroyed
in a struggle with some “dissidents” on board, and I received compensation for this—a
small share of credits.
The tutorial then asked me to walk through a hallway to a banking room—
pointing out the map and radar as I went—where ATM-like computer terminals allowed
me to move money from my purse to my bank, and back. Some other non-player
characters (NPCs) stood to the side of the room, discussing current events in the Star
Wars universe: the emperor had recently disbanded the senate, and was consolidating
power. The addition of politics in the role playing element of the tutorial gives players
their first opportunity to make a moral choice early on in Galaxies. Confronted with this
news about the emperor and the undeniable power of the troops present in the tutorial,
would I agree that the emperor should have more power, or would I sympathize with the
rebels? This moral aspect of socialization is essential to Durkheim’s definition of
solidarity (Ryan). Though the tutorial did not encourage me to adopt one set of morals
over another, I would make that choice later on.
18
In the next room, I learned how cloning works—if Ehmille is incapacitated three
times within ten minutes, or if a player or character “death blows” him, he is killed and
awakens in a cloning facility. I could designate a preferred cloning facility in a specific
city of the planet, when I got to it, or I could choose to clone at the facility nearest my
death.
I then moved to another room in which a bandit was fighting with another NPC,
and the tutorial asked me to intervene. The same way I had focused on the imperial
officer to converse with him, I focused on the bandit and select “attack” from the menu. I
easily defeated him (since this wasn’t supposed to be a major battle for a new avatar), and
learned how to loot his corpse.
Finally, I entered a room with NPC skill trainers who represent the basic
professions. Remember that I chose marksman as my first profession, and now I had the
opportunity to pick another novice profession to learn. A character must invest skill
points in a new skill in order to learn it, but characters have a limited learning capacity.
Players can only master three professions for each avatar, and learn a few additional
skills from other professions. The first skill in each profession tree costs 15 skill points—
the largest investment, since it is not only the first move down the path to mastering a
profession, but it also opens up single skills from profession trees that a player might not
want to master. For example, I used 15 skill points for Ehmille to learn novice scout,
since I wanted to eventually master scouting. Later on in my playing experience, I
decided to learn novice medic as well, in order to pick up some skills in the medic
profession tree. With these skills, I would be able to heal some of my own minor damage
and wounds. Since I was going to master carbineer—an elite profession that uses more
19
skill points and requires more experience than basic professions—I would not be able to
master three professions, and could not master medic.
The 250 skill point limit imposed on each player is one of the macro level
structures in place in the game that promotes organic solidarity. It is an intentionally
developed social-structural impediment designed to prevent players from acquiring all the
essential skills. By limiting the abilities of characters in this direct method, game
developers force players to specialize their avatars and therefore rely on one another for
skills that their own avatars don’t have the capacity to earn.
After learning novice scout, I reached the end of the tutorial. I was transported
down to the surface of the planet, to a newbie (new players) city, where I was finally
logged onto the server and could truly begin to interact with the community of the Bria
galaxy.
My experience with the tutorial was identical to other players who created and
started playing a marksman character around the fall of 2004. However, this experience
is nor universal. First, each of the starting novice professions has a different tutorial, and
second, since SWG is continuously updated, many aspects of the game have changed
over time, including the tutorial. According to one player, who began playing when
Galaxies was first released, the original tutorial was nothing more than a large room with
a ticket terminal selling shuttle tickets to “noob city.” After starting another character to
take pictures to include in this thesis, I noticed the tutorial and character creation process
had changed again. However, these changes are not so significant, nor do they affect so
many players, as to invalidate my field work.
20
Having completed the pre-gameplay socialization phases, learning about the
division of labor, role prescriptions, game mechanics, and current political events in the
Galactic Civil War, I was ready to start playing for real—with other human players. I
was quite eager to begin learning new skills, and excited to test out my blaster.
21
2
WHY I NAMED MY AVATAR EHMILLE DURKHEIM
In MMOGs, players are typically required to choose a character type or
profession. In most games, players choose to play as one or two classes (“professions” in
Galaxies) out of about six available types. In Galaxies, however, players have the
capacity to master up to three professions, out of 41 total available professions. The most
important skills needed for the success of the Galaxies community are divided amongst
these professions, so that no one profession contains all the essential skills. As a result,
players cannot learn and use all the skills for their avatars that they need to play the game.
This relatively complicated division of labor forces players to depend on one another to
complete even simple tasks, creating functional interdependence in a manner similar to
Durkheim’s model of organic solidarity.
In addition, the Star Wars Galaxies player community is a subculture within itself.
The demographics of Star Wars Galaxies players are fairly similar to one another. Also,
their interests in the game tend to originate from three perspectives: interest in MMOGs
or video games in general, interest in table-top role playing games, and interest in the Star
Wars universe. There is, of course, an overlap in these areas, so quite a few players are
interested in the game from all perspectives. Because of this, players share a preexisting
set of common values and norms even before they enter the game and go down the road
of the socialization process. This, combined with the functional interdependence with
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which the game is designed, creates communities of players with organic solidarity
(Parsons).
The socialization process does three essential things: first, it embeds in players an
understanding of organic solidarity, to the extent that it requires players to cooperate and
establish norms of reciprocity; second, it encourages players to master only two or three
professions for each avatar so that they may offer valuable, high-level skills to others;
and third, it encourages players to join and commit to groups called guilds—communities
of anywhere between only a few to over 400 players with norms of mutual reciprocity—
or to cities, which are frequently the homes of guilds and individual players. The
socialization mechanisms in the game create communities in Star Wars Galaxies in which
players are bound to one another by organic solidarity.
Fieldwork, survey, and interview data clearly indicate this. Successful integration
and commitment to guilds are directly related. Successful integration is measured
primarily by membership and activity in a guild or city that demonstrates organic
solidarity. This membership reflects another measure of successful integration— an
understanding of the division of labor. Additional measures of successful integration
include the number of professions a player has mastered. Commitment is measured by
the hours a player spends in the game each week, and the number of helping interactions
a player has with friends and strangers in which the player provides a skill distinctive to
his or her character.
Simply stated, players who reflect successful integration by belonging to a guild
or city are more likely to demonstrate higher levels of commitment to the Star Wars
Galaxies community, and especially to players within their own guild or city.
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Origin of Theses
The literature upon which my research is based is essentially divided into four
groups: first, research about socialization and encyclopedia references; second, classic
research about solidarity; third, modern research of solidarity specifically in internet
communities and the effects of the internet in general on social relations and identity; and
fourth, primary source player guides and narratives, as well as non-sociological academic
writing specifically about MMOGs. In the first group, Brim discusses adult socialization.
Smelser and Ritzer (2005) compile information about sociological phenomena, theories,
and theorists in their encyclopedias.
In the second group of literature, the major sociological research on social
solidarity was written by Durkheim, who discussed two models of solidarity, as created
by the organization of labor functions within society ([1933] 1984). He writes that
organic solidarity arose from the increasing “moral or dynamic density” of society, and
the division of labor that density produced ([1933] 1984: 201). In his masterwork,
Suicide, Durkheim broadens his view, writing that solidarity is also created by shared
values and beliefs ([1951] 1979: 159). Durkheim’s work on solidarity formed the base
upon which all future sociological studies of it were founded.
In the third group, initial literature about the internet focused on its effects upon
“real life” social solidarity and identity—that is, society outside the internet (Brown, Ho,
Kiesler 1984 & 1986, Turkle, Wellman 2002). The focus of later research shifted from
concerns about the internet’s effects upon existing social structures, to solidarity and
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identity on the internet itself. Touza and Donath study identity issues. Wellman (2001)
studies reciprocity and attachment on early electronic bulletin boards (usually called
forums or message boards today). Reid focuses on power hierarchies and social control
in online communities called multiple user dungeons or dimensions (MUDs, MUSHs,
and MOOs). Kollock looks at “gift giving” and cooperation in similar communities.
These studies are essential first steps to understanding not just the effects of the
internet on real life society, but solidarity on the internet itself. However, due to the
rapidly changing nature of the technology, and the huge increase in internet users in the
1990s, , studies of MUDs and bulletin boards are already antiquated. In addition, these
studies focused on loose-knit communities without embedded social institutions—any
norms and practices in the community arose gradually from mutual user participation,
rather than being written or programmed at the outset of such communities (Reid,
Wellman 2001, Kollock). Finally, while some MUDs placed material demands on
players, such as a need for virtual shelter, food, and work (Reid), none of these
communities contained a division of labor nearly as complex as exists in real life, or in
Star Wars Galaxies.
As a result, these studies discuss the effects of shared beliefs and values on
creating solidarity, but they do not take into account the effects of the division of labor on
creating organic solidarity in online communities. Because of this, I will be able to study
solidarity as a function of the division of labor in this virtual community, and make
comparisons to real-life models. My research will be the first to demonstrate the effects
of division of labor on solidarity in any online community, and specifically in an MMOG.
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The division of labor in Galaxies is special since it was carefully and deliberately
created—literally programmed—over months, before the game was released, and without
input from members of the society. So, in contrast to the communities studied in the
above literature, labor functions, ritual practices, norms, reciprocity, and socialization
were, for the most part, institutionalized before players became a part of the community.
Players can change these institutions through social interaction in the game, and by
demanding the developers update the game, but in general, players have less control over
these institutions than members of early internet communities had of theirs. This more
closely reflects real-life societies.
In the fourth group, several websites dedicated to SWG and specific guilds have
hundreds of pages of information available on specifics of gameplay aspects of Galaxies,
all written by fellow players. These pages contain player walkthroughs, (guides for
mastering professions quickly), information about creatures and non-player characters
(NPCs) in the game, maps and quest information and tips (Stratics, Allakhazam, Markee
Dragon). This information is especially useful for providing specific information about
the game that I never had, or no longer have access to because I had advanced in the
game. In addition, official SWG sources, such as Star Wars Galaxies Newsletters, and
message board posts from official Sony forums (The Station), provide more primary
source information.
Finally, one website in particular deserves special notice. On his website, The
Daedalus Project (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/), Nick Yee has compiled an
immense database of psychological research about many aspects of MMOGs, based on
player narratives and surveys. While most academic writing about the internet and online
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communities is “old news” by the time it is actually published, The Daedalus Project has
been an invaluable source of up-to-date academic writing on MMOGs. Yee’s website is
so well organized, and his research so accessible for most readers that I have modeled the
presentation of my survey data on his articles.
My focus on sociological aspects of MMOGs compliments Yee’s impressive
work from the psychological perspective, and will provide the sociological community
with the first theory of player integration into an MMOG. While Brim studies
socialization of adults, there exists no research about institutionalized socialization
processes in virtual communities such as Galaxies. My research will hopefully be a base
from which other sociologists can build theories that are more advanced.
In addition to theoretical import, this study provides empirical value as well. My
research documents my own socialization experience in the game—experiences common
to all players—as well as those unique to each player. As part of my description of the
socialization process, I provide the first sociological descriptions of socialization
institutions, player interactions, group dynamics, and guild dynamics in MMOGs. I have
also conducted interviews with players who belong to clans and cities, as well as with
players who play alone, giving MMOG players a voice in sociological research that has
thus far been rather quiet.
This research is not only meaningful to sociologists, but also to members of the
Star Wars Galaxies community. My research provides players with a new perspective of
their game and their society, which they may not have seen before. In this way, it will
help to “prick the bubble of pretense,” as Peter Berger wrote in Invitation to Society.
Perhaps with this deeper understanding of their culture, players will be better equipped to
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make positive changes, or to demand them of game developers. At the very least, it will
help players gain an understanding of the importance of their characters’ professions, and
their relationships to the greater society.
This research is a natural extension of my interest in computers, video games, and
the revolutionary power of the internet. I have worked with computers since I was old
enough to use a keyboard, and have always spoken about the vast possibilities of the
internet. It makes sense that as I have grown up, I have honed my already sociological
perception of the world through studying and learning, and turned my gaze upon
computers and the internet. I am excited about the existence of sociological phenomena
in a video game, especially because the game so closely models real life in certain ways.
The fact that theories based on real life societies can accurately describe an MMOG is
evidence that it is possible to simulate social phenomena accurately using computer
models—a task that I have set for myself in my life’s research.
Theory
Before realizing my theories I conducted two months of initial participant
observation in early fall 2004, during which time I created my avatar, and began to
master his professions. I completed the pre-gameplay phase, and started the solo
gameplay phase of the socialization process. In addition, I observed the group gameplay
phase from a distance—I was not a member of any guilds or cities. Through fieldwork,
research, and informal, exploratory interviews, I came to understand the division of labor
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in Galaxies, the significance of group gameplay and shared values and beliefs between
players, and the socialization process. I arrived at my theories and concepts from this
inductive research.
After clarifying my theories in my research proposal, and taking a break from the
game during finals week in the winter of 2004, I reentered the game with a renewed
theoretical perspective. In the following months of fieldwork, I tested three original
theories in my research, in addition to testing the compatibility of Durkheim’s organic
solidarity models within Galaxies. The first theory discusses how the socialization
process encourages players to commit time to the game, specialize their avatars, and join
guilds with organic solidarity. While testing this theory, I decided to include the process
of avatar creation in my theorization of socialization, since this is when players are first
introduced to the division of labor and role prescriptions. The second theory discusses
how shared values and beliefs help to create group solidarity. The third theory discusses
the ways in which the division of labor creates solidarity, and encourages players to
commit to guilds and cities. Finally, I examine how well Durkheim’s theory of organic
solidarity explains solidarity in Galaxies.
First, the socialization process occurs in three distinct phases: 1) pre-gameplay
avatar creation, 2) solo gameplay, and 3) group gameplay. While players may exhibit
gameplay patterns from both the second and third phases at the same time, there are
distinctions between the phases. In the pre-gameplay phase, players create their avatars
and complete a tutorial. Players extend their real life identity into the character they
create, and prepare to enter the game. When they create their avatar, players choose its
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species, gender, attributes, and most importantly, profession. Reading about professions
and choosing one introduces players to the division of labor, and teaches players about
role prescriptions (Brim). In the tutorial, players learn the mechanics of gameplay and
current events in the Galactic Civil War between Imperial and Rebel forces. In this phase,
players do not interact with one another, and are not yet logged onto the server, so they
don’t yet affect their galaxies. The tutorial places the player in an environment similar to
those in the game, but for the lack of human players.
The solo gameplay phase marks players first interactions with other human player
in the game. In this phase, players spend a majority of their time playing alone. They
familiarize themselves with various aspects of the game, beginning with basics such as
navigating across and among the planets, and communicating and interacting with other
players and NPCs. Communication with other players is a critical aspect of this phase
since experienced players have mountains of information to which new players (newbies
or noobs) need access.
In the solo gameplay phase, players learn firsthand that they must rely on other
players for skills that they do not possess. Players must beg, barter, or buy services and
goods from other players in order to complete missions and learn skills. In addition,
while players gain experience by hunting and completing missions, they do not actually
reap the benefits of this experience until they ask another player or NPC to teach them a
particular skill. While I was playing, players needed a certain number of apprenticeship
points, gained only by teaching skills to new players, to master a profession. This
encouraged experienced players to help newbies, and led to a number of friendships I
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formed. Since then, this system has been eliminated to allow players to master
professions more quickly. New players can still learn skills from NPCs.
Therefore, in the first phase, newbies slowly acquire skills, and in the process,
players learn that the division of labor creates mutual functional interdependence, which
leads to the establishment of norms of mutual reciprocity—players exchange goods and
services based on their avatars’ needs. As in real life, socialization in galaxies teaches
players the “various behaviors and perspectives associated with particular role identities
and [encourages] the development of relational commitments” (Ryan). Socialization
teaches players what is expected of them in Galaxies, and what they can expect in return
from other players. Players learn which professions possess which skills, and who they
will need to go to in order to acquire goods or services.
Players also usually choose to associate with a faction in this phase of gameplay.
By becoming either a rebel or an imperial, players indicate not only a moral inclination,
but also a commitment to a side of the Galactic Civil War. Many guilds and cities are
faction-specific. That is, they are open only to players who have demonstrated their
allegiance to a faction. Membership in a faction is therefore sometimes a required
credential for guilds and cities.
In addition, players learn how much time they will need to commit to Galaxies to
be a productive member of the community. Without spending the hours and weeks
necessary to learn all the aspects of the game, make friends, and master their professions,
players will not earn the credentials they need to enter the group gameplay phase.
Making a commitment to the game and one’s avatar is a necessary step to joining a guild.
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While the solo gameplay phase is marked by playing alone for the most part,
players may form temporary groups in order to complete missions too difficult for
individual players to handle on their own. Players can find others who are at about the
same level, and thus will be interested in missions and quests of the same difficulty.
Through combined efforts, players will acquire experience more quickly than if they
acted alone. Through such ad hoc group gameplay, players train for future membership
in a guild or city. Players learn advantages of group gameplay, their avatars’ roles in
these groups, and the commitment required for such groups.
Towards the end of the solo gameplay phase, players master their two or perhaps
three professions. At this point, they will have a clear understanding of their roles within
the society, and can use their newly acquired mastery to provide skills and goods for a
more stable, regularly meeting group called a guild. In addition to faction membership
that some guilds require, all guilds implicitly require players to demonstrate other
credentials before they will be accepted into the group. These credentials are skills a
player attains by mastering professions. Once players have mastered their professions,
they have these credentials and can join a guild, entering the group gameplay phase of
socialization.
In the group gameplay phase of socialization, a player makes a commitment
guilds to provide their avatars’ specialized skills to others in the group. This can be in
combat, entertainment, or in business. The focus of the socialization shifts from learning
the basics of the game, and one’s role within the society, to learning guild rules and
expectations, and one’s role immediately within the guild. Consequently, the socializing
forces in the second phase shift from primarily programmed social institutions to
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structures and processes created by player communities. In guilds, players learn when
and where to meet for certain kinds of events (hunting, quests, social events, PvP), and
learn what social expectations fellow guild members have of them. Players no longer
play and advance their character solely for personal reasons. Rather, the guild requires
each member to commit their time, and to contribute skills according to the group’s needs.
Players may master additional professions in order to be a more productive member of
the group.
In addition to changing professions, players may decide to specialize their
profession, and master either and elite or hybrid profession. My avatar’s basic profession,
marksman, for example, offers three elite professions that provide high-level mastery of
specific weapons types. I decided to master the carbineer profession, which gives my
avatar advanced medium-range firearms skills. In addition, the five hybrid professions
available to the marksman combine medic skills, scouting skills, and brawler skills to
provide a mixture of advanced skills. These higher levels of mastery give players
specialized skills that guilds require to tackle more difficult combat tasks. However, they
also require much more experience, and as such, players can more easily earn them while
playing in guilds, where more experience is awarded for difficult missions. Thus, players
do not stop learning skills and professions once they join guilds. Instead, they adapt their
avatars to the needs of the community, and seek to master more ambitious professions for
the sake of becoming more powerful and providing more advanced skills to the guild.
There exists an even higher level of mastery—Jedi—with its own phase of
socialization. This phase is incongruent with other socialization phases because it
requires players to commit a tremendous amount of time to playing alone. This is anomic
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because it distracts players from their guild commitments, causing problems for some
guilds. Players who try to become Jedi all but abandon the bonds their characters have
made with guilds while they grind the profession. For these reasons, I did not focus
much research on this phase, limiting it to a discussion of anomy in Galaxies.
Second, Durkheim argues that common values and norms are the “basis for
solidarity in all kinds of groups and societies” (Parsons). This is true for online
communities as well. Star Wars Galaxies players are of a certain type of individual—
relatively young, computer savvy, and mostly Star Wars fans—and as a result, they share
a set of common values and beliefs that preexist gameplay in Galaxies. Furthermore,
Wellman and Gulia write that in online communities, people base feelings of closeness
on shared interests rather than social characteristics, and argue that “homogeneous
interests of virtual community participants may [foster] relatively high levels of
empathetic understanding and mutual support” (186). Players’ interest in Galaxies tends
to be enough to create fellow feeling in the game. These are important causes of
solidarity, but are by no means the only ones, nor the most important ones.
Third, the division of labor in Galaxies is comparable to Durkheim’s model of
organic solidarity. It is the mutual functional interdependence created by the division of
labor that is principally responsible for creating solidarity in the virtual communities of
guilds and cities. Across all measurements of commitment, survey data clearly shows
that players who are members of guilds are more committed to Galaxies, and specifically,
committed to their guilds. Graphs of all the following statistics are available on page 103.
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Overall, guild members spend more time than non-guild members playing
Galaxies each week. The following statistics are taken from 167 respondents who belong
to a guild, and 67 respondents who do not. 50% of respondents who belong to a guild
indicated that they play Galaxies for more than sixteen hours a week, compared to only
34% of respondents who do not belong to a guild. In addition, on the other end of the
time spectrum, a lower percentage of guild members indicated they play eight hours a
week or less. Only 14% of respondents who belong to a guild indicated this lower level
of commitment, compared to 31% of respondents who did not. Therefore, measuring
commitment by time, respondents who belong to a guild demonstrate greater
commitment.
In addition, guild members are more likely than non-guild members to provide
skills to strangers, but the difference is relatively small. 59% of respondents who belong
to a guild indicated they provide skills to strangers about half the time they play or more,
compared to 55% of respondents who don’t belong to a guild. This small difference is
explained by the fact that guild members play with friends and guild members more often
than with strangers, and so don’t have as many opportunities to provide skills to strangers.
Providing skills to players respondents have met before is an indicator of how
frequently respondents contribute the essential skills of their avatars to their guilds, a
critical component of commitment to guilds. For respondents who are not members of
guilds, it measures how frequently these players offer skills to others from ad hoc groups,
their friends list, or simply acquaintances in the game. An impressive 81% of
respondents who belong to a guild indicated they provide skills to players they have met
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before about half the time they play or more, compared to 72% of respondents who don’t
belong to a guild.
Each of these figures increases when looking at respondents who are citizens of a
player city in addition to guild members, indicating that membership in both types of
groups increases commitment levels more than just guilds alone. Out of 142 respondents
in this category, 51% in this category play for more than sixteen hours a week. 61% of
respondents indicated they provide skills to strangers about half the time they play or
more, and finally, 83% indicated they provide skills to players they have met before
about half the time they play or more.
This can be explained by a structuralist perspective of organic solidarity. Players
share a common interest to master professions and advance their characters. Through
repeated group interactions based on this common interest, players develop commitments
to one another and groups that strengthen compliance to the need for collective action
(Hechter).
A rationalist would criticize this argument, contending that players are rational
egoists, and will “free ride” where they can, reducing solidarity to the most minimal form
necessary (Hechter). It is certainly true that where players can secure their material needs
without depending on others, they tend to do so. Some players acquire goods that
complement their avatars’ skill sets exceedingly well (for example, artisans can acquire
high-level armor and weapons to make up for their lack of combat skills), precluding the
need to continue acquiring goods and services from others. This can weaken organic
solidarity.
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However, players will need to earn a moderate sum of credits to acquire such
goods, and the best way to do this is to sell goods and skills to other players. If these
players don’t directly interact with others to exchange their goods and services, they will
likely use the galactic bazaar, which allows players to buy and sell items from one
another, throughout the galaxy, without direct contact or communication. All items on
the bazaar are created, gathered, or looted by other players, so it facilitates role behavior
by making it easier for players to provide their avatars’ services to strangers.
Another phenomena that threatens to dissolve solidarity is players who use
multiple avatars on one galaxy to support one another. By doing this, a player could have
a medic, an artisan, and a marksman, for example, all providing skills for one another,
rather than for the whole community. However, players cannot create more than one
avatar on a single galaxy without buying more than one account. This means that
although 68% of players have multiple avatars, only the 2% who pay for more than one
account can use their avatars on the same galaxy. The vast majority of players with more
than one avatar play on multiple galaxies, contributing the skills of their multiple avatars
to each galaxy.
In addition to free riding, some players circumvent solidarity-building institutions
by buying items, credits, and even complete avatars in real life. Players sometimes sell
in-game items to others using eBay or some other method, and then arrange to transfer
the item, avatar, or other goods within the game. In one example, a player who had
stopped playing decided to make some real life cash before she quit, and sold the net
worth of her avatar on eBay—ten million credits—for $51 (eBay). Buying in-game items
in real life is universally held in contempt by players. It essentially amounts to a cop out.
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Finally, I will test how compatible Durkheim’s theory of organic solidarity is with
MMOGs. If his model of organic solidarity works explains solidarity in Star Wars
Galaxies well, then his theory is compatible, and holds true for MMOG societies with a
division of labor. However, if his theory of organic solidarity does a poor job of
describing the Galaxies model of solidarity, then the theory is incompatible with
MMOGs, and possibly with virtual communities in general, in which case another theory
must explain the existence of solidarity within these communities.
Conceptualization
Successful integration, commitment, solidarity (and the division of labor), the
successful character, and the successful group or city are all concepts in my research.
One must realize that they are closely related, and that it is impossible to explain a
successful city properly without also understanding solidarity, and vice versa. Because of
this, it may be easier to see how these concepts relate to one another, than how their
definitions set them apart. In addition to defining the concepts below, the table located
on page 111 provides measurements for each concept, and the survey questions
associated with the measures. The spreadsheet also points out how concepts are related
to one another.
First, let us look at commitment because in addition to being a concept, it plays an
important role in the definitions of a number of other concepts, including integration,
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solidarity and the successful character and group. Commitment is a player’s time spent
playing the game, and a player’s willingness to provide skills and materials for strangers
and friends, according to the abilities of the player’s character. Commitment is measured
primarily by the hours a player spends playing SWG each week. Additionally, it is
measured by the frequency of helping interactions—including those in all forms of group
gameplay—a player has with both strangers and guild members.
Finally, the number of avatars and accounts a player has for Galaxies is an
excellent measure of a player’s commitment at a relatively high level. Although having
multiple avatars on a single server can actually undermine solidarity, as I mentioned
above, the vast majority of respondents do not do this, and instead commit extra time to
other galaxies, playing in different guilds on each galaxy. Respondents with more than
one avatar average more than three avatars per player. This means that, in theory, those
players are contributing their skills to three separate galaxies.
A successfully integrated player is one who understands his avatar’s role within
the Galaxies community. He has mastered two or three professions for his avatar, has
joined a guild or city, and provides skills for guild members and strangers according to
his avatar’s abilities. Implicit in this definition is the player’s understanding of game
mechanics. On a micro level—that of individual players—the concept is measured
primarily by membership in a guild or city. In addition it is measured by commitment (as
defined above), an understanding of role prescriptions (Brim), the number of professions
a player has mastered (and for many, the number of professions a player has given up in
favor of others), friends known in the game, and an understanding of game mechanics.
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On a more macro level—the design of the game—the concept of socialization
itself includes variables such as socializing agents and mechanisms. The process of
avatar creation and completing the tutorial, first week (newbie) activities, and grinding
are similar experiences for all players, so they are a common part of the integration
process for all players.
Solidarity and the division of labor are the degree to which essential skills are
divided amongst the varying professions. It is best studied on the macro level for my
research purposes. Variables include the number of professions, the number of skills in
each profession tree, the limits on the number of professions an avatar can master at once,
and the degree to which professions are interdependent. The first variable does not need
much operationalization, since the professions are already divided discretely into easily
measurable, objective categories. The second variable is defined by the skills available in
a completed (mastered) profession tree. These are also objectively divided into
categories. Interdependency of professions is defined as the need for players to seek the
skills of another character in order to accomplish a task, and is measured by asking
players which skills are essential (see table).
The concept of the successful character is closely related to successful integration.
A successful character is one who masters two or three professions, owns valuable
property (and a significant sum of credits), and is a member of a guild or city. The
concept includes variables such as the value of property owned, number of professions
mastered and intentionally given up, and membership in a guild or city. Property
includes houses, weapons, armor, vehicles, clothing, and cultural artifacts.
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A successful guild or city ideally represents all mastered professions, and at least
represents the essential professions and skills (healing and buffing, crafting, and combat).
A successful guild meets regularly (at least once a month) to engage in collective action
such as hunting, PvP combat, quests, or simply social events such as role-playing or
weddings (more about this later). A successful city also meets at least one a month,
either to engage in actions written above, or to discuss city matters. Variables that
measure the concept include the number of members in a guild or city, the number of
mastered professions represented in the community, the frequency of community
meetings, and the types of community activities.
Methodology
As I have mentioned above, my primary data collection method is participant
observation. This is the most appropriate form of research for the topic because I am
essentially a stranger in a completely new society. Even before I was able to theorize
about the game, I needed to conduct inductive fieldwork research. This has proven to be
the best way to understand the culture from a player’s perspective. My fieldwork has
provided highly valid data because I have been collecting data directly and consistently.
I have been able to clarify any uncertainties I had about my theory or data with
subsequent fieldwork.
My fieldwork was limited to the first of the two gameplay phases of socialization
that I outlined above—solo gameplay. I came very close to entering the second phase, as
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I began to play with ad hoc groups, and began to hone the elite profession skills of the
carbineer, but time restrictions prevented me from completely mastering the profession
and joining a guild or city. In order to collect valid data about the group gameplay phase,
and to demonstrate the reliability of my participant observation, I conducted survey
research and interviews. I also use player narratives from The Daedalus Project to
demonstrate my points.
I conducted surveys electronically using the free PHP Surveyor tool
(http://phpsurveyor.sourceforge.net/index.php), administering it electronically to
respondents via a website that was accessible to the public (http://www.swg.mrap.info).
Because of this, conditions under which players took the survey certainly varied, but
probably not enough to make the data unrepresentative. In addition, because the survey
was publicly accessible, it was possible for an individual to access the survey and fill out
false answers, but it is unlikely that this happened because the URL is obscure. After
reviewing the responses, it did not appear that this had occurred.
The full survey can be seen on page 113. It contained a total of 54 questions, but
many were conditional, so most respondents only answered about 48 questions. Note
that although the printed version of the survey included here has all 54 questions on it,
the electronic version only displayed conditional questions if those conditions were met.
For example, the question, “How many avatars do you have” would only display if the
respondent answered “yes” to the question “Do you have more than one avatar.” Most
respondents completed the survey in about fifteen minutes.
Because I did not have the resources to take a representative sample of the entire
Galaxies player population, I initially planned to use the snowball method to find
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respondents. I obtained the first three responses this way, and after getting nervous about
the low response rate, I posted more than a dozen requests on the official Star Wars
Galaxies forums, asking players to take the survey. Within an hour, I had 27 more
responses, and within 24 hours, I had 226 new responses. Before posting on the Galaxies
forums, I had intended to collect and use only twenty survey responses, but I could not
pass up the opportunity to collect more data. After a little more than a day, with 234
responses, I decided it would be an impossible task to compile any more data than I
already had, and I closed the survey.
The sample population is admittedly biased—players who visit the forums are
likely to be more committed to the game than those who do not, and players who were
interested in my posts and who took the time to answer the survey are even more likely to
be serious players. More than 31% of respondents indicated they play more than twenty
hours a week, the highest value answer available for the question. This was the most
popular answer for the question. That said, there was a statistically significant number of
respondents (19%) who indicated they play eight hours or less each week. In addition,
32% of respondents indicated they had only one avatar, another measurement of a
relatively low level of commitment.
One of the final questions on the survey was, “After reviewing survey responses, I
may find it especially helpful to ask follow up questions by email to clarify responses
(especially regarding clans and cities). May I contact you with a few more questions in
the near future if I find it necessary?” To flesh out survey responses I conducted more
than a dozen email interviews with survey respondents who answered yes to the previous
question. In order to balance the bias of the survey sample, I intentionally interviewed
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more players who indicated they play eight hours a week or less. I also actively sought
out players who have stopped playing (and stopped looking at the Galaxies forums), in
order to understand their perspective of the game, and specifically to understand their
reasons for quitting.
Unfortunately, email interviews do not have the desirable fluidity that wellconducted in-person interviews have. It is not as easy to zero in on a particular concept
or measure in email interviews as it is in person. However, the benefit of email is that the
questions and responses are directly in the email, and can be instantly recalled and
referenced in follow-up emails. Therefore, even though several days or weeks may have
passed between initial interviews and follow-ups, the text from the first interview was in
follow-ups. In this way, I was able to maintain continuity and reliability. Email
interviews also had the added benefit of being typed, saving me from hours of
transcribing taped interviews.
Ethics
I initially paid no mind to questions about ethics in my research. I did not
imagine it would be a problem to include research based on data gathered on people’s
identities in SWG because readers would not be able to associate players’ avatars with a
player’s real life identity. However, I realized that even though players’ real life
identities cannot be discovered, the names of avatars can be identified within the game,
and can present problems within the game itself. One respondent specifically asked me
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not to reveal her age because her friends in the game do not know it, and she was afraid
she might be ostracized because of it. The last thing I would want to do after receiving a
tremendous amount of support and encouragement from players is to create unnecessary
problems for them, so unless otherwise stated, I have altered all avatar names in my
thesis. In addition, in some cases I have altered other information that may be used to
personally identify a player’s avatar (such as guild or city names, galaxy, etc.).
The following is the privacy statement I included on the webpage preceding the
survey:
Your responses will be used for academic sociological research done by a
fellow gamer. Your responses will NOT be shared with ANYONE for
any purposes. Your information is kept strictly confidential, and all
personally identifiable information will be made changed in the final paper.
I will only use your email address to confirm survey responses.
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3
SOLO GAMEPLAY PHASE
One day, about a month after I had started playing Galaxies, I decided to take a
trip into East Boston, to the elementary school where I volunteered the previous year. I
didn’t have any classes on Thursdays, and for a while I had been meaning to stop in and
say hello to students and teachers I missed. I woke up earlier than usual (since I usually
wake up toward the end of the public school day), packed the novel I was currently
reading, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and left my room, forgetting entirely to
bring any change for the T (the Boston subway system). I always forget, and usually
realize it when I’m halfway out the building, but this time I didn’t realize until I was
already standing on the platform waiting for the train.
The fare from the Reservoir station near Boston College is $1.50, and all I had in
my wallet was a dollar bill and a twenty. The token machines don’t accept twenties—I
swear they do this to me because I’m from New York—so I had no way of getting that
fifty cents. I stood, defeated for a moment, with a dejected look on my face, and started
grumbling to myself about how I now needed to walk to the Dunkin Donuts to get change
from a purchase (this happened to me about once a week last year when I was
volunteering, so I knew the drill).
As I started on my way across the platform, an older man who had been watching
stopped me and asked if I needed change. “Yeah,” I told him, “but all I’ve got is a
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twenty. Thanks anyway.” He moved his hand to his pocket, and took two quarters out of
his change purse.
“Here,” he said, motioning me over to take the fifty cents.
“No, really, that’s ok. I can go get change from the store,” I said, and felt like I
was imposing on him.
He shook his head, reached out his hand to give me the change, and said in a wise
tone, “Life is about helping people. The moment you think you’re above help, you’re in
real trouble.” He put the change in my palm, and patted it with his open hand, adding,
“I’m sure you would do the same for someone if you were in my position.” I smiled, and
thanked him as the train arrived at the station. He was right. I would do, and had done
the same for others. The longer I sat on the train thinking about this, the more I realized
this was exactly the lesson I had been learning in Galaxies—the game was about helping
other players, and at that point in my gameplay, I certainly wasn’t above anyone’s help.
September 2004
Galaxies is about Helping Players
After completing the tutorial, I took a transport ship down to the city of Mos
Eisley, on planet Tatooine. Mos Eisley is a noob city, a common location from which
new players start their gaming experience. Looking around my starting location, I saw
several players with the label “helper” above their heads. These were veteran players
who chose to designate themselves as helpers, indicating they were knowledgeable and
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willing to help out noobs. Helpers can be easily located by using the search command in
the game. In a bind, I could pull up the search tool and find any helpers nearby.
In addition to helpers, some players were running macros—small programs that
automatically execute a series of commands with a single keystroke—to give quick
speeches about new cities, offering 10,000 credits and a house to anyone who became
citizens. Others advertised their skill sets, saying they offered money to teach new
players certain skills. Recall that at this time, experienced players needed apprenticeship
points to master their professions, so veteran players would frequently pay noobs to teach
them skills so that they may earn these points.
There were still other players nearby, all with green droids beeping and skwirking
in syncopated rhythm by their sides—noobs. I would be clueless as to what to do next if
not for two helpers: my roommate, and my own helper droid, R2Y3. Just as I was
starting to feel utterly lost, a R2Y3 materialized at my feet, and asked me if I wanted
advice on how to start gaining experience for my professions. I was eager to start
shooting things, but decided to pass up this advice and listen to my roommate instead.
He told me that there were many languages in SWG, and I should learn them all sooner
rather than later, so I walked up to the nearest helper and typed, “Can you teach me
languages?” The speech bubble appeared over my head, and in a moment, he responded,
“Sure, accept my group invite.”
The process of inviting players to a group is the same for everyone, regardless of
avatar type, so it is a ritual with which all players are familiar. To initiate a group, my
helper player clicked on me and held down the mouse button to bring up a context menu
with options such as “attack,” “examine,” and “invite.” After choosing “invite,” I
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received a popup message that asked if I wanted to accept his invitation. I clicked
“accept invitation,” and saw his attributes appear in the top left of the screen, under mine.
Over the next few minutes, he went through each of the language skills in the list of skills
he could teach me, and offered them to me with a few clicks. Since I hadn’t earned any
experience, the only skills he was able to teach me were the languages.
The helper taught me everything he could, and then disbanded the group. I
thanked him, and with some help from my roommate, bowed to him using the command
“/bow.” He reciprocated, bowing in another, seemingly more experienced manner. What
struck me most about this interaction, and the street scene in general was how polite it
and cooperative it all was. Unlike other online games I have played, there were no
veterans running around killing new players (called “ganking” in a new MMOG, World
of Warcraft). Instead, there were helpers offering money to teach me skills! Offering
houses and money to me simply for joining their cities! I expected to be teased and
mocked for being a newbie, but instead I was helped into the game by seasoned players.
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As if to prove the point, a player named Hangon ran into the middle of the crowd
and tipped all the noobs 50,000 credits each. Just like that. He didn’t talk to anyone or
ask for anything in return. It was so quick that I missed it when it first happened—it
wasn’t until some time later that I checked my inventory and saw I had the money. I
checked my chat history and saw the event: “Hangon has tipped you 50,000 credits.”
Such gifts are commonplace in the Galaxies community. In his essay titled “The
Economies of Online Cooperation,” Peter Kollock distinguishes between gift and
commodity economies, and discusses users’ contributions to online communities in these
terms. Whereas benefits in a commodity economy come from improving the “technology
of production,” benefits in a gift economy come from improving the “technology of
social relations” (222). Kollock provides an example of the latter: increasing the range
and diversity of one’s social networks. The economy in Galaxies is oriented more
towards improving social relations than production, so it is a kind of gift economy.
Specifically, Galaxies has what Kollock describes in the same passage as a
“generalized exchange.” In a generalized exchange economy, players don’t expect gifts
to be directly reciprocated, but instead expect such reciprocation from another player.
Hangon didn’t make his tipping conspicuous, and since he didn’t stick around afterwards,
he probably didn’t expect anyone he tipped to reciprocate his gift directly. Instead, he
probably expected to receive comparable help from another player at another time. In
this way, balance throughout the community as a whole is achieved. In an in-game email,
I asked Hangon why he tipped me. When he responded, he told me he had tipped me
because someone helped him out when he was a newbie. He received credits from a
generous player when he first started. This is a perfect example of generalized exchange
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in the SWG gift economy, and an in-game demonstration of the helping behavior I
experienced while waiting for the subway in Boston.
The Hunt is On
After a few minutes of exploring the city and studying other players’ clothing and
armor, R2Y3 let itself out of my pocket and asked again if I wanted help. This time I
agreed, and the droid recommended I start collecting animal hides. Once I had collected
enough, R2Y3 explained, I would be rewarded with credits. Good deal. My roommate
recommended I also find a mission terminal and take a couple missions to do while I
collected hides. A mission terminal lists tasks players can do for cash rewards. At this
level of the game, missions aren’t worth much money, but it’s basically all you have
when you start. So I picked a couple of missions to destroy mynock lairs, and set off in
their direction.
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My first three missions—two from the mission terminal, and one from R2Y3—
were all hunting missions. 48% of survey respondents indicated that hunting was one of
the tasks they did most frequently during the first week they played. This was the most
frequently occurring response to this question. In addition, 19% indicated they took
missions from the mission terminals. Hunting is a good way to earn experience points for
a couple of skills—combat experience for attacking creatures, and weapons experience
for my particular gun type (a pistol, to start). Both these experience types are for my
marksman profession, but the pistol weapons experience wouldn’t help me become a
master carbineer. I would need to buy and start using a carbine weapon first. Finally, by
harvesting the hides from the creatures I killed, as my droid suggested, I earned scouting
experience to help me on my way towards becoming a master scout.
I engaged several mynocks—low-level creatures—in combat, and after harvesting
one’s hide, R2Y3 popped back out and rewarded me with fireworks! These helper droids
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are the socializing agents with which players have the most direct and frequent contact
during very early stages of the solo gameplay phase. Brim identifies several relationships
that help form a person’s identity during socialization: I-them, they-me, and I-me.
“[They-me relationships are those] in which the person is the object of another’s actions,
expectations, or attitudes, such as ‘He doesn’t want me to do that,’ ‘She approves of what
I have just done,’ ‘My brother always got along well with me’” (13). In the first week or
two of gameplay, the helper droid is the “they” in a “they-me” relationship. It
encourages players to engage in role-specific behavior by repeatedly asking them to hunt,
scout, etc., and then rewards them when they have completed the task.
Brim writes, “The early, generalized learning described previously leaves the
person deeply dependent on self-appraisal for his sense of satisfaction, being true to his
core identity is fundamental to his self-esteem” (17). After players no longer need their
droid’s help, and they destroy it (this is quite a time for celebration), the droid’s role
expectations linger on in the player’s mind. Players internalize the droid’s
encouragement, so when they fulfill their role-prescription, they feel a sense of
accomplishment. This an example of Brim’s “I-me” relationship.
Outside Mos Eisley, I continued to kill and harvest mynocks until there was
nothing left but their lair. After destroying it, my payment was automatically deposited
into my bank account, and the mission was complete. At this early level, new skills don’t
require many experience points (XP), so even though I was only getting modest XP for
killing and harvesting weak creatures, I was able to collect enough to earn the first skill—
pistols I—in my marksman profession tree in my first night of gameplay.
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Low level skills are easy to earn, and don’t take up much of an avatar’s learning
capacity, so it is therefore easy to find people who have those skills. By asking around in
populated areas of Mos Eisley, I was able to quickly locate a master smuggler named
Ipav, who knew Pistols I. We grouped and talked about guns while he taught me my new
skill. I asked him about slicing—an illegal process of making a weapon more effective.
If Imperial troops catch players with a sliced weapon on them, they take it, so there’s a
cost-benefit analysis one must calculate when using a sliced weapon. Ipav offered me
two sliced pistols for free, so I graciously accepted his offer.
There is no way to simply give someone an item in Galaxies. Instead, players
must start a trading dialogue, offer items in one window, and then accept the trade
without making a counteroffer. Ipav initiated the trade, and walked me through the
process. I didn’t offer any credits or items in return, and clicked the “accept” button,
completing the trade. My avatar only learned one skill in the transaction, but as a player,
I learned several—how to find players with specific skills, how to trade items, what
sliced weapons were, and from which profession to acquire them.
Like my interaction with Ipav, many of the teaching interactions I had with other
players included more than the mere act of teaching. Frequently, I would learn
something more about the game by talking to someone for a few minutes. Sometimes,
like with Ipav, players offered me items for free, or for lower prices than I could find
elsewhere. And occasionally, a player would offer to help me learn a skill by helping me
complete a small task. This positive and helpful contact with strangers encouraged me to
search out human players to teach me skills, rather than to go to NPC trainers, who could
also teach me skills. As I earned more advanced skills, it became harder to find players
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who could teach me those skills, but experience taught me it was worth the effort of
tracking someone down and meeting them.
Overall, players are cooperative, rather than competitive with one another.
Constant et al. have suggested two reasons for such reciprocity in organizations. First,
providing technical skills or expertise to others is a form of expressing and affirming
one’s behavior. “Helping others can increase self-esteem, respect from others, and status
attainment” (in Wellman 178). Second, norms of generalized reciprocity—similar to
generalized exchange in a gift economy—lead individuals with a strong attachment to an
organization to help others with organizational problems. Wellman and Gulia theorize
how such behaviors eventually lead to the creation of a cooperative community that
values cooperation:
It can be quite easy to provide assistance to others when the group is large.
The accumulation of small, individual acts of assistance can sustain a large
community because each act is seen by the entire group and helps
perpetuate an image of generalized reciprocity and mutual aid. People
know that they may not receive help from the person they helped last
week, but from another network member. (Wellman 178)
All of these reasons for cooperation are true in Star Wars Galaxies. Players
certainly express and affirm their avatars’ identities by providing skills to others that only
their profession can provide. In addition, the game design encourages this behavior by
rewarding players with XP for engaging in behavior that is unique to their profession.
For example, Ipav earned points for slicing those two pistols, since slicing is a skill
provided by his smuggling profession. Not only that, but he received XP when I used
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them. This means that players have an incentive not only to make these weapons (or
armor, medical supplies, food, etc.) but to provide them for other players, since they
receive more experience when their skills benefit others through their use.
As I mentioned above, when discussing the gift economy in Galaxies, norms of
reciprocity exist in the form of generalized exchange, and although not everyone in the
community sees each act of assistance (like Hangon’s tips), everyone is acutely aware of
these norms throughout the community. Veteran players quickly sensitized me to these
norms and expectations, and instilled in me this cooperative attitude. So in the future,
when I had skills that others could use, I offered them to the best of my ability. More
often than not, I benefited from these interactions as much as the person who I helped.
Over the next few days, I took more hunting missions to earn credits and XP at
the same time, and tried out some of my other skills as I went along. One of the useful
skills a scout possesses is the ability to craft a tent from hides and bones harvested from
creatures and deploy it in the wild. It serves as a temporary safe haven—it boosts
players’ healing speed, and allows doctors and entertainers to heal wounds away from
hospitals and cantinas. In the heat of battle, a scout can deploy a large tent away from the
struggle to serve as a sort of field hospital. Injured characters can leave battle to run to
the tent if they need a quick patch-up, and then return to continue fighting.
Crafting tents gave me experience, as did deploying and using them, but I gained
the most experience when other players visited my camp. Because of this, it is
considered courteous in Galaxies to “tag” someone’s camp whenever you’re nearby one.
Tagging a tent is essentially running through it to give the player who owns it the extra
XP for having another visitor. In order to solicit tags, I frequently set up my tents in high
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traffic areas—outside the entrances to cities—and players usually stopped by to say hello
and wish me luck. Noobs who had just started would come by and ask about what skills
pitching a tent required, and would rest before going back into the wild. In this way, I
was already helping the Galaxies community out by providing my avatar’s unique skills.
I learned most level I skills within the first week I played since they required little
experience, and most players were able to teach them to me. Within five days, I was able
to start learning level II skills, which improved my shooting accuracy and speed, and
provided me with new attack abilities. With just a few days’ practice, my avatar was
becoming more proficient at fulfilling his role—killing stuff. I was able to actually
quantify how much I was improving. I saw the damage I was doing with each attack
increase, and was soon able to take on more powerful creatures, which gave me more
experience for each kill.
With each new skill, my avatar’s power increased, and I was able to engage in
more challenging and meaningful combat. Every day I played, I earned a new skill in
one of the skill trees—pistols, carbines, exploration, hunting, trapping, etc. And usually,
57
by the end of each day’s gameplay, I was only a few actions away from another new skill.
As a result, I frequently found myself saying to my roommate, when he turned the lights
off to go to bed, “I just need to kill a couple more kreetles before I can get Carbines II.
I’ll logout and go to bed after that.” Invariably, I would stay up until I earned enough XP
to learn the new skill, but instead of going to bed, I would spend another twenty minutes
finding someone to teach the skill to me. Then, I would remark, “Oh, neat! ‘Full auto
single?’ What’s that do?” and would run out to find more things to kill, using my newly
acquired combat skill. By the time I was tired of the new skill, a couple hours later, I
would be close to earning another skill, and the cycle would start again.
This is a powerful positive reinforcement loop that encourages players to commit
to the game. In the seventh page of my field notes, I wrote in big, block letters, with
permanent marker, and surrounded by red scribbles, “OBSESSED BY DAY 5.”
October
Where Everybody Knows your Name
In the following week, I learned several other aspects of the game. With every
battle, players accumulate battle fatigue, a form of damage that players can’t recuperate
on their own, and medics can’t treat. Only entertainers—dancers and musicians—have
the skills to heal battle fatigue, making them an essential part of the game. Entertainers
play in cantinas, which are sort of the jazz bars of the Star Wars universe. Cantinas in
large cities are usually swarming with players. They are hangouts for socializing
between battles, and a good place to ask people for advice when you feel like taking a
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break from gameplay. You can think of cantinas as a chat room, but the graphical
representations of avatars, and the ability to interact with others in the Galaxies
environment once you leave the cantina, provide more substance than a mere screen
name in a chat room can.
To heal damage and fatigue, players select an avatar that is playing music or
dancing, and chooses “listen” or “watch” from the context menu. Pretty soon, their
avatars will start nodding their heads, clapping, and swaying back and forth to the tunes.
The players… Well, they’re usually focused on the dancers. The image will give you an
idea why. Although it is free to watch and listen to entertainers, they will frequently ask
for tips, and unless entertainers are trying to earn XP as quickly as possible, buffs usually
have a market price, set by entertainers in the cantinas.
Once I had become bored of Tatooine, I found the star port back in Mos Eisley
where I first started, and learned how to travel between planets. There are ten planets in
all, and each of them has its own personality and distinct cities, as well as a history
59
associated with the films and books. Certain creatures and NPCs are unique to some
planets, so players don’t experience the full breadth of the game until they’ve visited each
of the planets. I bought a ticket to Corellia from a vending machine similar to the
MetroCard machines in Manhattan (which are so much better than Boston’s finicky token
machines, by the way), and then proceeded to the gate, where I waited for the transport
ship. Once it arrived, I handed my ticket to a droid and boarded the ship. The game
loaded Corellia, and I arrived in front of the transport ship in planet’s major city, Coronet.
I was getting tired of running everywhere on foot, so I decided to use the 50,000
credits from Hangon to buy myself a vehicle. There are three basic types of vehicles:
swoop bikes, speederbikes, and landspeeders. I wanted a speederbike, the fastest, but
least durable of the three types, so I searched through a bazaar terminal and shopped
around for the best price I could find. Most new speederbikes were selling for about the
same price—25,000 credits—so I bought one that was being sold from Coronet, thus
preventing the need to travel to another city or planet to pick up the item. In a few
moments, the bike was placed in my data pad, and I was able to ride it. What a difference
a ride makes—I was able to cross terrain five or six times more quickly, now!
I had recently learned the expert carbine skill, which certified me to use a new
weapon—the laser carbine. Without certification, I would still be able to use the gun, but
I wouldn’t be capable of hitting much, or dealing much damage with it since Ehmille
wouldn’t know how to use it. So with the rest of the money, I bought myself a new laser
carbine to go with my bike. I looked for complementary colors with matching highlights,
but all the guns were the same dull black.
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The Galactic Civil War
One day, while I was camping just south of Coronet, a novice creature handler
named Amista tagged the camp and said hello. He started talking about an encounter
with a Jedi he had about a half hour earlier in the city. A rebel Jedi tore through the
streets, killing imperial special forces—players who have aligned themselves with a
faction, and who have indicated they want to engage human players from the enemy
faction in combat. Amista showed animosity towards Jedi players because, he claimed,
they tend to be pretentious and take advantage of other players. This characterization
stood out in my mind as terribly incongruent with the rest of the community. The image
of Jedi running around, killing players at will (even if they were from the enemy faction)
seemed so contrary to what I had experienced thus far. However, I was still relatively
new to the game, and hadn’t yet associated my avatar with a faction—Ehmille was still
considered a civilian, and player experiences as a non-aligned civilian are very different
from those as a rebel or imperial.
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The distinction between civilians and aligned players—Rebel and Imperial—is
one between newbies and more experienced players. In order to associate with a faction,
players must earn 100 faction points by running missions for one of the factions. After
completing about ten missions (that pay a measly amount of credits), players can find
either a Rebel outpost or Imperial recruiting station and declare allegiance to the faction
of their choice. Players usually do this in phase one, since most guilds are either Rebel or
Imperial. Cities aren’t always associated with a faction, but many are, and it’s a tough
job being a rebel in an imperial city.
It was about this time that I began taking Rebel missions. They are similar to
other missions (either deliveries or base raids), except that they pay significantly less.
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Since I was interested primarily in earning spending cash at this point, I didn’t take Rebel
missions frequently, but dispersed them between hunting and other missions.
Once players have declared their allegiance, they have a few options. Game
developers have changed the system since I first started playing, so I’ll refer to current
rules rather than outdated ones. Players can either declare themselves “combatants” or
“special forces.” Combatants indicate they want to fight against enemy NPCs—computer
characters from the other faction. However, they don’t want to engage in combat with
other players. Special forces, on the other hand, indicates players want to engage in
player versus player combat (PvP). This means that any players who have set themselves
as special forces can attack—and be attacked by—other special forces players without
warning. The Jedi running through the city was special forces, and was able to attack
only other special forces players. So although the behavior was competitive, it was not
lawless or malicious, since players need to opt in to PvP before they can be attacked.
The system of combatants and special forces in Galaxies addresses a problem that
has always existed in online games—player killing (PKing). In her essay, “Hierarchy
and Power,” Elizabeth Reid includes a help file about PKing from a MUD called The
Revenge of the End of the Line (EOTL). I have updated some language to make it
consistent with terms used today:
[“Player killer”] is a label given to those users who hunt down and kill
other users. These notorious psychopaths usually go on killing sprees,
killing lots of users in a short amount of time. User killers have no qualms
and no remorse. EOTL’s official policy toward users killing is one of
tolerance. [Game developers] can’t help you if someone kills you. The
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best thing to do is to form a lynch mob and massacre the killer to itty bitty
bits… User killers usually know Muds like the back of their hands and are
extremely dangerous. (Reid 124)
Reid goes on to write, “Most EOTL users live by an unstated agreement that they
should live and let live. Most users are not ‘psychopathic’ playerkillers, and will not
initiate battles with those who are not known to enjoy this style of play. Those who do
attack without provocation, however, are often hunted down by those who wish to
preserve this unspoken rule.”
A popular solution to the problem of PKing is to create separate virtual
communities for players who enjoy PvP combat. One of the newest MMOGs, World of
Warcraft, does just this. There are separate servers for players who want to PvP, so those
who would rather play against the computer—sometimes called player versus monster
(PvM)—don’t need to worry about losing their heads.
The nice thing about the solution in Galaxies is that it allows PvPers and PvMers
to play on the same server, and even to participate in the Galactic Civil War together.
While combatants can’t attack other players, they can still attack NPCs, and help fight the
good fight (or the bad fight, as it may be). Furthermore, since players need to accumulate
faction points before they can associate with a faction, it is unlikely many noobs will
wind up in a situation where hardened veterans, who know the planet “like the back of
their hands” attack and kill them simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After Amista and I finished discussing Jedi, I asked him if he could teach me a
couple level II scouting skills. He paid me 10,000 credits for each skill he taught me,
since he wanted apprenticeship points. Then offered to give me a pet for free that he had
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just tamed. Pets are creatures from the game—the same ones that anyone can hunt and
skin—that creature handlers like Amista have tamed and trained. Players use them in
combat to help divert enemy attention (called tanking) or attack enemies. Creature
handlers can make a pretty penny by selling pets to players. Quite frequently, I saw huge
pets on display outside star ports, with their owners—creature handlers—standing nearby
trying to sell them. Since Amista hadn’t mastered his skill, yet, he was still earning XP,
and had only tamed relatively small animals. He gave me a baby female slice hound, a
sort of wild dog with horns protruding from its sides. As part of the exchange, he asked
me what commands I wanted him to teach it. I chose pretty standard ones—follow, stay,
guard, attack. I also named her myself—Xerxes.
With new skills, a new carbine weapon, a bike, and now a pet, I felt like I was
really making progress, and knew I wasn’t really a noob anymore. Ehmille was still
young, but had learned a good set of skills. I knew a substantial amount about the
profession system in the game, and felt pretty confident in my ability to engage others in
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combat. I decided to start taking missions against humanoids—NPCs, rather than
creatures.
These missions are similar—find a base with a bunch of computer characters, kill
the characters, and then destroy the base—but a consequence of going after humanoids
rather than creatures is it affects my reputation with factions, pictured above. Killing
Nabooians for a mission lowers an avatar’s standing with that species, and if that
standing drops too low, Noobians may start attacking the avatar on sight. This was a
concern, but not such a problem that it kept me from taking missions against NPCs. The
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upside is I could loot their corpses and sell the items on the bazaar to make some extra
cash.
November
This is Hardcore
One day, after completing a number of missions in quick succession while trying
to learn another marksman skill, I searched the area for, and contacted a nearby
marksman. The player, whose avatar was named Denut, said he was stuck in the ground.
It was a technical difficulty, a bug with the game’s program itself, not a problem his
avatar was having in the game. I traveled a few thousand meters to meet him and stood
around scratching my head while I tried to figure out why he couldn’t move.
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We chatted about the game a little bit, and I mentioned that I was doing research
about Galaxies—this was the first player to whom I had mentioned it, and it was pretty
neat to talk about to a member of the Galaxies community. I set up camp to earn some
wilderness survival XP while we talked, and I told him I was getting pretty obsessed with
the game. He remarked that “obsessed” was definitely the word for the attachment he
had formed. He told me he had six other “toons”—another word for avatar—and three
separate accounts. I knew some people had more than one account, but then he really
surprised me.
As we were talking, another player rode up to the camp in a landspeeder—a two
vehicle with room for a passenger—and just sort of stood there. I said hello, but he
didn’t answer at first. Then, after a minute of silence, he said, “Oh, it’s just me. This is
my second toon. I’m playing on my other computer now.” He had both computers
running and logged on to the same server so he could play as both avatars at the same
time. This was the first I had heard of people using multiple computers, but have since
heard of a small handful of others. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, this can
subvert solidarity by holding valuable skills private, but due to the expense and extreme
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time commitment, few players do this. Just 2% of those with more than one avatar
indicated on my survey that they play on multiple computers using different accounts.
After some time, and a bug report to the game developers, Denut was able to
move again, and taught me the skill I wanted before he left. He invited me to join his
guild, RAGE, and to move in to his city of 86 citizens. Like other city owners, he offered
new citizens gifts—a house and swoop bike, and he added that they don’t collect taxes or
charge fees for living there. I told him I’d consider him when I was ready to move in to a
city.
Shortly after this encounter, I got bored with Corellia and took a transport to
Naboo. This would be one of the last things I did in the game for a couple months—real
life began to require a much greater time commitment as finals started and my proposal
was due. I figured I would be back in the game afterwards, but as it turned out, when I
got home for winter break, that my internet connection at home was not very friendly
towards my gaming, and I kept losing my connection over winter break. As a result, I
spent almost two months without any significant interaction within the game. I lost
contact with friends, and lost interest over time. It wasn’t until I got back to Boston
College that I started playing again.
January 2005
Daddy’s Got a Brand New… Turban
When I arrived at BC for the spring semester and got back into the game, I
wanted to dive in and really commit to it. Before I did that, though, I went shopping. I
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bought Ehmille a spiffy new pair of black dress slacks, a nice shirt, and—yes—a white,
cloth turban. Up until now, I hadn’t spent any money on clothing, so I had been traipsing
around in the same noob outfit with which I came to Tatooine. Now I looked like I knew
what I was doing… Sort of.
As part of my renewed interest and commitment to the game, I went on the
Wookie Life Day quest, a sort of in-game New Year’s celebration. The quest took me
from one planet to the next until I finally ended up on Endor—the most dangerous planet
I had been on yet. I didn’t need to fight my way across the planet, but I certainly needed
to avoid and run from quite a few creatures on my way through the woods to the little hut
that held the Wookie elders. They discussed the importance of family and ancestors, and
then presented me with a portrait of a female Wookie warrior that I could display I my
home—if I had one.
After I completed the quest, I stayed on Endor and tried my hand at hunting some
of the more dangerous creatures. With Xerxes’ help, I was able to take out a couple of
them, but I needed to spend a lot of time resting in between fights because they were so
difficult to kill. This was the pattern of combat I had been experiencing since I had
started fighting more dangerous NPCs, and I was getting tired of it. I decided I was
going to need to learn how to heal myself, so I went to Naboo and found a medic
trainer—an NPC—in the city of Kaadara who could teach me novice medic skills. The
same way I used a crafting tool to make tents and traps, I could now make stimpacks I
could use to heal myself and others. In the middle of combat, now, I was able to apply a
stimpack and stay standing a little longer. I could apply them to Xerxes as well, to keep
her tanking for me.
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I ducked into a cantina after learning novice medic to socialize a bit while I
healed my battle fatigue, and had a great conversation about real life politics with a
couple players. This wasn’t too long after the 2004 election, so everyone was still talking
about it in real life. This type of conversation was a first for me in the game, though—
honestly, I had never discussed much in the way of real life with other players. Wellman
et al. lament over the fact that people in the western world spend less and less time in
public spaces waiting for friends to wander by, and to introduce friends to one another.
People don’t “drop by in a café or pub and wait for people they know to drop by” (188),
but I could see how players in Galaxies could spend hours just hanging out in cantinas,
waiting for friends, and talking to strangers. As a matter of fact, 19% of survey
respondents indicated that one of the activities they spend most of their time doing in the
game now is socializing. Many of those who indicated this have entertainer avatars and
enjoy talking to players in cantinas.
I wanted to buy a more powerful gun and a suit of armor that would allow me to
accept more difficult missions, but armor is expensive, and I spent most of what I had
been given by Hangon, so I needed to make a hefty sum of money. I took the best paying
missions I could find to earn cash. To avoid getting bored with familiar missions, I also
took some from NPCs—some computer characters have an information bubble over their
head, indicating they have work for players. These missions, it turns out, are pretty
similar, but the process of taking them is slightly different, since I needed to find the
NPCs and come back to them after the missions were over.
After running these missions, I had earned enough experience to learn a new skill,
but for the first time, I was having trouble finding a player who could teach me skills. I
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was interested in learning level IV skills, which are the highest skills in a profession tree,
and therefore the most difficult to find. I went days on end without finding a player, and
decided to just keep taking missions and earning money. In the meantime, I bought two
new guns—a DXR6 and an EE3 carbine—before I was certified in them, figuring I
would soon find someone to teach me Carbine Specialist and I would learn the skills I
needed to wield the weapons.
After three days, I finally found a marksman who could teach me—a friendly
player named Cylvan. He taught me the skills, and asked if I wanted to go hunting with
him on Corellia. Together, we would be able to hunt some bigger game than we could
each do alone, and since I had scouting skills that he didn’t, I could harvest all the
resources I wanted and make items out of them. We traveled to Corellia and took some
missions to kill bagerasets, which have high quality hides that I could use to craft medical
supplies. Although we split the credit rewards evenly, I earned more XP for these kills
than I had earned for anything else thus far.
This impromptu group, prompted by a need to learn skills, marked my shift into
the later stages of solo gameplay. Now that I had a decent skill set, I was valuable to
most players, and wouldn’t be just a hindrance when going on dangerous missions. I
held my own with the bagerasets, and although I was definitely less skilled than Cylvan, I
was able to help.
In addition to grouping with players more advanced than me, I took some
opportunities to group with noobs who wanted to learn new skills. I played with a couple
of fellows from Finland, both of whom has just started the day before, and were
extremely curious about the game. They had questions about everything, and I honestly
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didn’t know the answers to most of them, but I was able to teach them some scouting
skills, and all the languages. In addition, I pitched my large, multi-person tent, and taught
them how it provides a healing bonus, and allows medics and entertainers to heal wounds
while in the wild. We sat in the camp and I healed both of their wounds, getting them
ready for another battle, while at the same time earning wilderness survival experience
for camping, and first aid experience for healing them. It was nice to realize that I was
knowledgeable and skilled enough to teach newbies how to play.
Although I had been using advanced guns for a while, I never got rid of the first
weapons I had been using—the two sliced pistols that Ipav gave me. To demonstrate that
I empathized with my two new friends, and in a way, to continue the circuit of
generalized exchange, I gave each of them a pistol. In addition, I crafted and gave them
each a couple tents and some stimpacks. I was happy I could help. After we finished
some missions, we added one another to our friends list, and parted ways.
Over the next few weeks, I continued to meet up with one of my friends from this
encounter, but he proved to be disorganized and a little unpredictable in combat, so I
eventually stopped playing with him. Just like in real life, being a flake in Galaxies is
grounds for terminating a friendship.
February
Do the Carbineer Grind
At this point in my socialization, I had learned the basics of gameplay and the
division of labor, and had established a commitment to the game, so the remaining skills I
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needed to earn in order to master my profession were more of a barrier than anything else.
I decided to grind the skills remaining between Ehmille and his mastership.
Grinding is the process of engaging in repetitive in-game tasks in order to earn XP
quickly for a particular skill or set of skills. There is a definite negative association with
grinding since the activity is usually not enjoyable. The goal is to advance quickly, rather
than to enjoy the game itself—techne, rather than praxis. By standing in one place and
killing all the nearby creatures, collecting their hides and meat, and then using those
resources to craft items, I could quickly earn combat and weapon experience, as well as
scouting experience, and experience for crafting the items.
I spent several days grinding, and include here field notes from the day I finally
earned novice carbineer. They are unedited, except for avatar names:
I was randomly checking the bazaar for items while waiting for Madros, when I
stumbled upon a great piece of armor for relatively little money (6k creds for each piece).
I bought the pants, and almost immediately, got a tell from the seller, who said I should
check out the rest of the set. I did, and bought a few more pieces before I ran out of
credits. I said I would need to run some missions before I could return to buy the rest,
and did just that. I ran 4 or 6 missions in as little time as I could, but the remaining
helmet and jacket were unfortunately gone. I later found out from Mike that the gloves
and boots won’t fit my species, so I wasted 12k on items I couldn’t use, and in the mean
time lost a great deal on the jacket and helmet.
I didn’t hear from Madros again, so I decided to take my explorer missions and go
hunting for the Spats. I went south via my speedbike, masking scent along the way to
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earn scouting points in case I ran across some animals en route. I arrived at the
waypoints I had marked previously, and went after all the spats I could find. I decided to
make a macro in order to simplify my involvement. I checked the message boards online
and found the proper script, wrote it in the game, and customized the wait time in
between attacks. Now all I needed to do was sit at the keyboard in case my character
accidentally went after the wrong target. I finished the mission, and after attacking some
random creatures nearby, earned the XP for novice carbineer.
I was so thrilled that I finally made it to novice, I sped off to Coronet to find
someone to teach me the skill. I arrived in the star port, and after searching for a few
minutes, found a Master Carbineer with very impressive armor, queued to get buffed
from a medic. I was impressed by the orderly line formed behind the carbineer, of three
other players, waiting their turn for the buffs. After joining the MC’s group, he informed
me that he couldn’t teach me the skill, that I would need to find a trainer. I said thank
you and bowed. He saluted, and cancelled the group. Many interactions end with a
courtesy like this. I usually salute, but this player’s title (master) and armor were
impressive, and he demonstrated more advanced knowledge than my own, so I showed
some reverence with a bow.
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I went to bed that night (at 2 in the morning) before I could find a trainer to teach
me novice carbineer, but the next day, I checked message boards on internet fan websites
to see where I could find one and promptly bought a ticket to the city of Karen on Naboo,
where my trainer was hiding behind the star port.
Before I left, though, I hopped on my speedbike and drove to the north
westernmost corner of Corellia’s map and entered the Rebel base hidden there in the
mountains. I had slowly earned the hundred faction points I needed to align myself with
the Rebels, and was eager to experience the Galactic Civil War. I declared my allegiance
to the Rebel faction, took some trivial, low paying jobs from C3P0, and then headed off
to Naboo.
Learning from an NPC is pretty similar to learning from a player, except I had to
pay the trainer for his skills. After I achieved novice carbineer, I picked up my armor
from the city where I purchased it earlier, went to a nearby player mall to buy a couple
new guns I had just been certified to use, and went hunting for sport.
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Now that I had achieved novice status of an elite profession, learned the most
important aspects of the game, and associated myself with the Rebel faction, I was ready
to join a guild. As it turns out, that would never happen. Real life responsibilities caught
up with me, and I would need to stop playing.
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4
GROUP GAMEPLAY PHASE2
Guilds in Star Wars Galaxies are communities held together by organic solidarity.
Players establish their identities within guilds as the “go to” person to for specific highlevel skills. In these groups, players form commitments to one another and the guild as a
whole based on their functional relationships to one another. Had I joined a guild,
Ehmille would be the guild’s Master Carbineer, and I would be committed to performing
that function. Ideally, guilds try to represent all of the professions so guild members can
get all the support they need from within the guild. The goal is to be self-sufficient.
Survey data indicates that 36% of respondents belong to guilds that represent
every profession within Galaxies. Add to that another 29% of respondents in guilds that
have almost all the professions, and fully 65% of respondents in guilds can get most
everything they need in the game from someone within their guild. Data from survey
participants demonstrate how guilds try to offer as many skills as possible:
The guild covers most of the proffesions in the game. We try to be self
sufficiant and take care of our own.
2
Due to the fact that I was unable to conduct field work in this phase of the game, I use mostly survey
responses and interviews, rather than my own experiences, to illustrate my arguments in this chapter. In
addition, I use player narratives that Nick Yee has collected and published on his website,
www.nickyee.com/daedalus. While these player narratives are from other MMOGs, the social and
functional aspects of guilds presented in the narratives are similar enough to those in Galaxies that they are
representative of such phenomena in Star Wars Galaxies.
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We had all of them at one point or another. Generally always being self
sufficent. If someone dropped a profession someone else would likely
pick it up.
The regular players can cover every profession in the game, - but we have
no master bounty hunter yet ( I am working on it)
The last two responses point to another important aspect of guilds—when the
guild is incomplete (missing professions) or unbalanced (many of certain professions but
few or none of others), players will often drop their current profession and pick up
another. When players do this, they give up not only the skills their avatars learned, but
what they—as players—learned of a profession as well. Players need to relearn the game
from the perspective of another profession. This is comparable to Brim’s studies of
socialization in later life.
Brim writes that “socialization in later years builds on attitudes and skills acquired
earlier, using them as a foundation for later, more demanding learning” (19). While early
life socialization focuses on instilling motivation in individuals (remember how the
helper droid encouraged Ehmille to harvest hides?), socialization later in life emphasizes
knowledge and ability. Translated into Galaxies, when players drop a profession and
adopt another one for their guild, their focus is on learning the profession, and earning the
skills it comes with. This means grinding.
Survey data show that 82% of respondents who belong to a guild have given up
their original professions. This statistic does not necessarily represent those who have
changed professions for the sake of their guild, since players may change professions
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because they didn’t like their original, because they decided another one would be more
lucrative, or in order to become a Jedi. When compared to the 73% of respondents who
don’t belong to a guild and changed professions, however, this demonstrates that guild
membership provides incentive for players to change professions—most likely to balance
or complete the guild.
Joining a Guild
I stopped playing just as my avatar was ready to join a guild—Ehmille had earned
novice for an elite profession, and after a few weeks of grinding with guild members, I
would have been able to earn Master Carbineer for him. If I had kept playing, the next
step for me would have been to find a guild to join.
There are essentially three kinds of guilds—combat guilds, entertainer guilds, and
business guilds. Combat guilds focus on playing quests, hunting, and engaging in PvP
combat. Entertainer guilds consist of players who play venues together, either in cantinas,
or for special events, sort of like a band. Business guilds have players who own and
operate large business operations, usually in a guild city. Players in these guilds buy and
sell resources from one another, acting as a kind of syndicate.
Since Ehmille was a combat character, I was going to join a combat guild.
Subsequently, my research focuses on this type. I had a couple options open to me for
finding and joining one. First, I could join a guild with which I was associated through a
friend. I hunted and camped with several players who had talked about their guilds and
had asked if I was interested in joining them. This sort of recruiting reflects a guild that
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is somewhat selective about whom it brings into its ranks. The players who found such
guilds are usually either friends in real life, or know each other well in Galaxies or from
another MMOG before they start their guilds. Because of this, they will hand pick
players who demonstrate their commitment and expertise of their professions. The
following passage from an email interview I conducted demonstrates this:
The group was Eagles, started by Tin Eagle. We'd planned a city from the
beginning know it was coming eventually. Probably started with a group
of 8 of us who are really good friends in the real world then we started to
pick up other, friends, friends of friends folks we met online probably
being the smallest part, but a part none the less. We tried to make sure we
had at least one person in the guild who could do each thing, Armor,
weapons, spice entertaining etc. We basically did the whole time too.
I was the group doctor or one of the doctors we had probably around 6 or
so at the peak.
I also was mayor when Tin Eagle ended up quiting do to the excessive
time commitment SWG required.
In order to join the Eagles, a player would need to befriend a member, and
demonstrate not only an interest in the guild, but an allegiance to it as well. Taking this
route to join a guild may be challenging, but it provides several advantages: I would
already know at least one person from the guild, so I would feel more comfortable with
them; I would have a sense of what kind of guild it was, and what other players were like,
judging by people I already knew; and I would know that due to the more selective nature
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of the guild, members would likely be more reliable than in a random guild I didn’t know.
This is probably the route I would have gone.
My second option was to join a guild that I had never heard of, but one that was
looking for new members. Players sometimes advertise their guilds in starports and
cantinas to find recruits. These could be new guilds that need players to fill empty ranks,
or a guild whose members have slowly left over time, and which needs new blood to
sustain its existence. While it is easier for players to join a guild in this manner, there is a
chance that without knowing guild members or the guild’s reputation beforehand, they
may wind up in a guild that does not suit their tastes.
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Committing to a Guild
In the group gameplay phase of socialization, players are no longer learning how
Galaxies works, or how much time they need to commit to the game in order to master
their professions. Once a player joins a guild, the emphasis of the socialization process
shifts to integrating players into, and establishing a commitment to the guild. There are
two main forces responsible for doing this. First, the division of labor is essential in
creating organic solidarity—players use their professions’ skills for the benefit of the
group, and take pride on their work. Second, guild members (guildies) make the
difference between one guild and the next, and create a community with its own patterns
of gameplay, social events, norms, and values. As a result, veteran guildies help integrate
new members into the guild, and establish strong, usually intimate connections with other
guild members.
Although the three guild types—combat, entertainer, and business—serve
different purposes, the essential function in common with each is to bring players
together to support one another within the game. In these stable groups, players can
count on one another to provide cover fire, to heal damage just in time, to be the backup
band, or to provide a steady supply of critical minerals or hides. In a game in which no
one player possesses all the skills they need, players need to rely on one another, and
guilds try to represent as many skills as they can, in an attempt to be self sufficient.
When players provide their professions’ skills to one another, they engage in what
Snow et al. define as identity work: “the range of activities individuals and groups
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engage in to give meaning to themselves by selectively presenting, negotiating, and
sustaining identities congruent with their interests.” Players affirm their identity in the
guild by providing their avatar’s skills to others who need them. Furthermore, remember
that Constant et al. theorized that identity-affirming behaviors strengthen norms of
mutual reciprocity in online organizations, especially when technical expertise or
supportive behavior is considered an integral part of a member’s identity.
In the following passage from an email interview, a player describes his city and
guild, and discusses his roles as the guild leader and a Master Tailor:
A Talusian Metropolis is, and I apologize for this, a bit of an aggrandized
way of saying that we developed a maximum sized city (there are five
ranks of player city based on population with Metropolis being the largest
at over 85 residents) on what is generally considered a backwater planet
(Talus). The city is not exclusively for the guild, though the guild does
dominate the population by a good 90% or more.
The “advice and services” question is a bit more complicated to answer,
and the advice part relates directly to the fact I helped to establish and
grow both the city and the guild. The players in the city tend to use me as
a center of collected information and a guide to obtaining services,
particularly when they are very new to the game. As an example, a new
player might need to know how to gain Scout experience points. As I am
the guild leader, they will frequently direct such a question to me, despite
the fact that I am not a Scout. I keep information on a wide variety of
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game related subjects handy in a series of text files on my PC for easy
reference for just this reason. Likewise I have a very, very extensive list
of players based on their professions and services rendered. A guild
member might ask me if I know where to get a certain kind of food that
enhances their ability to dodge attacks (which is, again, well outside of
Arcyear’s skill set), and I can send them a waypoint to a location in the
game that has a vendor with a wide selection of food in hopes that it will
have what my guild member needs. These questions span the broadest
range of game related subjects - and even not so game related sometimes,
it is not uncommon for me to lend an ear when a guild member has
personal problems in their real life. Also moderating conflicts between
guild members is a responsibility of the guild leader, as well as resolving
disputes between our guild and others.
Providing services is a bit simpler to explain. As a Master Tailor / Master
Shipwright / Master Artisan I can produce a broad range of commonly
used items for consumption by the guild and the general public. For guild
member these products are either reduced in price or are simply free.
Given the highly customizable nature of the end products (clothing is a
clear example of this, there are many styles available and many colors to
choose from), I prefer to do most of my work based on custom orders to
the specification of the customer. This can be very specific (“I’d like a
black Robe With Hood Up, a pair of black Padded Pants with blue stripes,
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black Uniform Boots, and a blue Casual Shirt with black shoulders,”
where the names in capital letters denote specific clothing schematics I
craft from), or extremely vauge (“I want to look dangerous, can you
help?” being a recent example).
As the guild leader, Arcyear has a great responsibility to help out his guildies, and
provides not only his avatar’s skills, but his expertise as a player. He knows his guild
backwards and forwards, and can point players to guildies for help with any issues his
avatar cannot address. This knowledge and expertise is something that, as the guild
leader, and a founder of the city, Arcyear alone possesses. The fact that others rely on
him for these unique abilities increases his commitment to his guild, and the larger
Galaxies community—he plays more than twenty hours a week, and provides skills and
services to friends and strangers every time he plays.
Responses from other survey participants also demonstrate how players commit to
a guild by fulfilling a critical function within it. Each of these respondents indicated high
commitment levels, and belongs to a guild:
[I] play an instrument in the player city of which I'm mayor, in the cantina
I placed, healing mind wounds, battle fatigue and administering music
buffs to other players. I also occassionally do Force Sensitive quests on
Dathomir.
Revham, my doctor/rifleman gets about half the time. Atorzo, my ranger
gets out when there are important resources to gather - other than that I
play him little atm. Ronin, Mayor of a large metropolis gets more and
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more playtime due to a lot of work for the community. Probably will
surpas Revham pretty soon.
[I provide] advice and services to guild members, crafting, tending
harvesters, occasionally low level combat, and piloting whenever I can get
away for some "me" time.
I pretty much craft for chef then sell off any items which I never use such
as space loot and food. I also slice alot and sell spices. Hunt rebels of
course :) .. and I hunt animals for both the ability to sell the creature
resources to needy chefs or doctors and also to progress in the experience
needed to complete my current class.
In an excerpt from Yee’s article, “In Their Own Words: The Social Component”
(http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001301.php), a player describes the
satisfaction he gets from working in a group in which everyone performs their functions
properly:
A strong motivation for me, and what has most likely contributed the most
to my addiction is working with other people and existing within a perfect
and efficient group. The aims of this group are not important, we could be
grinding or camping a spawn to get an item for someone, when everything
goes perfect, no communication is needed, and everyone just does what
they should exactly as it should be done, i just feel great. While i would
much prefer to follow a good group leader, most the time, as i usually play
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classes that are able to control the flow of a fight and thus require greater
situational awareness to even play than more straight forward classes(that
is, a bad warrior can still kinda function in their role if played badly), i end
up being the leader. It just makes me feel wonderful when my group does
something other groups are not able to do. Back when i was playing daoc
me and my friend had made a pally/minstrel duo and took out things that
most people said you couldn’t do with even a full group... it made me feel
good. This has been a great source of joy and frustration for me, because
even if things go well when a group member is not doing something right i
get agitated and an argument is likely to break out... people just don’t
understand what im upset about. Conversely if we wipe but everyone was
playing at the best of their ability and every little trick had been done,
while im sitting there waiting for a rez i still feel just grand. Interacting
with people and being able to depend on them, and be depended on by
them... that’s why i play. [WoW, M, 20]
Although this player narrative is from another MMOG, World of Warcraft
(WoW), it is applicable to combat guilds in Galaxies, in which players take on different
responsibilities in battles.
The chart on page 102 breaks down professions in Galaxies and their roles in
combat. To be successful in combat, players need to play according to their characters’
abilities. The best combat guilds are successful because their members understand what
their avatars should do in combat, and they fulfill their roles exceptionally well.
88
In addition to providing technical skills and help, a player’s in-game reputation
also increases his commitment. In the email interview passage above, Arcyear
demonstrates that he has developed a reputation for being knowledgeable and helpful.
His guildies come to him for advice on professions that he doesn’t even have. Constant
et al. include a study by Gordon Meyer3 indicating that once hackers establish a
reputation for themselves online, they are unlikely to change nicknames—their
nicknames are signs of their contribution to the online community. In Galaxies, Arcyear
is unlikely to eliminate his avatar and abandon his guild—he has established a
commitment to both.
The Strength of Guild Bonds
Survey results clearly indicate that guild membership increases player
commitment to the game, and that the addition of city membership to the equation
increases commitment even more (see graphs on page 103), but what does this
commitment mean in terms of the relationships players have developed with one another?
I will present here some player responses and narratives that provide the meaningful
human side of this relationship that statistics just cannot convey.
Yee identifies two major reasons players establish strong bonds to one another in
MMOGs. MMOGs present players with frequent crisis situations during which the
mettle of in-game friends is tested (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000523.php).
Players have the opportunity to prove loyalty and trust to one another in these critical
3
Meyer, Gordon. 1989. “The Sociological Organization of the Computer Underground.” Master’s thesis,
Department of Sociology, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL.
89
situations much more frequently than in real life. Such high-stakes interactions help to
create strong bonds between players.
In addition, Yee writes that in-game relationships are formed “in reverse”—
players trust one another with secrets, see multiple sides of one another, and test one
another’s trust early on compared to real life relationships. Meeting up and seeing one
another is one of the last parts of in-game relationships. In contrast to real life
relationships, players “get a sense of their values and character from the situations in the
game. You hang out with them because you share a lot of common values or you like
their personality. And then finally, you may meet them in real life where you judge their
physical appearance” (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000523.php).
The following two survey responses exemplify how strong bonds can grow
between players. The first is in response to the final, open-ended question of the survey,
“If you have any general comments about this survey (to clarify your answers, to ask a
question, or to complain about its length), please include them here:”
It was long, but not too bad. I appreciated the memories it evoked... it
brought back feelings of good times with good people I've met in the game,
even though most of them have quit by now... As an aside, I feel more of
a bond with my profession than I do with any other group. You might
want to include something like that. Commandos are brothers. I don't
know of any other profession that I've been a part of where I've felt like
that.
The second is in response to the question, “Please list the three most valuable
items you own in Galaxies:”
90
I find this question highly insulting because nothing I [own] in SWG is
really the most improtant to me. The most important thing to me is my
good friend and in game wife.. I don't own anything of Value. I have good
friends that I value though.
Both responses demonstrate how important in-game relationships are to these
players. The first player refers to other players who share his profession as “brothers,”
much the same way my friend, a Marine, refers to his buddies on base. The second
player renounces his material (or perhaps immaterial) goods in favor of his friends. The
fact that he has married another player in the game is a testament to the strength of ingame relationships.
Marriages in Galaxies are not uncommon, and some ceremonies can be as
involved and intricate as real life weddings. One player, who is already so well known in
the game—and out—that I won’t even try to disguise her avatar’s name, plans weddings
in Galaxies. Chiana Me’Lya is a master tailor, merchant, and dancer. She organizes,
decorates, and dances for weddings, and charges a pretty penny for doing so!
Weddings: I used to do weddings when I played DragonRealms by
simutronics. In fact it was and still is a huge feature of that game. I carried
over doing weddings in SWG. I do the complete wedding from clothes,
bonding rings, hiring a band, getting food, dropping a vendor, supplying
the entire ceremony including the vows, fireworks.. just about everything.
www.royalweddings.net is my website
91
Special planning: I do all the planning for the couple so they can
concentrate on having fun, they just need to send out invitations, macro
the vows I send them and show up. I specialize in zabrak weddings,
wookiee weddings, bothan weddings and boring human weddings :)
At this point it is really easy for me to get one together and doesn’t take
much planning. Transferring the vows to my notepad and then into macros
is the hardest part. But I have about 6 or 7 wedding macros I can now use,
so it’s even easier.
I helped Pex write up the wedding guide, and Lucas Arts also filmed a
wedding I did for some TV show.
Most players are willing to pay me in the millions for a wedding! Most
players are happy for the service I provide. At one point when SWG was
at its peak, I had so many requests for weddings I just could not keep up
with the demand! It was really amazing.
Player weddings not only demonstrate the strength of player bonds and
commitment to the game, but also the degree to which the complicated division of labor
allows players to “become an individual in the proper sense of the word: a person who
creates a unique biography for himself or herself” (Schimanck). Chiana has created for
herself a little sector of the Galaxies community from which she can contribute a highly
92
valuable skill. Her website is worth a look, if only for the pictures from players’
weddings.
Anomie in Galaxies:
Virtual Suicide
While the game design of Star Wars Galaxies encourages guild membership and
commitment through the use of the division of labor more than any other MMOG, there
are undoubtedly anomic aspects of the game: some players snub profession specialization
in favor of creating a more capable, independent avatar; some find the amount of “work”
in the game unreasonable; some forego their guilds and cities in their quests to become
Jedi; and finally, some are just annoyed that after four years the game gets boring, still
has gameplay bugs, and now has balancing issues (over time, some professions, factions,
etc. are more powerful than others). In Durkheim’s theories, anomie led to suicide.
Similarly, in Galaxies, anomie can lead to quitting.
Durkheim writes that society “is frequently rude to individuals; it necessarily
demands perpetual sacrifices from them; it is constantly doing damage to our natural
93
appetites, just because it raises us above ourselves. If we are going to do our duties
toward it then we must be prepared to do violence to our instincts… it is inherent in all
social life” ([1912] 1965: 356). Galaxies, also, asks players to do violence against their
instincts—players are expected to specialize their avatars and commit a lot of their game
time to working for the sake of the whole community, rather than for themselves.
For example, scouts collect hides that are critical to tailors and artisans. Players
will earn quite a bit of money for doing this work, and if they belong to a guild, they will
be expected to contribute to the guild in this way, but the fact is killing and collecting five
hundred bageraset hides is very time consuming, and hardly fun. In his survey response,
Arcyear says nowadays he spends his time “providing advice and services to guild
members, crafting, tending harvesters, occasionally low level combat, and piloting
whenever I can get away for some ‘me’ time.” While his work is rewarding, it is work.
So much so, he needs to take in-game vacations.
For some players, the work involved in maintaining their avatars in Galaxies was
more than it was worth to continue playing. Take these examples from interviews and
survey responses: “The level of "work" in the game was too high, farming etc.”
“Ultimately the "work" required to maintain the city and personality differences made it
stop being fun so people started quiting.” “I quit because the game was really repetetive.
The point where I was at, the game was just unstructured, and the grinding was really
getting to me.”
For players who want to avoid this work, and to continue playing, one solution is
to create a self-sufficient avatar and play on their own. Yee refers to these players as
“solo achieving explorer” types (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001306.php).
94
This sort of gameplay could be considered anomic since a lack of strong ties to other
players in a close-knit community means these players are not committed to a guild, and
as a result, may be less likely to continue playing the game to see guild friends.
Although they play alone, solo achieving explorers (SAEs) still need support from
other players at some point, either initially getting their avatars setup with supplies,
weapons, etc., or to heal wounds and battle fatigue after battles. The galactic bazaar
provides a wonderful tool for SAEs to exchange goods and services with other players
without needing to commit to and rely on a particular group of players. In addition,
doctors and entertainers are the only players who can address severe wounds and fatigue,
so SAEs eventually need their services.
Although Arcyear is a guild and city leader, he says his avatar is “very self
sufficient.” Here, he explains how he created an avatar that needs little help from other
players:
There are a number of elements that lend a degree of self sufficiency to the
Arcyear character. He is a crafting character, and rarely intentionally
enters combat. When it is unavoidable (such as when a MOB attacks
while I am out checking harvesters) he is accompanied by a CL10 pet
Razor Cat that was bio-engineered with 68% kinetic resistance and almost
11k health, and carries a highly enhanced Krayt DLT20a rifle with a stock
that provides additional enhancements. Add to that a suit of resistance
sliced composite armor that has an average base effectiveness score of
89% and a crate of fully experimented PSGs, and he can usually handle
any situation outright, or at least long enough to jump in a speeder and run
95
away. In plain English, Arcyear has an overpowered pet, an overpowered
newbie weapon, very nearly the best armor money can buy, and a quick
getaway car handy at all times.
In order to acquire the high level pet, weapon, armor, and vehicle, Arcyear first
needed to earn credits to buy them. He most likely did this by selling items he crafted to
other players. Once he had the credits, he purchased the items from players. Therefore,
although he is usually self-sufficient, Arcyear still needed to rely on others at the start.
He continues:
The most damaging activity I engage in with this character is piloting.
When I do get shot down, frequently just loading into Coronet starport is
enough to get me healed, often before I am fully loaded in, as there are
doctors there that are grinding healing XP and ambushing new arrivals. If
that does not work, frequently a jog over to the med center results in a
quick free heal. Mind wounds are even easier to address, as so many
Entertainers are AFK. I suppose one could argue that this is a flaw in my
self sufficiency, but given the persistent availability of services, the lack of
cost, and the nearly nil human interaction it requires, I tend to look at it as
being able to fend for myself well enough.
When Arcyear does intentionally engage in risky combat, he needs to be healed
by other players to continue playing. By coming to the starport in Coronet, and getting
healed by doctors who are grinding, he helps other players earn the XP they need to
master their professions. In addition, by visiting cantinas, he provides entertainers with
96
XP for healing his mind wounds. As Arcyear says, he relies on others for these services,
but still manages to be essentially self-sufficient, with a minimum of player interaction.
Possibly the biggest threat to organic solidarity in Galaxies comes from the option
to become a Jedi. According to survey data, up to 40% of players are currently either
Jedi grinding—trying to attain force sensitive XP that will allow them to master Jedi
professions—or are already Jedi. This presents a problem because Jedi grinding requires
a huge time commitment. Furthermore, players must give up their professions in order to
earn the XP required to become Jedi. Players who dedicated thirty hours a week to
crafting for their guild, defending their city, or acquiring resources to sell on the galactic
bazaar give up those activities to earn Jedi. One player indicated that his guild represents
all the professions in the game, “but most people are foregoing their professions in favor
of jedi grinding.”
Another player commented in the final open-ended question of the survey:
Only thing I have to comment on, which you probably can’t help, is that a
lot of the questions about the groups I play with I really couldn't answer
fully because I am jedi now and I can’t play in groups but before I was
jedi i was in groups alot. And after I finish my Jedi template I will be
back in action with my guild and groups. Just something you might want
to concider, Jedi players might throw your survey off a little b/c we have
to play them totally different then what some would normally play them.
Just a thought and good luck on your Thesis.
97
This is a perfect example of how Jedi grinding negatively affects organic
solidarity in the game by encouraging players to focus on their own avatar rather than on
the needs of their guild or the larger community.
The most popular reason players quit is because their friends quit. The game
design of Galaxies forces players to make personal sacrifices for the sake of creating
organic solidarity—the emphasis of gameplay is social, rather than individual. It follows
that when a player’s friends leave, the social aspect of the game is lost, and he will want
to leave as well. These excerpts from interviews demonstrate how prevalent this reason
for quitting is:
Well, after the second summer of playing, things were just so broken and
therefore boring that I didn't want to continue. I thought about it some,
but I didn't think I had time, and then WoW came out - and I decided that I
did. I was also horribly out of step with the comminity at that point, and
the broken buffs meant that most of my social interaction went away soloing was the only efficient thing to do. So, mostly, it wasn't fun.
I stopped playing SWG mainly because of time--I commute a total of 11.5 hours a day, just one way, so I had very little time. On top of that, my
friends also stopped playing. The reason why my friends stopped playing
was because they didn't like some of the elements of the game and found a
new one, called World or Warcraft, which they play incessantly.
Few of my friends were still playing
98
The level of "work" in the game was too high, farming etc
Character growth had slowed.
Started playing COH
That's pretty much the big reasons in order.
The threat is, of course, that this trend is self-reinforcing—the more people quit
the game for any reason, the more likely others will be to quit as a result. Dedicated
players won’t want to hear it, but with newer MMOGs drawing large crowds from
Galaxies, players quitting due to the amount of work in the game, and others Jedi
grinding rather than playing in guilds, Galaxies is experiencing an anomic trend from
which it may not be able to recover.
99
5
CONCLUSION
Star Wars Galaxies is designed to encourage player cooperation by the use of a
division of labor. Organic solidarity is achieved by dividing the most essential and
valuable skills amongst the games various professions. Because players cannot learn all
the valuable skills they require, they will need to depend on others to successfully engage
in battles, to craft items, etc. In addition, the game design rewards players for providing
skills and goods to one another with XP points players need to master their avatars’
professions. As a result, a culture of mutual functional interdependence arises, with
norms of generalized exchange and reciprocity—players exchange skills and goods
between one another because both the giver and receiver benefit from the interaction.
The socialization process is designed to teach players about the division of labor,
organic solidarity, and their avatars’ role prescriptions within the game. The goal of this
process is to encourage players to commit their time to the game, to master two or three
professions for their avatars, and finally, to join a guild.
Guilds are clans that bond their members to one another with organic solidarity.
Players are integrated into the guild by fellow members, and take on the identity of the
guild’s carbineer, scout, chef, architect, smuggler, etc. Over time, guildies can develop
strong, meaningful relationships with one another that increase players’ commitment to
the game and their guilds.
100
Anomic elements of gameplay—Jedi grinding, repetitive gameplay, and the need
for constant “work”—have caused some players to abandon their guilds or quit altogether.
As players quit, the essential roles their avatars fulfilled within guilds—crafting armor,
extracting resources, or even planning weddings—are left empty. Without players to
carry out critical functions within guilds, other guild members may quickly become
frustrated and quit, themselves.
Emile Durkheim’s theory of organic solidarity explains solidarity and anomie in
Star Wars Galaxies well, but one must acknowledge that this theory, alone, cannot
explain solidarity. Other variables must be taken into account when discussing solidarity
in online communities: players are frequently friends before they interact online, so they
already share bonds with one another. Also, players can leave the game any time they
want to, conduct real life activities, and then re-enter the game another time, so their roles
within the online community are not their only, nor their primary ones. Finally, if a
player’s online role is unfulfilling, he or she can quit and return to real life without longlasting, major consequences—“virtual suicide” in response to anomie online is not nearly
as repercussive as in real life.
In spite of the limitations of Durkheim’s theories, it is exciting that the inclusion
of a complicated division of labor in the design of a video game can produce the
appropriate cultural response—the creation of organic solidarity. It is foreseeable that
with this knowledge, one could include in subsequent MMOG designs, other social
phenomena with the intention of producing other lifelike responses online. Imagine a
game model whose design so accurately reflects real life social conditions that it could
predict in-game player trends, group trends, and even trends throughout entire
101
communities. Such a model could be used to predict real life social trends much the
same way computer models of astronomical phenomena predict star formation and
galaxy collisions. The implications and possibilities are vast.
102
APPENDIX
Overview of Combat Roles
103
Server Chart
Galaxy
Galaxy
Galaxy
Bria
When initially creating a character, a player
must pick the galaxy his character will inhabit,
and cannot change this later on. Originally, all
galaxies were identical to one another, but
changes players made have made each galaxy
into sorts of parallel universes, reflecting the
players living in that galaxy.
Planet
Planet
Planet
Correlia
Naboo
Tatooine
All gameplay in
Galaxies takes place on
planets, except for the
expansion pack, Jump to
Lightspeed, which allows
players to play in space
between planets.
Players directly interact
only with things on the
same planet, but can
communicate with
anyone on the same
server.
While players are free to
travel anywhere on the
planet, there is a barrier
between planets that forces
players to take a shuttle,
unloading one planet and
loading another.
Cities
Coronet
All cities share certain buildings, like a city hall, and most have cantinas,
shuttle ports, and mission terminals, but there is some variation between
cities. Player cities can be home to upwards of a hundred citizens, and can
be associated with a faction. Owners of cities can purchase many building
types to customize their cities, and can even purchase and deploy defenses,
such as land mines and storm troopers.
Indicates total interaction barrier
Indicates direct interaction barrier
5-8
19%
12%
11%
0-4
12%
2%
2%
Non-guilded (n=67)
Guilded (n=167)
Guilded and citizens (n=142)
5%
10%
15%
0%
Hours of Gameplay/Week:
Percentage
of responses
20%
25%
30%
35%
22%
22%
22%
9 - 12
12%
15%
12%
13 - 16
16%
16%
9%
17 - 20
Player Time Commitment by Guild and Citizen Status
35%
34%
25%
>20
104
Graphical Analysis of Survey Results
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
14%
10%
10%
3%
4%
3%
Guilded (n=167)
Guilded and citizens (n=142)
Never
27%
28%
28%
6%
7%
5%
About half
Infrequently Occasionally the time I
play
Non-guilded (n=67)
Frequency of
Helping Interactions:
Percentage
of Total Responses
25%
30%
35%
35%
31%
28%
Quite
frequently
12%
11%
16%
9%
10%
6%
Almost
Absolutely
every time I every time I
play
play
Players' Helping Behaviors towards Strangers by Guild and Citizen Status
105
5%
10%
15%
20%
9%
2%
2%
2%
1%
1%
Guilded (n=167)
Guilded and citizens (n=142)
Never
13%
16%
18%
6%
6%
3%
About half
Infrequently Occasionally the time I
play
Non-guilded (n=67)
0%
Frequency of
Helping Interactions:
Percentage
of Total Responses
25%
30%
35%
31%
30%
30%
Quite
frequently
27%
26%
25%
18%
19%
13%
Almost
Absolutely
every time I every time I
play
play
Players' Helping Behaviors towards Friends by Guild and Citizen Status
106
Responses
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
<10
9%
10 - 25
23%
26 - 50
28%
2%
3%
51 - 75
76 - 100
101 - 125 126 - 150
Number of Members in Guild
11%
16%
Guild Membership (n=167)
151 - 175
1%
176 - 200
2%
>200
5%
107
Responses
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
10 - 25
13%
26 - 50
22%
51 - 75
20%
5%
7%
76 - 100
101 - 125
126 - 150
Number of Citizens in City
26%
City Membership (n=174)
151 - 175
2%
176 - 200
3%
>200
2%
108
Responses
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
12 - 17
14%
18 - 22
23%
23 - 28
Age
28%
Player Age (n=233)
29 - 35
25%
>35
9%
109
Responses
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
1
32%
2
29%
3
21%
4
Number of Avatars
9%
Number of
Avatars Players Have (n=234)
5
3%
6
3%
>6
4%
110
Responses
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
00
,0
0
<5
00
,0
0
5
1
00
,
0
10
00
,0
0
0
-1
-
0
0,
0
5
01
,0
0
50
00
01
,0
0
00
1,
00
,0
0
00
1,
-
01
,0
0
00
5,
0
00
,
0
00
5,
-
01
,0
0
0
,0
0
2
0
00
,
00
,0
0
-2
01
,0
0
0
,0
0
1
Credits
00
,0
0
0
,0
10
01
,0
0
0
,0
0
3
0
00
,
00
,0
0
-3
Number of Credtis Players Have (n=234)
01
,0
0
0
,0
0
4
0
00
,
00
,0
0
-4
0
00
,
00
,0
0
-5
00
,0
0
00
0,
5
>
111
Questions for game developers
Similar question or measure
Repeated question or measure
Centered entries are related to previous entries
The successful city
The successful group
Group membership
City membership
Number of players in the group
Frequency of meetings with at least 75% of gruop members in which players take missions or go on quests
The number of unique skills the group possesses as a whole
Number of players in the city
Frequency of meetings with at least 50% of gruop members in which players take missions, go on quests, or disc
The number of unique skills the group possesses as a whole
Association with a faction
Number of professions
Skills available to characters who obtain the master level of a particular profession
Interdependency of professions:
Need for players to seek skills of others to accomplish a task
Value of property owned
Number of credits owned
Profession level achieved
Specialization of profession
Solidarity & the division of labor (group / society level)
The successful character
Hours a player spends playing SWG each week
Frequency of helping interactions—including group play—a player has with both strangers and group members
Number of characters and accounts
Moderate understanding of the game
Frequency of helping interactions—including group play—a player has with both strangers and group members
Time spent playing without a group
Time spent playing as part of a group
Frequency of interactions with particular groups
Number of professions acquired
Number of skills aquired
Total length of time playing the game
socializing agents and mechanisms
Rituals of trading goods, choosing missions, and learning new skills
Friends known in the game, who player met after started playing
Group membership
City membership
Association with a faction
Whether or not a player has chosen a profession
Measures
Total length of time playing the game
Understanding of which professions have which skills
Commitment
Socialization (group / society level)
Gameplay phase
Concept
Successful socialization (player level)
112
Concepts and Measurements
Follow ups
On average, how many hours do you play each week?
On average, how many hours do you play each week?
How frequently do you provide a skill to other players (such as healing, slicing weapons, buffing, selling looted ite About what percentage of these interactions would you say are with players you've never met before?
Do you have more than one character?
If so, how many characters do you have?
On average, how frequently do you play with each of these characters?
What professions could be eliminated if it was necessary to eliminate some?
Why did you divide the skills among the professions the way you did?
What professions are the most essential to the continuation of the game?
What skills are essential to you that your character does not possess?
What type of profession would you seek out to find someone with this skill?
List the three most valuable properties you own in Star Wars Galaxies
How many credits do you have?
Have you attained any novice or master professions yet?
Which professions?
Have you decided to earn an elite profession (for example, carbineer, doctor, weaponsmith)?
Which professions?
Have you decided to earn a hybrid profession (for example, bounty hunter, squad leader, bio-engineer)?
Which professions?
Have you associated yourself with either the Rebel or Imperial factions?
Which faction?
How many faction points do you have?
Do you belong to a clan?
How frequently do you meet with members of that clan?
Are you a citizen of a player city?
How frequently do you meet with members of the city?
How many players are part of your clan?
How frequently does at least 75% of your group meet in order to complete missions or quests together?
Please list as many of the professions as you can remember that players in your group have
How many citizens are in your city?
How frequently do at least 50% of your city's citizens meet to complete missions, go on quests, or discuss the city
Please list as many of the professions as you can remember that citizens in your city have
Are these questions insulting?
Have you chosen more than one profession?
How frequently do you have contact with that friend in the game?
How long had that friend been playing Galaxies before you started to play?
How many players are in your friends list?
How many of those players do you communicate or play with at least once a week?
Do you belong to a clan?
How frequently do you meet with members of that clan?
Are you a citizen of a player city?
How frequently do you meet with members of the city?
Have you associated yourself with either the Rebel or Imperial factions?
Which faction?
How many faction points do you have?
Do you use any macros?
Have you written those macros yourself, or did you find them online?
How frequently do you provide a skill to other players (such as healing, slicing weapons, buffing, selling looted ite About what percentage of these interactions would you say are with players you've never met before?
How many hours a week would you say you play alone (not in a group)?
How many hours a week do you think you play with at least one other player?
Do you play in more than one group?
FOLLOW UP TO QUESTION ABOVE
How frequently do you play with each of these groups?
Have you attained any novice or master professions yet?
Which professions?
FOLLOW UP TO QUESTION ABOVE
How many individual skills have you learned?
When did you create your first character in Galaxies?
On average, how many hours do you play each week?
What were the most common tasks or missions you performed during the first week you played the game?
What activities do you participate in most frequently (such as crafting and selling items, healing and buffing, or hunting creatures or humanoids)?
Questions
When did you create your first character in Galaxies?
What profession character you would seek in order to…
Have your weapon sliced?
Get your stats buffed?
Heal your battle fatigue?
Have you chosen a profession yet?
Did you start playing Galaxies because a friend recommended to you
113
Concepts and Measurements (continued)
114
Original Survey
1) Basic Questions
Name, age, sex, country, etc.
q0: Do you have and play Jump to Lightspeed?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
q1: What is the first name of the avatar you use most frequently when playing
Star Wars Galaxies?
Please write your answer here:
q1a: Do you have more than one avatar?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q1a ']
q1b: How many avatars do you have?
Please write your answer here:
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q1a ']
q1c: In a few sentences, describe how frequently you play as each avatar.
Please write your answer here:
For example:
"I play as
Ehmille
about half
the time, as
Karrul about
a quarter of
the time, and
as Mahks the
rest of the
time."
q2: How old are you in years?
Please write your answer here:
115
q3: Are you male or female?
Please choose only one of the following:
Female
Male
q4: What country do you live in?
Please write your answer here:
2) Gameplay Basics
Gameplay length, hours per week, number of avatars
q1: When did you first start playing Star Wars Galaxies?
Please enter a date:
/
/
q1a: Did you start playing Star Wars Galaxies because a friend recommended it
to you?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q1a ']
q1b: How frequently do you have contact with that friend in the game?
Please choose only one of the following:
Never
Infrequently
Occasionally
Quite frequently
Almost every time I play
Absolutely every time I play
q2: On average, how many hours do you play Star Wars Galaxies each week?
Please choose only one of the following:
0-4 hours a week
5-8 hours a week
9-12 hours a week
13-16 hours a week
17-20 hours a week
More than 20 hours a week
116
q3: On average, how frequently do you...
Never
Infrequently
Occasionally
About
half
the
time I
play
Quite
frequently
Almost
every
time I
play
Absolutely
every time
I play
Play
alone
(not as
part of
a
group)?
Play
with at
least
one
other
player?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Quite frequently' or 'About half the time I
play' or 'Occasionally' or 'Infrequently' or 'Play with at least one other player?' or 'Almost
every time I play' or 'Absolutely every time I play' to question 'q3 ']
q4: Do you play in more than one group of players?
For example:
Answer
"yes" if you
play
regularly
with players
named
Moriard and
Birffok, but
only
occassionally
with a player
named
Jueleyl.
Answer "no"
if you only
play with
Moriard.
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q4 ']
q5: Please type a few sentences describing how frequently you play with each
group.
Please write your answer here:
For example:
"I play
regularly
with Moriard
and Birffok,
but only
occassionally
with a player
named
Jueleyl."
117
3) Information about Professions
Chosen? Which? Essential skills? Elite or hybrid?
q1: Have you achieved novice for any professions yet?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q1 ']
q1b: Please list any professions you for which you have achieved novice,
separated by commas.
For example:
Novice
carbineer
Please write your answer here:
q2: Have you mastered any professions yet?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'No' to question 'q2 ']
q2a: Have you chosen a profession to master yet?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q2a ']
q2a1: Please list any profession(s) you have chosen to master, separated by
commas.
For example:
Master
carbineer,
scout.
Please write your answer here:
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q2 ']
q2b: Have you mastered any professions and later decided to give them up the
to master another profession?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q2b ']
q2b1: Please list the professions you have intentionally given up, separated by
commas.
For example:
Entertainer,
artisan.
Please write your answer here:
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q2 ']
118
q2b2: Please list any professions you have mastered and that you have
currently, separated by commas.
For example:
Master
carbineer,
scout.
Please write your answer here:
q3: What were the most common activities you performed during the first
week you played Star Wars Galaxies?
For example:
Killing and
harvesting
weak
creatures;
talking to
experiences
players about
weapons and
cities;
wandering
aimlessly
around maps.
Please write your answer here:
q4: What activites do you perform most frequently now?
Please write your answer here:
For example:
Crafting and
selling items
through
vendors;
healing and
buffing
players;
hunting
creatures or
humanoids.
q5: What skills are essential to you that your character does not possess?
Please write your answer here:
For example:
If you
frequently
need to be
healed in
battle but
cannot heal
yourself,
write
"healing."
q6: What profession characters would you seek out to find someone with those
skills?
Please write your answer here:
For example:
I would look
for a medic
to heal me in
battle.
119
q7: About how frequently do you (either directly or inderectly) provide a skill...
Skills
include
things like:
Healing
players,
slicing
weapons,
selling hides
and other
materials, or
selling
looted items.
Never
Infrequently
Occasionally
About
half
the
time I
play
Quite
frequently
Almost
every
time I
play
Absolutely
every time
I play
...for
players
you
have
never
met
before?
...for
players
you
have
met
before?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
4) Player and Avatar Aspects
Macros, friends list, property, credits
q1: About how many players are in your friends list?
Please write your answer here:
q2: How many of these players do you commicate or play with at least once a
week?
Please choose only one of the following:
Almost none of them
About 25%
About 50%
About 75%
Almost all of them
Other
q3: Do you use macros?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
120
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q3 ']
q3a: For the most part, did you write the macros yourself, or use ones that you
found online?
Please choose only one of the following:
Pick the
option that
best
describes
what you
did.
Mostly wrote them myself
Mostly used macros I found online
I modified macros I found online to suit my own needs
q4: What profession characters would you seek out in order to...
Please write your answer(s) here:
Have your weapon sliced?:
Get your stats buffed?:
Heal your battle fatigue?:
q4a: Did you find the last question insulting?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
q5: Please list the three most valuable properties you own in Star Wars
Galaxies, separated by commas.
Please write your answer here:
q6: About how many credits does your main avatar have?
Please write your answer here:
5) Group Membership in SWG
q1: Have you associated yourself with either the Rebel or Imperial faction?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
121
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q1 ']
q1a: Which faction did you choose?
Please choose only one of the following:
Rebel
Imperial
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q1 ']
q1b: About how many faction points do you have?
Please write your answer here:
q2: Do you belong to a clan?
By clan, I
mean a
group of
players with
whom you
have plans to
meet
regularly at
least once
every two
weeks.
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q2 ']
q2a: About how many players are part of your clan?
Please write your answer here:
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q2 ']
q2b: How frequently do at least 75% of your clan members meet in order to
complete missions or quests together? (If you would like to elaborate on this
answer, use the space on the right to enter your comments.)
Please choose only one of the following:
About once every two weeks
About once each week
About two or three times a week
About four or five times a week
About six or seven times a week
More than seven times a week
Make a comment on your choice here:
122
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q2 ']
q2c: To the best of your memory, please list as many professions as you can
remember that players in your clan have (including professions of multiple
avatars if players use those avatars to benefit the clan).
For example:
All together,
everyone in
the clan has
master
carbineer,
master
medic,
novice
entertainer,
master
bounty
hunter, and
master image
designer.
Please write your answer here:
q3: Are you a citizen of a city?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q3 ']
q3a: About how many players are part of your city?
Please write your answer here:
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q3 ']
q3b: How frequently do at least 50% of your city's citizens meet in order to
complete missions, go on quests, or discuss the city? (If you would like to
elaborate on this answer, use the space on the right to enter your comments.)
Please choose only one of the following:
About once every two weeks
About once each week
About two or three times a week
About four or five times a week
About six or seven times a week
More than seven times a week
Make a comment on your choice here:
123
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q3 ']
q3c: To the best of your memory, please list as many professions as you can
remember that citizens of your city have (including professions of multiple
avatars if players use those avatars to benefit the city).
For example:
All together,
everyone in
the city has
master
carbineer,
master
medic,
novice
entertainer,
master
bounty
hunter, and
master image
designer.
Please write your answer here:
Thank you!
: Would you like me to contact you when I'm finished with my thesis?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
q1: Thank you so much for your time. Without your help, I would be unable to
complete my research. Please answer these last few questions so I can get an
idea about your interest in my final paper.
q2: After reviewing survey responses, I may find it especially helpful to ask
follow up questions by email to clarify responses (especially regarding clans
and cities). May I contact you with a few more questions in the near future if I
find it necessary?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question 'q2 ']
q2a: What is your email address?
Please write your answer here:
124
q3: Would you llike me to contact you when I'm finished with my thesis?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No
[Only answer this question if you answered 'No' to question 'q2 ' and if you answered
'Yes' to question 'q3 ']
q3a: What is your email address?
Please write your answer here:
q4: If you have any general comments about this survey (to clarify your
answers, to ask a question, or to complain about its length), please include
them here.
Please write your answer here:
Submit Your Survey
Thank you for completing this survey. Please fax your completed survey to: by 200503-18.
125
GLOSSARY
Avatar:
A humanoid in Galaxies. Player characters are those characters that are
controlled by humans, and have unique first names that identify them from other
characters. Characters are highly customizable, from the species of alien, to the shape of
their facial features. See “NPC.”
Clan:
See Guild.
Client:
The Star Wars Galaxies program running on a player’s computer that
connects the computer to Sony’s servers. The client loads unchanging (static) data from
the player’s computer as well as changing (dynamic) data from the server and combines
them to create the world the player experiences.
Droid:
Robots serve many functions in Galaxies, from engaging in combat, to
healing wounds, and crafting items. The most ubiquitous droid in the game is the highly
visible, green helper droid that all new players have in their inventory. The droid
encourages players to complete tasks and earn their first few skills, working their way
towards a profession.
126
Expansion (pack):
A major update for a video game (usually computer games), that
must be purchased, and usually contains new features, levels, characters, etc. Jump to
Lightspeed is a Galaxies expansion that allows players to engage in space combat
missions.
Faction:
Either the Imperial or Rebel side of the civil war. Players can choose to
associate with either faction. In addition, species of NPCs are called factions, but the
main usage of the word refers to either Rebels or Imperials.
Galaxy:
See the chart on page ??
Group:
After selecting a player, one can create or join a group, which allows
players to trade goods easily, and teach one another skills. Players will form groups
when going on hunts or quests, and must form a group in order to teach one another
skills.
Guild:
A group of players that meet regularly to play together, and typically share
housing in a city. Guilds can focus on combat, crafting, or entertainment, but in order to
be self-sufficient, guilds must have characters that represent each of these types of skills.
127
HAM:
The health, action, and mind points that measure a character’s strengths.
Players customize these attributes according to their character’s needs (my character
needs a large action pool to complete special attacks).
Helper:
In their profiles, players can designate themselves as “helpers,” indicating
to others that they can explain aspects of the game to noobs. This designation is
searchable, so a confused new player can search for nearby helpers.
HP:
Health points, or hit points. A character’s health in the game. When this
reaches zero, the character is incapacitated.
Jedi:
The highest rank a player can reach. Attaining Jedi requires an incredible
time commitment, and draws players away from their roles in guilds to earn the “force
sensitive” XP required to become a Jedi.
JTL:
Jump to Lightspeed, the expansion pack for Galaxies.
Log:
To “log” is to log off the game, to disconnect from the game server,
presumably to finish an essay, to finally go to bed, or to spend time with one’s girlfriend.
128
Macro:
A small program that completes a series of tasks automatically, by
pressing only one button. Macros can do anything from repeatedly shout ads for a store,
to engage an enemy in a predefined combat pattern. Many macros are available online in
forums, and can be quickly adapted to individual needs. My favorite macro is only five
lines. It targets the nearest creature and attacks it.
MMO(RP)G:
Massively multiplayer online (role playing) game. Any game that
allows a large number (thousands) of players to play at the same time and interact with
one another during gameplay.
Newbie (or noob):
A new player, easily identified during their first week or so by the
green helper droid at their side.
NPC:
Non-player character. A humanoid character that is not controlled by a
human player. NPCs make up most of the populated cities in Galaxies. Some are
scripted to provide missions, while others provide services. Most NPCs are combat
characters that exist as part of a mission, or the continuously fighting Ewoks on Endor.
Pet:
A creature, vehicle, or NPC that a player can control. Types range from
droids, to my dog-sized animal, to faction troops, to AT-ATs. Pets are typically used in
battle, either to fight or to heal.
129
Player City: Player cities are planned, paid for, and run by players. Most cities are
home to either a specific guild (guild city), or to multiple guilds. Not many cities have
frequent town meetings with a majority of citizens, but a popular form of government is a
city council, whereby players can bring issues to representatives who meet regularly to
discuss city matters.
PK:
Player killing. The act of killing fellow players in the game. Similar to
PvP, but with a negative connotation. PKing may be directed mostly at noobs who
cannot defend themselves. Other terms include “ganking” and “user killing.”
Player:
The human behind the character.
Pool points: See HAM.
Publish:
An update for Galaxies that improves game reliability, or makes changes
to gameplay. These are free, and all players are required to download and install the
latest publish version before logging on.
PvE:
Player versus environment. Combat in which players attack NPCs or
creatures. In this combat, players do not attack one another, but focus their aggression on
enemy computer characters.
130
PvP:
Player versus player. Combat in which players attack other players. In
Galaxies, players must indicate that they are willing to fight other players by associating
with a faction and becoming “overt,” making that association known to others, to engage
in PvP. Otherwise, players can only attack NPCs.
RPG:
Role playing game. A fantasy game in which a player assumes the
identity of a character, and goes on a quest. Quests usually follow a story line, giving the
game the feeling of a fantasy novel, such as The Lord of the Rings. Online variants
usually aren’t scripted.
Servers:
The computers that host players connecting to play Galaxies.
SOE:
Sony Online Entertainment. A division of Sony that maintains the game
servers, internet forums, and other online aspects of the game.
Speed bike:
A commonly-used vehicle that allows players to travel several times their
running speed.
SWG:
Star Wars Galaxies. More frequently referred to simply as “Galaxies.”
131
Vendor:
A special NPC that players use to sell goods directly to other players. The
seller loads a vendor with items, and a buyer “uses” a vendor by browsing its inventory
and purchasing any number of items. If the sale is instant (as opposed to an auction) the
item is immediately given to the buyer.
XP:
Experience points. Experience in Galaxies is quantified and represented
by XP. In order to learn a skill, players first need to earn enough XP in a particular
category. For example, in order to learn how to use a new weapon, players need to earn
weapons XP for that weapon by using it in combat.
132
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