No man is an Island
Posted: January 24th, 2006 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Noteworthy | Tags: analysis, Games, group dynamics, itu, mmog, report, roleplaying, world of warcraft, Writings | Comments OffAs mentioned earlier, just before Christmas I handed in a paper about a study we did of World of Warcraft.
We were looking for the dynamic relationship between the behavior of the individual player and the behavior of the groups they participate in, and how they mutually influence each other.
We used Bartle’s player types and two theories from the field of Organizational Theory; Richard Daft’s Life cycle Model and H.J. Leavit’s Open System Model.
Our problem statement:
- When playing World of Warcraft, what are the key factors of the relationship between the player and the group?
To understand why players make certain choices regarding group structures, we will initially have to clarify how the game facilitates group structures and what types of players it is dealing with. We will therefore use the following questions as means to answer the before-mentioned statement.
- How are groups structured within World of Warcraft?
- Which type of players takes part in these structures?
Get the entire report here (PDF format)