An Analogy

The reason that virtual world designers find viewing the player base in terms of communities useful is four-fold.

• Community ties rank among the most powerful reasons for players to stay with a virtual world. They generate intangible content, but can be aided in tangible ways.

• The sheer number of players in some virtual worlds makes it impractical to consider players at a personal level. It’s easier to reach communities than individuals.

• Players frequently act in groups. If you look at them as individuals the whole time, you miss what’s going on (“you can’t see the woods for the trees”).

• Communities act analogously to players. Many of the things designers know about players can be applied to communities.

We’ve looked briefly at the first of these, and will look at it some more. The second item is purely pragmatic—we have to live with it, but it doesn’t really tell us anything. The third makes a good point; furthermore, because there is an existing body of work on this subject, designers can adapt and apply what has been learned in other fields to virtual worlds. The fourth item, which I’ll address now, is a way that designers can use work in their own field to think about communities.

Put simply, levels of community are analogous to stages of player progression. Look back at Figure 3.6:

• Players start as instinctives. They go in all directions at once to find the limits of what they can do. A community of interest behaves the same way, all members pushing their own interests to determine its boundaries.

• Next, players become learners. They embark on a process of discovery to find out more about what interests them.

A community of practice is similar, its members pooling what they know to increase the knowledge of the community as a whole.

• After this, players become doers. They apply what they have learned to better themselves. This is like a community of commitment, where members work together on projects for the benefit of the community, rather than for the (immediate) benefit of themselves.

• Finally, players become experts and communities become spiritual. Both have fully internalized their experiences.

This is only an analogy: Communities resemble players in some respects, but are very different in others. The two aren’t tied together, either—it’s perfectly possible to have scientist-type players in a spiritual community and hacker-type ones in a community of interest, for example. Communities may be defined by their members, but the reverse does not apply.

Knowing this connection between community development and player development, though, it’s possible to look at both with more enlightened eyes. Player development tracks, although they do show how players progress over time, are because of their origins more focused on what players want at each stage (rather than what should be provided for them to advance to the next stage). In contrast, levels of community are mainly to do with development—how to take the next step toward a spiritual community (rather than how to provide for players who are going to remain within a community at the same level for some time). Thus, designers should be aware that they should accommodate the stages and transition between those stages, whether considering community or player progression or both.

There’s one final observation we can make (if not actually use).

Player progression is closely connected with deepening immersion. Progression of communities through increasing levels should therefore, by analogy, be closely connected with immersion of the community (as an entity). How, though, can a virtual community be said to exhibit immersion? In what sense can a spiritual community be more “in” the virtual world than a community of interest? It can’t; but it can be said to be more in the real world than a community of interest, because it forms real bonds between real players.

Immersion puts the real world into the virtual; community puts the virtual world into the real.

That’s enough community theory for the purposes of this book, but there are plenty of places you can look if you want to learn more. For a short introduction to levels of community, read ethnographer Arian Ward’s succinct article, What is a Community? ¹. For a longer one, which discusses virtual world communities in terms of community studies in general, Chapter 6 of Lynn Cherny’s Conversation and Community ² is invaluable. For a psychological perspective of virtual communities (with particular reference to virtual worlds), explore John Suler’s superb ongoing hypertext book, The Psychology of Cyberspace ³. To learn more about managing virtual communities in general, consult Amy Jo Kim’s Community Building on the Web ⁴ or Jenny Preece’s Online Communities ⁵, both of which make reference to virtual worlds. If you just want a broad but thought-provoking overview of what virtual communities are, Howard Rheingold’s The Virtual Community ⁶ is still required reading.

Now let’s see if we can apply some of what we’ve learned here.