Session 5: Social Presence in Virtual Worlds

4th Global Conference

Friday 13th March – Sunday 15th March 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Social Nature of Time and Space in Online Games: Designing Fantastic Social Worlds
Göknur Bostanci Ege and Nicholas Koullapis
Sociology Department, Ege University, Turkey and Game Designer, United Kingdom

This paper is concerned with the dimensions of time and space of multi player online games along with the perspectives of both sociology and game design. We will analyse the time and space in these game worlds with regard to the illustrations from The World of Warcraft which came on the scene in 2004 and presently has 11 million players all over the world. We are examining both what players see on user interface and what is going on behind in computer space, comparing the time and space of the game with other games of the same genre and analysing social aspects of these game worlds. Our motivation in challenging such a problematic is that online games emerge as a social phenomenon that affects millions of people’s lives and constitute their own social environments for their online players.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Recent developments in the Internet technology have offered various formations online, many of which can be brought together in the frame of Web 2.0. Among these, some applications have put the user on the foreground, placing him/her to a fairly active position. In that manner Eksi Sozluk (www.eksisozluk.com), one of the most popular web sites in Turkey, has attracted attention as an output of online collaboration. It’s described as ‘a collaborative hypertext dictionary based on the concept of web sites built upon user contribution’ (Turkish Daily News Web site, 14th August 2006) enabling its users to express themselves in different ways. Although there are some similar (but different on a larger scale) worldwide web site formations, Eksi Sozluk is still unique with its format. This paper locates Eksi Sozluk among these other forms of online web applications via drawing the frame of its functions. Although it has emerged as a database with the catch-phrase ‘sacred source of knowledge’, it is used in a sense of a blog diary and a web forum at the same time. In this sense, attributes of authors are examined for the reason why they contribute to a such community by reproducing texts.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)