Danah Boyd on MySpace
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Mar 012006
Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace is Danah Boyd’s recent presentation.
However, what I really want to ponder is “why can/can’t we replace MySpace in this paper with the word MMORPGs?”
Factoid: MMORPGs are not, demographically speaking, youth spaces as described (yes, I know you will have anecdotes to the contrary about the obnoxious 14 year old, and so on). Why or why not?
12 Responses to “Danah Boyd on MySpace”
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Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace. “…the location of hanging out and the cultural glue itself…to maintain “full-time always-on intimate communities” ….allows youth to solidify their social groups.” viaRaph Koster
I mostly agree.
Some random comments:
– There is one important difference that I can think of… People will probably stick with myspace longer than individual mmorpgs. MySpace is a service that you could stick with for your entire life. (Sacrilidgeous comment warning….) MMORPGs are something that you play and eventually get bored with.
– The paper emphasize the appeal to teenagers. I was recently thinking about Richard Bartle’s assertion that a world should cater to all 4 types: socializers, killers, achievers, and explorers, and that failing to cater to all 4 types produces less successful worlds. Part of my thought experiment was to figure out if there were any specific demographics a world could try to attract; one of them was age (teenage vs. adult vs. retiree). For more info see http://www.mxac.com.au/drt/WordOfMouth.htm.
There are several heavy differencies, most reasons why MySpace and MMORPG dont compare well are design bandaids on the MMORPG side. Altho there is additional trouble in IP development where a mmorpg product is stuck in conventions which wont allow it to adapt fast enough for cultural growth and development.
I could point out a list of maybe 20 standard mmorpg features which would be bad for MySpace but I’ll save you the trouble.
Another product problem with mmorpg’s is that they are “games”, hence they fall within “controlled space” of the parents. MMORPG’s are also Role-Playing-Centric, founded on the notion that you pretend to be someone other than yourself, almost all players of mmorpg’s are not role-playing in this sence, they are trying to apply themselves to controling their proxies as representatives of themselves, more or less. This isnt much of a problem for mmorpg gamers, but it does pose a problem for the communication about the activity of “playing mmorpg” between consumer and onlooker (parent/school/whatever).
If you want to rob MySpace of some of its market and stuff it into the mmorpg sphere you’ll have to convince those marketting people to sell realestate on the web, rather than another game. (And I think that will be problematic.) 🙂
(Not really fitting here, but couldn’t find an e-mail: You need to fix the RSS feed :-))
Partly the appeal of myspace and IMs is as it always is in any generation gap. The capacity to create and use a lnguage impenetrable (or nearly so) to an older generation, which often reacts strongly to use of that language.
“d00d u no ne1 1 2 rade teh MC?” – in WoW, especially on the euro servers, that kind of crap gets the derisory treatment that i feel it deserves, but then i’m 36.
In order to attract the youth, you have to accept and work with their own language and let them have the capaicity to extend it.
But whatever you do, don’t get it wrong. Because you’re lame like the teacher in the nikes and the hoody top who thinks he’s cool.
According to the the included link, the primary activity for teens on MySpace is identity play. It seems to me that role play is in some ways antithetical to indentity play, especially the very limitted type of role play available in commericial MMORPGs. Teens are more interested in being a human adult than an orc warrior or a gnome rogue.
Perhaps if MMORPGs presented more activities than being a hero in a world where no one dies, or being wealthy when none go hungry, then the role playing choices might be more interesting to teens. As it is, MMORPGs serve as escapist entertainment. Teens aren’t looking for escape from the adult world. They are looking for entree.
What’s wrong with the RSS feed? Over on the side there, Feedburner claims 463 people read it last night…
On the other hand, I got told last night by a friend that the feed stopped a few days ago.
Never mind, fixed the feed.
Why?
Because we already have the Jack Thompson crowd against us and we don’t need the MySpace lynch mob following us also.
So lets not 🙂
I think life is a game, life in general in an open sense and society in a goal-oriented sense. MySpace works because its game is open and personal representation is radically decentralized, you can collate with spheres of friends in addition to making otherwise random networks with disparate people. MMO’s have all required embodied interaction through an avatar, which heavily centralizes and therefore limits the networking factor. Subscription rates and the fact that MMO’s are largely closed systems are also limitations.
The closest thing we’ve got is Second Life. For all intentensive purposes it’s very similar to MySpace and can litterally have your own “space” for a fee. You can however PARTICIPATE for free. Interestingly they’re in the process of intergrating the Mozilla browser into their engine… so you could even literally tie myspace into it. If MySpace WANTED to attempt a virtual world. They most defitely could by connecting it back to the webpage.
I think the first step between connecting a MMOG with a true social network is to grow it FROM an existing social network and allow a virtualization of that social network into a visual representation. I think it’s doable and I for one would be intereted to see how it unfolded.
[…] I’ve been following an entry over on Raph Koster’s blog (Link) discussing the MySpace phenomenon. There are some interesting comments that are worth reading imo. The most recent comment as of this writing included this bit: I think the first step between connecting a MMOG with a true social network is to grow it FROM an existing social network and allow a virtualization of that social network into a visual representation. Interesting. I guess by going from Second Life to LinkedIn I’m doing this all backwards (see earlier post for reference – Link). I’ve not actively pursued making virtual person-to-virtual person contacts on LinkedIn; no time at the moment. Perhaps next week. […]