SDForum: friends and strangers
(Visited 6800 times) Game talk
May 042006
Will Harvey of IMVU just showed some stats showing that a clear majority of people use IMVU to meet people as either a primary goal or as a goal equivalent to chatting with existing friends.
But we hear repeatedly now that in the MMOGs, people play with their friends, people they already know, and don’t want to meet new people.
What’s the difference caused by?
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Like you said, people use IMVU primarily to socialise. In MMOs, people meet other people primarily to accomplish some in-game goal.
When that accomplishment requires a degree of commitment and ability from all participants, it’s nice to know upfront that the people you’re playing with are willing and able.
Compare playing on a sports team to going to a party.
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Although I want to say the difference is sex, I think the real difference is that IMVU is largely non-persistant and non-geographically-limited. Therefore, it is natural to use it in a more exploratory way: fewer limitations and fewer lasting results means you can just go around at random without risking anything.
The difference is in the focus. MMOGs, note that you left out the RP part because that’s just the point, don’t offer reasons to meet new folks while they do offer goal orientations. The scales are weighted.
Could it be as simple as the user is adopting an ‘alternate’ personality ingame in the belief that they are conforming to expected social norms of an MMO, whereas on IMVU they are attempting to portray an image of themself that is being used to promote / positively boost their real life character?
Or that “The Game” while it may have real life analogues, isn’t percieved as an extension of the real world whereas chat systems, from simple IM’s to video chat and now IMVU* are seen of an extension of the users environment? Different initial approaches to the two differing environments could be expected to prompt different expected behaviours.
* I’d argue that there are users in sandbox games who do use the game environment in a similar manner to IMVU, ie, SecondLife, entertainers in SWG, etc as a way of meeting people with similar interests. Perhaps what we’re seeing here is another variation on the Social Profession – Combat Profession spectrum? It’d be interesting to see how the user groups activities broke down according to gender and ‘role’.
And then it hit me…
Preselection.
IMVU’s homepage, client, etc, are all very ‘cheery’ chatty and geared towards a strongly social and interactive experience.
Players in MMOG’s on the other hand are drawn to the game, by and large, as they are looking for a challenge, to compete, to ‘win’.
Different personality types attracted to different environments, or different expressions of personality by the same people in different environments?
It could also be a result of age/experience. I notice that as I got older and more net-savvy, I was less interested in talking to new people online. I already have my group of friends, and I really didn’t want to have to put up with someone I might not like. My gut feeling is that people playing online games are more experienced, so they may be more wary. People intrigued by IMVU may be less net savvy, so they may be more willing to meet new people.
Consider how many people complain about pick-up groups (PUGs) in WoW. Conventional wisdom is that there’s a lot of total newbies playing WoW as their first online game; so, while this bit of news is old hat for the rest of us veteran players (remember where Scott’s domain name came from?), it’s news to WoW players.
My thoughts,
[…] This seems like a crowd that might want to discuss the stuff coming out of the Metaverse Roadmap Summit, if only to dismiss it all as dotcommie hype and cyberspace wanking. https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/04/sdforum-friends-and-strangers/ https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/04/sdforum-joi-itos-keynote/ https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/05/sdforum-cnets-take/ https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/06/metaverse-roadmap-roundup/ Particularly off the beaten path: the notion of using virtual worlds as annotation sources for the real world. Anyone here been talking about Google Earth the MMO? Because that was very much on everyone’s mind in the Valley given their purchase of SketchUp. […]
[…] … http://www.digibarn.com/collections/articles/apple-orchar... [Found on Yahoo! Search] 37. Raph’s Website " SDForum: friends and strangers Raph Koster’s personal website: MMOs, gaming, writing, art, music, books. … Will Harvey of IMVU […]