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The Mafia Everquest Connection
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the 2003 Melbourne Digital Arts And Culture Conference site, where a large selection of new academic papers about videogaming have been disseminated online. This includes The Sopranos Meets Everquest - Social Networking In Massively Multiplayer Online Games (PDF file), which discusses why "instead of having Gandalf as a role model, [Everquest players] would be better off trying to think as Tony Soprano, a present day mafia boss in New Jersey from the American TV show The Sopranos."
What's the Everquest equivalent of "gabba-goo"?
"academic papers
about videogaming"
Dream job, or make-work project?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
People like PVP so much. It's that entire kill people thing.
Fundamentalism stops a thinking mind.
And the mafia? One's legal, and one is illegal.
They both operate using force and attempt to gain as much power for themselves as possible (in response to the ability of the populace to fight back against them). Well, Everquest lacks a real government, so as a result, mafia becomes the rule.
People who play video games can make friends? How can this be?
I've learned from experience playing MUDs that in this type of game, just like life, it's not what you know, it's who you know that gets you ahead. From items to money, there's nothing that a high experienced friend can't get you.
Good to see the academics are catching up.
i think a better role-model than a mafia boss would be the main character of Office Space. When you're trapped in a repetative and mundane experience, the players i look up to are ones that find creative solutions to the boredom wraught by blind farming of capital and experience.
both to practice, and to program. It takes maturity to come up with a better solution. This isn't to say that violence has no place, I am only saying it's much easier to be violent than it is to be compassionate. Also easier to reward experience points based on killing than on non-killing.
So the more experienced users should be shaking down newbies for gold if they don't want to get spammed? Form a gang and charge local businesses a tithe as "insurance"? Basically do everything possible to make sure all wealth flows to the top and the little guy has nothing? I thought games were supposed to give us a break from reality...
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Really, there are a lot fo similarities in how people act in MMORPGs to how mafia members are portrayed in TV and movies.
But really, most of the similar attributes seem to be GOOD things. Loyalty to guild/friends, word-of-mouth as to who can/can't be trusted.
I mean, I didn't really see any mafia similarities mentioned that are particularily BAD.
No extortion, blackmail, etc.
Though I'm sure it could happen to someone who's far too attached to their characters, I doubt it could ever be as widespread as these other "symptoms".
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
But I wasn't convinced by the analogy. Based on the sopranos, anyway, the mafia seems to have an ethos of servitude to---producing for---the higher ups, and I didn't see enough proof that the same is true of EQ guilds.
This post is dedicated to all of those
I read the paper, and it's got a bunch of points. I'll say that from a bunch of MUDs I used to play you would see the same behavior. But besides just who you know, it's also lots of being in the right place at the right time. I've had characters given cool stuff by high level people all the time. Part of it was so they could be seen as cool by the noob, and part of it was that the super cool item you just got is worthless junk at their level.
Lots of folks get good reps for just helping out noobs or on corpse runs, and you know that that rep stayed around and if they ever needed help they got it, as well as preferental grouping.
You want to be treated nice - play a female healer of some sort - groups will court you, random people will give you things. People will go on quests just to get items for you.
If you want a lone hero vs. the world, play on your home machine. If social gaming is really your style, then MMRPGs have a lot to be said for them. And in any social group, you get the mix of folks -- some will help, some will only help themselves. If you watch your friend's back, that's not mafia, that just taking care of those who take care of you.
==Blue(23)
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
And now not only does that guild know, so does everybody that's read the paper through Slashdot. If he hasn't deleted that character by now, I'd say he's about to!
I can't even imagine the combination of smells in that conference room: horrible body odor from the Everquest people mixed with the excessive stink of aftershave that the Sopranos guineas wear. I predict a big rumble taking place, namely the Everquest people sucking fist and nursing head wounds.
Ping?
It's nothing personal, just business. Capish?
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
Sony online's next release: EverSoprano, where you get to swear, shoot guns and get into legal disputes with HBO.
Q: Whadda you in for?
A: Virtual Murder 1.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
What is this blue on black mess?
That's it for Humanity, we're going to destroy ourselves very soon.
Dargon "I only wanted to have an alt for awhile he is a STD"
;)
TL "A what darg?"
Dargon "A STD super twinked dwarf"
Tony needs to keep his ring of ladies a lil cleaner, STD's are no laughing matter
My two cents (more like five dollars):
The behavior you see in many online RPGs, in which "familial associations" form between groups of players, is basically similar to the formation of cliques in high and middle (US) schools. The only difference is that the cliques have weapons, magic, booty and lots of XP; the sum of these is what determines the worth of a person in the online world, just as "fashion" and "who you know" are the determinants of self-worth in cliques IRL.
In fact, if you take some steps back and look at the most infamous mobs, could it not be argued that they are simply cliques with guns that join together to commit crime and bribe those in power?
And then there's the issue of newbie hazing, which is analogous to cliques blackballing those who are not members of the "in" crowd, again quite similar to what happens when the mob gains control over a city and "elects" its officials. Online RPGs, especially and notoriously Everquest, are extremely culpable in this regard. Newbies who do not join a guild or other crowd of "in", upper-level characters will find themselves ostracized and devoured by trolls (not necessarily the Slashdot variety).
The issue of newbie hazing wasn't really touched on by the paper, but I argue that it is a huge problem and that it is not just limited to online RPGs, but also many websites with "experience" systems. Everything2 specifically comes to mind but I'm sure there are many other examples of sites where an attempt by a newbie to contribute to the community at large will be rejected because the newbie doesn't have the right connections nor the XP to stand on their own. What about Slashdot? The karma system works because trolls are controlled and a newbie can stand on their own, and the only real privelege granted by "experience" is a +1 karma bonus to initial posts. Newbies can do everything those with "Excellent" karma can do and the moderation system cares a lot more about the age of an account than its karma. Again, contrast with Everything2, and with Everquest.
So, I argue that the points the paper makes are quite valid outside the world of Everquest and are applicable to many, many online and offline environments. (Apologies to Everythingers who might be rubbed the wrong way by the above comments, but I have seen with my own eyes that Everything and Everquest have an awful lot in common from the newbie's perspective.)
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
Gandalf...Gandolfini...
Coincidence? I think not.
Can some explain this 'bada-bing' catchphrase and why it is thought to be associated with Americans of Italian extraction or the Mafia? Do real mobsters go around saying it? Does it mean anything?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
As appealing as it may be to glue two pop-cultural phenomenons together, the connections to fictionalized mafia and EQ seem pretty tenuous.
For one thing, there isn't the zero-sum game of the Mafia - the power brokerage involved in EQ doesn't seem to benefit from betrayal, or "keeping your enemies closer" aspect that we see in that thing of theirs. There isn't the "money flows up, shit flows down" ethic, and you don't have to worry about entanglements with a more powerful outside authority (FBI).
Most of the examples given in the article examining the social networking could just as easily be seen as an excuse to have an adventure ("Someone's dead! Let's go rescue him."). You get to play the hero in a very specific mini-myth.
The larger & more formalized groupings in the game resemble fraternities a lot more than the mafia - a bunch of people who glom together who share a common outlook on life & a desire to party together. Piss off the alpha members of said community and you'll be shunned, not whacked. Heck, with all those "virtual weddings" you hear about, can "virtual date rape" be that far off?
-BbT
Don't you remember what happens in Return of the King? When Gandalf cuts off Frodo's head and hands, and hurls him into Mt. Doom?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I'm not sure how well the mafia connection holds up, frankly; I'd like to see a lot more information and analysis about the parallels between the two than the hand-waving "just as the Mafia developed because of its environment." Still an interesting read, especially since I've never played EQ.
But I have played Shadowbane (though I don't anymore), and I think they might really have something if they looked at a game, like SB, where player-killing is virtually unrestricted and where all expectations point to a social-interaction model versus a lone-wolf model.
Their example of a player ripping off the group by logging out pales next to some of the experiences I had on SB: an assassin backstabbing from stealth to kill and rob players ten levels lower, for example. Then griefed players grouping together to track and kill that sucker across the entire game world (as we did once). Add in the ever-present guild scene in that game, in which certain leading individuals are known to literally every player on the server, and you get a lot closer to northern New jersey.
... Fat Tony from the Simpsons myself.
The communities on MMORPGs are all about tweaking. No originality.
Anarchy run amok.
> We have AK-47s, they have keyboards and mice.
> Sounds like a fair fight to me.
They choose to live fairly and live in a civilized fight.
Should they choose otherwise, how long do you think your thugocracy would stand against thousands of people with high IQ's? You live at their sufferance.
Yes, you would do well to compare the actions of EQ guilds to the mafia and Tony Soprano. Their motives, while differing in context, are unavoidably similar. Power, wealth, and social status.
m l?tid=127
The ultimate goal of any EQ guild is to get ahead of all other EQ guilds, acquire the best loot and items, and block the progression of any other guilds by killing important MOBs before any other guild can get their members online.
The only way to exercise power on a "blue" server (non-pvp) in EQ is to grief other players within the confines of the game rules. This means that blocking the progression of other players is a very enjoyable pasttime. It's the only way you can hurt them. Watching other guilds complain because they are stuck unable to progress in the game for weeks or months is very entertaining, and addicting. Many, many guilds do this, and relish the opportunity. And Verant/SoE does nothing to dissuade or stop it, unless you pay an extra $30/mo in subscription fees, in which case they put you on the "Legends" server, and force the other guilds to give you a chance.
To be a mafia, you really should be dabbling in illegal activities. This is true in EQ to an extent. The only rule that Verant/SoE consistently enforces on end-game guilds is the no-exploit rule: "You can't take advantage of flaws in the game design to kill something more easily or more quickly than Verant/SoE wants you to."
As a matter of fact, this rule is broken very often in the name of getting ahead of the competition. Nearly every EQ guild exploits something: if not MOB pathing, then a spell that's too powerful, a quirk in the Feign Death ability, etc. It's the way the game is played. Some might argue that the game is so flawed that it's impossible NOT to use an exploit now and then in the course of playing an honest game.
Anyway, for further reading, you can check out this article on EQ I wrote way back in December. It goes into some of the problems with the game that lead to a mafia mentality taking over the social structure, and the apathy of the development company. A few of the comments were pretty good, also.
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/27/1748252.sht
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Even though Everquest breeds gangsters, it treats its playerbase like shit. This is a bad idea because the inevitable result is someone's going to take it out of fantasy to real life. There are many players who play Everquest as if it is their life, so its not that big of a stretch.
God spoke to me
Of course some of the best writings on the subject (not from academia, btw) are the seminal "Habitat Papers" by Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer. Their main home at communities.com is gone, with the collapse of that company - does anybody out there have copies or links to another site that has them?
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
I saw Godfather III for the first time a few years ago, and I couldn't take Joe Mantegna's character seriously because I kept picturing Fat Tony.
Just play a good MMORPG like AO, and you won't have the problems as you would playing an outdated hag like EverSuck.
you're gonna sleep wit' da krakens!
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Specifically, I was thinking about the MMPORPG described in Todd McAulty's great story The Haunting of Cold Harbour . Basically, think of the Mafia with Ghouls, Vampires, and some cyborgs thrown in (and, no, it's not a straight Buffy rip off). I quit EQ last year to better cope with RL, but a game like this would definately suck me in.
Shameless plug: If you get a chance to pick up a copy of Black Gate , which printed "Haunting," do so. It really is a great collection of fantasy stories, book reviews, and RPG articles. And I'm not just saying that cause I've got a story coming out this Summer... really!
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
The same thing, basically.. unrestricted player-kill.
If you killed in town, the town guards would go hostile on you.
If you killed in an area the Order guild chose to be policing, you would end up with them after you.
If you killed someone, you would have their friends after you....
The trick, of course, to PK, is those who run the game ensuring there is balance.. as you said, if a high level doing socially unacceptable things like killing noobs causes him to end up chased around teh entire game by a mob for a few hours, that's *AWESOME*. It's fun, there is purpose, anger, feeling, intent.. everyone gets into it.. that's how it SHOULD be, and one of the best gaming experiences there is.. for BOTH paties.
Knowing that if you walk through town and steal shit from some high level guy, nobody will mind if he kicks your ass gives you more incentive to be good at it, and chose your marks carefully.
Sanctuary had a good balance.. you could generally go out in a group and chase wahtever items you wanted, or level up, without fear of being attacked... except of course there was a guild who's job it was to stir shit up.... plus you had some nasty solo players out there with god-given superpowers who, although forbidden to group together or help each other, were allowed to do anything they wanted.. that was a good unstable element tot he game. You'd be having a great party kicknig some ass and suddenly a Forsaken woudl show up and maim half your party... and then you would spend an hour chasing him down.
That's fun.
Any zone in which people interact is fodder for sociological analysis, and online gaming is particularly interesting because there is a level of abstraction built into the interaction (although, as the paper points out, it isn't completely isolated from "RL" relationships).
I'd look for more of these as time goes by; the creation of a virtual world comes close to addressing one of the major deficits of the 'social sciences', the inability to (ethically) set up an experiment to test a theory. It's limited, of course, since the players
Nevertheless, this is an arena in which sociological concepts can in a limited fashion actually be tried out. I think we'll learn a surprising amount from it, and hopefully it will even have practical use if we go on to create new societies in space.Wizards.
You might also note that an example of short-term benefit from betrayal was mentioned in the paper (Phrank's running off with the forest ring), along with the longer-term consequences.
Neither milieu (EQ or Mafia) could accurately be described as a zero-sum game within its own context.
Sorry? What was that? Playing Everquest is indicative of a high IQ? Come on, I mean, I know this is Slashdot, but this is just getting ridiculous.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
OMFG, mods are so lame, that comment is so not funny. The only thing that is a joke in that comment is that guys social life.
While I am glad that gaming is getting some attention from academic types with loads of extra grant money lying around just waiting to be put to some good use for the betterment of mankind, it saddens me that this paper is written so poorly. Nobody that is not already familiar with online gaming would be able to make heads or tails of the material. Entire concepts go unexplained. Observations made are shallow, and poorly introduced with little attention to style. I have written (and published) enough APA and ACS style papers to recognize a hack job when I see it.
Someone please assure me that this was not the work of graduate students. If it was, University standards are at an all time low. Poorly written items like this one only do disservice to the field in general because it destroys creditability.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Although watching big brother and playing computer games probably are.
Whether or not you watch TV, or whether or not you use a computer, are not as notable as what you use them FOR. If you told me you don't watch TV, I'd think you were an idiot, because there are some very good things on TV (History Channel? Law and Order? The Sopranos?) There's nothing to say that using a TV as a tool to knowlege/arts is any better or worse than using a museum or theater.
Plenty of people use computers for lots of activities other than games.
Why is playing computer games looked at wierd?
Maybe because too many people do it for 48 hours without sleep? Maybe for the same reasons people disdained playing chess during lunch in high school? Maybe the same reason it's wierd to talk about NASCAR at a Trixie party?
Maybe the same reason you disdain Big Brother watching?
paintball
Just play a good MMORPG like AO, and you won't have the problems as you would playing an outdated hag like EverSuck.
EQ is pretty sucky in comparison yes, but remember that AO had the benefit of not being the first to tread the unknown path.
AO has certainly avoided suffering from some of the really bad problems of EQ in my experience, so I wonder what the author of the paper would conclude if he analysed AO. He wouldn't find many of the negative aspects of social dependency that can make EQ life less than complete fun. AO organizations are everywhere, especially after the Notum Wars upgrade with its emphasis on land ownership, but life is fun and progress is rapid without riding on their shoulders. It's pretty different.
That's absolutely true...the only thing indicative of a high iq is a high score on an iq test.
And anyway, wtf does that then mean...that you're good at doing iq tests, period.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
"Nice dark horde you got 'er Sauron." "Yeah, very nice" "Yeah, be a shame if some'int happened to it?" "Yeah, real shame" CRASH. TINKLE. "Ohh. I'm so sorry." "Yeah sorry guv, my brother's so clumsy, he didn't mean to break your ring." "Yeah, real sorry."
The fact that some are good at it, while you're clearly not, says more about you than it does them.
First, what the hell is it? Its not science; theres no method, no data, no design. Its not anything sociological/philosophical either, theres no perspective informing it that I can uncover. So really is just someones opinions. Why should we be interested in them then? I assume we are supposed to accept validity by the authority imbued by academic credentials. Analysis is signally lacking here; its reads rather like "what we did on our holidays". I'm afraid I recognise what has gone on here only too well; fellow academics will immediately rumble it, but I shall shall say only this: it is perhaps not unconnected that the conference was in sunny Australia...
In any case, I'm not the world's greatest Sopranos or LoTR buff, but I distinctly recall that Gandalf had a wide network of friends and allies all of whom could be called on in extremis (every character in the entire novel knows him or his reputation. he gets rescued by an otherwise aloof maian spirit/given the best horse in the world(!)/trusted to lead armies/offered the Ring/so well connected he gets reincarnated/invited to go on holiday with the elves etc.). By contrast, Tony Soprano is isolated, lonely, can trust no-one it seems (hes killed at least two capos that i'm aware of for example, his wife is cheating on him, his kids hate him, Pauly is plotting against him etc.). What the authors mean to say is "like Micheal Corleone in the Godfather sequels". But hey, the Sopranos is newer, they heard its about the mafia, guessed it will be the same. Well, it isn't. Given they are too lazy to even depict two incredibly famous and popular fictional characters correctly, this undermines the article as a whole, particularly because it purports to be some sort of cultural analysis.
In conclusion, the point the argue for is at best banal, really redundant and even if it wasn't, the weak attempt at rhetoric to support it falls embarassingly under any sort of examination.Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
I'm going to get in here before anyone else. Argh!!!! Nooooo!!!! I can't believe it. Yes, OK, I was the last person to explain the connection between music and hearing here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=65787&cid=6064 297
C'mon, you get my drift though!? ...inserts shotgun into mouth. ...depresses trigger.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
http://www.project-entropia.com/default.asp
anybody got some money to launder?
The paper presented in Melbourne by these two academics is nothing short of great. The connections between Everquest and The Sopranos while at first may seem far-fetched are in actuality, pervasive and influential.
What this paper says is stuff you've always thought about, but they finally put together
I first heard of Dr. Taylor's work when she was doing research on MMORPGs. I hope I continue to learn more new stuff on gaming and culture from her and others covering this burgeoning field.
I'm having difficulty seeing how Tony Soprano is much worse than Gandalf. You know, if you look at LotR objectively, what Gandalf is all about is White Power and anti-democracy. He worked tirelessly to maintain the hegemony and genetic purity of a small core of oligarchical monarchists with a fundamentalst religious outlook that believed the Gods had given them eminent domain over Middle Earth. They seem to have been fighting a viscious war of ethnic cleansing and land grabs against all the southern and eastern cultures in Middle Earth. Apparently, Gondor was no place to be if your skin has a dark, brown, or yellow tinge. You had these poor immigrants from the South (including descendents of the losing side in one of Gondor's civil wars) being denied immigration visas, even though Gondor itself was evidently underpopulated and suffering from a low fertility rate.
Da Blog
how is it that goatse.cx qualifies as words?
(quietly thanks the good murphy that i'm not new around here. shiva forfend that i click on that link twice in my life!)
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1