Studien behandlar vilka interaktioner en användare behöver tillämpa för att den ska kunna finna eller skapa ett förtroende inom en guild i spelet World of Warcraft. Det övergripande syftet är att se om dessa interaktioner tillämpas på olika sätt beroende på vilken guild en användare är medlem i. Studien har främst utgått ifrån tre guilder och ett antal WoW-användares egna perspektiv, erfarenheter och tankar där undersökningarna har byggts på kvalitativa metoder. De kvalitativa metoderna inkluderade enkäter, scenario, observation och semi- strukturerade intervjuer. Analysen har till stor del utgått ifrån teorierna socialt kapital teorin och flow-teorin. Studien har även granskat hur WoW’s design och funktioner kan påverka en användares interaktioner både i och utanför spelet. / This study will show different interactions that a user needs to adjust in order to find and create trust within a guild in the game World of Warcraft. The aim of this study is to see if these interactions are used in different ways depending on which guild a user is a member in. The study is based on three different guilds and a few WoW-users perspectives, experiences and thoughts. The main methods in this study is based on qualitative methods that includes surveys, scenarios, observation and semi-structured interviews. The analysis has been based on two theories, social capital theory and the flow theory. This study has also examined how the design and features of WoW can affect a user's interactions, both in and outside the game.

多人角色扮演線上遊戲內是否有領導力？若有，這種能力如何培養、展現與有效實踐？本研究期待藉由探索魔獸世界公會團隊隊長(Raid Leader，簡稱RL)的遊戲歷程，探究線上遊戲如何可能成為形塑領導能力的場域，並分析此領導力應用於現實世界的機會與限制。 / 以線上遊戲「魔獸世界」為觀察環境，從RL在遊戲裡的日常工作、與他人相處、副本經歷到追求集體目標的過程，了解RL如何帶領玩家獲得成就感及形成影響力。擁有深遠故事背景、明確角色定位、任務導向及短中長期目標的「魔獸世界」正好提供良好的虛擬試煉空間，讓玩家組隊挑戰副本空間，讓玩家在自由組隊及各種征戰練習中，以團隊的力量尋找解答與達成擊敗魔王的目標。投入條件不斷變化的副本環境獲得利益與經驗等級，此過程所產生的情感與經濟的交換，使玩家間的關係變得複雜，也增加玩家對遊戲的黏著度，線上遊戲不但塑造出新的交友管道，更可能追引出新的管理模式與領袖培養機制。 / 本研究透過不同年齡與社會歷練之RL深度訪談，加上公會論壇的內容分析，察知在管理公會事務與副本征戰過程中的RL，將會於實踐遊戲目標之際建立自信與玩家間的信賴關係，並逐步形塑其領導力。此歷程中發現之策略運用、資源交換等遊戲技能；風險承擔與情緒管理等服務態度與合作分享等人格特質，與Drucker與Senge提出的領導力特質不謀而合，玩家將遊戲裡所獲得的心得分析、重組、整合，並把遊戲中與朋友相處的法則與解決問題的方式轉化及複製為現實社會裡的應用知識，線上遊戲除了可形塑創造願景、審時度勢、協調利益、嘗試創新、激勵賦能等領導者能力，可轉換至現實社會或不適宜轉換但可引以為戒的反向思考與限制也將一併於本研究中呈現。 / Is leadership really existent amongst on-line games? If so, how can those players develop, display or effectively practice their leadership when playing games? Then what will this capability affect or contribute to the virtual environment and our physical social context after players possess it? In order to answer these questions, this research has examined the character Raid leader or RL in on-line game, the World of Warcraft, investigated the forming process of his leadership and explored the ways in which an on-line game has become an arena to train leadership. Based on the World of Warcraft, we have observed RL’s daily routines in the game, the interaction with other players and the process from the dungeon (also called instance) experience to achieve team’s goal pursuit in attempts in order to realize the model of interaction in on-line game as well as the ways in which RL has led all the team member to attain achievements and form their influence. MMORPG with a long storyline, clear role position, mission orientation and different term goals offers an on-line gaming world where designed a series of quizzes and a dungeon for different player communities to challenge. Player can team up with the others, match with one another and conquer difference practices to find the resolution and defeat the monsters (also called Boss) in the dungeon. After campaigning with team members in different personalities and joining continuously changing dungeon environments to gain different bonus and experience levels, players may form a close bond with one another and exchange treasures or information on hand in terms of their economic profit during the game. Furthermore, after having some intensive interviews with RLs who are at different ages and having their own social experience in the real society as well as the analysis of the context in the guild forum, this research has discovered that RLs who manage guild affairs and conquer dungeon will establish their self-confidence and dependence with the other players when achieving the goals in games, and extend his leadership to those players. Those findings from this forming procedure not only agree with the rules to hone leadership asserted by Drucker and Senge in recent years and the characteristics but also drew forth a team dynamics force to on-line player communities and a new mass movement that may influence the social impression or educational direction in the future. By means of daily play of on-line games, players analyzed, re-organized and integrated their own feedback from the games, and involuntarily transferred the ways to get along with friends in games and to solve questions to tacit knowledge to manage the real society. In addition to the search for the vision formed in on-line games and the characteristics of leadership as consideration of the situation, co-ordination of the profits on hand, attempt to innovate and ability to stimulate talents, some changeable key points, mechanism or limitation to the real society or unchangeable but referring points will also be presented in this research.

Through more than five years of extensive, participatory research the writer became a fully integrated member of the World of Warcraft community he set out to study. By actually living the grounded practices that constitute the everyday life he concludes that the mundane, often repetitive practice has very little to do with the cyber-utopian claim that one can flee the body and become who they want on the Internet. Instead this doctoral thesis argues that the constant transitions of the borders between offline and online, virtual and real, body and avatar, play and work, player and producer are best described with the concept of leakage. Using leakage to describe the perforated borders that surrounds the game not only allows an understanding of World of Warcraft as a powerful site for production of meaning and culture but also places it far from the traditional understandings of separated fun, play and games. Play as an activity has traditionally been described with three intrinsic features: it is separable from everyday life, in particular from work; it is safe, meaning that it isn’t productive nor does it carry consequence and finally that play is pleasurable or fun. World of Warcraft doesn’t easily admit to these features and should not be understood as neither innocent utopia nor as a devoured mimesis, but rather as an expansion of the life space where players repeatedly and deliberately stretch beyond the producer’s intentions and create a world consisting of work, unwritten social norms, creativity and friendship. Players are social laborers that produce the core of what makes World of Warcraft what it is: a serious game.

A concept of underworld runs through many cultures. These realms of spirits and the dead generally share several key characteristics, despite their varied and separate traditions. The commonalities among these different mythological places make it possible to generalize certain characteristics as chthonic for descriptive and analytical purposes. The underworld has appeared widely in video games throughout their history. I argue that the remarkable prevalence reflects a formal relationship between the underworld and video games; specific elements in mythic underworlds comprise a chthonic poetics that resonates with video game worlds and affordances. Video games uniquely support the spatial, thematic, and narrative elements that characterize underworlds and the philosophical questions they engage. Embodiment binds these elements together; they are unintelligible without this core perspective. The body sits at the axis of experience in mythic underworlds like the one described by Dante in the Divine Comedy and in game worlds like the one in World of Warcraft. It provides the medium through which we can experience these simulations as worlds rather than mere information structures. Other formal elements give context and direction to that embodied experience, and exploring how these interact with embodiment can expand our understanding of chthonic embodiment and the experience of space in virtual worlds. Three primary forces acting on the agency, subjectivity and control of the body structure that experience, which in turn reflects the ways of being that emerge from chthonic contexts. By incorporating these forces into their gameplay and narrative structure, games provide more direct access to the mythic power associated with the underworld than previous media forms.

The purpose of this study is to examine the player’s experiences and perspective of the massively multiplayer online role playing game World of Warcraft. This study wants to find out the effects on the players psychological and social well-being through interviewing 10 World of Warcraft players between the ages of 18-32. This has been done through a thematic analysis. The reason behind this study is because a lot of scientific studies and the media has portrayed World of Warcraft players in a negative light where they are described as lone wolfs. This study wants to find out how the players themselves talk about the game and how it has affected their lives. The findings of this study have shown that players describe World of Warcraft as a meaningful occupation where it has given them better confidence, self-awareness, language skills, social skills but also build a social network inside the game. The social interactions that the players have with their friends have given them a platform to be open about their lives but also problems that affect them in the real world. The conclusion of this study is that the picture that a lot of the scientific studies and the media are portraying is a dishonest one. They judge players as single group where they do not look at the bigger picture or through the perspective of the World of Warcraft player.

Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht am Beispiel von Online-Rollenspielen, wie sich prosoziales Verhalten in virtuellen Umgebungen im Vergleich zu dem in realen Umgebungen unterscheidet. Ausgangspunkt für die Untersuchungen sind die Modelle zum und Einflussgrößen auf das prosoziale Verhalten, die als Ergebnisse der einschlägigen Forschung realer Hilfesituationen vorliegen. Unter Berücksichtigung der Charakteristika und Besonderheiten von Online-Rollenspielen werden verschiedene Variablen wie Attraktivität des Hilfeempfängers, Ähnlichkeit zwischen Helfer und Hilfeempfänger, die Schwere der Notsituation und Gruppenzugehörigkeit auf ihre Auswirkung auf das prosoziale Verhalten in virtuellen Szenarien getestet. Um ein maximales Maß an externer Validität zu gewährleisten, kommt dabei die Methode der In-situ-Untersuchung zum Einsatz, bei der das Verhalten der Probanden in natürlichen Spielsituationen erfasst wird. Die Ergebnisse zeigen bei weiblichen Avataren einen signifikanten Einfluss der Attraktivität bei männlichen Helfern, wohingegen es bei fehlender Verfügbarkeit von Attraktivitätsmerkmalen keine Geschlechtsunterschiede gibt. Kein Einfluss auf prosoziales Verhalten kann bei den Variablen Schwere der Notsituation und perzeptueller Ähnlichkeit nachgewiesen werden. Darüber hinaus wird mittels einer Fragebogenstudie der Einfluss dispositionaler Merkmale, die unter dem Begriff prosoziale Persönlichkeit zusammengefasst werden, auf prosoziales Verhalten untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die positiven Prädiktoren empathic concern, other-oriented moral reasoning und der negative Prädiktor personal distress einen signifikanten Einfluss auf das Auftreten prosozialen Verhaltens in realen und in virtuellen Szenarien haben. Allerdings unterscheidet sich die Höhe des Einflusses dieser Variablen in Abhängigkeit der Zielpersonen des prosozialen Verhaltens (Ingroup vs. Outgroup) sowie des Umgebung (real vs. virtuell).

I mitten av 1990-talet närmare bestämt 1996 gjordes en film kallad Diary of a Camper. Filmen handlade om en person som satt och lurpassade på sina fiender i ett datorspel. Det som var speciellt med denna film var inte handlingen eller något fantastiskt kameraarbete. Nej det som var speciellt var det faktum att filmen spelades in i ett datorspel. Denna film anses vara startskottet för machinimakulturen som idag omfattar flera tusen utövare världen över.Det var personerna bakom Diary of a camper som myntade uttrycket machinima som är en sammanslagning av de engelska orden ”machine” och ”animation” alltså maskin och animation. Det finns en annan tolkning där ordets andra stavelse är ”cinema” istället för ”animation” men den officiella ska vara det tidigare. Vad än ordet machinima är ihopsatt av är det en filmteknik där kreatören eller producenten spelar in sin historia i ett TV- eller datorspel. I denna uppsats tittar vi närmare på machinimakulturen och vad för regler, attityder och förhållningssätt som finns i denna tilldags dato, anno 2010, något outforskade arena.

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This thesis paper addresses a problem of motivation that interaction designers experience when managing multiple design processes while keeping track of many design considerations. Once this issue is described at length, the paper focuses towards a possible solution in the form of a hybrid between creativity and productivity support tools: an accomplishment support tool. This tool is meant to support interaction designers in their experience with managing multiple processes.This paper does not suggest that interaction design is the only profession that suffers from the motivation issue that is described, nor does it deny that other professions could benefit from the use of such a tool. The paper merely attempts to narrow the issue down to one profession so that it may be addressed within the limits of the thesis project.The paper explores the need for such a tool by inspecting and analyzing current methods and digital applications used by interaction designers and mentions how this need is addressed with solutions based on relevant theories from diverse areas of interest. As defining qualities emerge from a combination of theoretical and practical research, case studies are described from a preparation perspective and then as experienced by workshop participants and interviewees.The case studies (which include workshops and prototype modules) are then reflected upon and discussed in terms of their impact on the overall goals of the thesis project. A final prototype in the form of a web application, IxD Companion, is then described through scenarios of use and assessed in the conclusion. Suggestion to future work on accomplishment support tools such as IxD Companion, as well as others, is provided at the end.