[Mud-Dev] Social Networks

[Paul]

From: "Dave Rickey" <daver at mythicentertainment.com>

> At the other extreme, I live in a townhouse development full of
> dual-income, no-kids households.  I have only met the people
> living in the townhouse next door (with whom I share an interior
> wall) once, and I don't know their names.  In the terminology of
> networks, I am a weakly connected leaf node, and my neighborhood
> is a sparse social network.  I have no sense of "belonging" to
> that neighborhood, it is just one of many places I have lived in
> my life, and one I could leave at any time without a sense of
> loss.

Nice post, Dave.  This is such a good description of Northern
Virgina communities (I'd forgotten that you live nearby).  It
reminds me very much of my own townhouse experiences in Centreville.
A couple of years ago, though, my wife and I moved out to
Gainesville, where community is a bit more existent, though not
truly small-town.  Now I am wondering what factors go into
determining these sorts of things.  Brainstorming for three quick
answers, I come up with:
 
  - More children in the neighborhood.  Parents now share a need
  that falls low on Maslow's Heirarchy.  Interest in their family's
  security compels them to reach out to others in the community.

  - More stay-at-home moms.  Again, comminity seems to result from
  shared needs, though probably higher on Maslow's Heirarchy in this
  instance.  The need for adult fellowship is probably not nearly as
  pressing, but I do think it contributes.
 
  - Less ambition.  Less investment at work may lead to higher
  investment at home.  Maybe this is simply a matter of having more
  time, but investment in outdoor recreational activities, yardwork,
  etc. around the home seems to lend itself to community.

In general, it seems to me that shared needs are the key.  And the
lower those *perceived* (important to virtual reality) needs appear
to fall in Maslow's Heirarchy, the greater their tendency to push
toward community.

> I believe the reason why Motor City Online has been so marginal is
> because it has no group objectives at all, only individual goals.
> WW2O, on the other hand, has the problem that its only meaningful
> goals are *too* group-centric, there is no small-scale
> organizational dynamic that is directly rewarded.  If WW2O had
> some kind of graduated progression from individual combat to
> squad-level, the army-level combat that is the centerpiece of the
> of the game would be much more approachable (because battalions
> and regiments would be much easier to assemble, and people would
> already be integrated into the social mileau).

How important do you think large-scale organizational dynamics are?
Intuition tells me that as WW2O could benefit from progressively
more intimate layers to bring it down to a small scale, some other
games might benefit from progressively more global layers to bring
more "epic" feel or meaning to the dynamics.  It seems to me that
this might also help address some of the issues with the "ceilings"
that social networks seem to hit at certain population levels.

--Phinehas


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