Games (specifically multiplayer role-playing games) allow players to try out new personalities and behaviors due to their rules that vary so much ‘” or so little ‘” from the real world. You can be a spell-casting Wizard, an insane, noble, sometimes ignorant Barbarian, or a conspiring CEO.

Effectively, games allow people to try things that they’d never be able to do in the real world. One group has put that notion to the test. Claiming that most guilds in MMORPG’s tend to follow the hierarchy and patterns of your average street gang, and they have the math to prove it. The paper hasn’t been released to a public-access journal (you have to pay to read it), but the abstract is enough to get my brain seriously stimulated about the topic. It makes sense, as the main dynamic of most popular MMORPG’s is the same as what you’d think gangs’ would be, ‘” get rich or die trying.

It’s almost unnerving to think about playing an MMO with some people in the terms of “Hey, you’re basically in a gang.” Not to suggest that people who play MMORPG’s are more likely to be in street gangs, just that the patterns and structures that the data the guilds provide tends to follow the data that’s recovered of street gangs. It’s one of those parallels in Sociology that make you think, but don’t do much more than that. Similar to the Venus of Willendorf and the other similar stone sculptures found around the world dating tens of thousands of years ago.

It only costs $25 to buy the article, so someone should totally get it for me for Christmas! MMORPG design is something that greatly interests me. Until then you’ll just have to live with the abstract and my wishy-washy summary to whet your appetite.

Via: BoingBoing

Image : http://www.flickr.com/photos/majoracartergroup/ / CC BY-SA 2.0