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Roettger - 1 Analysis of Final Fantasy XI: Development of Social Values and Norms using the Social Exchange Theory By James Roettger Roettger - 2 Since the development of the Internet in the early 1970s, virtual communities have been in existence. However, it wasn’t until the early 1990s when computer technology became affordable and more user-friendly for the average citizen that these online communities began to develop their own unique form of socialization. By the late 1990s most households had at least one computer and an internet connection1. People were beginning to spend more of their time on their computers playing games and socializing online. In March of 1999, a new type of computer game became popularized—the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG)— with the release of a game called EverQuest. MMORPGs are games that take place completely online, requiring a constant connection to the internet while playing, and usually consisting of an alternate world in which a player may take on a role of some fantasy character such as a wizard or warrior. To give players the feeling of having a unique character, MMORPGs give them the option to customize an avatar to represent the player in the game. These customization options allow the player to specify everything from height of the avatar to skin color and age. EverQuest, one of the most popular MMORPGs with over one million players, had several unexpected effects on society. The first was that many of the players became so engrossed with the game, preferring it to reality, that they rarely stopped playing it to socialize in the real world. Some lost their jobs, families, and homes because all that they would do is play the game. Secondly, up until this point a large majority of computer games were played by people between the ages of 15-30, but EverQuest seemed to draw in an equally large number of adults over the age of thirty, as well2. Finally, many sociologists began to notice that a virtual culture was slowly being created on EverQuest which not only contained different rituals for socialization, but also instilled in players a set of morals different from the ones that they were raised with. Unfortunately, most 1 2 Glee, J. Beginning of the Internet. 1999. 12 Feb. 2004 Yee, Nicholas. “The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of EverQuest” (version 2.5) May 2001. Roettger - 3 of these realizations came many years after EverQuest was released and so it was too late to study this virtual culture evolving from its conception. In October of 2003 a chance to study a MMORPG community from its release in America was offered to me with the announcement of the U.S. release of Final Fantasy XI. Final Fantasy XI was expected to be one of the fastest growing online games of its time. Having only been out in the United States for eight short months, Final Fantasy XI already has gained over 800,000 players internationally and is still growing today. Virtual communities are beginning to develop and social bonds have grown between many players. New social norms and values within the game world have been created and rituals for socialization are becoming institutionalized. The purpose of this research project was to apply George Homans’ and Peter Blau’s social exchange theory to explain the development and reinforcement of in-game norms. This paper breaks the analysis down into three parts. The first part of the paper will be an introduction into the world of Final Fantasy XI. In this part I will describe the workings of this game world as well as how the economy is run. The second part will look at the basic assumptions of George Homans and how they apply to actions of individual players. Peter Blau’s theories on social conformity and the development of collective values will be used in the last part of this paper to analyze how groups and communities in Final Fantasy XI reinforce the social norms developed from individual players. “The World” The world of Final Fantasy XI is composed of 62 different areas (new areas were added recently), making up 3 continents and one alternate universe designed specifically for high-level characters Each area takes a player about half an hour to an hour to walk across, can range from a tropical jungle to a desert, and has an assorted amount of wildlife. Some wildlife will attack Roettger - 4 players who get too close, and there are semi-intelligent monsters in each area that will hunt players in groups of as large as six monsters. In each area players are able to gather valuable resources by looting the bodies of the dead creatures. The term resources are used loosely in this paper to include equipment characters can use, money, animal parts, ores and minerals, and magical items. A player’s strength is measured in levels, so a beginning player would be considered level one. Players get stronger (go up in levels) in the game by collecting experience points (commonly called xp) from killing monsters. The amount of experience points that a player gets for each monster killed is determined by comparing the player's level to the strength of the monster. The harder the monster is relative to the player, the more experience points the player will get from killing the monster. If player gets killed in the game their character is penalized a large amount of xp, which may lead to a loss of level. After dying, the player will be teleported back to a pre-determined restart point. Players may also join in groups of up to 18 people to kill any one monster, but the xp will be split fairly among the players involved based on their level, relative to other players in the party. In addition to this, the game records how many experience points players from the same kingdom (there are three major kingdoms in the game) get in each area. At the end of the week those points are tallied up and the kingdom whose players earned the most points in a specific area gets control of that area. What this means is that players in an area controlled by their kingdom will be marginally stronger than players from the other kingdoms and they will be able to gather resources from the environment more efficiently. There are three basic job categories; tanks, secondary damagers, and healers. Tanks are composed of the warrior and paladin job classes which specialize in provoking monsters so the monster attacks only this player, ignoring the other party members. Tanks usually have a lot of protective armor and can take a lot of damage, but do not deal a large amount of damage to Roettger - 5 anything that they are attacking. Secondary damagers include monks, thieves, ninjas, beastmasters, rangers, samurai, summoners, bards, dragoons, black mages, and red mages. These job classes all specialize in different types of attacks, but generally are used to the same end – to consistently damage the monster while the tank gets hit by it. Finally, the healer job class consists of the white mage job. White mages and bards can not really hurt any monster themselves, relying on the damage dealers to kill it; white mages focus on healing any damage done to those fighting the monsters. Players may change their job at any point they wish in the game, but each job class has a separate level record (so for example a level 20 monk can become a white mage, but they'll be starting over at level 1). In addition to choosing a job class, a player must also choose one of five races for their avatar. A player’s avatar is the virtual representation of themselves in the game. Although the avatar is humanoid the strengths and weaknesses of each race differ. These races are Galka, Tarutaru, Mithra, Elvaan, and Hume. Each race is known for being strong in one ascribed area, compared to the other races. Galka (hulking giants with rippling muscles) are extremely strong so they make good fighters, but they are also very stupid so they make poor mages. TaruTaru (very tiny humanoid, resembling mice almost), on the other hand, are very weak physically, but they are very intelligent, making them good mages. Mithra (cat people) are considered to be very dexterous so they make good thieves, but they are also decent fighters and mages. Elvaans (elves) and Humes (humans) are just about equally balanced in strength, dexterity, and intelligence, making them versatile in switching between different job classes. Players can never change their race once it’s chosen. As with most MMORPGs Final Fantasy XI was created with no clearly defined goals or objectives, though it does offer an overlying storyline which players may choose to learn about by Roettger - 6 completing certain missions that are offered in the game. In the absences of game-defined objectives players tend to make up their own goals or objectives to justify playing the game. The two most common goals are to become the strongest (highest level) player in the game or to become the richest player in the game. In most cases, however, in order to achieve a goal in the game, players need resources (which translate into money) and experience points. To gather resources and experience points most players join or create hunting parties. The basic hunting party is formed by a group of six players who are generally around the same level. The primary goal of hunting parties is to seek monsters which no one player could hunt on his own. The xp yield from hunting monsters of this caliber is greater per party member than for any single player that hunted weaker monsters alone. Resources gathered from the kill are put into a lottery which any party member can participate in to obtain the resource. It is generally considered impractical to be in a group that doesn't have a healer or tank. Parties without these two job classes break up very quickly and many players flat out refuse to hunt with parties that lack one or both of these job classes. Sometimes hunting parties will stay together for days, logging on together, at scheduled times to hunt together while other times, a hunting party will break apart after only hours of being together. One of the most important factors that determine the longevity of a group is the abilities of each party member to efficiently play the role determined by their job class. For example, a group will break apart within hours if it doesn’t have a skillful white mage to heal the other party members. The same goes for a party that has a warrior who runs from battle instead of protecting the weaker party members. Certain expectations are placed on each job class and if the player does not meet with these expectations, the group will disband. Roettger - 7 Development of social norms and values: individuals to groups George Horman based his exchange theory on five principle propositions which could be applied to all forms social activity. The first three principles, which make up his rationality proposition3, can be used to explain how values within Final Fantasy XI are formed, while the least two principles predict the way in which (on the level of an individual player) the norms are reinforced. The first of these is the success proposition, which states that for all actions taken by persons, the more often a particular action of a person is rewarded, the more likely the person is to perform that action. An example of this proposition applying to Final Fantasy XI is when we see how social rewards will affect what job class a player chooses for their character. As mentioned before, each race has their own set of advantages and disadvantages which can help or hinder the character depending on the job class they choose. Players who have job classes that compliment their race, like a Tarutaru mage, are rewarded by being invited to a large number of groups. On the other hand, players who choose jobs that are not complimented by their race, like a Galka mage, will not receive those group invites as often. From this we see a culturally created value which considers players who have races that do not compliment their jobs to be useless to the society. Homan’s second proposition was the stimulus proposition, which states that if an individual is rewarded for a specific reaction to a stimulus or set of stimuli, then in situations where the present stimuli is similar to that past stimuli, the more likely the individual is to perform the same reaction or a reaction that is similar to their past one. In Final Fantasy XI players begin to form groups almost as soon as they learn how to play the game. As players gain more knowledge of the game world, they begin to see that grouping with other players to 3 Wallace, Ruth A. & Alison Wolf. Contemporary Sociological Theory. NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. pg. 307 Roettger - 8 kill strong monsters has a greater benefit to everyone; these stronger monsters drop resources that are more valuable than resources dropped by monsters the player could fight alone. So, when a player decides to go out hunting monsters, that individual will begin looking for a group that will be hunting the same monster. This value has become so institutionalized in the world of Final Fantasy XI; players have declared certain areas of the world as party seeking areas. When an individual is looking to be invited to a group, they go to these areas where they know most groups look for members. The last proposition that composes Homan’s rationality proposition is the value proposition. This proposition states that the likelihood of an individual repeating an action will be dependant on how valuable the result of the action is to the individual4. Thus an individual who values gathering large amounts of rare resources in a short amount of time will be more likely to look for a group than an person who values being alone. Homan’s Rationality proposition summarizes the success, value, and stimulus propositions by saying, “In choosing between alternative actions a person will choose the one for which, as perceived by him the time, the value, V, of the result, multiplied by the probability, p, of getting the result is greater4.” This basically means that an individual will choose an action based on the chances of success and the size of the reward. While Homan’s rationality proposition logically predicts which actions an individual, one might assume that if the proposition was always true, individuals would repeat certain actions an infinite number of times. To explain why individuals change the focus of their actions, Homan created the deprivation-satiation proposition. This proposition says that the more often in the recent past an individual has received a particular reward, the less valuable any further unit of that reward becomes for him4. In Final Fantasy XI, as a player gains strength (levels) 4 Wallace, Ruth A. & Alison Wolf. pg. 307 Roettger - 9 the amount of experience points required to get to the successive level is exponentially larger. Thus, for a player to go from level two to level three they would only need 1000 experience points, while that same player will need 1700 experience points to go from level three to level four. In this case, a player who is level two will value 100 experience points more than a person at level four. In game, this means that players actions will change based on the amount of experience points they need to achieve the next level. Going back to the example from the value proposition, the player who values hunting monsters alone may begin to value hunting in groups more because he needs more experience points to get to his next level. While Homan’s propositions show how values in the game are derived from the rewards that certain actions elicit, there is still the question as to how these values become societal norms. Homan offers the theory that a players need for social approval leads to conformity of values which, in turn, creates social norms. To summarize Homan’s theory up until this point; individuals will commit certain actions that will induce a rewarding response. The more valuable the rewards are, the more likely the individual will repeat their action. These actions and responses will create a set of values in the virtual society. Then, when new players enter the game, they will strive for social approval from the older players by conforming and taking on these values even if they don’t know why the values exist. Eventually, so many players take on the values and consider them to be a way of life in the game that these values become social norms. Enforcement of these social norms can be seen in Homan’s aggression-approval5 proposition. This proposition states that when an individual does not receive an expected reward or received punishment that was not expected, that person will be angry and will perform aggressive behavior. In Final Fantasy XI, when a player does not receive the expected rewards from grouping with other players, the individual becomes very upset and the enjoyment of 5 Wallace, Ruth A. & Alison Wolf. pg. 312 Roettger - 10 playing the game is drastically reduced. Since these value sets originally derived from real situations where when the values were not followed, the rewards were less than expected. This in turn becomes distributive justice, if groups invite players who do not follow afore mentioned norms, the other group members become agitated with the less than expected rewards and will act in an aggressive manner towards the nonconforming member. Collective Values: A closer look at development of group norms Blau extends Homan’s theories on group norm development by proposing an “emergent process” through which the shared experiences of group members help to produce group norms and values6. In this process individual responses and rationalizations (Homan’s propositions) are shared through mutual discussion and are transformed into social norms through group consensus. An example of this in Final Fantasy XI would be if two individuals in a social setting were arguing whether it is better to hunt in a group for resources or to hunt alone. Both individuals would present their side of the argument to the community, trying to gain support. In the end, the belief that wins through social consensus would become an accepted group value by the community. In this case, the idea that hunting in groups to get more experience points has been socially accepted and become a strong belief in the game world. Individuals in a community are willing to participate in this emergent process under the belief that their norms and values, if instituted as a group norm, would greatly benefit the community. This interest in helping the community become more successful the members of that community will become more successful. This belief can be explained using Blau’s proposition that as groups grow into larger communities, the exchanges are increasingly 6 Wallace, Ruth A. & Alison Wolf. pg. 333 Roettger - 11 indirect7. An example of this in Final Fantasy XI would be if, in a given community an individual helps another community member obtain a rare and highly prized resource. In doing this, the individual receives some social approval from the other community members. Later when this individual needs help completing a difficult task, another community member helps him. In this way, the player is getting rewards for helping out another community member, but the rewards do not come from the member he helped out, but from another member of the community. Thus, as each member becomes more successful, they can help others in the community become more successful as well. Social approval, a sought after characteristic, is one of the prime determinants of social status in the virtual communities. With enough social approval, an individual will be able to coerce others into helping him gather extremely rare resources. There are several ways in which a player may gain social approval to raise their social status: generosity towards other community members, character level, services provided to the community, and how well the individual follows the social norms of the group. Similar to certain tribes in New Guinea8, players may bestow gifts or provide services to other community members in exchange for a degree of social approval. The underlying belief here is that the person receiving the gift or service will eventually pay the giver back, with interest, for this generous display. While the gift giving is not institutionalized or ritualized a person who does not reciprocate (with interest) for a gift given will lose social status with the other community members. Blau theorized that this underlying process of social exchange is a fundamental social norm of reciprocity. This norm creates a starting mechanism of social interactions which could be defined as a need to reciprocate for gifts received in order to 7 8 Wallace, Ruth A. & Alison Wolf. pg. 331 Ongka's Big Moka - The Kawelka of Papua, New Guinea. Odyssey Series (1974). Roettger - 12 continue receiving them9. This theory leads back to Homan’s distributive justice definition in that those who don’t reciprocate are considered to be freeloaders and that’s why they lose social status. Character level is another important part of social status, because the higher the level of the character, the more expensive or rare the resources that the character can gather are. Level also dictates how much authority a player has since the higher the level of the character the more they are assumed to know about the game world and how to survive. Lower level characters are always happy to have a higher level character around to help them gather resources, because it is assumed that the higher level character will increase the likelihood of efficient resource gathering and survivability in battles. Character level also contributes a great deal to legitimation of authority over the community. Blau asserts that the major determinant of authority stems from the exchange aspect of power—specifically whether subordinate groups feel that the power of an individual is being utilized not only fairly, but generously. In regards to character level, one might say that a player with high-level power is considered a legitimate authority, because that person generously provides more goods and services to the other, lower level community members than would be expected for players of his status. Having tested this theory in particular in game, I can attest to the validity of this theory. As a new player I had found a quiet social community to join. While in this community I readily offered my services to any member who was in need. In addition to this I periodically gave out gifts to each community member. Within two months of joining this community I was viewed as one of the most powerful and influential community members. When there was a dispute between two other members I was called in to settle the quarrel. I was also seen as one of the more “experienced” members of the community because of the speed at 9 Wallace, Ruth A. & Alison Wolf. pg. 331 Roettger - 13 which I gained levels was quite a bit faster than others. This was mainly due to the fact that most of my spare time was spent in the game world, but the amount of time I was in the game also contributed to my status. The amount of time in-game will, to a degree, show other players how dedicated an individual is to the world. However, if a player plays over a certain amount of hours in-game (over 8 hours a day), the player is considered to be fanatical and loses social approval. This is due to media publicity of the EverQuest players who did nothing but play EverQuest—most people who participate in online games know that there is a health limit to how much time should be spent online. Closing thoughts As presented in this paper, George Homan’s and Peter Blau’s social exchange theory can be applied to interactions within the virtual world of Final Fantasy XI. The player-to-player and player-to-group actions of this online game are just as realistic and valid in the virtual world as they are in real life. A character’s actions will determine if he or she is successful in life, there is still racial biases in-game just as there are out of game and the basic economic structure if Final Fantasy XI works the same as most economic structures in the world work—workers gather resources to sell or trade for capital. Status and the need for social approval are still a major part of society and are used to create and enforce social norms. This study and numerous other studies on virtual societies bring to light a question that sociologists may have to answer in the near future. The online world has evolved far past the boundaries that its creators had originally conceived for it10. Having become a gathering place for people of every country, the Internet has developed its own social norms, rituals, and values. Some of these norms, rituals, and values 10 Glee, J Roettger - 14 stem from cultures found in the real world, but others, such as the norms and values of Final Fantasy XI, are developed and used solely online. What sociologists must now look is whether or not the Internet in general, and online games in specific, should be considered separate cultures in which members of societies in the real world can join and take on a role completely different from who they are. Even then, there may be adverse effects of having an additional role which may be completely different from the public self that an individual can now play online. While I may not consider the online world to be a separate culture, I do see it as a separate society. Having looked at socialization in one virtual world I have become curious as to if any of the norms and values that players learn in the game are transferred to the norms and values that they have in their “real world” society. As for the social exchange theory, it has show to be a very versatile theory which can be applied to interactions and situations that its creators could not have imagined possible. Roettger - 15 Bibliography Dibble, J. 1994 ‘A Rape in Cyberspace: or, How and Evil Clown, a Haitan Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society’, in M. Dery (ed.), Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Etzioni, Amitai, and Oren Etzioni. “Face-to-Face and Computer Mediated Communities, A Comparative Analysis.” Information Society. 5 (1999): 241-49. Glee, J. Beginning of the Internet. 1999. 12 Feb. 2004 <www.ciadvertising.org/ studies/student/99 _ spring/interactive/jglee/ interactive/internet-history.html>. Jones, S.G. ,ed., (1998). Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing, Inc. Markham, A. (1998). Life Online. New York: Sage Ongka's Big Moka - The Kawelka of Papua, New Guinea. Odyssey Series (1974). Poster, M. (1995) Postmodern Vistualities, in M. Featehrstone and R. Burrows (eds.) Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London:Routledge. Reid, E. (1995). Virtual worlds: culture and imagination. In Jones, S.G. (ed) Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety. London: Routledge pp 107-133. Turkel, S. (1995). Life on the screen: identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon and Schuster. Wallace, Ruth A. & Alison Wolf. Contemporary Sociological Theory. NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. Wellman, Barry. Netlab. 30 October 2001. University of Toronto. 5 Nov. 2003 <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/index.html>. Wysocki, D. K. (1996) Somewhere over the modem: Relationships over computer bulletin boards. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California, Santa Barbara. Yee, Nicholas. “The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of EverQuest” (version 2.5) May 2001. <http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/report.html> Roettger - 16 Appendix A: Races Elvaan Galka Tarutaru Mithra Hume Size Ratio