Tribal Thinking and MMOs

[Morreion]

MMOs and tribal thinking (Massively)

Your favorite MMO is a bit more of a commitment than choosing to eat an apple or banana. An MMO is a heavy time and cash investment, and as a result people get more attached to their favorite and more worked up when they feel someone is slighting it. The reverse is true as well: if you choose not to invest your time and money in a game, you can just...not invest your time and money in it and move on. The end. We all know, however, that a huge percentage of gamers are unwilling or unable to do so. A comment from We Fly Spitfires put it very simply: "People love to belong to one camp or another and irrationally abuse anyone who doesn't agree with them."

It's that sort of tribal thinking -- you're either with us or against us! -- that Tobold explores in his blog entry. It's an interesting read, and worth the time to take a look at

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I don't like bananas (Tobold's MMORPG Blog)

Because having made the "right choice" is important to us, anyone having made a different choice is perceived as a threat. At the very least we feel a need to demonstrate that the other guy's choice was "wrong", because it was obviously "us" who choose the "best" game, and not "them". That gets considerably worse if the other guy is a prominent blogger. Look, Tobold is one of "them", writing about the "wrong" game, quick, let's launch some personal attacks against him, some slander to discredit him. If Tobold plays a game with millions of subscribers and says he likes it, then obviously he was bought to influence those millions of mindless sheep, those dumb lemmings going for the lowest common denominator, the McDonalds of MMORPGs. We need to strike fast and hard to make people see the errors of their ways, how "our" game is so far superior, because there can be only one! It couldn't possibly be that a company managed to design a game which is appealing to so many people, and that Tobold just happens to be one of those many, there must be some hidden agenda!

Personally, I think gamers who post online about games have to be one of the most contentious and irritable fanbases of any hobby I've ever seen. The amount of vituperation out there is enormous. I don't see quite the same phenomenon in other hobbies that consume lots of time and effort. It's hard to figure out.

[Regolyth]

Interesting read.

[EchoVamper]

Maybe online gaming (for some) is not a hobby so much as a religion:

"Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth. Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, rituals, and scriptures are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular philosophy. Religion is also often described as a "way of life" or a life stance." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

Massive multiplayer online communities do have a bit of the flavor of the above, right down to denominational variations and the like.

Some of the nastiest, most vituperative controversies I have ever encountered in my life (both personal and professional) have been associated with religious infighting in a church. Being dressed down by a "fire and brimstone" advocate is historically a very sobering experience, and may actually be the origin of the term "flaming" that is practiced in online communities.

[Morreion]

There's something to what you say, Echo. Combine those sentiments with an obviously online-savvy culture where the anonymous internet breeds extreme opinions without consequences, and here we are.