Play Between Worlds: La necesidad de Redes Sociales en Juegos Online Multijugador

Desde niños nos enseñan a relacionarnos a través del juego. De mayores perdemos la noción de que es eso lo que estamos haciendo “jugar”.

Todos los juegos online multijugador pueden ser jugados solo, pero entonces solo experimentas una parte. En general para llegar a la parte final del juego (los niveles más altos) es necesaria la ayuda de otros. Esta necesidad de interacción social, o creación de comunidades, es un aspecto intencional del diseño del juego. Brad MacQuaid productor/codiseñador de EverQuest dijo:

Community is relationships between players, whether it be friendly or adversarial, symbiotic or competitive. It’s also a form of persistence, which is key to massively multiplayer games. Without community, you simply have a bunch of independent players running around the same environment. Players won’t be drawn in and there won’t be anything there to bind them. The key to creating community, therefore, is interdependence. In EverQuest, we forced interdependence in several ways and although we’ve been criticized for it, I think it’s one of a couple of reasons behind our success and current lead. By creating a class-based system, players NEED each other. By creating an environment often too challenging for a solo player, people are compelled to group and even to form large guilds and alliances. All of this builds community, and it all keeps players coming back for more and more. (Aihoshi 2002)