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Role playing games are a form of gaming dating back to the early 1970’s. These games require players to assume the role of fictional characters, and participate in a collaborative and interactive story telling environment. (http://en.wikipedia.org) In the past these games were simulated and played out through text based recording sheets and dice. Though with the technological innovation of Computer Games and the Internet in the 1990’s there has been a great shift towards MMORPG’s. MMORPG’s or massively multiplayer online role-playing games are multiplayer Internet based role-playing games, whereby players are able to participate within a virtual world, interacting simultaneously with players throughout the globe.
Unlike the text based role-playing games, which use character sheets to represent the player, MMORPG’s require users to adopt 'Avatars'. These Avatars are physical representations of the players within the virtual world and allow users to interact with the simulative environments, creatures and players. MMORPG’s are accessible through Internet servers or Mud's “multi user domains�?, which provide users with a virtual environment to explore and engage within. The innovation of communicative technologies has enhanced the ways in which players are able to communicate with each other within the virtual world. Heckle suggests that the implementation of such expressive icons such as 'Emoticons' ,which enable players to express visual emotions through their avatars help to convey a sense of realism, allowing players to connect with each other on an emotional level (Heckle. l, 2003).
MMORPG’s vary in structure and Genre, ranging from Science fiction to fantasy and offer users a wide range of options in terms of participatory features. These features include, participating in quests, forming guilds, interacting and socializing with other players and part taking in the online economy through trading and selling of various virtual world items.
Youth culture and MMORPG’s has become a closely associated topic particularly within Korea, since the introduction of graphically realistic online games such as “lineage�?. Survey’s of online gamers by the “Korea journal�?[1] depicted that the general age group for Korean players were, high school students (40%), college students (38.1%), junior school students (17.8%) and a small portion of people aged between 20-30 (4.5%) (Whang .L, 2003 Whang and Chang describes the Cyberspace of online games as serving as a whole new living space for youth, where they can carry out daily activities centered especially on social relationships and [[Information Society - Leisure
|Leisure]] (Whang .L, 2003). MMORPG’s contain a deep social subculture for youths, with the formulation of guilds and bonds relationships with various online members, these communal aspects driven by MMORPG’s encourage player loyalty towards the game and thus the virtual world becomes more then just a game but a separate world in itself. An anthropological study by Heckle revealed that long-term players were largely drawn towards the social aspects of online role playing games and that no distinguishments were made between online and offline relationships (Heckle. l, 2003).
Heckel .H (2003), Online social interaction: The case of Everquest, http://home.att.net/~hheckel/Online_Social_Interaction__The_Case_of_Everquest.pdf[2](6/8/2005).
Whang .L, (2003) Lifestyles of the virtual world residents: Living in the online game “lineage�?, The others: center of computer game research, http://www.itu.dk/op/proceedings.htm,[3] (4/8/2005)
Wikipedia, (2005) MMORPG, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmorpg [4] (15/9/2005)
