Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Harris, Michael S.

Abstract

This study examines the social organization of Gaiscíoch, a large online gaming community that exists within the simulated world of a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). It provides an ethnographic account of an online gaming community that is open to any player without skill or time commitment requirements, but still maintains high status within the game world. This project identifies eight elements that make this inclusive, friendly, and casual community successful in virtual worlds that tend to be dominated by communities that have a competitive, strict, and exclusive approach to online gaming (social interaction, code of values, leadership, rank system, events, community building, population size, gameplay). Lastly, this project briefly inquires about the nature of the border between the virtual and the physical and establishes that gamers can be considered pseudo-border-inhabitants that are in control of the community they place adjacent to them in the cyber world.

Extent

100 p.

Comments

Includes bibliography.|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.

Identifier

FA00004399

Format

pdf

Download

Share

COinS