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United We Stand: Here Comes Democracy

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

An issue once came up when I was a clan leader in Star Wars: Jedi Academy, and the council didn’t really know what to do. So, we put it to a vote for the whole clan. This may seem like a really simple statement, but there is actually a lot of meaning behind it. Why does it immediately occur to us to put the issue to a vote?  We are the council, tasked with protecting the clan and making its decisions. We should just be making a decision on behalf of the clan and moving on, there’s no need for the voice of the members in this process. Yet, for some reason, in our online communities we always wedge the vote into our system, even when it doesn’t belong. It may be the very basis of the governing system, a last resort measure, or simply the method the ruling council, but there’s always the scared vote.

Why is this important? Because democracy is a terrible way to govern a guild. Sean “Dragons” Stalzer in his book The Legend of the Syndicate says that when he designed the system governing the Syndicate that he specifically chose to forge a benevolent dictatorship. Seeing as how successful the Syndicate has been, I think that we can define that as a good choice. It also just makes sense, a single leader with a single vision will be able to lead and make decisions for a guild better then a group of people with slightly differing, or even competing, visions. Yet we still think the vote is important and include it anyway.

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United We Stand: Too Young to Takeover, Too Old to Ignore

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

I don’t think that we can possibly hammer the point home enough: guilds are actually important and you find evidence for this in the most surprising places. Awhile ago for a class, we had to read a book by Henry Brady, Sidney Verba, and Kay Schlozman called Voice and Equality. Apparently it’s a really important book in political science, but I don’t care. I only read one chapter on their Civic Volunteerism Model and how non-political groups can teach civic participation skills. Immediately, I thought to myself, “Gee, I wonder if this happens in guilds too?”

Idea is that “the institutional affiliations of adults -on the job, in non-political organizations, and in religious institutions – provide additional opportunities for the acquisition of politically relevant resources and the enhancement of a sense of psychological engagement with politics.” If this is true, then I think that we can expect these effects from guilds too, particularly because guilds are organizations with structures, hierarchies, and governing systems.  Furthermore, this is particularly important because the populations of guilds are on average younger and they encounter these “institutional affiliations” earlier.

Guilds provide members with the opportunity for both acquisition of “politically relevant resources and a psychological engagement with politics” through its day to day activities. The guild’s officers have to exercise leadership skills, both in terms of game play and in terms of organizational management. The guild leader is using all the same skills that a manager might use in an office, but instead of focusing on getting TPS reports in on time, he is focusing on making sure that there are enough members online tonight for their latest attempt to clear the Eternity Vault. Just like churches, unions, and other voluntary associations can teach civic skills through participation, so can guilds by giving members opportunities to aid in complicated coordinated action.

According to Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, invitation through a voluntary association is one of the most common ways that someone is invited to participate politically by volunteering, giving money, or voting. Guilds can also serve this function, since they operate entirely the same way. “Not only are these institutions the training ground for civic skills, but they also function as a site for political recruitment and nurture political engagement.” An awesome survey was administered by Joesph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, and Chris Evans and they found that “simulations of civic and political activities and learning how government, political, economic, and legal systems work provide young people with knowledge and skills necessary to participate in the political system.” More fascinatingly, they found that “youth who reported organizing or managing a guild group were more civically and politically engaged in their offline lives.”

Leading and participating in guilds in online games teaches political skills like leadership and civic participation. This is a really big deal, it means that there is more to guilds then just loot and DKP, more then just a group of friends gathering online. They actually have an effect; they are actually teaching valuable lessons to those that play these games. On whom are they having the most effect on? Well, people like you and I who had our first experiences with guilds at a young age, and now we’re much older and have learned so much. Now the question is what kind of effect is this going to have on society as a whole.

Leave comments or tweet me @TwinHits with your thoughts, ideas, and stories about guilds, communities, and leadership in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

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United We Stand: Here Comes Everybody

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

This past week I was rereading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, and I was reminded of how kickass of a time we live in. Seriously: the development of the internet into a ubiquitous tool, the development of the personal computer, and of course most importantly the creation of the MMORPG. Not only is this time cool, but it’s really important as well. We don’t know what kinds of changes that these new technologies are going to bring; all we know is that they are coming. “The politics get interesting when the technology gets boring.” If you have to read this book for a class, it’s wonderful, although this article will probably give you enough to get away with not reading it.

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United We Stand: If We Play Together, We Stay Together

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

So, here’s where we’re at: We’ve talked about how you should never be afraid to share and talk about how much you love online gaming because our interactions with others are what makes the online real. So real, in fact, that communities formed online will slowly emerge into offline communities. But why is this important? Who cares if a bunch of random people play video games together and then occasionally awkwardly talk about said video games at TGI Friday’s? One answer is how important they are to our own personal stories, if you want proof just look at the stories in the comments. For us, it’s the experiences of meeting people online, making friends, working together, and getting the purples that makes it important. However, I wish to make an argument to you that guilds are important for a lot more than just friendships.

If you will bear with me, the first part of my argument begins with the difference between Star Wars: The Old Republic’s guilds, EVE Online‘s corporations, Lord of the Rings Online‘s kinships, and Star Wars: Jedi Academy’s  clans. Now, each of these types of communities can be classified as a guild or a clan. This distinction at first seems petty, that this is just two ways of saying the same thing, but this is actually important. Guilds are created in games where the game supports and allows you to create player organizations, as opposed to games that do not support player organizations and players create clans anyway.

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Posted by TwinHits | 13 Comments

United We Stand: You’re Just Going To End Up Talking About Video Games Anyway

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about how online relationships are real and how you should never be ashamed of your connection to an online community. These things got me thinking, and I’ve come up with an idea that will be useful to any current or aspiring guild leader. When I started college, I was blessed with two random roommates who both played World of Warcraft. I had quit at this point, but I started over in order to join their guild. Together, we started doing five man dungeons together, building the guild together, and eventually holding consistent 10 man raids with a group of some of the best friends I have ever made online. This offered me a number of unique experiences and internet firsts, for example most of the guild knew one or more other members offline. My roommates and I lived together and there was an extended family crisscrossing most of Virginia. What I found was that I was experiencing something very important to any online community: the state of emergence.

Never The ‘Twain Shall Meet

One day, our dear guildmate Niantae messaged me and my roommates saying that she was going to be in town one weekend and wanted to meet with us. We all froze, for meeting with someone you met over the internet has long been against the great and ancient cardinal rules of the internet. We got over it when we realized this was not a matter of us trusting her, but her extraordinary courage to trust the three of us. Why is this okay? At what point does it become okay for online friends to become offline friends? I’m sure this story is not unique to me, and many others out there have had similar experiences and have asked themselves similar questions. Those questions sound ridiculous now, but you remember the horror stories you hear on the news occasionally when something goes terribly, terribly wrong. Something has fundamentally changed with the internet and it has allowed for this emergence. Our culture is no longer grounded in the need for sharing physical space to validate a social connection, and that statement (if it’s true) is worth a whole book in itself.

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