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#8

presentation script

this is the presentation, and the topic is How do a specific social media affect its player user or gaming community or vice versa. this presentation willl be presented in 4 parts. 

An introduction to the concept and characteristics of the chosen platform, the relevance of the game itself to the specific social media gaming community, how do a specific social media affect its player user or gaming community or vice versa, and a survey of the players within the community.

The game community chosen for this research is the players of Final fantasy XIV China server, and the social media is a large Chinese social networking platform: Weibo. As the Chinese server of final fantasy XIV are purchased by a local company and operated independently under the game developer, they do not have the right to directly modify the game's content, apart from being slower to update than the international servers, the feedback from players they also have to be further forwarded to the game developer. Unlike social media in English-speaking countries, Chinese people, due to cultural differences, are more likely to integrate themselves into a group such as "a specific game job player" or to have topics relayed by people with more power to speak about them than to do so alone. This has led to the development of a unique 'zhuye' culture and system of operation for players in the game's community on Weibo, less authoritative than the game's operators, but with an equal level of discussion and visibility.

How the game itself is connect with the social media gaming community. As Final fantasy xiv is an MMORPG game, the genre of the game makes it naturally tied to social. The lack of social functionality within the game has lead players to develop unique gaming community attached to the game on various social platforms, and the researched community has been developed in this specific social media environment with a 'zhuye' system that is highly linked to the gamer and game itself. Players are given the means to give content more exposure and get more feedback than just posting it on their own pages, and because the essence of the 'zhuye' system is to allow players to share their in-game needs or feelings from the game, relying on the 'page' The act of creating emotional resonance with others binds the player, the social media and the game itself: the player maintains and runs the "zhuye" on the social platform, and the "zhuye" gives the player the opportunity to spread their in-game needs and thoughts far and wide. "zhuye" gives players the opportunity to spread their in-game needs and ideas far and wide, and players who satisfy their in-game needs or desire to share through the "zhuye" become even more involved in the game, creating a virtuous circle. Even if there are a certain number of players within that social media who do not use or like the culture, they generally do not disrupt the cycle and keep the ecosystem of the gaming community in balance.

How specific social media affects the players users or gaming community or vice versa. The particular circumstances of the indie servers, combined with the social media environment that has given rise to a particular culture, have led to the power of the 'zhuye', although more often than not players use it as a communication tool and a neutral point of information, also some use it as a means of communication to spread their good wills to other players. By the original communicative nature of the 'zhuye' is used to share the good will of the game or the community, but as any statement made between players has the opportunity to be discussed on the 'zhuye' and amplified indefinitely, as humans are more susceptible to negative emotions, this opportunity for widely distributed content will in most cases hurt the person or be used to hurt others. For example, the existence of accounts such as "ge kong han hua", which are designed to attack people anonymously, has created a special dark corner in the  community. But human malice is not limited by social media, there are also attacks on individual players that are not related to the homepage, and this is a phenomenon that exists everywhere there are living people, outside the restriction of specific social media.

A survey of games within the community. As this particular social media outlet features a 'zhuye' related culture, most of the questions asked in the survey revolved around this. From the statistics, it can be seen that most of the players who completed the survey felt that the 'zhuye' was necessary, available in use in a more neutral manner, while only a few showed a strong 'it is/isn't necessary' sentiment. The percentage of players who felt that the existence of the Home Page was beneficial to that particular gaming community was higher than the percentage of players who were unhappy about it, but although the percentage was smaller, from an emotional point of view, that small amount of ill will had a greater negative impact on players. The conclusion that it is necessary opinions by players to be there suggests that zhuye influences the majority of players in this specific platform's gaming community, and as the zhuye is maintained and run by players, it is the players who can be said to influence the overall style and culture of the platform by osmosis. 

As a conclusion, the platform has form a specific culture due to the needs of the players, and the players are influenced by this culture, which is bound to each other and linked to the game itself, making it an indispensable feature of the specific game community: final fantasy xiv China server players in weibo.

reference:

https://www.wjx.cn/newwjx/manage/myquestionnaires.aspx

Todd Harris, Mike Johnston, “Empowering Gaming Communities: Unlocking the Virtuous Cycle (Presented by Facebook)” GDC Vault (2018)

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024819/Empowering-Gaming-Communities-Unlocking-the&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1684946516791098&usg=AOvVaw1dzNiQG3w5yfrHMaaSjScf

Won Jung, Chang. “Role of Gamers’ Communicative Ecology on Game Community Involvement and Self-Identification of Gamer.” Computers in human behavior 104 (2020): 106164–. Web.

Saldanha, Lucinda, Sofia Marques da Silva, and Pedro D. Ferreira. “‘Community’ in Video Game Communities.” Games and culture (2023): 155541202211500–. Web.

Hsiao, Cheng-Chieh, and Jyh-Shen Chiou. “The Impact of Online Community Position on Online Game Continuance Intention: Do Game Knowledge and Community Size Matter?” Information & management 49.6 (2012): 292–300. Web.

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#7

While most of the previous blog investigations have been on the community as a whole, here is a recent investigation into a typical case of negative communication impact on an individual player

Player T is a female player who plays mainly in PVP. Due to the relatively small and tight PVP community of the game, Player T has a certain amount of visibility on Weibo (target survey social media), one of her main activity platforms, and her visibility is not positive: she is young but relatively wealthy, has repeatedly used illegal cheat plug-ins within the game to perform hardcore challenges and PVP battles and has not admitted to them when they were pointed out, and she has repeatedly committed similar violations of the game's rules, which has led to her being viewed quite badly by some players. Some of these malicious players created a hashtag containing Player T's name and vilified her with impunity, but even though the hashtag has existed for a long time, the people who are keen to abuse her have not gone under Player T's own account to make direct hurtful replies, and Player T has chosen to ignore or black them out when she is aware of their existence. A delicate balance of bad reviews is maintained.

Despite the negative visibility, Player T is just a normal player in the community. But after rumors of "Player T's pornographic photos with other men" broke around April this year on another social media platform with a large number of FFXIV players, and a new account based on Player T's id appeared on weibo (椿在枝头, 椿 for player T's name) spreading vulgar pornographic messages about her, her buzz within the community reached a considerable number. The majority of the discussion was made up of the "none of my business" attitude of the uninformed crowd trying to get the full story,and some of the gloating ridicule of her because of her bad reputation, and even the in-game party finder where some people advertised the incident and called Player T a bitch. Only a small percentage of players rationally sought to confirm the truth and try to dispel the rumors. The novelty-seeking internet users don't stay on a topic for long, and after a few days, the topic of Player T's pornographic photos dropped off and was barely discussed anymore, except by only some of the players e.g. the audience of her vicious hashtag.

A month after the incident, on May 7, 2023, Player T dispelled the rumor on her own homepage. Player T chose to call the police and with their help obtained information on the person who had spread as well as propagated the rumors. The rumored pornographic photos are photoshopped, the new account and vulgar messages on party finder were maliciously paid to spread and all fake, and all of the primary rumors were uploaded by a male player who had failed in his pursuit of Player T, and spread the rumor motivated by his revenge. The player was detained and fined with the help of the police, and the false messages were removed from the internet. The post that dispelled the rumor received over 1000 reposts, and searches for keywords about Player T's name, posts speaking for her behalf after the dispel increased, but as with the rumor, there was no more discussion in just a few days.

Due to Player T's strong personal willpower, the pornographic rumors didn't have too much of a negative impact on her, and she even quickly sanctioned the person who spread the rumors and dispelled them. but due to Gamer T's own negative popularity and the attitude of some netizens who only seek excitement and don't care about the truth, there are still people who are happy to have negative discussions about it in her hashtag.

In summary, user behavior on specific online platforms, i.e. registering personal accounts, sharing specific information, creating digital images, etc., is linked to the perception of a specific individual gamer, and this interference not only affects the experience of the game itself and its community atmosphere, but also the actual life of a specific individual.

In the above specific events, the behavior of individual players in the game process influences and interferes with other players who play the game together, causing other players to develop various impressions and emotions towards the specific player. Players from the same game also converge their emotions and thoughts into this group consciousness, forming a common wave of thought that grows and spreads to influence more players.

This is followed by the emergence of specific behaviors on specific social networking platforms, i.e. the fabrication of accounts to spread false information, from the impressions created in the previous group consciousness, further fabricating and spreading false information, using the means and resources available on the specific social King Broad platform. The impact of the game events and even the game itself are no longer important.

Different individuals have different perceptions and feedback on the influence of public opinion, but there is no doubt that this kind of fabrication and slander, which rises from simple harmless game behaviors to personal life or even negative personality issues, will inevitably have various effects on the people involved, and once the rumors are created, it is difficult to be completely extinguished.

The various effects of specific social networking platforms on information, the organization of specific groups of players, the diversion and convergence of information shared and disseminated by players, make it possible to amplify, distort or even falsify information that would only exist in the game and affect a very small number of players in the game. At the same time, as the medium that connects the game to reality, the specific social networking platforms also spread information about the game and its actions and the subsequent information to the real world, causing various interventions and influences on the people involved and on those involved.

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#6

GDC Vault observation note

Empowering Gaming Communities: Unlocking the Virtuous Cycle (Presented by Facebook)

GDC Vault - Empowering Gaming Communities: Unlocking the Virtuous Cycle (Presented by Facebook)

This video is a presentation by Todd Harris, from the perspective of a game developer (the game Paladins as example) about starting a virtuous circle within Facebook for the player community.

Linked login and friend finder features and integration: improving authentication and user base, ensuring that players who know each other on different platforms can play together and find others to play with

An important tool to help players and developers connect through community

Game developers can bring the community closer together by helping players to integrate in-game player stats into Facebook groups, allowing players to link their real identities to their in-game characters

Game developers' development of the live streaming aspect of the game: allowing facebook lifestream functionality to be added to players' android PC and IOS games, players can now stream directly from the game client to their facebook, with full camera and microphone support, without the need for additional third party hardware and software.

Share with friends: a way to engage players

Involvement in the community allows players to better follow events in the game

Understanding the user community and analysing their behaviour can better inform marketing campaigns to understand game user behaviour and adapt gameplay and mechanics etc.

Introduce rewards: create meaningful viewing experiences for the community, create opportunities for engagement, promote community activity and encourage players to return to the game

Make community rewards relevant to the game: logging in to Facebook or watching live streams within the community will earn rewards in the game

Example of a community of players: Paladins, a team-based shooting game with some strategy and MOBA elements, but the core gameplay is first-person shooting. A gaming community with around 30 million registered players

Game developers trying to connect with the community: means dealing with many different platforms, such as reddit, as an important community of gamers

Using social platforms to get new users

Talking content in the community: posting memes that are circulated, looking for other players to partner or compete with, e.g. posting messages like 'I'm a tank and I need supporter' in the community

A group called 'Paadins global' was created and a large grassroot tournament was held in the group's area to bring players in, which grew to 30,000 members and hundreds of groups were formed in the first month. It was just about the time that Facebook launched its own live streaming system. So the technology was adopted: players could find other players to form teams to play, and players in the region could watch the tournament on the facebook platform: getting players interested, as well as evolving to a more advanced tournament based on a grassroots approach

eSports needs to ideally unite all stakeholders on a platform to work together to grow the audience, use fans to grow the brand, promote withinto have sharing and posting capabilities for the social platform, and use it to get people to discover the live stream. how does Paladins' community stream continue to drive higher engagement and reward viewers for watching the content when it already has a decent viewership

Worked closely with facebook to provide viewers with a live stream reward feature

Live streaming paladins on facebook will whitelist the game and players will be able to build their fan base by giving out rewards

As a free-to-play game, players can create an account by email and then link to facebook. the developers will offer players additional rewards to generate good results, for example by linking to their account to get a higher conversion rate

Through the association of the community with the game players can interact in groups and chats using their real identities, which varies from community to community and people are excited about real ids

toxic in the community: not the most forgiving environment, but players like it. Good for both gaming and eSports

From the audience's point of view: competition is always beneficial and the audience benefits from the developers' innovations and features

The developer's perspective: in order to attract the next mainstream audience, you can't always do the same thing, you need to change to make the content more accessible to more mainstream platforms

Why Facebook for Esport? Every new platform that wants to enter the eSports space is good for the industry

More mainstream media acceptance of this content is healthy for overall growth

The original purpose of listening to the talk was to compare the community in the talk as a reference to the community I was investigating (FFXIV China server, Weibo), as Facebook and Weibo have similar levels of visibility and influence in the environment, but after browsing through the talk I found it to be a relatively large departure from what I needed. As the presentation was about the virtuous circle of the gaming community from the perspective of the game developer and the focus on the impact of livestream on the community, the gaming community I investigated, while also having livestream, was not on the main platform I investigated: while both players and official accounts promote their livestream on that platform for other platform(bilibili, not the research target) , as a storyline-based game with PVE gameplay as the main selling point, FFXIV does not have a strong livestream element, and apart from players who do hardcord raid challenges and PVP players, and the official livestreams when version updates are available, the number of people who will livestream or will go to the livestream is only a small percentage of the total number of players.

As Weibo does not have the same well-developed live streaming function as Facebook, the FFXIV China server operator's promotional notification account and the live streaming account are not on the same platform, but rather the target players are diverted to other platforms to watch the live streaming after the promotion on weibo. With a certain number of followers on both sides, the campaign is promoted in a similar way to the 'Paladins' operator (including account bundling rewards, live streaming rewards, online or offline competition rewards, cooperation with social media platforms to gain publicity, etc.) and a mutual diversion that can only be done if both platforms have a certain audience, the way to operation of FFXIV is a unique and innovative approach to promoting and distributing information.

Unlike Paladins, FFXIV's player community does not that much involvement from the operator (usually only for notifications and events or when receiving reports from players). Unlike the kind of operator participates on a specific platform  and interferes heavily with players, for example by holding tournaments, and where other game developers can participate in the community, such as Paladins(on Facebook), the FFXIV game is developed in Japan and the Chinese server is operated independently by a local company that has purchased the licence, resulting in the company have the operator of the server only has the right to operate the game, while the development and modifications suggest by players to the operator need to be forwarded by the operator to the developer without the right to make changes without permission: at the same time, due to language translation and licensing issues, players of the Chinese server will experience the version updates several months later than players of the international server, which intermittently results in the operator of the Chinese server having less say than the developer of the game.

For these reasons, although the game community itself supposed to be player-driven, due to the specific circumstances, the game operator and developer have less direct influence over the game community than other game communities. Although the operator‘s official account has absolute authority, in the particular environment of Weibo, even some players can have almost as much influence as the operator's account.

Even within this relatively unique community, the operators and players have managed to maintain a relatively benign community environment by giving each other information and feedback. However, as the community is run by the operator team that's not the actual developer of the game, if there is content in the game that would cause a large negative impact on the community, without quick feedback and the right to change the game content, a loss of players and a short breakdown of the community is inevitable.

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#5

Datas

As part of the research, a less rigorous questionnaire survey was conducted over a period of about a week, with a commissioned submission on the social media weibo entrust zhuye"以太之光广场"to repost it, and in-game Party Finder function recruited for an hour each day to collect the questionnaires. The number of 243 responses does not prove anything, but it can be used as a less rigorous reference. Here are the datas

As some of the questions are multiple choice answers, there will be cases where the percentages add up to more than 100.

In addition to the pie chart, some questions are set up to be filled in rather than selected, or optionally filled in.

50 of the 176 people who chose "positively influenced by social media" chose to fill in comments, most of which were "Checking for game updates", "Notifications of events held by players", "Research and creation by others", "Warm game stories" and so on. "The next question asked those who chose "positive" to give examples, most of 52 people of them chose "game information", "gaming strategy" and "warm stories and friendships", while others chose the alternative but benign option of "asking and answering strangers' questions". 15 of the 59 people who chose the  "negatively influenced by social media" were almost all "arguing" and "watching people spreading malice". 32 responses to "Actions taken after a negative impact" were similar: "block and unfollow, don't watch and ignore" options, with a few "argue back", "ask the zhuye to remove the post", and one "had psychological counseling".

And not surprisingly, for this survey alone, PVP players had more negative content on social media than PVE players.

Of the 135 responses to the "how did you think about 'zhuye' on social media”, "It's good", "It's good to be exposed to more tools to spread information about the game and it helps the game " and "thank them for running the account spontaneously and without profit", "hope it will get better and better" are the majority of voices, but there are also a few like "the value of effective information is getting lower and lower and "good intentions, but easy to be exploited by evil ones", and similar to the pie chart, there were a few people who thought its very necessary or very unnecessary, and most of them remained indifferent or needed but not necessary, and one of them said A neutral view was expressed that "players also need some unofficial platforms for speaking out, but some comments could be controlled a little".

In summary, of the players surveyed, a greater proportion of those who are neutral and feel good about the information and who think the presence of social media is beneficial to the gaming community than those who feel uncomfortable with it or not using social medias, but even though the proportion is smaller, the degree of negative impact on players is stronger in terms of emotion. The majority of players surveyed believe that social media is a more important part of the gaming community, with more interesting content than negative messages, but that negative messages are more likely to affect others.

Although players are relatively balanced in terms of receiving information from social platforms, i.e., both positive and negative information, the extent to which players are influenced by social networks depends on which kind of information the individuals themselves give stronger feedback, and because of the nature of social media that allows players to communicate within the ingestion community, the feedback generated by players and the actions they take after being influenced affect others again, and this behavior, whether it is from good or bad intentions, will The positive reinforcing loop of social media and the game's emotional communication will be generated

Players receive positive information → generate positive emotions → players then share them in social media or games, or therefore behave kindly to other players → let more players receive positive information

Players receive negative information → generate negative emotions → players then show their hostility on social media or in the game, or attack the game itself or other players → let more players receive negative information

Even if not all players will do so, there are people who are not happy to retweet or show emotions exist in the community, or a small probability exists that the type of people who repay the blame with virtue or the opposite will not participate in this loop, also because the information will be distorted in the transmission and human emotions will not remain high for a long time will return to a normal, even if the loop of spreading emotions will strengthen the players' reaction to specific content in a short period of time, it will also be over time It will return to normal, both positive and negative, as a balance of natural regulation within the community.

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#4

This is a completely subjective blog because of the lack of data

While doing a research on players' sense of community identity I found an article with a similar goal to mine, and after reading it I realized that I had made another serious mistake: the questionnaire only asked about players' attitudes towards social media, but not their sense of belonging and identification with the community, and the questionnaire had been posted for about a week and could no longer be modified, thus leaving me with no data to use in I don't have any data to use in this regard.

But uncritically, as a player in the environment rather than as a research, I aware that a large proportion of the community likes to use the term "you FF players" to tease others, also "we FF players" to laugh at themselves: This is not only on Weibo, but also on any social media in China with a certain number of FFXIV players who can find a large number of posts by searching for similar keywords"As mentioned earlier, the emergence of the "zhuye" concept on Chinese social media is most likely related to the specific local cultural environment. The Chinese culture and education style focuses on the concept of group and collective honor, resulting in players naturally developing a sense of "we"even in the game. ", to identify themselves as belonging.

Although this article is primarily a study of RAS and AR gamers and FFXIV is an mmo game, it suggests that "by discussing game issues with others, gamers can foster a collective sense of identity as gamers." This confirms that the act of discussing and communicating within the community creates a sense of belonging to the gaming community, and that the use of social media is a large part of how gamers communicate within the gaming community.

Returning to the topic of "we" in the game community, players on the FFXIV China server (and perhaps not just players, but most Chinese) are more flexible in this regard. When it comes to positive events or when someone is making fun of themselves, they will refer to themselves and the event or the player as "we", while in negative events they will refer to "you guys" in a critical manner: although they use "you guys" is used without taking oneself out completely or denying being an FFXIV player, even if a player uses the term in a way that dissociates him/herself completely, when the term "you guys the FF players" is no longer used to refer to all The term "FF players" is no longer used to refer to FFXIV players as a whole, but rather to temporarily generalize the group he is denying as "you FF players". I think that this is in a sense a consequence of the culture of the environment that has subtly influenced the social attitudes and identity of the players, and is a product of the specific environment in which it exists.

The sense of belonging to a social platform has its roots in the game, and directly in the sense of identification with the "same kind of players" that the game engages with. This sense of belonging to the 'same group' can also come from contact and communication on social platforms, based on the same gaming experiences and experiences, and even if one leaves the game itself to reach other social platforms, the connections built on contact and communication still exist and can be further expanded and perpetuated on social media platforms.

Reference:

Won Jung, Chang(2020) Role of gamers’ communicative ecology on game community involvement and self-identification of gamer

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#03

I was plan to write about the positive impact of social media on game players today, but after browsing tag and various accounts, I found that there were not very prominent and representative positive examples, but there were quite a few small warm stories that had no influence, and these warm positive stories were mostly from games and shared on social media by players with a friendly attitude. It's not so much about social media per se, but it's a testament to the relevance of social media to the gaming community in another sense.

This blog documented a Party Finder fieldnote: I start a party with the text "try to find some warm stories and opinions between players, both in-game and on social media." A total of seven players joined the group and shared their thoughts

Here's an excerpt from the conversation with the first player to enter the party

[3:09] (Vaan): I think there is a very important point for me, because I studied overseas, online games and social media are good platforms for me to communicate with friends and meet new people

[3:10] (Vaan): When I first went abroad, there was a lot of pressure on my social life and school life. I could meet friends who played games with me through social media, and my free time was not so difficult

[3:11] (Vaan):Online games are like a tool for me to communicate with strangers and make friends with them. On social media, I can also meet all kinds of people through games [3:12] (Vaan):It feels like everyone is an island now, tied together by games or other common loves. The same with social media? [3:13] (Vaan):I have a former gaming friend who is in the same time zone as me and sharing our lives on social media has really taken the pressure off a lot [3:16] (Vaan):We come to know each other in reality, triggered by our virtual characters. It might be a good way to make friends

Friends from games and friend in-game then became on social media took the pressure off her life, leading her to conclude that social media communication deepened the bond between gamers, but the conversation was so short that it didn't lead to anything else

The following dialogue was rather messy due to the large number of players involved, so some extracts were made, all diverging from the title I originally proposed

[3:25](Dongkong) : Positive emotions... A lot actually

[3:26](Me) : It's a lot, but most of them are small things that warm the hearts of people who see them. It's hard to find an influential example...

[3:27](Dongkong) : That make sense, bad influences spread far more than good ones

He makes the same point as I did in research, that there are a lot of positive things going on between players on social media, but they just don't have the same impact as the negative ones, which he came back to it later in the chat, with gugugujijiji asking the specific Chinese culture question I mentioned in blog#1.

[4:12] (XiaJiu) : Actually, I personally feel that in general, negative emotions are easier to show in the communication between people, because giving vent to negative emotions will make people feel happier, compared with positive emotions, sharing positive emotions don't give people the  feeling of abreact I ​think. Is this the reason why negative emotions have stronger spreading ability

[4:13] (FuLiao) : It feels that people do not resonate with positive emotions as quickly as negative ones

[4:14] (XiaJiu) : Emotions such as anger are stronger and easier to empathize with

[4:14] (Lu) : A lot of the time it's like, "Oh, you're upset about this, me too," like that

[4:14] (Gugugujijiji) : I have a little bit of an extra point. We all experience Pressure education to some extent when we are young, so we lose a lot of our ability to express positive emotion

When the conversation turned from the game itself to social media, almost everyone reacted negatively, but some objectively pointed out that platforms limit exposure to users with fewer followers, leading to zhuye's growing importance among players. And then it's back to the culture thing: Chinese gamers seem to prefer to be polite and distant, to get approval first, and then communicate with people.

[4:01] (FuLiao): Weibo? It feels like it's become a place where garbage players pours out their garbage emotions

[4:01] (Kilizo) : OMG weibo

[4:02] (Gugugujijiji) : Some accounts have evolved into information hubs, perhaps because Chinese social media limits the number of views

[4:02] (Gugugujijiji) : It's hard for small individuals to get exposure

[4:02] (FuLiao) : Overseas communities use hashtags to communicate, although it's OK for domestic users, but using a hashtag will expose their account. Whether positive or negative, most people on this side prefer to find others who share their views before they continue to express their opinions, which is why anonymous zhuye appear

[4:03] (FuLiao) : For example, if you like a specific race in game, you might feel embarrassed to send it out directly. After going for an anonymous post on zhuye, you find that many people also like to reappear and participate in the communication and it will become not so embarrassing, many people think so

[4:03] (Gugugujijiji) : But zhuye's form is more like a medium in between players, which is more socially atomized

[4:04] (Lu) : Some words are really uncomfortable when spoken directly

[4:04] (Gugugujijiji) : Maybe there's also the censorship of the Chinese environment, which makes it more demanding

[4:06] (FuLiao) : And all the positive comments on social media...they are just too polite, like complimenting your home decor or your photos, and it only made people feels polite.

[4:06] (FuLiao) : And the use of social media has removed the identity of the game characters.    In many cases, people communicate with each other very carefully.    Without the image of the game characters, they are even afraid to speak

[4:06] (XiaJiu): Chinese are indeed euphemistic. Nepotist society

[4:07] (Gugugujijiji) : And environmental pressure

The concept of a information hub is the same as the "other zhuye" mentioned in blog#0. There are some individuals or zhuye is running that share updates or official interviews, but the majority of players just read and repost their thoughts on it. It has a lot of influence among players, but no interaction. Nor will they be the first thing most players think of when they mention zhuye's concept.

After the negative topic was over, FuLiao brought up the fact that there had been a page dedicated to sharing warm stories, to prove that her understanding of social media is not just about dark content, and to support my initial point that “there are many small warm things that don't have an impact on social media.”

[4:07](Fuliao): I remember there's a zhuye dedicated to positive emotions

[4:07](Fuliao): Let me help you find it, I think you can find something you need in that account

[4:07](Fuliao): It's called "Ishigard Milktea Shop", and it's dedicated to sharing the warm thoughts you encounter in the game, but it's no longer operating

[4:07](Fuliao): Because so few people come to share their stories

And here ends this blog with screenshots translated from The account mentioned above as a positive part of the ecology of social media related to the game.

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#2

The emotional impact from social networks or the game itself

Still related to zhuye content, the investigation chose the events that led to the cessation of operations of zhuye#4 from last blog “神典石”and another account “隔空喊话bot” to show rough examples of the negative impact widespread and precise individuals on social media.

After account#3 discontinued in October 2021, account 4 (hereafter referred to as Tomestone) took over and began operating in roughly the same manner rules began and was gradually accustomed and accepted by players and took over account#3's position within a few months, with occasional lapses occurring but not affecting normal operations, until a nefarious event occurred that led to the account being discontinued on April 2022 that the account was terminated in an emergency.

A clan hunt is a type of PVE gameplay in FFXIV where a specific action on the map (e.g. killing a certain number of monsters) or in certain weather spawn a powerful monster (S-rank elite mark) that requires a large number of players to successfully kill, and a clan hunt-specific reward is awarded for it. This game has given rise to the existence of (spawn teams), which are more strict and exclusive on the Chinese servers than on other servers. Spawn team players record the time of death of each S-ranks to calculate its cooldown and organise their spawns, and then inform other players. Of course, due to the spawn team's authoritarian nature and suspected RMT (real money trade, not allowed in FFXIV), so there was a lot of opposition to it such as independent spawners, so the conflict between the spawn team and the independents has always existed and never stopped.

Around April 2022, an plugin update to the addon platform "Dalamud", called "Sonar", which allowed for a full map broadcast of elite mark appearances, was deemed by the spawn team on one server to be a game cheat and decided to reduce the notification of information to other players as a result. This led to discontent and conflict between players who already had a grudge against the spawn team, and even a DDOS attack on other plugin platforms and websites. Tomestone, the homepage in operation at the time, became a battleground for those who wanted to make a big deal out of it. As Tomestone offered a "player-edited content sent by tomestone" service, and in an anonymous environment, both parties suspected that there were antagonists on the staff of Tomestone, which eventually turned into attacks on the staff of Tomestone: Tomestone's account was reported and banned several times, and some staff members were suspected of having their personal information exposed and threatened. So about two weeks after the Sonar incident, Tomestone announced that it would permanently cease operations as of 23 April 2022 in order to ensure the personal safety of its staff. This was the first time had FFXIV zhuye have been attacked on weibo to the point of ceasing operations, and during the two weeks that the struggle lasted, due to Tomestone's influence among players and the breadth of information spread, there were also a large number of posts sent by players on their own pages or on Tomestone about how they wished Sonar-related content could be stopped or complained about it. at the end It is no longer possible to find information on whether the Sonar incident was resolved, but it was forgotten over time by players who did not follow the clan hunt because there was no longer a place where information and fights could be spread with maximum efficiency.

In contrast to Tomestone, which was caused by a group of players using the proliferation power of social media to influence a large number of players, posts on "隔空喊话bot" are malicious from independent to independent.

In English, "隔空喊话" can be translated as "shouting to the air", which means that players are allowed to speak anonymously to other people (but have to hide their game ID). Unlike the other pages, this one is the darkest and most offensive place on social media for FFXIV players.

The following are random posts from the account

The first is a verbal abuse of a teammate in the context of the situation, but since the teammate's behaviour is more common, it can be seen as an attack on all players who have engaged in this behaviour

The second is a verbal abuse of all players on a team in a particular game at a particular time, i.e. the player being abused is aware that the post is directed at him or her

The third post is an anonymous abuse to exact player. Although the player's ID is not mentioned, but its summarised by length and keywords and the server it is on: even if there are other players who fit the profile, the abused player will be able to realize that and there's a person verbal abuse him or her simply by viewing the post.

Due to the nature and operational constraints of the game itself, it is rare for players to actually have negative or malicious feelings towards the game itself, and it is also difficult to express the conflicts and frictions that are inevitable in human interaction directly in the game. In games players generally crave positive feedback, while the venting of negative emotions is suppressed for a variety of reasons, so it is only logical that social platforms carry these negative

As a medium for communication outside of the game itself, players are given a platform to express the negative emotions that they cannot directly express in the game, whether it is against a specific individual who constitutes a conflict or a controversy, or whether they want the public to support their own views, or to suppress or exclude opposing groups, all of which are subjective and unrelated to the enjoyment of the game. These subjective wishes, which are not related to the enjoyment of the game, can be satisfied on social media platforms: Social platforms have in effect become part of the game's ecology, complementing the absorption and release of negative emotions from players, in a relationship similar to that of light and shadow.

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#1

More than about how social media connects to the game itself, it is more like the players themselves who are using social media and then bringing the game's content to social media. In addition to the personal pages of players who use social media, there are also specific situations where social media intersects with the game in specific contexts, take my research take place game FFXIV (China server) for example, the unique phenomenon of "zhuye" mentioned in blog#0 Operation

The most famous zhuye, run by the players themselves and serving their contributions on the microblogging platform, has been changing over time It is not possible to go back further than this→ 艾欧泽亚二次元虫洞 (account#1, 2014-2015) → 艾欧泽亚吐槽站 (account#2, 2016-2022) during the same period 说给海德林(account#3, 2017-2021) → 神典石 (account#4, 2021-2022) → 以太之光广场 (account#5,2022-), the longest-standing and defunct account#4 and account#3 had 185,875 and 104,130 posts respectively on the platform, with 79,000 and 95,000 followers . There are also other zhuye with more detailed categories, such as the fanart zhuye (which for reasons of China-specific policy has iterated from the first (account destroyed and untraceable) to 2023 is already the 9th account)) The year 2014 was the first year of operation of FFXIV in China, which means that this kind of operation homepage, specific to China, has been present since the game first started in China, alongside the game's updates.

As a research, between the discontinuation of the most famous zhuye of successive generations and the emergence of a new one to take over, from the earliest first account to 2, to the emergence of 3, which operated at the same time as 2, all by players voluntarily, the earliest news of account#4 which emerged after 3 ceased operations, has disappeared for unknown reasons, but the content and number of reposts (802) at the time of the initial emergence of 3 and the eventual discontinuation of The number of reposts shows that players who would be happy to see a new 'zhuye' appear are not the few. Until today, The number of followers of the official FFXIV account is 468,000 and the number of followers of the 4th zhuye "以太之光广场" is 114,000. The number of players who follow the account, together with the more than 90,000 posts since its operation in April last year, proves to a certain extent its popularity and topicality among the player community, while the way it operates and the instructions for contributing are much the same as those of the previous homepages: it seems that each zhuye has learned from its predecessors or from its own Each one seems to have learned from its predecessors or from its own accidents, improving and refining the rules.

As opposed to players moving game-related content to social media, also some others bring other social media into the game as a way to connect with others. Images are taken from the in-game party finder, the raid category and the other category respectively: the sections framed in red are where players have attached their QQ account (Messenger-like software) within recruitment, while the ones framed in yellow are weibo links, the first of which will jump to the party leader's personal page, the second goes to the party leader's entrust on 以太之光广场, both of which link social media to the game itself.

During research I found that the number of such 'zhuye' on facebook and twitter in the English-speaking environment was quite small. Unlike the English-speaking community where everyone is independent, the Chinese culture tends to favour the concept of a 'group', and perhaps this is what gives rise to the concept of 'zhuye', which is unique to Chinese social media.

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#0.5

I admit mistake. My original research was titled 'How do social media affect the player or gaming community or vice versa', After researching the data of a specific audience, I realized that there was another platform with a larger media audience than the one I surveyed, but with a much lower profile and a large number of players. However, since the platform declined around 2018 and was replaced by the current main research platform, I completely forgot about this matter and did not conduct a survey there or add the option of this platform in the questionnaire. The questionnaire has been sent and cannot be modified. So I changed the title to 'How do a specific social media affect the player or gaming community or vice versa'.

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#0

1) Your ballpark interest - TOPIC/THE ME: 

how pve and pvp game mode impact action and socialization of players in the same game community

↑ originally intended to do this, but the teacher said that it was better not to make comparison, so it was changed to ↓

How do a specific social media affect the player or gaming community or vice versa

2) Main research questions? Develop a few “HOW” questions 

- How does the social media relate to the game itself

- How does a community of gamers feel like they belong or feel a sense of identity on social networks

- Social networking groups and home page operations

- The emotional impact of social networks or games themselves

- How does the player carry this emotion from the social media into the game or vice versa

- the community

3) Where might this research take place (sites and people you will engage with)? (e.g., where might you study other folks experience or systems? e.g., a Twitch livestreamer engaging in inclusive practices/rules/community moderation techniques OR an indie studio regularly livestreaming gameplay on YouTube as a form of community engagement and marketing) 

This research mainly took place on the Chinese social platform Weibo and the game itself (Final Fantasy XIV China server, for short “FFXIV” in later). I chose the Chinese server environment because it was most familiar to me and I only had the Chinese server account to record and investigate in close range. Weibo is the largest social network platform in the Chinese server environment so mainly a survey and observation of social media networks, while the game itself is a fieldnote within the environment

4) How might you conduct this study: (This is a methods question. You may not know just yet, but start to think about the most suitable methods to address your research question- weekly observations? Participant play? Interviews with makers?)

Scholarship & Concepts: You won't have this in place yet, but you are working towards this integration between your project and existing scholarship over the semester. Start from the syllabus texts (or year 1 contextual studies course readings) & ask yourself which readings and ideas feature in your own study?

This research is to be conducted from three aspects: observation of the social group players on the social platform "Weibo" (objective record at a distance), close observation of players participating in the game as fieldnotes(subjective record, including strangers and friends), and questionnaire survey (players themselves make subjective evaluation) to synthesize this research.

Play and Punishment: The Sad and Curious

Case of Twixt would be an appropriate reference text to read

Some background explanations

Weibo

Weibo is the largest social networking platform in China, about the same as Facebook in Australia.

homepages(zhuye)

Home page in the English network context mostly refers to the meaning of "a person's personal home page", but in the Chinese network environment, in addition to the personal home page and the game official account, there are also unofficial accounts run by voluntary individuals for players: accounts that send out entrust and disseminate content contributed by players, accounts that share in-game outfits or fanart, etc., which have a significant influence among gamers using this social networking software. This kind of account don't seem to be common on twitter or facebook in the English-speaking world, Even though they have specific names and nickname given by players, here conclude all of them use the chinese word 'zhuye'.

Party Finder

An in-game feature for recruiting teammates who meet your expectations to join others in recruiting, or to strike deals with people, etc. In addition to content related to the game itself, there are also people who post content on the recruitment board that is more unrelated to the gameplay, such as looking for people to contact outside of the game that they can become friends with, drawing for people for practice purposes or even arguing.

assignment research target group

This assignment is aimed at the group of players in the middle as seen in the picture, while gamers who only play games and do not use social networks and non-gamers who only use social networks are not target for this research