The notion of requiring players to cooperate in order to make progress is an interesting twist – I don’t really play MMORPG’s, but I am under the impression that most of them don’t force players to interact in order to accomplish goals.
“Getting the goods” by checking player levels, class, gender, etc. definitely affects how players form relationships in the game, and you explained this well. For identifiability, I’d like to add that (according to my understanding), the two cases of “stranger in the train” and “stranger in the crowd” can be explained by visual anonymity. It can be argued that since you are only exposing yourself to other players through an avatar, the real you is invisible to everyone else. Thus, your private self-awareness increases while your public self-awareness decreases. These effects lead to greater self-disclosure and relationship development.
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The notion of requiring players to cooperate in order to make progress is an interesting twist – I don’t really play MMORPG’s, but I am under the impression that most of them don’t force players to interact in order to accomplish goals.
“Getting the goods” by checking player levels, class, gender, etc. definitely affects how players form relationships in the game, and you explained this well. For identifiability, I’d like to add that (according to my understanding), the two cases of “stranger in the train” and “stranger in the crowd” can be explained by visual anonymity. It can be argued that since you are only exposing yourself to other players through an avatar, the real you is invisible to everyone else. Thus, your private self-awareness increases while your public self-awareness decreases. These effects lead to greater self-disclosure and relationship development.
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