Hello to Everybody! My name is Markus Friedl, 22 years old, and I am currently studying "communications techniques and design" in Austria (for more information about my course maybe you want to visit www.fh-vorarlberg.ac.at). I am now in my last semester of my studies and currently prepare my thesis dissertation. It will be on "Game Design for Online Games" in general with a special focus on "Community Design for Online Gaems" and its importance for the overall design process. In my dissertation I mainly want to focus on "real" online games (so no flash or shockwave). However I would be really interested in hearing from you all how you would define "multiplayer online game" or "massive multiplayer online game"????? I want to work out the design process itself (game balance, mood creation, storytelling,...), discuss different technical solutions (networking, latency, security, ...) and try to search for some "non-convential" AI-solutions. But my focus will be on *community design* (psychology, socialization, law, administration, ...) and its impact on the design. Now my question: Does anybody know some resources on that topics (besides gamasutra, gamedev, gdmag) that he/she thinks might be useful for my research. Maybe anybody of you has already made some experience and may want to share his/her knowledge with me. That would be really great! Greetings to you all from Austria and thank you very much in advance! Markus

I think a good way to find this stuff out is to become part of such a community! A good example is that of Settlers 3. It''s not too big, so most people know each other and it''s really interesting to watch


- JQ, PWC Software
"programming is all about wasting time" -me

Time is short (isn''t it always? ) so I''ll be brief.

quote: Original post by friedl_markus
Now my question:
Does anybody know some resources on that topics (besides
gamasutra, gamedev, gdmag) that he/she thinks might be useful for my research.

flipcode.com (Mentioning the name that must not be mentioned ), codewhore.com, Ptah''s site - can''t think of the actual URL, mudconnector.com - for access to a db of just about every MUD on the net & their homepages, RPGnet, RPGvault, I could go on for hours, but I don''t have the time.

However, if you want to get a good grasp of how these things are designed, log in to a M(UD, USH, OO) and, while interacting with the actual community, pick apart how the community interaction has been set up.

Reality is not the goal, total immersion is

Thanks very much to you all !!!

Does anybody of you maybe know the books "My Tiny Life" by Julian Dibbel, "Life on the Screen" by Sherry Turkle, "Online Communities" by Jenny Preece or "The Virtual Community" by Howard Rheingold ??

Did you find these books goo and think they could help me in my research ?? (I won''t believe any customer reviews at amazon )

Do you think such aspects apply to games too or is the computer gaming community something special?