Blizzard Forums will soon display real name
For those who are researching interactions within gaming environment, or even just internet social anonymity or gender anonymity, this is a big deal. http://kotaku.com/5580585/blizzard-forums-will-soon-display-your-real-name Privacy issues arise, as do gender interaction issues. Would you let in a female player in to your guild in WoW? What if they were a 'female' playing with a male avatar? What about a 'male' name playing with a female avatar? These games are built on guilds and social formations - what impact might this new change have? I must curtail my thoughts and come back later to explore this, but I thought I'd share the Kotaku post. -SharonG
From what I understand, users have a username and a "real name" linked to their accounts. The real name, though, does not have to be the same name linked to the credit card used (eg., a parent uses a card for their child, who inputs their own "real name"). But couldn't the real name just be a faked name? Are there statistics to how many people actually put their real name?
Alex --- Alexander Leavitt Researcher Convergence Culture Consortium (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) Microsoft New England Research & Development http://doalchemy.org Twitter: @alexleavitt On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 11:59 AM, live <human.factor.one@gmail.com> wrote:
For those who are researching interactions within gaming environment, or even just internet social anonymity or gender anonymity, this is a big deal. http://kotaku.com/5580585/blizzard-forums-will-soon-display-your-real-name
Privacy issues arise, as do gender interaction issues. Would you let in a female player in to your guild in WoW? What if they were a 'female' playing with a male avatar? What about a 'male' name playing with a female avatar? These games are built on guilds and social formations - what impact might this new change have?
I must curtail my thoughts and come back later to explore this, but I thought I'd share the Kotaku post.
-SharonG
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One of the places I study is WoW (currently a chapter in my dissertation). I spent hours yesterday watching, and trying to record, the storm over this unfold across websites. I agree, it raises a multitude of questions about the privacy of the users/players. Most fascinating to me is the outrage of the players to the change. There is a still ongoing outpouring of fury that has only somewhat slowed in which people are articulating their beliefs about their privacy and anonymity online, including views about the purpose of video games in their lives--many of which include some of the gender interaction questions raised here: "Privacy issues arise, as do gender interaction issues. Would you let in a female player in to your guild in WoW? What if they were a 'female' playing with a male avatar? What about a 'male' name playing with a female avatar? These games are built on guilds and social formations - what impact might this new change have?" Also, Alex, in response to your question: "But couldn't the real name just be a faked name? Are there statistics to how many people actually put their real name?" I don't think anyone knows this--Blizzard is extremely proprietary with their data. But, I can tell you from my own observation that it appears that there is a minority who are responding saying that they didn't use their legal names when they signed up for their accounts. However, the majority seem to be indicating that they did. And, Blizzard's policy makes it very hard to impossible to change the name on the account (something transgendered people are pointing out). People are also expressing concern over accounts that children or spouses play on that have one name attached to them--making the account holder responsible for any post on the forums. I'm sure that Blizzard considers them responsible anyway as the account holder, but it says something interesting about how people see and identify themselves in relation to their toons. Also, it's important to note that the forums are used by a tiny minority of total players--but the streams of people coming onto websites to express displeasure is far greater numbers than I've observed while doing research. This is just a rough estimation based on what I read as I was frantically trying to record everything. Also interesting is the case of the Blizzard Community Manager who, to calm people's fears, posted his own legal name on the forums yesterday--and who then had a lot of his personal information dug up and posted. And, that the North American realm groups (also includes Oceania and S. America) and the Europe realms seem to be responding similarly to the change. Anyway, I agree that this is extremely exciting. And, anyone interested in privacy and anonymity online might check it out. Wow.com (formerly WoW Insider) has been covering it if people are looking for an overview. I'm going to be continuing to try to record it for my research as well and would be happy to share what I find. Best, Jessica -------------------------------------- Jessica L. Beyer Doctoral Candidate University of Washington Department of Political Science http://students.washington.edu/jlbeyer -------------------------------------- On Wed, 7 Jul 2010, Alex Leavitt wrote:
From what I understand, users have a username and a "real name" linked to their accounts. The real name, though, does not have to be the same name linked to the credit card used (eg., a parent uses a card for their child, who inputs their own "real name"). But couldn't the real name just be a faked name? Are there statistics to how many people actually put their real name?
Alex
---
Alexander Leavitt Researcher Convergence Culture Consortium (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) Microsoft New England Research & Development http://doalchemy.org Twitter: @alexleavitt
On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 11:59 AM, live <human.factor.one@gmail.com> wrote:
For those who are researching interactions within gaming environment, or even just internet social anonymity or gender anonymity, this is a big deal. http://kotaku.com/5580585/blizzard-forums-will-soon-display-your-real-name
Privacy issues arise, as do gender interaction issues. Would you let in a female player in to your guild in WoW? What if they were a 'female' playing with a male avatar? What about a 'male' name playing with a female avatar? These games are built on guilds and social formations - what impact might this new change have?
I must curtail my thoughts and come back later to explore this, but I thought I'd share the Kotaku post.
-SharonG
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I was particularly concerned about the gameplay possibilities than just the forum and social interactions. Imagine tracking "friends" on starcraft and being able to call them back to WoW for help - teamplay will be greatly affected. With cross-game, cross-avatar, cross-server communication possibilities the RealID move by Blizzard seems to change how social interactions are structured, how social formations are affected, on the other hand, would be really exciting. Ofcourse the request has to be accepted by the other player, without which tracking alt avatars across servers/games wont be possible (or so they say!). Have not seen much studies on real name usage on WoW, but i am pretty sure personal and private data would be available with blizzard particularly on credit card usages. Most games have data retention policies exceeding 6 months (am not certain about blizzard). If you do find studies, or any other material, please do forward them. Best, Arun Menon @arunuik <http://twitter.com/arunuik> On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 9:37 PM, Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt@gmail.com> wrote:
From what I understand, users have a username and a "real name" linked to their accounts. The real name, though, does not have to be the same name linked to the credit card used (eg., a parent uses a card for their child, who inputs their own "real name"). But couldn't the real name just be a faked name? Are there statistics to how many people actually put their real name?
Alex
---
Alexander Leavitt Researcher Convergence Culture Consortium (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) Microsoft New England Research & Development http://doalchemy.org Twitter: @alexleavitt
On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 11:59 AM, live <human.factor.one@gmail.com> wrote:
For those who are researching interactions within gaming environment, or even just internet social anonymity or gender anonymity, this is a big deal.
http://kotaku.com/5580585/blizzard-forums-will-soon-display-your-real-name
Privacy issues arise, as do gender interaction issues. Would you let in a female player in to your guild in WoW? What if they were a 'female'
playing
with a male avatar? What about a 'male' name playing with a female avatar? These games are built on guilds and social formations - what impact might this new change have?
I must curtail my thoughts and come back later to explore this, but I thought I'd share the Kotaku post.
-SharonG
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
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participants (4)
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Alex Leavitt -
Arun Menon -
Jessica L. Beyer -
live