This article investigates the relationships between norms and the rich visual environment of the multiplayer game The Sims Online (TSO). Literature suggests that people exhibit normative behavior in online environments. The complex actions and interactions possible with the game's avatars and a minimal game structure make TSO an evocative online space in which to examine social interaction. Through participation and observation, we examined conversation and avatar conduct in TSO and found norms for verbal and nonverbal behavior that governed both text and avatar use. These norms are related to offline expectations of politeness and etiquette associated with visiting and hosting in people's homes, and they correspond with the visual dollhouse-like environment of TSO and its characters. This game is a special context where social norms are clear and powerful, affecting not only players' game play but also their social interaction.
Ambady, N., Koo, J., Lee, F., & Rosenthal, R. (1996). More than words: Linguistic and nonlinguistic politeness in two cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 996-1011.
2.
Baym, N.K. (1998). The emergence of on-line community. In S. G. Jones (Ed.), Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting computer-mediated communication and community (pp. 35-68). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
3.
Beavis, C., & Charles, C. (2005). Challenging notions of gendered game play: Teenagers playing The Sims. Discourse, 26(3), 355-367.
4.
Becker, B., & Mark, G. (2002). Social conventions in computer-mediated communication: A comparison of three online shared virtual environments. In R. Schroeder (Ed.), The social life of avatars (pp. 19-40). New York: Springer.
5.
Bendor, J., & Swistak, P. (2001). The evolution of norms. American Journal of Sociology, 106, 1493-1545.
6.
Bonvillain, N. (2002). Language, culture, and communication: The meaning of messages (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
7.
Brown, B., & Bell, M. (2004). CSCW at play: “There” as a collaborative virtual environment. In Computer supported cooperative work: Proceedings of the 2004 Association for Computing Machinery conference on computer supported cooperative work (pp. 350-359). New York: ACM.
8.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena . In E. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction (pp. 56-311). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
9.
Chen, M. (2005). Addressing social dilemmas and fostering cooperation through computer games. In Changing views: Worlds in play. Digital Games Research Association conference proceedings. Retrieved January 17, 2007, from http://hdl.handle.net/1892/1625
10.
Consalvo, M. (in press). From dollhouse to metaverse: What happened when The Sims went online. In J. P. Williams & J. H. Smith (Eds.), Digital gaming cultures and social life. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
11.
Danet, B., & Herring, S.C. (2003). Introduction: The multilingual internet. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 9(1). Retrieved February 10, 2007, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/intro.html
12.
Deutch, M., & Gerard, H.B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influence upon judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 51, 629-636.
13.
Ducheneaut, N., & Moore, R.J. (2004). The social side of gaming: A study of interaction patterns in a massively multiplayer online game. In Computer supported cooperative work: Proceedings of the 2004 Association for Computing Machinery conference on computer supported cooperative work (pp. 360-369). New York: ACM.
14.
Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003). Language and gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15.
Erickson, T. (1999). Rhyme and punishment: The creation and enforcement of conventions in an on-line participatory limerick genre. In Proceedings of the thirty-second Hawaii international conference on system sciences (Vol. 2, p. 2005 ). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.
16.
Flanagan, M. (2003, May). SIMple & personal: Domestic space and The Sims. Paper presented at the Melbourne DAC, the fifth international Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Melbourne, Australia.
17.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior . New York: Anchor.
18.
Guiller, J., & Durndell, A. (2006). “I totally agree with you”: Gender interactions in educational online discussion groups. Journal of Computer-AssistedLearning, 22, 368-381.
19.
Harrison, S., & Dourish, P. (1996). Re-place-ing space: The roles of place and space in collaborative systems. In M. S. Ackerman (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work (pp. 67-76). New York: ACM.
20.
Herring, S.C. (1994). Politeness in computer culture: Why women thank and men flame. In M. Bucholtz, A. Liang, & L. Sutton (Eds.), Cultural performances: Proceedings of the third Berkeley Women And Language Conference (pp. 278-294). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
21.
Huffaker, D. (2004). Gender similarities and differences in online identity and language use among teenage bloggers. Unpublished master's thesis , Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
22.
Iversen, S. (2005). Challenge Balance and Diversity: Playing The Sims and The Sims 2; Changing views: Worlds in play. Digital Games Research Association 2005 conference proceedings. Retrieved January 7, 2007, from http://www.digra.org/dl/db/06276.10020.pdf .
23.
Jeffrey, P., & Mark, G. (2003). Navigating the virtual landscape: Co-ordinating the shared use of space. In K. Höök, D. Beynon, & A. Munro (Eds.), Designing information spaces: The social navigation approach (pp. 105-124). London: Springer .
24.
Jobs for the girls. (2005, June 23). Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved January 18, 2007, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/computergames/story/0,,1512184,00.html
25.
Kline, S., Dyer-Witheford, N., & De Peuter, G. (2003). Digital play: The interaction of technology, culture, and marketing. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press.
26.
Lin, H., & Sun, C.-T. (2005). The “white-eyed” player culture: Grief play and construction of deviance in MMORPGs. In Changing views: Worlds in play. Digital Games Research Association conference proceedings. Retrieved January 18, 2007, from http://hdl.handle.net/1892/1584
27.
Michaelson, G., & Pohl, M. (2001). Gender in email based co-operative problem-solving . In E. Green & A. Adams (Eds.), Virtual gender (pp. 28-44). London: Routledge.
28.
Mills, S., (2000). Rethinking politeness, impoliteness and gender identity. In E. Litosseliti & J. Sutherland (Eds.), Discourse analysis and gender identity (pp. 69-89). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
29.
Nutt, D., & Railton, D. (2003). The Sims: Real life as genre. Information, Communication and Society, 6, 577-592.
30.
Paccagnella, L. (1997). Getting the seats of your pants dirty: Strategies for ethnographic research on virtual communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(1). Retrieved January 14, 2007, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue1/paccagnella.html
31.
Pankoke-Babatz, U., & Jeffrey, P. (2002). Documented norms and conventions on the internet . International Journal of Human Computer Interaction, 14, 219-235.
32.
Panyametheekul, S., & S.C. Herring (2003). Gender and turn allocation in a Thai chat room . Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 9(1). Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/panya_herring.html
33.
Peña, J., & Hancock, J.T. (2006). An analysis of socioemotional and task-oriented communication in an online multiplayer video game. Communication Research, 33, 92-109.
34.
Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (1998). Deindividuation and antinormative behavior: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin,123(3), 1-22.
35.
Roberts, L.D., & Parks, M.R. (1999). The social geography of gender-switching in virtual environments on the internet. Information, Communication and Society, 2, 521-540.
36.
Rodino, M. (1997). Breaking out of binaries: Reconceptualizing gender and its relationship to language in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(3). Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue3/rodino.html
37.
Sassenberg, K. (2002). Common bond and common identity groups on the internet: Attachment and normative behavior in on-topic and off-topic chats. Group Dynamics, Theory, Research and Practice, 6, 27-37.
38.
Schroeder, R. (2002). The social life of avatars: Presence and interaction in shared virtual environments. London: Springer.
39.
Smith, C.B., McLaughlin, M.L., & Osborne, K.K. (1997). Conduct control on Usenet. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2(4). Retrieved May 18, 2003, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue4/smith.html
40.
Squire, K.D., & Steinkuehler, C.A. (2006). Generating cyberculture/s: The case of Star Wars Galaxies. In D. Gibbs & K. L. Krause (Eds.), Cyberlines 2.0: Languages and cultures of the internet (2nd ed., pp. 177-199). Albert Park, Australia: James Nicholas.
41.
Steen, F.F., Greenfield, P.M., Davies, M.S., & Tynes, B. (2006). What went wrong with The Sims Online: Cultural learning and barriers to identification in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. In P. Vordered & J. Bryant (Eds.), Playing video games: Motives, responses and consequences (pp. 307-323). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
42.
Steinkuehler, C.A. (2004). Learning in massively multiplayer online games . In Y. B. Kafai, W. A. Sandoval, N. Enyedy , A. S. Nixon, & F. Herrera (Eds.), Proceedings of the sixth international conference of the learning sciences (pp. 521—528). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
43.
Stromer-Galley, J., & Mikeal, R. (2006). Gaming pink: Gender and structure in The Sims Online. In P. Messaris & L. Humphreys (Eds.), Digital media: Transformations in human communication (pp. 197-210). New York: Peter Lang.
44.
Suler, J.R. (2002). Identity management in cyberspace. Journal of Applied PsychoanalyticStudies, 4, 455-460.
45.
Taylor, C. (2003, August 31). Reinventing the Sims: Will Wright hopes to erase some bad memories with a new version of the best-selling computer game. Time.com. Retrieved September 11, 2003, from http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030908/xgames.html
46.
Taylor, T.L. (2006). Play between worlds: Exploring online game culture . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
47.
Tidwell, L.C., & Walther, J.B. (2002). Computer-mediated communication effects on disclosure, impressions, and interpersonal evaluations: Getting to know one another a bit at a time. Human Communication Research, 28, 317-348.
48.
Tsikalas, K. (2001). When the SIMS get real: An analysis of how digital play spaces promote learning in low income, diverse communities. New York: Computers for Youth and CILT, PlaySpace Project . Retrieved January 19, 2007, from http://concepts.concord.org/playspace
49.
Wallace, P. (1999). The psychology of the internet. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press.
50.
Walther, J.B. (1995). Relational aspects of computer-mediated communication: Experimental observations over time. Organization Science , 6, 186-203.
51.
Walther, J.B., Loh, T., & Granka, L. (2005). Let me count the ways: The interchange of verbal and nonverbal cues in computer-mediated and face-to-face affinity. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 24, 36-65.
52.
Williams, D., Ducheneaut, N., Xiong, L., Zhang, Y., Yee, N., & Nickell, E. (2006). From tree house to barracks: The social life of guilds in World of Warcraft. Games andCulture, 1, 338-361.
53.
Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., & Merget, D. (2007). The unbearable likeness of being digital: The persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments. CyberPsychology and Behavior10, 115-121.
