As technology advances and more computers with Internet connections are available in homes worldwide, the subculture of online role-playing video gamers has grown enormously. Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) allow real people to interact with each other in virtual worlds. The games generally start by allowing you to create your in-game character. Players can choose their height, weight, skin color, hair color, and the abilities these characters will be more apt to develop. In these worlds, players can cooperate or compete with each other to gain virtual land, clothing, armor, weapons, magical items, and even food — their virtual counterparts need to eat too.

These MMORPGs are also a big business. Currently the most popular game is World of Warcraft, and with over 9 million subscribers (source) paying a $15 monthly fee to play, this game generates over a billion dollars in sales every year. Most of these games support the ability to create guilds or clans; family-like structures where players are associated with one other. Members of guilds can help each other complete quests in the game, or fight with other guilds for possessions or reputation. Many times, guild members will even fight amongst themselves for power in the group. In this way, these virtual societies closely resemble our real-world societies, where there is competition for possessions and relational support from “family” and friends.

World of Warcraft generates over a billion dollars every year.

Enjoyment and fulfillment in virtual worlds usually comes from the relationships players build with each other in the game. The ability to play with other humans is arguably the primary reason to play MMORPGs. If it were not for this, then these online games would be just like any other video game where you are playing by yourself among artificially intelligent computer characters. To those not familiar with online games, it may seem strange or even frightening that players would care about their relationships with strangers across the globe, who they only see and talk to in a virtual world. However, studies show that these players often do develop meaningful relationships. These relationships are so common that approximately 80% of female players and 66% of male players have responded in surveys that they have become good friends with someone they met in a MMORPG (source), and 29% of female players and 8% of male players have physically dated someone they met in a game (source). Virtual marriages are also common in online role-playing games, and they are usually a celebrated event with dozens or even hundreds of friends attending the ceremonies. Some online games tend to focus on PvE (players versus environment), which encourages players to team up together and beat the computer-controlled enemies. This type of approach is in agreement with the social-functionalism theory, which states that a society functions to sustain itself. Other games focus on PvP (player versus player) and encourage players to fight against each other for the rewards of the game, which is more like the social-conflict theory that explains how we compete for the limited resources of the world.

MMORPG players have developed their own slang so they can type messages more quickly by using less letters. Although some players have voice headsets for communication with one another, the primary method of communication is the game chat rooms. There are hundreds of acronyms and slang terms players learn over time. For example, to “buff” someone means to temporarily enhance their character’s abilities with the use of an item or magic spell. “LFT” is an acronym for “looking for team,” and “KoS” is a command to kill an enemy (usually another player who is commonly disliked) the moment you see them. Online gaming societies also have their own economies. Players with a lot of gold in a game can buy better equipment, land, or even pay other players to do favors for them. These favors can include delivering an item to another player, embarking on a quest that an “upper-class” player may consider boring, or even engaging in prostitution and virtual sex — a popular activity in Sociolotron, an adult-only MMORPG. There is much dispute among gamers of “gold-farmers,” who they say ruin the online economies of the most popular games. Gold-farmers are gamers who play the game with the sole purpose of earning virtual gold to sell to other players for real-life currency. Considering that around 22% of MMORPG players buy virtual gold, and spend an average of $135 to purchase it (source), gold-farming can be a lucrative business and is a popular type of employment in Mexico, Indonesia, and especially China. In addition to selling gold, many players have become virtual real-estate agents and invest in limited virtual land to sell to other players.

In games like Second Life, many people pay real money to have virtual sex.

As time goes on, we will likely see even more participation in online worlds. We see a mixture of our real world and fantasies in these “second lives,” and studies have shown that MMORPGs often have a real effect on the people who play them. In addition to the constant study of humans on the physical Earth, sociologists may need to devote more time to studying humans in a computer fantasy realm composed of bit and bytes.