Tribes: The Study of an Online Community

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when conversation takes over (Hafner 75). And this, Hafner says, is the kind of stuff that gaming networks want. They want to have the social environment it takes to create an online type of community for gamers in order to keep their clients and players devoted (Hafner 75).

Tribalwar.com states that the “Most users ever online was 212 on 09-23-2002 at 04:20 AM” (tribalwar.com). Take note of the time. With that many people actively using tribalwar.com in the early hours of the AM, it is only plausible that every time I read the discussion forums there were never less than 150 members and guests currently active. Every post had responses. MIRC is the program in which the Tribes chat room server is put to use. Irc.dynamix.com is a specifically registered server for individual channels based around Tribes and the Tribes community. As Hafner says, “The trick now [for interactive games over the Internet] is to create ‘social worlds’ rich in graphics for games of all kinds, featuring ...

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Daemon posted at one point (#tribalwar 10/15/02). I figured out that #estrogen was another chat room hosted by irc.dynamix.com consisting of females. Later, talking to another player, I realized that ‘atm’ was an acronym for ‘at the moment.’ “Siege mode” still remains an unfamiliar term to me. Another time I was reviewing conversation in the chat room I found that a player named Vang had said, “I’m about to start DdoS on wctoc. I need people to refresh, k?” (#tribalwar 10/15/02). Shortly after his statement, various other members agreed to “refresh” for him.

Different forums were also dedicated to this kind of stuff. One forum containing 2094 threads is entitled TW Tech. The ...

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