Transcript
Page 1: The reality of friendship within immersive virtual worlds

ORIGINAL PAPER

The reality of friendship within immersive virtual worlds

Nicholas John Munn

Published online: 21 May 2011

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract In this article I examine a recent development

in online communication, the immersive virtual worlds

of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

(MMORPGs). I argue that these environments provide a

distinct form of online experience from the experience

available through earlier generation forms of online com-

munication such as newsgroups, chat rooms, email and

instant messaging. The experience available to participants

in MMORPGs is founded on shared activity, while the

experience of earlier generation online communication is

largely if not wholly dependent on the communication itself.

This difference, I argue, makes interaction in immersive

virtual worlds such as MMORPGs relevantly similar to

interaction in the physical world, and distinguishes both

physical world and immersive virtual world interaction from

other forms of online communication. I argue that to the

extent that shared activity is a core element in the formation

of friendships, friendships can form in immersive virtual

worlds as they do in the physical world, and that this possi-

bility was unavailable in earlier forms of online interaction. I

do, however, note that earlier forms of online interaction are

capable of sustaining friendships formed through either

physical or immersive virtual world interaction. I conclude

that we cannot any longer make a sharp distinction between

the physical and the virtual world, as the characteristics of

friendship are able to be developed in each.

Keywords Virtual worlds � Friendship � MMORPGs �Interaction

Introduction

Many differences have been claimed between the rela-

tionships developed online and those developed in the

physical world. Dean Cocking and Steve Matthews have

argued that ‘net friends’ are relevantly distinct from

friends, and do not fulfil all the characteristics of friendship

(2000). More recently, Adam Briggle has critiqued this

position, arguing that online communication can (but often

does not) result in close friendships (2008). In this article I

discuss the possibility of friendship formation in the

immersive virtual worlds of massively multiplayer online

role-playing games (MMORPGs), focussing on the concept

of shared activity as a requirement of the development of

friendship. This concept has most effectively been articu-

lated by Bennett Helm (2008). I argue that MMORPGs

facilitate friendship development through shared activity in

a way parallel to that offered by physical world interaction,

and that both the immersive virtual worlds of MMORPGs

and the physical world can be distinguished from prior

generations of online interaction in virtue of their ability to

provide this medium for shared activity. As MMORPGs

are a relatively recent phenomenon, I spend some time

examining the fundamental shift that has occurred in

moving to this kind of online interaction from previous

generation forms of online interaction such as email, chat

rooms, instant messaging and newsgroups. I also discuss

the status of newly emerging immersive social environ-

ments such as Facebook, arguing that these are more

similar to the prior generation online communication than

to either physical interaction or immersive virtual worlds.

N. J. Munn (&)

School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies,

Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia

e-mail: [email protected]

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Ethics Inf Technol (2012) 14:1–10

DOI 10.1007/s10676-011-9274-6

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In order to achieve this, I argue that the purpose and use of

Facebook and similar online social networks is importantly

distinct from the purpose and use of immersive virtual

worlds such as World of Warcraft, drawing on a distinction

between using these services for communication (as occurs

in Facebook use) and engaging in shared activity within

virtual worlds.

The possibility of friendship formation within immer-

sive virtual worlds is important as it enables the benefits

of friendship to be shared more broadly. In particular, it is

commonly held that special obligations arise between

friends (Scheffler 1997; Mason 1997; Leib 2007) and the

ability to form relationships incurring these obligations

remotely has the potential to raise important issues of

responsibility and expectation arising from virtual rela-

tionships. Friendships elicit responsibility, such that when

faced with a choice between acting so as to benefit a

friend or to benefit a stranger, the fact that one possible

beneficiary is a friend gives a reason to act in their

favour. If online relationships can generate friendships,

then they similarly generate these kinds of obligations,

held by us to those we have never physically met. It is

this feature of online friendships that is controversial, as it

implies duties to act in particular ways to preserve the

online friendship, including acting to the detriment of

non-friends with whom one does have physical contact,

when so acting is necessary to avoid similar detriment

accruing to the online friend. If friendships can be formed

online, then all the special obligations triggered by

friendship generally are triggered by these friendships,

and our accounts of special responsibility must be able to

take this into account. A second important consequence of

the possibility of online friendship development arises

from the ability of friendships to enhance our knowledge,

particularly in this case our knowledge of the world and

those within it. Elizabeth Telfer argues that friendship

itself is knowledge enhancing (1971), and as such the

possibility of developing true friendships online opens the

opportunity for friendship with a wider range of persons

than are generally available through physical world social

networks. People from divergent backgrounds, societies

and status are available as ‘potential friends’ who would

not be available without the medium of the immersive

virtual world. This second argument is probabilistic.

Online friendships are distinctly valuable because they

provide the opportunity for those that have them to

interact with and gain knowledge of people in social

settings distinct from their own, more easily than is the

case without online friendship. This knowledge could be

gained in other ways (as for example when you befriend

new arrivals from abroad), but the possibility of real

friendship formation online makes such friendships more

feasible for more people, more often.

The structure of the article is as follows. Firstly, I make

the case for the centrality of shared activity in the forma-

tion of friendships. Secondly, I apply the shared activity

criterion to the four kinds of activity identified above: older

generation online communications; social media; immer-

sive virtual worlds; and the physical world. Thirdly, I argue

that neither older generation online communications nor

social media have the capacity to develop close friend-

ships, while both immersive virtual worlds and the physical

world share this capacity. Fourthly and finally, I argue that

all four kinds of activity share an ability to maintain

existing friendships.

The characteristics of friendship

Aristotle identifies three kinds of friendship, the imperfect

friendships of utility and of pleasure, and the perfect

friendship of virtue, in which each participant wishes well

for the other for their own sake, rather than as a means to

either the utility or pleasure of the lesser friendships. (1998,

NE 8.3–4) It is this last, perfect friendship with which I am

concerned in this article, as imperfect friendships do not

have the same strong positive outcomes as perfect friend-

ships, and also are taken by many commentators to be more

feasibly established online. Cocking and Matthews, for

example, confine their criticism of ‘net friends’ to close

friendships, acknowledging that some of the characteristics

of friendships can and do develop through online interac-

tion (2000).

Certain characteristics of friendships are accepted by all

who work in the area. Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett

identify affection and well-wishing as components accep-

ted by all accounts of friendship (1998), while Bennett

Helm argues that the concepts of mutual caring, intimacy

and shared activity are shared by the majority of philo-

sophical accounts of friendship (2010). Mutual caring is the

idea that each friend cares for the other and does so for the

sake of the other, not themselves; intimacy is the notion of

a deeper relationship than mere collegiality or acquain-

tance, and shared activity is the idea that friends will do

things together, as they each enjoy the thing in question,

and, further, they enjoy doing this thing in the company of

friends.1 In this article I focus predominantly on the shared

activity criterion of friendship, which originated with

Aristotle who claimed that friends will share their activities

and in doing so improve themselves and their friendship.

(1998, NE 9.12) I do so as I consider this criterion to be

1 Discussion of these three criteria is, as Helm suggests, widespread

in the literature on friendship. In addition to Helm (2010), discussion

can be found in Cooper (1977a, b), Sherman (1987), Telfer (1971),

Thomas (1987). Helm (2009) provides many further discussions for

those interested.

2 N. J. Munn

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foundational. It is (usually, if not always) through shared

activity that intimacy and mutual caring develop.2 Nancy

Sherman for example claims that it is the ‘‘capacity to

share and co-ordinate activities over an extended period of

time’’ that is constitutive of friendship (1987). A possible

exception arises in familial relationships, in which inti-

macy and mutual caring between parents and child exist

prior to any engagement in shared activity. However, it is

standard to draw a distinction between friendships in

general and familial relationships such that familial rela-

tionships are not friendships. (Helm 2010) Such a distinc-

tion begins with Aristotle, who distinguishes ‘‘both the

friendship of kindred and that of comrades’’ from his

general description of friendships. (1998, NE 8.12) I follow

that convention here.3 I take it that outside of the familial

environment, shared activity is the best available contender

for providing the kind of contact which is required for the

development of mutual caring and affection. If a particular

mode of interaction does not provide meaningful oppor-

tunities for shared activity, then this mode will also not be

able to cause a relationship of intimacy and mutual caring

to develop. As Aristotle says, ‘‘friendship requires time and

familiarity’’ and men cannot ‘‘admit each other to friend-

ship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been

trusted by each.’’ (1998, NE 8.3) To illustrate this point,

consider the development of a friendship between Jesse

and Kelly. They meet during a multi-day bike ride, in line

for the evening meal. Sitting together over dinner, they

already know they share an enthusiasm for bicycling.

Conversation reveals that they each work at a university,

one as a librarian, the other an academic. This provides a

further background of shared experience. Over the course

of the bike ride, they have more opportunities to converse.

It may transpire that they enjoy each others company, and

have further interests in common. From here, intimacy and

mutual caring can develop. While a chance encounter with

a stranger may in principle lead to the same kind of out-

come, it is at the least more likely that a foundation of

shared activity will provide a platform for the development

of a friendship than do situations which lack this

foundation.

Simply engaging in a mutually liked activity cannot

however suffice for that activity to be relevantly shared.

Two people may each enjoy bicycling, whilst having no

preference to bicycling with others. They may each enjoy

bicycling with others, without wishing to bicycle with a

particular other person. For the shared activity to be a

foundational component of friendship, it is also necessary

that each friend enjoys engaging in the activity with the

other. In this way, the pleasure of the activity is increased

by the company in which the activity is enjoyed. This

conception of mutual activity is articulated by Nancy

Sherman who follows Aristotle in claiming that ‘‘the best

sort of friendship provides us with companions with whom

we can share goods and interests in a jointly pursued life’’

(1987). Not every person is a candidate for friendship. I will

argue in the following section that there is an important

difference between, on the one hand, earlier forms of online

interaction and the current generation social media para-

digm of online interaction, and on the other hand, interac-

tion in immersive virtual worlds and the physical world, in

the way that these realms facilitate shared activity.

Shared activity

In the four subsections below I address distinct kinds of

interaction. I argue that the early forms of online interac-

tion discussed in ‘‘Early forms of online interaction’’ and

the social media paradigm of interaction discussed in ‘‘The

social media paradigm’’ share a characteristic of not pro-

viding an independent means of engaging in shared activ-

ity, while immersive virtual worlds (‘‘Immersive virtual

worlds’’) and the physical world (‘‘The physical world’’)

both do provide such a forum. Before beginning this dis-

cussion, I must briefly describe the content of the shared

activity under consideration. I take it that the shared

activity component of friendship requires friends to coop-

eratively engage in activity, whether in pursuit of the

experience of doing so or of some greater goal, and to do so

not only for the sake of the activity, but in order to engage

in the activity with their friends. This means that, as dis-

cussed in Sect. ‘‘The characteristics of friendship’’, one is

not engaged in shared activity just because they like

bicycling with others, and have found someone to bicycle

with. That other person must also wish to bicycle with

others, and each must want, specifically, to bicycle with the

other person, rather than simply to enjoy bicycling with

some unspecified other.

This concept of shared activity is demanding. It can be

contrasted with the accounts of social action theorists who

are concerned with examining what it means for groups of

agents to behave ‘‘in a way that is coordinated through

planning and deliberation’’ (Helm 2008). These accounts

are less demanding. A representative example is Michael

Bratman’s account of shared cooperative activity which

does not require participants to have an interest in engaging

in the activity with specified others (1992).4 It is enough for

2 For examination of Intimacy and Mutual Caring, see Cocking and

Kennett (1998), White (2001). I do not address these criteria in depth

in this article.3 While some commentators, such as Rorty (1993) explicitly include

familial relationships within the realm of friendship, I follow the

majority in excluding them. 4 Other accounts include Velleman (1997), Gilbert (2000).

The reality of friendship within immersive virtual worlds 3

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the participants to cooperatively pursue designated ends,

where each participant has a desire to achieve that end.

Under my account of shared activity, friends engaged in

such activity jointly pursue a goal when all of them not

only desire a particular outcome, but also desire that the

outcome be the product of the combined activity of the

group, as it is composed. As friends, they may be willing to

reduce the likelihood of achieving the desired outcome, in

order to ensure that if it is achieved, the group which

achieves it is composed of the friends. Bratman’s account,

and those of action theorists who are concerned with social

activity more broadly, rather than shared activity in the

context of friendship, does not require this final step. This

can be illustrated by considering the case of a social

football league. A group of friends who share an interest in

football may form a team, with a goal of winning the local

league. In order for their actions to constitute shared

activity, the goal must be further specified, to winning the

league as part of a group of friends. Bratman’s agents could

attempt to achieve their goal by bringing in ringers who

shared the goal of winning the league and were willing to

co-operatively engage in attempting to do so, but they

would achieve this at the cost of sacrificing the goal of

some members of the group, those excluded in order to

increase the chance of winning. My agents, as friends,

could not do this, as doing so would undermine the

important process, of winning as a group.

Further, I distinguish between communication and

activity. I take communication to be the planning of

activity, the sharing of ideas, the development of proce-

dures and so on, while activity involves putting the things

discussed into practice. In making this division I follow the

usage common to social action theorists, whose examples

of shared activity are consistently of this kind (Tuomela

1993; Bratman 1992). While in some instances communi-

cation could arguably extend to activity, as in for example

the orchestration of a letter writing campaign as a political

protest, such instances are both rare and contentious, and

for the moment I leave them aside.

Early forms of online interaction

While the landscape of the modern internet is dominsated

by the social media paradigm, exemplified by Facebook

(founded in 2004) and Twitter (founded in 2006), which

have rapidly displaced smaller predecessors such as

MySpace, Friendster and Bebo, much of the literature on

friendship in the online sphere predates this development.

As such, many discussions of friendship online, including

the virtual interactions considered by Cocking and Mat-

thews in ‘‘Unreal Friends’’ (2000), focus on preceding

generations of interaction, namely ‘‘e-mail, chat rooms,

instant messaging, newsgroups, and other means.’’

(McKenna et al. 2002) When used by strangers (that is, by

people who do not have pre-existing physical world rela-

tionships), the interactions available to people in this set-

ting are not conducive to the development of shared

activity. These methods of interaction are all primarily

means of communication. They are useful for people to

talk to one another, for the sharing of ideas and information

or the arranging of physical world activities. But within the

setting of a chat room or a newsgroup, it is only the con-

versation that is shared. Rather than doing anything new

with the other participants, you are engaged in recounting

things you have done, explaining your interests to others,

or potentially comparing your prior (non-shared) experi-

ences of particular kinds of activities with others. So for

example, a newsgroup may be formed for camping

enthusiasts in Central Otago, in New Zealand. Within this

newsgroup, people who have gone camping in the region,

or who wish to, or who want to determine whether they

wish to, can share experiences, offer advice and converse

with others who have these same interests. Importantly

though, any shared interactions that arise from this forum

will occur in the physical world. The newsgroup environ-

ment (and similarly, the email, chat room or instant mes-

saging environment) does not provide a realm for actually

engaging in shared activity.

This situation arises because, in these earlier online

interactions, the act of communication was itself central.

When one entered a chat room and began communicating

with the other participants, the novel factor was being able

to talk to distant persons who were previously unknown to

you, to develop relationships with people you have never

met and may never meet in the flesh. To develop ongoing

relationships with these people, in this environment, relied

upon a continuing interaction based solely on this com-

munication. To engage in shared activity required breach-

ing the barriers of the online world, and engaging in the

physical world. While this medium provided an expanded

range of means for people who already had the foundation

of a friendship to expand that friendship, the development

of the friendship was reliant on the physical world inter-

actions occurring additionally to the online. This means

that this form of communication is incapable of providing

the shared activity required for friendship.

The social media paradigm

The social media paradigm is at this stage exemplified by

Facebook, which is wildly successful and pervasive.5

5 The companies own statistics place them as having over 500

million active users, over half of whom access the site each day.

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics (Last Accessed

December 6, 2010).

4 N. J. Munn

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Facebook is a social media system whereby you form and

participate in networks of people, by choosing to ‘friend’

them. Having become someone’s ‘friend’ on Facebook,

you each have access to the information the other places on

the system, and are thereby able to track the activity of

those you have befriended. This activity may include

updates as to what the person is doing at a given time,

photographs and video of the person uploaded by them-

selves or others within your network, and information as to

products, companies or activities which the person is

tracking, planning, or participating in. Importantly, con-

nections on Facebook (and other similar services) follow a

social networking model whereby you befriend people you

have pre-existing connections with: Friends, family,

acquaintances and work colleagues. This is the ‘circle of

friends’ model of social networking, and it distinguishes

this type of interaction from the interactions considered in

‘‘Early forms of online interaction’’ above, which did not

rely on prior knowledge of other participants (Rosen 2007).

Facebook provides a means by which family, friends,

and mere acquaintances are able to maintain contact with

you, to learn as much as you are willing to tell them about

your current location, thoughts, and actions, and to find

other mutual acquaintances that they may have lost contact

with. Within this paradigm, there are two distinct levels at

which the concept of friendship operates. Some partici-

pants in the social media paradigm treat friendship as being

purely a matter of acquaintance, such that they will ‘friend’

people they know not because they want to talk to them,

but in recognition of a connection forged by shared place or

experience at some stage in the past. We are concerned

here with the stronger form of friendship operating within

the social media paradigm, which occurs when you use

social media to interact with people you consider to be

friends in a strong sense; involving mutual caring, inti-

macy, and shared activity.

In this strong sense, social media act as a means for the

continuation of friendships, not for their development.

They are used to contact old friends, to arrange activities

with them, not to make new friends. The importance of

Facebook is not to enable you to meet new people or make

new friends, but to keep you in touch with existing friends,

and, increasingly, to facilitate your participation in the

shared activities constitutive of that friendship. So, for

example, you may organise a party with a group of your

friends by inviting them to it via Facebook (rather than, as

in the past, by email or telephone). When you do this, it is

with the intention that you engage in a shared physical

world activity, which will (all going well) strengthen the

existing friendships you have with the people you invite.

After the fact, Facebook provides a repository for memo-

ries of the activity, through photographs and comments.

However, as with the earlier online interactions discussed

in ‘‘Early forms of online interaction’’ above, the actual

shared activities are engaged in outside of the interactions

in social media.

Immersive virtual worlds

The preceding two discussions have been relatively brief,

as the features of each are commonly known. Immersive

virtual worlds, however, are a more recent and less

pervasive phenomenon, with Everquest in 1999 being the

most successful early version, peaking at 450,000 sub-

scribers. (Sony 2004) While Everquest itself was by no

means the first such game, it was the first to capture

widespread public interest, particularly amongst the

broader society. Previous online worlds, such as the

MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) which were popular

amongst those with the finance, technical acumen and

access to technology required to participate in them

during the formative years of the internet, lacked the

accessibility, population base, graphical interface and

widespread acceptance that characterise the immersive

virtual worlds I am concerned with in this paper.

Scholarly interest has focussed more recently on Second

Life, which is a free and largely user generated experi-

ence (See Cole and Griffiths 2007; Terra Nova 2011),

but the dominant force in MMORPGs is World of

Warcraft, which has recently passed 12 million active

subscribers. (Blizzard 2010) In the following discussion I

use World of Warcraft (henceforth WOW) as a para-

digmatic example of the virtual world impact on the idea

of friendship. Before doing so, however, I must

emphasise the importance of the ‘virtual’ component of

the immersive virtual worlds under consideration. The

activities engaged in in immersive virtual worlds could

equally be engaged in by groups of friends or acquain-

tances playing board games, or playing co-operative

games in a LAN cafe or similar environment in which

they have the opportunity for physical contact with the

other participants. Were friendships to develop because

of engagement in these sorts of activities, we would gain

no insight as to whether it was the activity engaged in or

the fact that it was done while in physical proximity that

enabled friendship development. By looking at activities

undertaken in immersive virtual worlds, we remove the

possibility of physical contact and thereby can establish

the possibility of friendship formation amongst people

who have never met in the physical world. The goal is

to show that it is the act of engaging in shared activity,

rather than the medium in which that activity is engaged

in, which is the crucial determinant of friendship

development.

The reality of friendship within immersive virtual worlds 5

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The workings of immersive virtual worlds

In WOW style virtual worlds, participants have a choice as

to whether to pursue independent or collaborative

advancement. Participants who choose to play indepen-

dently are able to progress without relying on building

relationships with other players. They can level (progres-

sively gain abilities through activity and the performance

of tasks), instance (battle against particular sets of monsters

in scripted environments as part of a group of 5/10/25

players), and PvP (engage in player vs. player combat,

which pits teams of player characters against each other in

capture the flag and other styles of game). All of these

activities can be done in randomly generated groups, the

other participants chosen without reference to prior

knowledge or interaction. Alternatively, players who

choose to level collaboratively have access to a number of

tools to enable collaborative levelling. These can be divi-

ded into internal and external means. Internal means are

processes provided by the virtual world itself through

which friendships can be developed and maintained.

External processes are ones developed by the participants

themselves to facilitate the development and maintenance

of friendships within the virtual world.

Internal processes available in WOW include the ability

to befriend particular characters in the game, an ability that

has recently been extended to also allow you to befriend

the player, rather than the character. By doing this, you will

be informed whenever that character is online, enabling

you to maintain contact with them. By befriending the

player rather than a particular character, you are able to see

when the player is online in any capacity, whether on any

of a variety of characters, on any number of servers, or

even in any of the games which share Blizzard entertain-

ment’s tracking system. This friending process provides the

simplest level of interaction between participants in the

virtual world.

A further and more nuanced means of interaction is pro-

vided by guilds. Guilds are groups of participants who share

dedicated communication channels, pool their in world

resources, and are able more easily to track each others

online presence. Joining a guild is done both for the social

components of guild membership, through the availability of

like minded participants with whom to share the world

experience, and for the game-play benefits, such as the easier

availability of positions in raid groups, organised PvP com-

bat, and other components of the virtual world. Guilds

thereby facilitate the sharing and co-ordination of activities

over an extended period of time, that Sherman identifies as

requirements for the development of friendships (1987).

External processes through which interaction in these

virtual worlds is reinforced are often corollaries to guild

processes within the game. For example, guilds may

provide web-pages and forums in which their members can

converse outside the game. These are likely to be joined by

Facebook groups (currently, Facebook is sufficiently

dominant in the social media sphere as to be the only

system worth considering) and ventrilo servers. Ventrilo is

a voice over internet programme allowing verbal commu-

nication between large groups of people. WOW provides

for up to 40 person groups for some encounters (currently,

40 person groups only exist in some of the player versus

player battlegrounds. Against computer scripts, the largest

current content encounters are for 25 people), and Ventrilo

enables all 40 to listen to instructions and converse with

each other.

In combination, these internal and external factors allow

for very strong social bonds to be formed between partic-

ipants in immersive virtual worlds who choose to develop

relationships within them. Richard Rouse argues that the

kind of social bonds formed in these game worlds could

become the primary motivation for continued participation

(2000). This is very important for this debate, as it makes

the game world a vehicle for the relationship, rather than

itself being the reason for participation. Nick Yee has run

several studies on the perceptions participants have of

relationships in immersive worlds, which suggest that those

involved in the worlds consider them to be capable of

developing friendships, and to actually do so (2006a, b, c).6

With the general structure of the gaming situation estab-

lished, I turn now to the particular development of shared

activity in WOW.7

Shared activity in WOW

In contrast to the kinds of activity discussed in ‘‘Early

forms of online interaction’’ and ‘‘The social media para-

digm’’ above, the primary focus of social interaction in

WOW and similar immersive virtual worlds is not com-

munication, but shared experience. Shared experience, or

activity, is Aristotle’s core requirement for friendship for-

mation, as discussed in (‘‘The characteristics of friend-

ship’’) above. Participants in these virtual worlds find

others who they wish to share experiences with, within the

confines of the virtual world itself. Rather than facilitating

a physical world interaction, these virtual worlds provide a

realm in which shared activity takes place. This difference

is illustrated through consideration of the ways in which

6 See the project archives at http://www.nickyee.com/index-

daedalus.html for a description of his project and numerous articles

published reporting on the work.7 This section is a brief summary of the values of immersive virtual

worlds. For a more detailed discussion of MMORPG norms, see

Verhagen and Johansson (2009) For detailed examination of WOW in

particular, see Nardi and Harris (2006).

6 N. J. Munn

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the activities detailed in ‘‘Early forms of online interac-

tion’’ and ‘‘The social media paradigm’’ interact with

immersive virtual worlds. The relationship in which an

environment such as WOW stands to Facebook, or to an

instant messaging system, is much more similar to that in

which physical world activities stand to these things, than it

is to the things themselves. That is, people use Facebook to

organise shared activity within the immersive virtual

world, or to reminisce about past shared activities within

that immersive virtual world. They plan shared activities

via email, or on discussion boards, and execute those

activities within the virtual world, in the way that others

plan to catch up with friends in a bar in town via email, and

then do the catching up in the physical world.

So, interactions within the virtual world system are

founded on shared activity. This is a relatively new devel-

opment in online communication, and has significant

implications for the way in which friendships can develop in

this medium. Because activity rather than communication

itself is central to interaction within an immersive virtual

world, the virtual world paradigm more closely mirrors

many of our real world engagements with our friends. While

it is often nice to catch up with a friend you have not seen in

some time and talk about what you have done without each

other, the bonds of friendship are initially formed by the

experiences you share. Virtual worlds provide shared

experiences that can fulfil the role of forming that initial

bond between people. You form a group of adventurers, and

you work together against often overwhelming odds toward

specific objectives. By doing this, those in the group dem-

onstrate their character, their roles and desires, and it

becomes apparent to the other members of the group whe-

ther or not the prerequisites for friendship are present. That

is, the virtual world activity is an opportunity for the

potential friends to be found ‘lovable and trustworthy’, as

Aristotle requires. (NE 8.3) Similarly, over an extended

period of participation in this shared virtual activity, the

group will grow closer as friends, and improve themselves in

terms of in game ability, and in general skills such as co-

ordination, co-operation and patience, thereby satisfying

Aristotle’s criteria for the importance of shared activity. (NE

9.12) As friendship develops within the group, you will

come to be interested in what they do when they are not with

you in the virtual world. When you meet for your weekly or

daily jaunt into the virtual world together, one of the ways in

which you pass the time is to ask how your friends have

been, as you would ask a climbing friend what they have

been doing since the last time you saw them at the wall, or a

bicycling friend what they have been doing since your last

shared ride. This suggests that interaction in these immersive

virtual worlds is distinct in kind from the interactions dis-

cussed in ‘‘Early forms of online interaction’’ and ‘‘The

social media paradigm’’. Before discussing whether there is

sufficient evidence to draw the conclusion that friendships

can develop in this kind of environment, I turn to a brief

discussion of the characteristics of shared activity in the

physical world.

The physical world

The physical world is the medium through which friend-

ships have traditionally been established. It is by compar-

ison to the patterns of friendship formation in this realm

that we can make judgements as to the ability of other

realms to generate friendships. We have seen from the

above three sections that immersive virtual worlds are

relevantly similar to the physical world, while social media

and previous generation online interactions are importantly

distinct from the physical world in terms of the kind of

interaction involved in them. In this section I argue that, as

per ‘‘Immersive virtual worlds’’ above, it is shared activity

in the physical world which provides the basis for friend-

ship formation.

We gain friends in many places. Our oldest friends are

likely to be the children of our parent’s friends, or perhaps

our classmates in the early years of school. Newer friend-

ships are developed and maintained at university, in

sporting teams, and through other activities, such as

debating and war-gaming. A key feature of these friend-

ships, aside from the physical realm in which they develop,

is that they are discerning. In the physical world, you are

not friends with everyone you went to school with, nor with

everyone you work with. You become friends with those

whom you connect with in some deeper way. Perhaps you

both enjoy a particular class, both despise a particular

manager. You choose a candidate for friendship and see if

a friendship will develop by doing things with that person.

When you mutually enjoy each others company, and find

activities you wish to engage in together, a friendship

forms. Subject to the analysis engaged in in Sect. ‘‘Shared

activity’’ above, in which the requirements for relevantly

shared activity were outlined, there is no special kind of

activity which makes this friendship formation possible,

because the kind of activity is not central to the process of

friendship formation. Rather, engaging in shared activity is

itself the key feature that enables friendship formation.

Over long periods of time, and through repeated and pro-

longed shared activity, the bonds of intimacy and mutual

caring also develop, such that the friendships we have

formed become close ones.

The capacity to develop friendships

It is uncontroversial that we are capable of developing

friendships in the physical world. We do, after all, do so. In

The reality of friendship within immersive virtual worlds 7

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this section I argue that there is nothing to distinguish

between the capacity of the physical world and that of

immersive virtual worlds in developing the kinds of bonds

that lead to friendships.

The characteristic of the physical world which provides

the ability to develop close friendships is that the physical

world provides a forum in which potential close friends can

interact and learn about each other’s proclivities. They can,

as Sherman claims, share goods and interests in a jointly

pursued life (1987). This is reliant on activity, rather than

simple communication, and it is for this reason that I

classify immersive virtual worlds and the physical world as

relevantly similar, and distinct from social media and other

online communication. Consider our subjects Jesse and

Kelly from Sect. ‘‘The characteristics of friendship’’. They

met and became friends on a bike ride. They could have

met online, on a forum about bicycling, but if they had

done so, the process of developing acquaintance into

friendship would have been significantly more difficult, if

not impossible to achieve without at some stage tran-

scending the online and entering the physical realm. By

becoming friends, and engaging in their shared desire to

bicycle, they assist each other in achieving lives of the kind

they desire. Within immersive virtual worlds, online

friends can similarly assist one another. For instance, there

are significant costs associated with changing characters

within immersive virtual worlds, measured in the time

expended on the initial character, and the rewards that

character has obtained, all of which are bound to that

character. A player who wants to change characters then is

helped by the willingness of their friends to assist in lev-

elling and developing the new character, such that the

player can more quickly rejoin their friends in shared

activity. Because all concerned share an interest not only in

playing the game, but in doing so together, this mutual

co-operation facilitates the joint pursuit of this goal.

Amongst the chief difficulties for the development of

friendships online is the difficulty of ascertaining the truth

of the claims participants make, both about their desires

and about their character. Absent indicators such as body

language, tone and inflection in speech, determining whe-

ther someone is telling the truth online is more difficult

than in the physical world. Caspi and Gorsky recently

found that one-third of respondents admitted to engaging in

some level of deception online, while simultaneously

believing that the practice of deception was significantly

more widespread than this (2006). Shared activity, whether

virtual or physical, mitigates this difficulty, as it is sub-

stantially more difficult to maintain an assumed identity

under pressure or during exertion than it is when you have

the luxury of time that social media provides. Similarly, in

both immersive virtual worlds and the physical world,

voice communication is widespread, while it is not in the

other two situations considered. This minimises the ability

of participants in immersive virtual worlds to present the

‘‘carefully constructed self’’ that Cocking and Matthews

identify as preventing friendship formation online (2000),

while increasing the degree to which participants in

immersive virtual worlds engage in ‘‘non-voluntary self

disclosure’’, which they argue is valuable as a component

of the relational self developed in friendship (Cocking and

Mathews 2000). Unlike the chat room participant, or the

carefully sculpted public image someone presents on

Facebook, characteristics of participants in immersive

virtual worlds become apparent through actions. Leaders

take charge, the impetuous or impatient push ahead, the

careful and considered ask for advice, or discuss options to

overcome obstacles.

It may be argued against this claim that the kind of

activity undertaken in immersive virtual worlds is distinct

from that undertaken in the physical world, and this dis-

tinction is sufficient to render the connection between the

two unstable. For example, one who pursued this line

might think that there is something innate in performing

physical exercise that triggers friendship formation in a

way simulating that exercise does not. It is, however, dif-

ficult to see how this position could be maintained. Insofar

as the important aspect of shared activity is the interaction

with other real people, this is present both in the physical

world and in immersive virtual worlds. Through interaction

over time, you come to know the other people you engage

in these activities with, and the behavioural cues that

something is wrong or different are available in each

domain. It is, in other words, more difficult to hide your

personality when interacting in an immersive virtual world,

than it has been to do so in prior forms of online interac-

tion. Suppose, contrary to my earlier description of Jesse

and Kelly as having met while bicycling, that they met

instead inside the World of Warcraft. As new players in the

game, both create characters, and arrive in the first area in

which they can quest. They quickly discover the benefits of

co-operation, and together with a third player, Lee, they

quickly advance. Lee doesn’t want to talk, preferring

instead to try and advance as rapidly as possible, while

Jesse and Kelly talk as they play, and genuinely enjoy each

others company. Next week, Lee has moved on, while

Jesse and Kelly are still at around the same level. They

choose to level together again, and each takes a comple-

mentary role, such that their characters benefit from being

together. As they progress in the game, so to their friend-

ship develops. They come to know when the other is likely

to be online, and to communicate when this will change, in

order to allay concerns. While engaging in the shared

activity of gaming, they disclose their other interests and

goals, and discover that they share these also. They follow,

in other words, a path parallel to that followed by the

8 N. J. Munn

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bicycling Jesse and Kelly discussed in Sect. ‘‘The charac-

teristics of friendship’’ above. I claim that this is just as

plausible a means for developing friendship as was the

bicycling example, and I hope that the considerations thus

far examined support this contention.

Some may also attempt to distinguish between the kinds

of activities that physical friendships lead to, and the kinds

that immersive virtual world friendships lead to. For

example, it has been suggested to me by an older academic

that ‘one would not invite an online friend to one’s wed-

ding’. This claim was intended, I take it, to point to a

meaningful distinction in the nature of the friendships

developed online by comparison to those developed in the

physical world, such that even if it were the case that

something properly called friendship could develop in an

immersive virtual world, the friendships therein developed

would be of a different kind to the friendships developed in

the physical world. Second-tier friends, who you keep out

of sight of your ‘real’ friends. For at least some people my

age, and I suspect for more as you examine younger

audiences, this kind of division simply does not exist. I

have, in fact, been invited to a wedding by people I had

only known through an immersive virtual world, and the

data collected by Cole and Griffiths suggests that meeting

online friends in real life is very common, with 55% of

females and 38% of males reporting having met online

friends in real life (2007). I suggest, therefore, that it is a

consequence of the relative novelty of the medium, not of

the nature, that results in the current desire to privilege

physical over virtual friendships. As people age in the

presence of virtual worlds, relationships formed in them

will become more common, less surprising, and more

accepted.8

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that the foundational compo-

nent of friendship is shared experience, and that the other

two components commonly held to be required for

friendship, namely mutual caring and intimacy, predomi-

nantly arise through shared experience, rather than inde-

pendently of it. With this conclusion in mind, I have

examined four different kinds of social interaction, three

online kinds and one more familiar kind, the interaction we

are used to from the physical world. I have argued that both

the currently dominant social media paradigm of online

interaction, as exemplified by Facebook, and the previous

generations of online interaction through email, discussion

boards, instant messaging, chat rooms and newsgroups, fail

to provide a forum in which shared activity can take place,

and as such, they are incapable of independently providing

a realm in which friendships can develop. I concede,

however, that in conjunction with either interaction in the

physical world or interaction in immersive virtual worlds,

they are capable of helping to maintain and strengthen pre-

existing friendships.

I argued that the third of the online means of interaction,

participation in immersive virtual worlds, or MMORPGs,

and in World of Warcraft in particular, is capable of pro-

viding the kind of shared activity that is required for the

development of friendships. Further, that this is possible

without the involvement of physical world interaction, such

that friendships can develop amongst people who have

never met in the physical world, solely through their shared

online experiences. To make this argument I relied firstly

on the nature of the shared activity common to the

immersive virtual world and to the physical world, and

secondly on the relationship in which these two realms

stand to the other two areas of online interaction discussed,

social media and older forms of online interaction. This

possibility has potentially important ramifications for the

kinds of obligations we have to others in the world. It is

commonly held that friendships are capable of generating

special obligations, and the ability to form friendships

online would drastically increase the number and location

of those obligations that are held by regular participants in

immersive virtual worlds.

Finally, I argued that an inability to provide for the

development of new friendships on the part of social media

and the previous generations of online interaction must not

be conflated with an inability to protect, encourage and

strengthen friendships. I argued that all four of the para-

digms discussed in this work are able to be used to

strengthen pre-existing bonds of friendship.

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