Sick Around the WorldWatch Sick Around the World” (either at ht.docx

Sick Around the World
Watch “Sick Around the World” (either at
http://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-sick-around-the-world/ or at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfusssJW7TI) and answer
the following questions:
1) What does “universal health care” mean? Which countries in
the film have universal health care?
2) How do the British pay for their National Health Service?
What, according to the film, might Americans not like about the
British system?
3) Japanese citizens visit doctors three times more often as
Americans, and have longer life spans and lower infant
mortality than Americans. How do the Japanese pay for their
health care system?
4) In Germany, the rich pay for the poor, the ill are covered by
the healthy, health insurance continues with or without
employment, and doctors, who are private entrepreneurs, make
less money than they did before reform. Why will doctors in
Germany accept less money? Should the rich pay for the poor
when it comes to health insurance? Why or why not?
5) Taiwan designed its health care system in 1995, after looking
at health care in 10-15 other countries. What do you think
works well in the Taiwanese system?
6) Evaluate the U.S. health care system in comparison to some
of the other systems explained in the film. How does the U.S.
system compare, in terms of access, cost, and equity? Compare
the U.S. on each dimension to at least two other countries. Do

you think the U.S. should adopt universal health care? Why or
why not?
This assignment is participant observation, “ethnography”. On
the topic of cyberbullying
For the red paragraph, do the following :
- Relate the article’s participant observation method with my
method at the end of the
paragraph.
For the blue paragraph, do the following
- Imagine you are doing the participant observation (going
through tik-tok video
comments), and you are taking notes while doing it, for
example, offensive comments,
etc.
1. Add summaries of relevant scenes, and behaviors you
witnessed and quotes of offensive
comments in the paragraph.
2. Then develop a self-reflective “auto-ethnography.
3. Change one of the questions to “ How does the offensive
comments effect your

mental health?” then provide an answer for it
For the green paragraph,
- Write a paragraph discussing the ethnographic findings in
relationship to the
thesis statement. This would be a “discussion” or “analysis”
paragraph.
For the pink paragraph,
Conclusion paragraph,
1. Provide summary of the argument,
2. Provide the significance of your research for anthropology,
3. Respond to a potential critique of your argument, .
Cyberbullying
Every day, the majority of US teenagers use the internet.
Crimes and offenses against
young people, particularly children and teens, are common.
Cyberbullying is among the crimes
majorly done by young people. Cyberbullying is the use of any
electronic medium, including
social media, to harass another person to cause harm. It is the
online victimization of online and

social media users. Both cyberbullying and common bullying
have the same purpose of causing
harm to someone. Bullying entails violent action that distresses
the victim. Both cyberbullying
and common bullying intend to disturb victims. Cyberbullying
occurs through online interactions
rather than physical encounters causing loneliness, and
emotional and mental stress among
children and adolescents.
Cyberbullying is a serious public health issue affecting
adolescent’s and children's mental
health (Zhu et al., 2021). There are many forms of intimidation
so far that can be executed by
people but as the most affected community are adolescents and
children for the overuse of the
internet, thus verbal aggression was the most prevalent form of
cyberbullying. Cyberbullying
starts by identifying the need of the targeted person whether
male or female and once the
weakness has been recognized, then it will be easy to trap a
person with verbal aggression
(Eichelberger, 2014). Most young people commit crimes and
offenses after getting access to the

internet on a daily basis (Tokunaga, 2010). Their regular
interactions with the content of the
internet world modify their behaviors so much and turn them
into aggressive individuals to
execute cyberbullying. Teenagers in urban Vietnam participated
in their study, which examined
the experiences and coping mechanisms of cyberbullying, and
support mechanisms used
concerning problems with mental health. The research shows
that among 484 students, 26.8% of
students felt fear and anxiety, which led them to hate being
around people (Ngo et al., 2021).
The long-term use of the internet put stress on the mental as
well as physical health of the youth
and thus their attitude and behavior get changed and leading to
cyberbullying. Rumination as a
result of cyberbullying is more common among young people
who have suffered peer
victimization, and it has been associated with worse mental
health (Parris, 2020). Children who
face cyberbullying are more likely to be facing low social
support. It has been shown that family
involvement may attenuate some of the links between

adolescent psychological troubles and
online bullying experience and observance (Ngo et al., 2021).
Participant observation is important from the perspective of
anthropology because
anthropology refers to the study of human behaviors along with
their culture, problems, and
societies. Therefore, observing the participants will benefit to
understand in real-life
circumstances how human beings feel and what they encounter.
In this project, participant
observations have been helpful as I got the chance to
communicate with the participants of this
research related to the effects of cyberbullying. I became able to
comprehend what the victims of
cyberbullying feel when they are victimized. Later, when
readers of anthropology will go
through this research, they will find it easy to understand the
effects of cyberbullying as they will
get examples of some real-life victims. The actual studies I
conducted employed a qualitative
technique for the study, drawing on ethnography and case study
methodologies. Data gathering
was through the use of several approaches. Primarily, I
collected data from an interview with one

of the young tik-tokers online in the direct message platform,
for a twenty-five minutes session.
Beforehand, I went through many famous pages on Tik-tok,
trying to find an influencer at a
young age with a good number of followers. In addition, a good
amount of time in my search
was scrolling down in the comments section to get an idea of
the type of comments that were
posted. I intended to use this method since it will allow me to
connect to a young person who
faces cyberbullying at its most. Once I got an agreement from
one of the famous Tik-tokers, I
choose to conduct my interview with her through the same
platform. Raising my questions
through the same platform that I intended to ask her about,
gives us the flexibility to exchange
offensive comments in her videos from followers, or Tik-Tok
users in general.
While I conducted the interview, here are the five questions I
asked her that formed the
basis of my research and our conversation.
Question 1: When you encounter the phrase "cyber-bullying,"

what images or ideas come to
mind?
Question 2: Have you or anybody you know experienced
cyberbullying? Can you give an
example?
Question 3: For what reasons do cyberbullies harass others in
Tik-tok?
Question 4: In what ways do you find cyberbullying to be
problematic? If you were the target of
cyberbullying, what steps would you take to stop it?
Question 5: How different do you think cyberbullies are from
those who harass people in the
workplace or at school?
In the first question she provided her feedback as shared; “The
term "cyberbullying" refers to
when one or more person uses electronic means such as the
internet or mobile phones to harass,
threaten, or otherwise intimidate another person. Hurtful texting
or sharing of embarrassing
images online are two examples”. She answers question two by
implying that “I am a victim of
cyberbullying. I have experienced it in manners such as the
sending, forwarding, or publishing

mean-spirited, demeaning, and abusive comments on my Tik-tok
video comment section.” In the
third question, she suggests, "Many of the same factors that lead
to traditional bullying also
contribute to the rise of cyberbullying; in fact, the anonymity it
provides may make it more
enticing to bullies. In addition, bullies often act out because of
issues inside themselves. Bullies
are more likely to suffer from depression and despair and have
less enthusiastic family and
friends. As a result, they struggle to keep their feelings and
behaviors under control. Her
suggestions to the fourth question are, “Putting such comments
down by publishing and
circulating them was humiliating and really hurtful to me. I took
various steps to stop
cyberbullying as I was problematic by hurting my mental and
emotional well-being. When
necessary, I had to block the online accounts of the bully. I was
once being bullied by text and I
considered changing my number. I suggest that one should not
respond to cyberbullies; doing so

would encourage the bully's behavior.” In the last question, she
replies, “Like face-to-face
bullying, cyberbullying can manifest itself in several different
kinds of behaviors and they are all
hurtful to the victim, Acts such as catfishing, impersonation,
cyberstalking, trickery and trolling
are just as hurtful as actions of the normal bullying. It's
possible that, like with traditional
bullying, the victim of cyberbullying will not come forward for
fear of retaliation or because they
are too ashamed to tell anybody.”
In my participant observation with the Tik-toker, I looked into
the subject of cyberbullying
through online conversation, to understand their environment.
Bullying has been demonstrated to
occur in our daily interactions. From her feedback, it is clear
that cyberbullying is a serious issue
and exists even at the lower school level in our society. She
experiences the same things I
encountered in my situation, providing a strong understanding
of the whole situation. The
comments from the Tik-toker replies clearly illustrate what
happens in the social media avenues.
Tik-tok portrays how cyberbullying operates in the typical level

of society. Generally, from these
studies, cyberbullying exists among children, adolescents,
teenagers, and adults. Currently, a
substantial majority of people are on social media platforms,
implying that significant education
on bullying has to be done.
Participant observation has aided in having a clear view of what
happens among
adolescents, children, teenagers as well as adults in the society.
Comparing previous studies on
cyberbullying has allowed scholars to go further into essential
areas of study, including
anthropology and social science. It is simpler to see how a
common problem has different
responses and reactions in such instances. This aspect,
combined with the fieldwork and
participant observation, helps study the social-cultural aspects
of social media users in the
society (Snodgrass et al., 2016). It also helps understand their
way of life, in this case, the
Tik-tok and other social media users, which largely contributes
to anthropology. Mass education

on the effects of this vice can help reduce and manage
cyberbullying. Interactive technology
policies and initiatives are crucial. For a positive change to
occur, the whole society should take
a more cooperative approach to dealing with online bullying.
References
Eichelberger, E. (2014, April 21). What I Learned Hanging Out
with Nigerian Email
Scammers On a recent trip to the West African country, two
fraudsters schooled me
in the tricks of their trade. Motherjones.
Geertz, C. (2000). Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight.
In Culture and politics (pp.
175-201). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Modecki, K. L., Minchin, J., Harbaugh, A. G., Guerra, N. G., &
Runions, K. C. (2014).
Bullying prevalence across contexts: A meta-analysis measuring
cyber and traditional
bullying. Journal of Adolescent Health, 55(5), 602-611
Ngo, A. T., Tran, A. Q., Tran, B. X., Nguyen, L. H., Hoang, M.

T., Nguyen, T. H., Doan, L.
P., Vu, G. T., Nguyen, T. H., Do, H. T., Latkin, C. A., Ho, R.
C., & Ho, C. S. (2021).
Cyberbullying among school adolescents in an urban developing
country setting:
Experience, coping strategies, and mediating effects of different
support on
psychological well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.661919
Snodgrass, J. G., Batchelder, G., Eisenhauer, S., Howard, L.,
Dengah II, H. F., Thompson,
R. S., Bassarear, J., Cookson, R. J., Defouw, P. D., Matteliano,
M., & Powell, C.
(2016). A guild culture of ‘casual raiding’ enhances its
members’ online gaming
experiences: A cognitive anthropological and ethnographic
approach to World of
Warcraf
Tokunaga, R. S. (2010). Following you home from school: A
critical review and synthesis
of research on cyberbullying victimization. Computers in human
behavior, 26(3),
277-287.

Zhu, C., Huang, S., Evans, R., & Zhang, W. (2021).
Cyberbullying among adolescents and
children: A comprehensive review of the global situation, risk
factors, and preventive
measures. Frontiers in Public Health, p. 9.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.634909
Boccagni, P., & Schrooten, M. (2018). Participant observation
in migration studies: An
overview and some emerging issues. Qualitative research in
European migration
studies, 209-225.
Parris, L., Lannin, D. G., Hynes, K., & Yazedjian, A. (2020).
Exploring social media
rumination: Associations with bullying, cyberbullying, and
distress. Journal of
Interpersonal Violence, 37(5-6).
https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520946826

new media & society
1 –18
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/1461444816644804
nms.sagepub.com
A guild culture of ‘casual
raiding’ enhances its members’
online gaming experiences:
A cognitive anthropological
and ethnographic approach to
World of Warcraft
Jeffrey G Snodgrass
Colorado State University, USA
Greg Batchelder
The University of Alabama, USA
Scarlett Eisenhauer
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA
Lahoma Howard
HJ Francois Dengah II
Utah State University, USA
Rory Sascha Thompson

Josh Bassarear
University of Utah, USA
Corresponding author:
Jeffrey G Snodgrass, Department of Anthropology, Colorado
State University, Fort Collins,
CO 80523-1787, USA.
Email: [email protected]
644804 NMS0010.1177/1461444816644804new media &
societySnodgrass et al.
research-article2016
Article
at COLORADO STATE UNIV LIBRARIES on May 8,
2016nms.sagepub.comDownloaded from
2 new media & society
Robert J Cookson
University of Alaska Anchorage, USA
Peter Daniel Defouw
University of Colorado Denver, USA
Melanie Matteliano
Colton Powell
St. Mary’s University, USA
Abstract
We document the norms and practices of a “casual raiding

guild” pursuing a balanced
approach to World of Warcraft gaming under the banner
“offline life matters.” Confirming
insights in the problematic online gaming literature, our
ethnography reveals that some
guild members experience gaming distress. However, this
guild’s normative culture helps
its members better self-regulate and thus protect themselves
from, among other things,
their own impulses to over-play and thus compromise their
offline lives. We suggest
that cognitive anthropological “culture as socially transmitted
knowledge” theories—
combined with ethnographic methods—illuminate how socially
learned gaming patterns
shape online experiences. Our approach helps us refine theories
judging socially
motivated Internet activity as harmful. We affirm the potential
for distress in these
social gaming contexts, but we also show how a specific guild
culture can minimize or
even reverse such distress, in this case promoting experiences
that strike a nice balance
between thrill and comradery.
Keywords
Cultural norms, online gaming, subjective well-being, virtual
worlds, World of Warcraft
Introduction
In a side note in his now classic work, Bowling Alone, Putnam
(2000) proposed that new
media technologies such as online social networking sites
contribute to the degradation
of actual-world social life and civic engagement, in the manner

that they draw people
out of offline networks of relationships into the more
superficial connections character-
istic of the Internet. Further research suggests that individuals
drawn to the interpersonal
dimensions of the Internet, in particular, experience negative
outcomes associated with
such use (Caplan, 2003). Studies even suggest that individuals
can be so overly con-
cerned with the Internet and social networking sites, in
particular, as to experience deep
Snodgrass et al. 3
psychological distress and social impairment characteristic of
behavioral “addictions”
(et al., 2016).
Social play in massively multiplayer online role-playing games
(MMOs) such as
World of Warcraft (WoW), a subset of all Internet activity and
the focus of this article,
has also been associated with obligations and pressures that can
produce compulsive
over-play and psychological distress (Ducheneaut et al., 2006;
Pisan, 2007; Snodgrass
et al., 2011b). And play in online gaming groups referred to as
guilds—in-game associa-
tions of like-minded players, the more particular focus of this
study—can draw players
into too intensive of online commitments, which both become

distressful in their own
right and also potentially compromise players’ offline lives
(Pisan, 2007; Snodgrass
et al., 2016; Yee, 2006). This is especially the case when guilds
organize players into
achievement-oriented collaborative events such as raids, where
multiple players together
try to defeat challenging “end-game” content and powerful
bosses (Charlton and
Danforth, 2007; Snodgrass et al., 2012, 2013, 2014b; Yee,
2006). In such contexts, MMO
gamers can get drawn into communities and collaborations that
demand increasing
amounts of time, in some cases, maladaptively avoiding actual-
world commitments and
problems, which can harm gamers’ psyches and their offline
social lives as their gaming
assumes “addictive” qualities (Hussain et al., 2015; Snodgrass
et al., 2011a).
Nevertheless, ethnographers have also shown that MMO guilds,
although not immune
to conflict, can provide members with supportive environments
and rewarding experi-
ences (Chen, 2012; Cockshut, 2012; Nardi, 2010). Participation
in guilds can produce a
sense of positive role fulfillment and even elation when in-game
challenges are over-
come with online friends and collaborators. So-called
“hardcore” raiding guilds strive to
be the first to complete MMO “end-game” content, thereby
satisfying members (Chen,
2012; Cockshut, 2012; Malone, 2009). To obtain their goals,
such guilds can be charac-
terized by more top-down “authority-compliance” governance
styles, as we’ve seen in

ethnographic and other accounts of guilds and similar groups as
“playful” forms of insti-
tutional organization (Lisk et al., 2011; Malone, 2007; Prax,
2010; Warmelink, 2014).
And they typically exercise tight control over loot distribution
(Malone, 2009). Failure
and defeat are less acceptable in such contexts, and, to avoid
them, such guilds can
require members to give, in their own estimation, too much to
the game, compromising
their offline lives (Snodgrass et al., 2016). By contrast, “social”
or “friends and family”
guilds value casual socializing above in-game advancement,
thus reducing member
stress but also the exhilarating feelings of accomplishment that
accompany successful
raiding (Cockshut, 2012). Such guilds can be characterized by
more laissez-faire and
democratic governance structures—or even by no clear
management and organizational
structure at all—resulting in quite different in-game experiences
(Cockshut, 2012; Lisk
et al., 2011; Prax, 2010).
In this article, we address the question of how social play
shapes MMO experience, by
exploring the manner that guild structure shapes MMO players’
subjective well-being, a
topic rarely explicitly explored in the scholarly literature. We
present ethnographic obser-
vation and interview data (collected largely between 2011 and
2012) with members of one
WoW guild, pseudonymously referred to here as “The Knights
of Good” (KOG).1 Like
other WoW raiders, KOG’s members collaborate together in
multiplayer groups to battle

some of this online game’s most challenging content. Our
ethnography reveals that KOG’s
members are not immune to sometimes intense achievement-
oriented play that can pro-
duce distress—that is, play that sometimes feels stressful,
compulsive, and out-of-control
and that interferes with offline life (Griffiths et al., 2016).
However, as a self-dubbed
“casual” raiding guild (Cockshut, 2012; Sundén and
Sveningsson, 2012)—somewhere
between a “hardcore” and “friends and family” organization—
KOG takes an unusually
relaxed attitude toward WoW gaming, organizing itself under
the mantra of “real-life
comes first.” Our ethnography reveals how KOG’s particular
governance and manage-
ment style—a more democratic “team” approach relying on the
personal charisma and
individual leadership skills of its two founders (Lisk et al.,
2011; Prax, 2010)—work bet-
ter for this guild’s less “hardcore” membership.
Drawing on cognitive anthropological concepts of culture as
“socially learned knowl-
edge” (D’Andrade, 1995; Goodenough et al., 1996), we show
that MMO guilds such as
KOG can develop and propagate unique norms and governance
styles that shape online

gaming experiences, in this case ameliorating the distress that
can emerge from highly
competitive raiding. In contrast to Putnam, we emphasize the
manner that player experi-
ences importantly depend upon the correct fit between
individual players’ personalities
and expectations and guild structure and organization—which,
drawing on work in cog-
nitive anthropology (Dressler et al., 2007), we’ve framed
elsewhere as examples of cul-
tural consonance and dissonance (Snodgrass et al., 2014a).
As such, our study does not lead us to any singular judgment on
the overall negative
or positive character of online social play—the important thing
is that players find online
communities that meet their orientations and needs—a point that
resonates with other
studies of online gaming (Sundén and Sveningsson, 2012).
Methodologically, our
research illuminates the importance of ethnographic case studies
such as ours to reveal
the diverse ways that online communities can meet—or fail to
meet—their members’
needs (Brown, 2015; Vesa, 2013). Overall, our cognitive
anthropological and ethno-
graphic approach to life online further complicates—and also
potentially refines—more
general theories such as Putnam’s about how socially motivated
Internet activity might
detract from users’ well-being, affirming such theories in
certain ways and challenging
them in others.
Research setting: the KOG

Ranging in size from groups of tens of players to massive
numbers in the hundreds and
even thousands, WoW guilds typically represent a group of
gamers who, sharing com-
mon interests and goals, join together to pursue them. Prior to
the foundation of KOG in
2008, its founders, Lainey (aged 44 years) and Vern (aged 35
years), now married, first
met online in a hardcore raiding guild in WoW, where they
experienced problems.2 The
guild in which they first met aimed to progress rapidly through
raiding content, compet-
ing aggressively with other groups on the server. This guild
removed Lainey and Vern
when they did not show up for a raid, which was interpreted to
mean (unjustifiably in
these two’s eyes) that they were not committed enough to the
guild mission. As explained
to us by Lainey, final exam week had just ended—they were
both students at the time—
and they were tired and needed a night off from raiding. Lainey
says that they were
“kicked out” despite her being recognized as the guild’s “best
healer” and having
Snodgrass et al. 5
“exemplary attendance, like 99% raid attendance.” Still, she
says, the guild’s council of
leaders “got all uppity and pissed off and kicked us out, because
we missed one raid.”

Angrily, she considered quitting the game for good. Instead, she
gathered the necessary
signatures (a WoW requirement at that time) and founded KOG,
presenting it to Vern as
a Christmas gift on 24 December 2008. With Lainey, the self-
proclaimed “guild mom,”
and Vern, the raid leader, they started recruiting raiders in order
to build the kind of guild
“they wanted to be in,” soon having enough members to field a
team that worked suc-
cessfully and at a decent pace through the then “end-game”
raiding content.3
Not wishing to inflict on others the pain and injustice they
themselves had experi-
enced—they were serious gamers and being removed abruptly
from their former guild
was traumatic for them—Lainey and Vern created a guild with a
charter of promoting
good. It would be a “casual” rather than a “hardcore” raiding
guild, in the sense that they
would aim to raid a few times a week, but they would not
require players to show up for
these raids, instead respecting members’ offline lives. However,
out of consideration for
others in the guild and to plan more effectively, players would
be asked to sign up for
raids that would meet at a certain time and place in the game.
Players who showed up
more frequently did have a better chance to make it into the
guild’s raiding rotation, but
there was no severe punishment characteristic of other hardcore
raiding guilds.
Though aiming to progress through WoW’s raiding content at a
relatively steady pace,

KOG did not generally strive to be among the first on their
server (and certainly not first
across all servers) to complete end-game content, as some
guilds did, instead taking fre-
quent breaks from raiding to accommodate member schedules.
Likewise, light banter
accompanied the sometimes necessary stricter military-like
hierarchically orchestrated
raid communications, with raid leaders and other members often
taking responsibility for
foibles and offering constructive and supportive counsel, rather
than berating subordi-
nates and pointing fingers. The guild even organized charity
events, encouraging mem-
bers to donate to worthy social causes. Overall, as the name
suggests, the guild strived to
create “good” in their members’ lives and in the world more
generally, which meant
respecting the guild’s motto that “real-life is more important.”
At its core, KOG has 15 committed raiders, surrounded in turn
by another 35–40
individuals, typically friends and family of the raiders, who
show up more occasionally
in the guild via both in-game text-based chat channels and
KOG’s own private Ventrilo
channels. KOG has attracted members who tend to be older than
the average WoW
gamer—typically in their early to mid-30s or above. Likewise,
with a few exceptions, the
members tend to be well-educated, white, and middle class, with
a relatively equal gen-
der balance. They also tended to be gainfully employed, with
core members working, for
example, as a bill collector, a military contractor (who had
previous service in Iraq),

maintenance workers at a hotel (a husband and wife), a nursing
assistant in a cardiac
intensive care unit, a health insurance salesperson, an assistant
manager at Walgreens,
and in retail at a bookstore. One raider was a medical student,
and another was in nursing
school. Many of the core raiders had children, as did Lainey,
one of whom himself along
with his girlfriend were also KOG members. Most of KOG’s
core raiders were “serious”
WoW players, possessing multiple max-level characters (level
85 at the time of our
research during 2011–2012). For example, one member
informed us that he played over
80 hours a week and had 10 separate characters in the guild,
many of them maximum
level. Of note, many of these core members had left hardcore
raiding guilds to join KOG,
having had negative experiences like Vern and Lainey’s.
Research methods: an ethnographic approach to online
game worlds
Research points to different types of guilds defined by their
goals, level of ambition,
intensity of activity, and required expertise and time
commitment (Williams et al.,
2006)—some driven by the desire for casual socializing, others

by role-playing aims,
and still others by varying degrees of zeal to defeat challenging
WoW content or even
other players (Chen, 2012; Cockshut, 2012; Nardi, 2010). As
treated in this literature and
also in our own research, MMO guilds can be thought of as
communities or organiza-
tions with distinctive cultures, worlds (guilds) within worlds
(MMOs) within worlds (life
offline), so to speak, whose nested sub-cultures can be
investigated ethnographically
(Boellstorff et al., 2012; Snodgrass, 2014; Warmelink, 2014).
Our research team conducted participant observation research in
KOG over roughly a
6-month period in fall 2011 and spring 2012, observing and
documenting in field-notes
KOG’s weekly raids via live Internet streams on YouTube and
other online video ser-
vices (and in a few instances in the actual home of this guild’s
founder couple), conduct-
ing informal interviews and generally participating in and
observing this guild’s online
and sometimes offline activities. In addition, we conducted 21
more formal “semistruc-
tured” interviews with members of KOG about their gaming
motivations and positive
and negative play experiences, concentrating especially on their
raiding experiences with
KOG and other more “hardcore” guilds. The interviews were
drawn from a convenience
sample from KOG’s membership, although we interviewed all
the guild’s “core” raiders.
Interviews generally lasted between 30–60 minutes. Some
interviews were conducted
face-to-face, such as those with Lainey and Vern, who were

local, although most were
conducted over Ventrilo, a voice over Internet protocol (VOIP)
commonly used by mem-
bers of this guild. All interviews were fully transcribed and,
along with field-notes,
entered into and managed with the software MAXQDA.
Importantly, one of KOG’s core raiders is also a member of our
research team and
a co-author on this article. This member provided us with access
to this unique set-
ting, helping establish trust so that members felt comfortable
revealing intimate and
sometimes painful life details related to, as we’ll see, disability,
war, transgender
identity, single parenthood, and their (failed or realized) life
ambitions (Brown, 2015).
This member also helped us develop research questions and
approaches, ensuring
they were meaningful and of interest to insiders to this guild
community, lending our
project some of the qualities of participatory and community-
based collaborative
research (Cornwall and Jewkes, 1995). Situated in part as
insiders, we can speak more
authentically and self-reflexively about the lived experiences of
actual WoW raiders,
one of the strengths of immersive ethnographic participation
demonstrated in other
studies of WoW, EVE Online, and other MMOs (Brown, 2015;
Nardi, 2010; Vesa,
2013; Warmelink, 2014).
By contrast, others in our research team, although typically
experienced online gamers
and members of the guild, were not raiders. But we did play the

game with KOG’s
Snodgrass et al. 7
members and, as mentioned, observed and documented in field-
notes all raid activities via
multiple sources (e.g. not just Twitch and YouTube broadcasts,
but also WoW’s in-game
text-based chat channels and the raiders’ Ventrilo
conversations, to which we were privy).
Still, we were usually referred to as “the researchers,” with
members recognizing us as
typically less committed online gamers but nevertheless
potentially potent in our ability to
document and frame KOG experience for an audience. Not
wanting to overwhelm, we
typically only sent a few researchers into any given night’s raid
and limited our question-
ing there, refraining from talking at all during critical raid
moments. We also assigned
individual researchers to “shadow” and thus document the
words and activities of a given
raider, with more in-depth “debrief” conversations saved for
after the raid. Here, more
neutral outsiders of the guild’s daily activities in “naturalistic”
settings, we can more
objectively critique the positive and negative tenor of KOG
gaming experiences—less
compelled to defend the interests and character of “our” guild, a
characteristic strength of
ethnographic observers who maintain boundaries between

themselves and their respond-
ents (Brown, 2015; Sundén and Sveningsson, 2012).
Overall, our methodology, which is in fact a collection of
methods as others have
noted of ethnography (Sundén and Sveningsson, 2012), rendered
us participating “auto-
ethnographers” in some instances, more neutral observers and
crafters of a “case study”
at other moments (Brown, 2015; Warmelink, 2014). Our team
approach to research did
provide us with access to multiple perspectives on KOG and
WoW raiding, a clear
strength of our study, somewhat akin to the manner that Sundén
and Sveningsson (2012)
as a pair could access in both straight and queer WoW gaming,
Alliance and Horde fac-
tions, PvP and PvE servers (player-vs-player and player-vs-
environment), and so on. But
we recognize that our arguments are still limited by our finite
points of view—our par-
ticular “situatedness” and subject positions, so to speak—more
dialogical conversation
(between ourselves and KOG as a whole) than factual account,
traits generally character-
istic of ethnographic research, which we and others have written
about extensively else-
where (Boellstorff et al., 2012; Brown, 2015; Hine, 2000;
Snodgrass, 2014).
Ethnographic results: a guild pursuing good and (relatively)
casual raiding
Real life first
Emerging from their own negative experiences with their

previous guild, Lainey and
Vern promoted in KOG an ethic of “real life comes first,” which
was repeated frequently
to members of our research team. In part, as we learned from
member Breezy, this meant
relaxing raid schedules and attendance requirements, in
recognition that members had
other offline commitments, and not taking the game too
seriously. As Breezy puts it,
“I’ve changed some of my outlooks on life in general. I’ve
become a bit more relaxed.
Stuff that’s not serious, you shouldn’t take seriously. Just enjoy
it and take it for what it
is and move on.” Reflecting such an ethic, KOG frequently
made concessions for play-
ers’ more serious offline commitments, for example, adjusting
raid schedules when one
member, BlueFalcon, had affairs to attend in Iraq, or stopping
the raid progression when
Vern or others, real-life students, had class projects to
complete.
Likewise, as we observed, raids themselves tended to be
supportive endeavors, with
Vern, as raid leader, and others as well offering words of
encouragement like, “Good
job!,” or advice on how to improve performance, rather than
punishing or embarrassing
members for mistakes. As Lainey put it, on being asked about

her guild by one of our
research team members, Scarlett,
S: What kind of guild is KOG?
L: Where people aren’t dicks to each other. If you’ve ever been
in a real hardcore raid
guild, they are not nice people.
S: So what do you do if somebody’s not participating well?
L: We tend to be a little more forgiving of people, who have
issues in real life. That’s
why we have class leaders, we try to get people to work with
their class leader. How
they can get their gear better.
S: So it’s more like training them, rather than punishing them?
L: Yes. But other guilds will just punish you. Have you ever
been in a guild where like
they’re competing to be on the top 10 list on the server? The
hardcore people are
really ridiculous. They just want to do it as fast as they can.
They call it “e-peen.”
Their e-penis. They stroke their e-penis by having the best gear,
being number one.
It’s status, they have status, and they like to show it off.
Notice here that KOG has not abandoned their standards: they
still strive for raiding
mastery and success, checking on their members’ performance.
But KOG’s senior mem-
bers typically chastised others in a way that was helpful and
supportive rather than puni-
tive. They reasoned that in helping members improve they also

helped the guild to
improve and thus more successfully progress in the raid.
Others first
To a large extent, these patterns reflected Lainey and Vern’s
own personal ethics, emerg-
ing from their life and game experiences. Lainey, the guild’s
“mom” and a mother of
three now grown children in her offline life, prided herself on
being a supportive and
generous person:
I love the social aspect of it. I really love the people that I have
in my guild too. I know a lot
about them. I’m guild mom. So if someone has a problem I get
dumped on for hours sometimes.
But it’s okay!
Lainey notes, too, how it is important to teach others to “behave
like adults” and be
“mindful” of others’ needs (her words), especially during the
potentially most conten-
tious moments of the game, when distributing loot or gear won
at the end of even months
of pitched battles against a finally defeated tough raid boss.
Indeed, Lainey conceptual-
izes her avatar Tessa as a “benefactor” who enjoyed helping
others: “I see Tessa being a
benefactor for a bunch of people, and I like to be able to do
good things for people, in my

Snodgrass et al. 9
real world as much as I can for how much I can in game.”
Though she and Vern had
power and authority in the guild, she told us she did not like to
order people around and
“make anyone do anything,” instead trying to motivate people to
be better in the sense of
helpful and group- instead of “me-”oriented (her phrase).
Lainey’s main character,
unsurprisingly, was a healer, as this WoW class is known for
their generally more sup-
portive and generous personalities.
Likewise, Vern, too, strived to put others’ needs and feelings
above his own, promot-
ing an ethic of generosity and humility rather than hardcore
competitiveness. Here’s the
way the raid’s main tank, Rayna, describes Vern and his avatar
Steely:
If you’ve met Steely, who is the guild leader, or Vern, he is an
extremely charismatic guy, and
that is one thing that I have never really mastered very well. He
knows how to really pull people
together and they just love him. He’s extremely humble. He’s
willing to sit himself. He’ll
always say that he’s not performing, and someone else can take
his spot. He’s very altruistic and
charitable and those are features that I really don’t possess very
much.
Vern acknowledged that he could get frustrated sometimes with
raid members’ mis-
takes and a stalled progression, but he prided himself on being a

person who used his
brains rather than his in-game brawn (he was a skilled player
with a powerful avatar) to
motivate others. Taking an analogy from youth soccer, of which
he was also a coach, he
told us, “You can yell at kids, but not at adults.”
Collaboration
One of our group’s researchers observed in his field-notes that
“leadership” was not even
the right word to describe the way Lainey, Vern, and the guild
as a whole raided, echoing
the observations of one of raid members themselves. As Josh
noted 7 March 2012,
Overall the raid seemed to be quite laid back as most of the
players were still talking about
news, sports, etc., while attacking the enemy. As one pointed
out, there was little to no leadership
within the guild about where to go, how to attack, etc. Everyone
seemed to know, for the most
part, what to do in order to beat the bosses.
Josh and others, in fact, documented how the raid members
knew very well each
other’s style of play, strengths, and weaknesses, reflecting, in
part, the fact that they had
played together for so long. As such, they were often able to
coordinate even difficult
raids in a relatively effortless manner, with few commands
necessary, cloaking any obvi-
ous signs of raid hierarchy. When the raids were working as
they should, according to
KOG’s members, they reflected true collective and supportive
problem solving, with

many to most members of the raid participating in not only the
execution but also the
strategizing, as documented by another in our research team:
This week the raiders are finally trying Deathwing [a boss] on
the heroic level, and I immediately
notice a difference in the tone of their interactions. There is
much more excitement and tons of
talk about strategy before they begin … Sable, Breezy, Steely,
and DocMartin are most involved
in the planning. They begin the raid, and it becomes apparent to
me that this is really a massive
team problem-solving effort. Phrases like, “Does anyone
understand the mechanics?” and
“Let’s divide into groups” are heard, as well as more detailed
dissection of exactly what distance
each player must be standing and who should be taking which
hits, etc.. They wipe [fail] almost
immediately and then wipe again, but they seem to be
encouraging each other some. Breezy
says “We’ve just got to be a little more aware overall” and
jokes that they should “expect the
unexpected.” Emotions are definitely running higher than on the
usual normal level raids.
Valissamunk begins to take a more prominent role in the
strategizing. I had never heard him
speak up this much.

The raid continues in an animated fashion, with raiders yelling
things like, “No, no,
no, dammit! and “Good job!” After trying several new
approaches and wiping four or
five times, they finally beat the boss, and the guild chatroom
exploded with mad chatter,
with the raid team and other observers too all congratulating
each other and talking ani-
matedly about the victory, reliving the action for quite a while
after the actual event.
Doing good, promoting tolerance
In addition to promoting positive feelings and cooperation
during raids, KOG also aimed
to promote a more general ethic of support, tolerance, balance,
and overall enhancing
rather than compromising guild members’ offline lives and even
the world more gener-
ally. The guild once solicited donations from members and
others and subsequently pur-
chased a new wheelchair for one of its members,
Hadley/Sapher, who had lost a leg after
being hit by a car. They even successfully gathered money for
Hadley on another occa-
sion, which paid for 7 months of her game subscription. This
helped her, as one member
told us, “continue playing, because she’s very confined in real
life. She can’t do much.
So she can run and jump and fly and do all kinds of really cool
things she can’t do in real
life.” Likewise, Lainey and Vern looked for members who were
aiming to do good in the
world, which they were asked to describe in KOG’s guild
application. And members
were encouraged to donate time and money to social causes,

including in the past earth-
quake relief in Haiti and a local AIDS run. Additionally, the
group’s main raiding tank,
Rayna, is transgender, which provides an example of KOG’s
respect and tolerance for
diversity, on which many guild members prided themselves.
Lainey often described to us
how the guild helped Rayna find and get comfortable in her new
feminine identity and
“learn how to be a woman,” by, for example, spending
many hours chatting with her, about what’s going on with her
life, just trying to offer her
encouragement, giving her tips on nails and hair, all these
things you wouldn’t really think of
as having anything to do with WoW.
In fact, Lainey, Vern, and others monitored the guild chat
channels for examples of
homophobia, racism, or too angry of words, which they quickly
shut down, aiming to
maintain an environment that remained friendly and supportive
for all. Overall, the guild
succeeded in maintaining its particular public ethic of respect
and tolerance for diversity.
To a large extent, this seemed to be because the guild members
understood that Lainey,
Vern, and others’ hearts were in the right place. That is, they
really cared for each other,
we concluded, as we saw on 4 September 2012 when one raid
member, Sable, was late

Snodgrass et al. 11
and in fact hadn’t been logged on for 20 hours (as they could
see in the game’s roster). A
long and somewhat worried conversation ensued before the raid,
with everyone hoping
he was okay.
Still (somewhat) competitive
Nevertheless, much of KOG’s staying power and appeal to its
members related to the fact
that the guild was able to succeed in its promotion of good,
tolerance of diversity, and so
on, while also remaining competitive and successful as raiders.
For example, Clark/
Tracker described defeating a difficult boss as “a really good
feeling, probably the best
feeling I ever had in that game because it was something that
not everybody could do.”
Lainey, too, was driven by achievement motivations, though for
her it was more about
helping the guild succeed as a whole than achieving only
individual success:
Because I was a single mom, I dropped out of high school, I got
a GED, and I took care of three
kids and took a lot of crap from the welfare office for years, and
a lot of crap from society for
being the, you know, that which we consider a problem. So, it’s
been good for me as far as my
self-worth to be able to be successful at running a guild in
World of Warcraft and to have people
respect me and look up to me, because I didn’t get a lot of that

in my real life until, until I started
playing World of Warcraft and until I started running a guild.
Lainey continues,
For me, what I want is for my guild to achieve things and for
people to see us as being a good
guild. I don’t care what they think of me as a player. I’m more
interested in the group, getting
some kind of notoriety, I guess, because it means more that
way.
In Lainey’s words, in particular, we see the ethic of
camaraderie, collaboration, and
group effort that animates KOG’s success: they succeed as a
team together, rather than
just as individuals. We see, too, KOG’s emphasis on balance, on
making sure that KOG
succeeds in ways that does not eclipse or compromise life
offline. As Lainey puts it,
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have been able to earn the degrees and stuff
[laughs] if I didn’t keep
some kind of balance.” Or, as guild member BlueFalcon tells us,
Most people that display maturity are well balanced. Yeah, they
get upset at times or are
passionate about things, however they are not completely
unreasonable, like ‘I am going to
spend all of my kids’ college fund playing WoW’ kind of thing.
For BlueFalcon and others, KOG helps them regulate their play
in just that manner, keep-
ing them from doing “nothing but play WoW 24/7,” as he and
others have seen, even
feeling at times such a pull within themselves.

Guild fragility
As mentioned, KOG’s membership is composed of many
“recovering” hardcore raiders
(their phrase), who joined KOG after experiencing WoW
burnout. Still, sometimes
KOG’s more casual pace doesn’t satisfy its members. One
member, Stimpy, told us, he
frequently got bored during raids, which were often not
challenging, and thus surfed the
Internet during them. Or, as DocMartin told us explicitly,
I wanna say for me personally, and I can’t speak for everyone,
that there are times where I
really would like to compete a little bit more. I think that we
have a lot of good players, and
I would like to see us push a little bit more. But I think that can
very easily get out of control
at times, and I would say that I can’t fault us for maybe not
pushing so hard, cause I would
rather have a good experience and a little bit more fun playing
than pushing five days a week
for several hours and maybe killing like one boss or something.
That’s just not as much of a
fun environment.
These somewhat conflicting desires led sometimes to guild
tensions, as in one instance

when a contingent of players suddenly and dramatically
abandoned the guild in order to
join groups progressing more quickly through the raid content.
This left many group
members perplexed as they logged into their WoW accounts to
find the guild roster
gutted.
This led to canceled raids over the coming nights. One member
somewhat melodra-
matically declared to us, “This guild died.” Another
“whispered” to a research team
member via a private in-game chat channel:
Missy whispers: where folks will come here and use them and
their generous nature to gear up
and then once they have what they need, move on to a more
progressed guild. It is kind of sad,
because the people in this guild that I do know actually really
care about it and put in a lot of
work.
Another echoed this sentiment, telling us it was sad for guilds
like KOG to put so
much effort into individual players and then to have its
members use them more as a
“stepping stone” for gaining acceptance to a more hardcore
raiding guild. Another
described it as a “slap in the face” to the guild, when players
benefitted from Vern/
Steely’s and Lainey/Tessa’s kindness and then left in this
manner. Eventually, the guild
regrouped by concentrating on 10- rather than 25-man raids,
finding success at clearing
tough groups of enemies from the game, when another core
member left unexpectedly,

which further challenged the guild’s positive moral framework,
as revealed by the fol-
lowing interview exchange:
Breezy: And we slowly started to restructure it and we finally
got back to point where we could
pretty much clear the place and we did clear it and that’s when
BlueFalcon left. And I was mad
at him because we had put in a lot of extra time to get him his
legendary weapon and that was
what ticked me off the most, is that we had gotten him the
legendary. We had gone on separate
special runs that weren’t scheduled just to get him the
legendary. [Int: Who’s “we”?] Myself
and Stee[ly], especially Stee[ly], he put in a lot of extra time
there, and other members of the
guild. I mean it was all guild stuff. They had put it together and
gotten him his weapon. And it
was like, wow, so you’re basically just taking that and ditching
us now, that’s really cool
[sarcastically], especially since we had just got a group back
together that could go in and clear
the place. But he has always been that kind of person. He’s like
a child trapped in a 37-year old
man’s body.
Snodgrass et al. 13
Discussion of results in relationship to the literature
Inspired by Putnam’s “bowling alone” account of online social

networks, studies of
MMOs have illuminated the potentially socially and
psychological harmful dimensions
of online realities, with MMOs problematically eclipsing offline
life in importance
(Ducheneaut et al., 2006; Griffiths et al., 2016; Pisan, 2007;
Snodgrass et al., 2011; Yee,
2006). Ethnographers, too, have shown how WoW raiding, in
particular, can be distress-
ful. Chen (2012) describes the sometimes deep frustration and
failure in his own more
casual and social raiding guild, as well as interpersonal
conflicts that disrupted the guild.
Nardi (2010) examines how some players, spurred on in part by
their guild-mates, get so
“caught up in” their play as to lose balance and proportion and
become “overwhelmed”
by their passion for the game, even judging themselves
“addicted” to WoW. And others
have described how so-called “hardcore” raiding guilds’
competitive strivings and more
top-down leadership and organizational styles can place their
members under duress
(Lisk et al., 2011; Malone, 2007; Prax, 2010).
Our ethnography does reveal that KOG’s members are
vulnerable to distressful online
gaming experiences, as when they are sometimes driven to
pursue a more “hardcore” and
achievement-oriented style of raiding, either while remaining
within KOG or when mov-
ing outside of it. However, with Lainey and Vern as role models
and moral guides—and
under the banners of real-life and others first, leading by
example, doing good, tolerance
for diversity, and even social justice—KOG’s members play in

ways that model their
founders’ values and approach. Lainey and Vern’s thought and
practice infect the guild,
so to speak, creating a distinctive culture of more relaxed
raiding that furthers the well-
being of KOG’s members. As such, our research echoes more
fully ethnographic and
other scholarship illuminating how online gaming guilds create
positive experiences for
their members (Chen, 2012; Nardi, 2010; Sundén and
Sveningsson, 2012; Vesa, 2013;
Williams et al., 2006).
In cognitive anthropology, culture is understood to be that
which one must know in
order to function adequately in a given social system
(Goodenough et al., 1996). To func-
tion effectively within KOG, members need to know—and
indeed psychologically
“internalize” or commit to (D’Andrade and Strauss, 1992)—this
guild’s particular cul-
tural “model” or understanding of “doing good.” These
distinctive normative goals—
socially learned and thus transmitted in the act of play itself and
thus “cultural” in the
cognitive anthropological sense of this term (D’Andrade,
1995)—importantly shape
whether KOG online game-play is experienced alternately as
psychosocially beneficial
or harmful. That is, Lainey and Vern’s personal norms have
become culturally institu-
tionalized in thought and practice, now broadly shared in KOG
as a whole rather than
only evident in these two’s individual behaviors (D’Andrade,
2006).

Colloquially, Lainey and Vern are “role models,” as Rayna
described them. In cogni-
tive scientific vocabulary, they provide schematic prototypes of
ideal behavior that are
imitated by others (Rosch and Mervis, 1975), producing in the
process KOG’s distinctive
patterns of play. KOG does have other more formal governance
structures—for example,
they have experimented with “dragon kill points” (DKP) and
other loot distribution sys-
tems (DKP offers a more formal way of keeping track of player
participation and effort)
(Malone, 2009). But KOG’s informal guild norms—a parallel
and emergent form of
governance relying largely on voluntary compliance—are
particularly important in help-
ing its members self-regulate, partially protecting raiders
against even their own impulses
to play harder and longer. Based in large part on these socially
learned norms, KOG helps
its members set reasonable limits on their hours played, thus
protecting them from their
sometimes own tendency “to care too much” (about raid
progression), in one member’s
phrasing. However, we would say that the protection is partial,
in the sense that KOG
raiders sometimes revert to earlier patterns of more hardcore
play. As we’ve seen, KOG

possesses a certain fragility, as when certain members “guild
hop” into more competitive
and achievement-oriented online groups.
In these terms, Putnam is not all right—or wrong—in his view
of socially motivated
Internet activity posing certain psychological and social risks.
Such risks certainly exist,
as KOG members themselves demonstrate and acknowledge,
especially when speaking
of their more “hardcore” raiding days. Likewise, theories
counter to Putnam’s thesis
proposing that online spaces are akin to the pubs or
coffeehouses that came before them
and thus serve precisely as the “third places”—between the first
space of home and the
second of work—whose loss Putnam laments are not all right
(or wrong) either
(Steinkuehler and Williams, 2006). Guilds can serve even
socially and psychologically
therapeutic third-place functions, as KOG surely does for many
of its members much of
the time.
Indeed, we’d suggest avoiding conceptualizing online social
activity as being wholly
negative or, by contrast, only positive. Full-blown techno-
pessimism or optimism—and
thinking of society in such simplistic terms, free from culture
that shapes social relations
in particular local ways—does not do justice to the complexities
of life online described
by ourselves and others. And our cognitive anthropological
point of view makes it chal-
lenging to ever pronounce definitively on the healthfulness or
lack thereof of any online

social formation such as MMO guilds. For us, the key is fit—or
what has been called
“consonance”—between individual desires and guild culture and
structure (Snodgrass
et al., 2014a). Even hardcore raiding and “power gaming” more
generally can lead to
powerfully satisfying experiences (Cockshut, 2012; Malone,
2009). But their distinctive
demands and governance styles only promote their members’
overall well-being when
and if those members are ready to make the necessary offline
life sacrifices to ensure
online success (Chen, 2012). A similar point could be made for
KOG, whose softer style
would not be for everyone. And as we’ve seen, KOG member
needs in fact evolve lon-
gitudinally, as evidenced when some previously “hardcore”
raiders seek refuge in KOG,
only to return once again to more competitive raiding
environments, a point made in
other studies (Chen, 2012).
Conclusion
Researchers are aware that MMO guilds take different forms—
in one well-known con-
trast, casual treehouses compared to military-style barracks
(Williams et al., 2006).
However, we have never seen a guild such as KOG described in
the literature nor have
we encountered such a group in our own play. Chen’s (2012)
guild with its ethic of “hav-
ing fun, hanging out” is close, but not equivalent in its lack of
KOG’s moral imperative
“to do good in the world.” KOG is unique in its particular
constellation of values and

Snodgrass et al. 15
behaviors, and one aim of this article was to document this
guild’s unique community
and culture. Furthermore, we hoped to show how KOG’s culture
led to particular kinds
of social and self-regulation, which more typically led to
positive MMO experiences
because it met the particular needs and orientations of its
(typically older, well-educated,
and politically progressive) members. Researchers have
documented the diversity of
MMO guilds and social play (Cockshut, 2012; Ducheneaut et
al., 2007; Nardi, 2010;
Sundén and Sveningsson, 2012; Williams et al., 2006), but they
have less commonly
tried to understand how particular guild structures might pattern
its members’ individual
subjective well-being. Our research represents a step in that
direction, a second aim of
our ethnographic case study.
To conclude, KOG does resemble a socially productive “third
place” of a kind, poten-
tially replacing in importance for its members cafes, beer halls,
and other earlier social
spaces (Steinkuehler and Williams, 2006). Importantly, KOG
provides the potential for
both stimulating comradery and pleasure, on one hand,
alongside adrenaline-induced—

rather than caffeine- or alcohol-fueled—compulsion and frenzy,
on the other. Cognitive
anthropology directs us to avoid singular judgments on the
negative or positive character
of online social play in KOG or elsewhere: players must find
online communities that
meet their particular orientations and needs at a certain point in
time, a point resonant
with other MMO accounts (Cockshut, 2012; Sundén and
Sveningsson, 2012). And eth-
nography gives us the tools to render more visible the particular
cultural forces shaping
positive well-being in this unique online third place,
illuminating the limits of more
generalizing theories such as Putnam’s.
Acknowledgements
We thank the Colorado State University students from the fall
2011 seminar, Cultures of Virtual
Worlds: Research Methods, who helped with this research. We
are also grateful to the members of
The Knights of Good for allowing us into their guild and lives.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: This work was supported by the
Colorado State University and its

Department of Anthropology.
Notes
1. The Knights of Good (KOG) is the name of the guild
featuring in Felicia Day’s popular
comedy web series, The Guild. The founder of the actual guild
featuring in our study sug-
gested we use this fictitious name to better protect its members’
identities. All names in this
article—both player names and those of their avatars—are
pseudonyms.
2. Both guilds are found on North American World of Warcraft
(WoW) servers.
3. At the time of our research in Fall 2011, KOG had switched
to progressing through 10-man
“heroic” raids.
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Author biographies
Jeffrey G Snodgrass is Professor of Anthropology at Colorado
State University (CSU) and Director
of the Ethnographic Research and Teaching Laboratory (ERTL)
that conducted this research. The
other co-authors were former CSU graduate or undergraduate
student members of this lab.
Greg Batchelder is currently pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at
the University of Alabama.

Scarlett Eisenhauer is a PhD student at University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA) in
Anthropology.
Lahoma Howard is in a PhD program in Sociology at CSU,
where she also instructs and supervises
the internship program.
HJ Francois Dengah II is an Assistant Professor of
Anthropology at Utah State University in the
Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology.
Rory Sascha Thompson completed an undergraduate degree in
anthropology at CSU.
Josh Bassarear is in a Master of Arts (MA) program in Social
Work at the University of Utah.
Robert J Cookson is completing a second bachelor’s degree in
Computer Science from the
University of Alaska Anchorage, while also working as a
petroleum engineering technician for
ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc.
Peter Daniel Defouw is in an MA program in Multicultural
Clinical Mental Health Counseling at
the University of Colorado Denver.
Melanie Matteliano works in the private sector while also
supervising summer anthropological
field schools.
Colton Powell is pursuing an MA in Public Administration at
St. Mary’s University in San
Antonio.

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