Clans
by structure :
Small social groups :
Most gamers organize themselves into small groups of like-minded
players in order to play together and socialize. Typically,
these groups start suddenly, contain a handful of members,
focus on a single game and have a short life span. There are
literally hundreds to thousands of these clans or guilds in
each online game.
Single-game groups :
There are also many larger, longer-lasting groups devoted
to a single game. Examples can be found in every long-lasting
online game, in particular, role-playing games, which have
a strong social element.
Communities :
Some gamers are organized less formally in communities, which
may also contain clans or guilds. Often these communities
include websites generating a fair amount of news and active
forums to give the members their sense of community. It is
not uncommon for a community to be based on more than one
game.
Online Gaming Groups :
Finally, there are a number of more persistent and more organized
groups that field players in a variety of games. These groups
share some of the characteristics of the single-game groups
and communities. These are known as Online Gaming Groups (or
OGG for short).
E-Sports teams :
E-Sports clans are organizations created solely for competition.
They are often small in size but their size is also usually
determined by how many players they need to meet numbers for
competing regularly. Social interaction and friendship is
often a requirement for the stability of these teams but it
is not the main purpose for the organization, this means that
many of these teams are short lived but those who do not fall
apart due to social conflicts tend to last for a long time
and stay together should they change to a newer game. E-Sports
teams also often have a tendency to form larger multi-game
OGGs.
Organization :
The larger a clan gets the more hierarchical the organizational
structure tends to become. Usually there is at least a clan
leader, in small teams a clan leader may only be a team captain
heading the team in game and initiating discussions to solve
problems. In larger clans the leader is often responsible
for the entirety of organizing the clan, with a number of
basic members. If the clan expands, experienced members are
usually promoted and are delegated various tasks such as recruiting,
disciplining rule-breakers, member training, webpage maintenance,
and others. Certain clans take this type of organization to
a higher level where they emulate the structure (and sometimes
name) of a military unit with specific ranks, positions, and
groups. These clans are usually found in shooter games and
are referred to as realism units.
In most games, players show the clan they belong to by using
a unique tag which takes the form of a prefix or suffix tag.
Tags are often enclosed in brackets or symbols and coloured
differently if the game allows it. For example, in a name
like "[EW]Bob", "[EW]" is the clan tag
and "Bob" is the player's name. Some clans prefer
to have a more subtle and arcane way of indicating membership,
such as a simple marking in or around the name. For example,
"Bob!!" with "Bob" being the player's
name and "!!" being the clan's tag.
In MMORPGs and strategy games the game often features a separate
mechanism used to identify the clan a player belongs to. For
example in Dark Age of Camelot, the player's guild appears
in full below the player's name. In games that allow players
to customize their appearance (usually by picking the color
of their attire), clan members might all share a similar look,
or bear their clan's logo on their character's outfit. The
MMORPG World of Warcraft introduced tabards, in which a guild
master could customize a tabard to any look he wanted, and
then guild members could buy one so they'd all be wearing
guild colors.
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