Hello World, Guild Theory Online Here!
Welcome to Guild Theory Online! We are finally live and we are so excited to share what we have planned for this website with you. To summarize what we are in a few sentences: Guild Theory Online is a blog that studies the human connection of online gaming and looks at how to build stronger and more meaningful relationships out of these interactions. This includes information for guild leaders on how to more effectively lead a team and even advice for members as they try to find a space that fits for them. Though with the word theory in our name, we may have to go further than that.
What’s in a Name?
Let us review the reason for choosing the name Guild Theory Online. At first, we considered adding “MMO” to the name to signal to MMORPG players that this is content designed for them. For those that do not know, MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. This distinction to include Massively Multiplayer Online was much needed at the time in the early 2000s because many games only had the capacity to have at most two to four additional players and likely not online but rather locally connected. A quintessential example of an MMORPG is World of Warcraft. MMORPGs became virtual spaces for dozens or more players to interact with each other from different homes. Given that most MMORPGs are fantasy-based, guilds became a common feature of the genre. One day we will have to do a deep dive into the history of online guilds. But for the purpose of introducing our website’s name, we will keep things brief.
Historically, online guilds are an integral part of the MMORPG genre. However, as technology continues to progress, many games have become massively multiplayer online but do not fit the traditional stereotype of MMORPGs. Additionally, rising mobile-focused games such as Genshin Impact are sometimes categorized as MMORPGs despite not having traditional MMORPG elements. Games like these or even competitive e-sports games such as League of Legends, Overwatch, and Valorant have community groups that operate like guilds. We want to expand to all these types of online gaming communities in our discussions, so we ultimately kept the prefix MMO out of our blog’s name.
Though we want to be inclusive of these communities, the core social scenario we do want to explore is centered around the guild (or as Final Fantasy XIV calls them, free companies). Therefore, we continue to include the word guild in the name. The word guild is also synonymous with club or group, and this can signify choice. People have the choice or desire to come together and make this community work. This organic desire to do so inspires us to choose to contribute to this cause.
So we have what we want to look deeper into–guilds. But what action will we merge it with? We considered words like team-making, initiative, talk, and help. But none of these words truly captured our desire to look deeper into this phenomenon than anyone who came before us. This is where the word theory comes in.
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines theory as, “a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena.” We wish to explore the guild dynamic and find more structured patterns that can help explain why certain things happen the way they do. And we wish that our readers can use these theories we build to help them with their own individual situations. And if you are a fellow theorizer, we can work on these ideas together.
Unlike the words talk, teammaking, or help, we don’t just want to give general social advice, unless they are valid solutions guided by the theories we form. We do want to disclaim, however, that there are no promises that we will rigidly use traditional research methods and ideas from sociology, psychology, or anthropology. Although we are studying the human connection, we want to keep things flexible and see if we can also gain new insights by following thought processes outside of these rigid disciplines.
Keeping the word Online initially started as a filler since Guild Theory itself was taken. However, the more we thought about it, the more it made sense to include the word even if Guild Theory was not taken. Many games of the MMORPG genre use the word Online in their name to signify the social MMO aspect of the game. Consider Black Desert Online, Ragnarok Online, Albion Online, EVE Online, Fiesta Online, and so on! The word online also brings attention to the complexities of digital social interaction, which we wish to analyze.
What’s in a Logo?
We wanted a symbol that represents a cozy place where people gather and interact in the game. The first thing that comes to mind is the local tavern or inn. If you are a lover of the isekai subgenre in anime, the local inn is usually attached to a dining area and is where all adventurers come to lower their guard, put down their weapons, and unwind with friends. It is a space to regain health, purchase supplies, and learn new information before heading out to the open world. While designing this logo, we were also playing a few games that made us think of the other half of our logo- Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age and Tales of Arise.
In both these games, the campfire is a critical place of rest and a space to bond with your party. In a 36-minute video essay review of Dragon Quest, Kotaku’s Tim Rogers describes the campfire as a place for being with your ‘buds’ and to perform rougher outdoor activities that should not take place in a tavern or inn. In Tales of Arise, one of the characters explains to their fellow party members that it is a good time and place for reflection. The campsite is also always in a state of being temporary. The campsite will eventually be packed up and may not look the same as it was if you were to return there again. Although there is a time to reflect and restrategize, the party must deal with the tools they have on hand.
How does this tie into Guild Theory Online? Whether you, the reader, are here for the long haul to invest in improving your guild experience, or you are already deep in the trenches and need to quickly restrategize for your current quest, we are here for you. We wanted to bring these two elements together–the local tavern and the campsite. The sign reflects the tavern or inn, inviting you in. The campfire symbolizes the warmth of your friends and the light signifies the knowledge to be gained by theorizing about guilds. The warmth and the light of the fire are both powered by the logs of experience from not just our logs, but others too. All come together under the banner of the letters GTO, which stands for Guild Theory Online.
Guild Theory Online’s Vision Board
We think you have gotten a sense of the vibe we are going for by reading about our thought process for picking a blog name and logo, but through this section, we will also share our hopes for this website moving forward. Theories can change over time, be disproven, or reinforced. This means that our blog posts may be revisited and adjusted over time. We may also post the same concept but with more modern examples or see how the community has helped expand on these ideas we produce. With these blog posts, we want to provide you, the reader, something of value. Hopefully, it is a new way to think about a problem or gain a sense of relief from seeing that we share the same thoughts about an idea, or perhaps we light a fire in you that prompts you to respond critically. Even if you disagree with us, we welcome the discourse (as long as we remain civil) because that is how we improve our guild theories, and in turn, improve our guild experiences.
When you reach the end of this blog post you may notice there is no comment section. We want the discourse to take place in a more dynamic environment: social media and our Discord server. Social media provides the reach and accessibility to comment, but the deeper insights we hope will take place on Discord. This process also eases the spam filtering and content moderation that would be required on this website which can get overwhelming when the number of our articles grows.
Although this blog is in a way a love letter to the gaming community, we also want to create some content for non-gamers to better understand the worlds that exist online. This can exist in the form of finding what products to get your gaming loved ones or exploring what skills are translatable from this virtual world to the real world. Our motive here is to warm the gamer’s social heart both online and offline.
Our staff’s home MMORPG is Final Fantasy XIV. So many of our posts will be centered around the free company. However, we hope to gain additional information about other gaming communities both by trying them out ourselves and conducting interviews. We also understand our single experience on Final Fantasy XIV is just one of thousands of social experiences that can be had. Therefore it is important to seek out a diverse range of experiences when covering this subject. As we begin to incorporate more posts about other online gaming communities, you will begin to see the true vision we have for this website come to reality. We don’t want to spoil everything here, but we do have a bunch of ideas we are excited to share with you when the time is right.
I Made My Character, I Can Finally Play the Game?
Congratulations! You made it to the end of this post. We are now fresh out of character creation–we have our logo, our name Guild Theory Online, and our website design. We also have a general idea of what we want to focus on. Now we can finally start blogging!
This is our first official blog so we will be making mistakes, fixing them, and learning things as we move along. Because of this, we thank you for your patience. If there are any cool topics you would like us to explore, feel free to let us know! We want to journey through every nook and cranny of the guild ecosystem so no matter how niche your topic of interest is, we will gladly look over it.
