http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_%28online_game%29

Utopia, a highly addictive online multiplayer strategy game, is one of the most popular games on the internet. I used to be a huge fan, back in my secondary school days, and I was helplessly addicted — but it was a lot of fun. Utopia allows for the formation of social networks completely separate from the ones we experience in our everyday lives.

In Utopia, every player controls a province, and can choose a race and a personality, each of which will bestow unique features to his gameplay, both strengths and weaknesses. Provinces are grouped into kingdoms, and each kingdom functions as a collective unit. The player can explore land, build different buildings, train armies, and attack and conquer lands from other provinces. Kingdoms can wage wars and battles include both military campaigns and thievery and magic operations. Each ‘game’ last several months — an age — after which everything resets and everyone starts over. The more organized and successful kingdoms in Utopia depend greatly on teamwork and communication. Every province in the kingdom has a role, and co-ordination is essential for success during wars. There is also a forum within each kingdom that provinces can chat and interact.

Utopia is essentially a huge social network, just like the other multiplayer games World of Warcraft, Guild Wars etc. However, one key difference is that Utopia is real time, meaning actions in the game take time to complete, and the game is updated every hour. This makes it feel more like a real world, and the forum is a huge avenue for socializing and interaction. Utopia is very much like the social networks in real-life — in another world. Organized kingdoms tend to be very close-knit - players controlling the provinces tend to communicate outside of the game, coordinating attacks and operations and discussing war strategies. There are also alliances among kingdoms and a lot of politics played, especially among the top echelon. Since placement of provinces at the start are random, it encourages players meeting people from all over the world.

I was once part of a kingdom that was fairly active. There was a lot of interaction in the forum and I gradually found myself drawn into the game due to the social aspects of it. I mean, yes the game was fun and exciting, but playing it as a collective unit with people that you have gotten to know is the main draw. As a kingdom we each had a role to play in wars — we were each assigned a target, and we constantly communicated via MSN or ICQ, messenger programs. Utopia was a complete world on it’s own, and a social network completely separate from the one in real life. And having a forum meant that interaction between the different players extended to things outside of the game — debates about real-life issues, sharing of personal stories, and even discussions to meet up in real life, across the borders that separated us.

Many people feel that multiplayer games as such are ‘unhealthy’ as they are not real and just offer a form of escape for people from their real lives. I definitely beg to differ. Such social networks are very similar to those that we encounter in our everyday lives, just that they exist in different forms. You still see the usual triadic closures, and information cascades happening in the World of Utopia — meeting new people, spreading different strategies and playing styles. It’s just that all these occur in a world over the internet, with a different way of communication, and separate from the world that we know and are most comfortable in.