Building Up the Virtual Community in Online Games and “Onlineaholics” Behaviour of Adolescents in Bangkok Metropolitan

Abstract

The research report of Building Up the Virtual Community in Online Games and ‘Onlineaholics’ Behaviour of Adolescents in Bangkok Metropolitan had three main objectives which were to study the virtual community in game online, to study the communication behaviour for creating the virual community in game online, to study the impact of adolescents lifestyle in Bangkok metropolitan and to study the factors which caused ‘Onlineaholics’

The research operation was mixed research including qualitative and quantitative research between November 2004 - May 2005. The researcher collected the data by studying the content of game online, in-depth interviewing frequently game online players, academics, the officer of Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, the specialists of adolescents psychology and interviewing the group of onlineaholics adolescents including survey the adolescents in Bangkok Metropolitan.

The results were that there were two ways to create the virtual community such as party and guild which the players joined to fight against monsters and took the palace. The behaviour of communication were dialogue, conversation in the party and conversation in the guild. The impacts of the game were divided into the advantages and disadvantages. The advantages were helping the typing skill, learning English, earning some money and having new friends. The disadvantages were missing classes, wasting money, wasting time, losing the lovers, having health problems and being selfish. The factors to cause onlineaholics were the adventure in different towns, playing with a lot of friends at the same time and competing for reaching the target.

The research was found that to solve the problems of onlineaholics among adolescents needed the cooperation between many groups including the government section, the parents, the owners of Internet cafe, the game companies and the adolescents.