ABSTRACTS SESSION 6 Thursday, October 20 th - 14:30 - 16:00,2016, VSMM 2, LT7 Level 1 Calm Down Buddy! It’s Just a Game: Behavioral Patterns Observed among Teamwork MMO Players in WARGAMING’s World of Tanks Human Esmaeili, Harold Thwaites and Peter Woods (#1) Author keywords: Massively Multiplayer Online Games, MMO, World of Tanks, WOT, WARGAMING, Virtual Behavior, Teamwork This study examines (also develops) several scenarios in a massively multiplayer online game, World of Tanks, in order to observe player’s response to the occurred/created stimuli in different situations. World of Tanks has been developed by a Belarusian-Cypriot company called WARGAMING. In 2011, the game set a Guinness record for most players online simultaneously in one server. According to the GameSpot, in 2014, WARGAMING reported over 75 million registered users and 1.1 million concurrent players only for their World of Tanks game. The Asia server of World of Tanks that includes Southeast Asian, Australian, and New Zealand players is the main target of this study. A qualitative approach through observation and experience is employed to study the behavior of team players in the real situations, although occurring in a virtual environment. World of Tanks offers various scenarios, which are mostly involved with teamwork activities. Being a tiered and ranked based game, also exposing players’ statistics to each other, the games has provided an environment where stats are becoming more important than the game itself for many players. In this situation sometimes the fun part of the game is victimized by the above attitude, leading to bullying, humiliation, verbal abuse, and deliberate friendly fire. However the level of these behaviors varies from a scenario to another. Additionally some other behavioral patterns observed during the experience are discussed in this study, which reflect the real world semi-similar scenarios or situations in a virtual environment. For example helping the other team members in a time of need or taking personal advantages rather than assisting others. This study is a phenomenological case study using symbolic interactionism, interpretivism, and phenomenology as theoretical perspective through direct and indirect observation wile experiencing the phenomenon being investigated. A constructionism epistemology is used in order to construct knowledge about the above phenomenon. Data is collected using an existing WARGAMING’s World of Tanks account mainly from the real scenarios (battles). However, this game offers various features such as online chat, statistics, and several associated websites where users can share their experience/thoughts in many different forms from text to interactive multimedia. These sources of data are also used in this study. This study looks at various scenarios to investigate the factors influencing the players’ behavior in occurrence of the mentioned events in order to develop a pattern for some of them where applicable. This study aims not to criticize the observed behavior but to study the reasons behind it. Therefore study takes no side neither encouraging nor discouraging the behavior. However a brief discussion is provided in the conclusion arguing over the possibility of reflection of this behavior in the real world scenarios, vice versa.