(Well done to Doug for spotting this great site. Tasty Research is a compendium of scientific research. But never fear: it's all interesting, rather left field stuff. Perfect for us planning types.
Because it's something I've been thinking about recently, I will use the same example as Doug: 'Third Places' in a digital world. Using massive multi-player games as the example, the research (from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication - Hmmm, very specky techy!) suggests 8 characteristics that define a good Third Place...
- Neutral Ground: Individuals are free to come and go as they please. In on-line games, players are not obligated to play; joins and quits are not significant events.
- Leveller: An individual’s rank and status in society are not significant. As in the culture of early video game arcades, “It didn’t matter what you drove to the arcade. If you sucked at Asteroids, you just sucked.” Players on on-line games use a separate avatar unrelated to their real life person, and social status is rarely invoked.
- Conversation is Main Activity: In third places, conversation is the main activity that the individuals participate in. While debatable as the main activity in on-line games, players would not disagree that conversation plays a crucial role. Often, conversation drifts to real world discussion such as personal life, politics, culture, etc.
- Accessibility & Accommodation: Third places are easy to access and accommodating to individuals. On-line games allow players to log on and off at will and there are always players on-line. Activity occurs throughout all hours of the day.
- The Regulars: Regulars are those who give the place its character, and attract new individuals. Guild members, who form a clan to play the on-line game together, and squatters, who stay within an area of the game, are the regulars of the on-line world.
- A Low Profile: Third places are characteristically homely and without pretension. The population of on-line games follow a parabolic curve; after the onset of players following the release, the regulars remain while many move on to higher profile games.
- The Mood is Playful: The general mood of a third place is playful and witty. Players in on-line games crack jokes during heated battles, perform goofy actions with their avatars, and mock each others’ appearances. Rarely are players overly serious about game matters.
- A Home Away from Home: Rootedness, feelings of possession, spiritual regeneration, feelings of being at ease, and warmth. On-line games possess a homely atmosphere where players notice others’ absences and makes the overall feel of the game “warm”.
Actually, interesting and useful as this is, I do also wonder what impact digital community and Third Places will have on the 'real' world. Starbucks, in many ways the originator of Third Place thinking, is very much a solo affair - the oasis of calm in a busy day for the individual.
But given the rise of everything from Myspace to World of Warcraft, where interaction with others is key, I wonder whether we will see a reinvention of the real world Third Place to be something more social.
In a micro-planning-blogging context, Russell's Breakfast Club is doing this (and it actually ticks every one of the boxes above - and on that basis it probably shouldn't 'belong' to Russell but to everyone who goes...which is probably how Mr R would see it). But maybe there's an opportunity for, say, bars or pubs to reinvent themselves along these lines. Obviously, they do this to a certain extent already. But this is still more about getting drunk with a few mates, or pulling a specific individual. So what about something that is much more explicitly a social environment; a real world Myspace?
