This article addresses the use of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) to foster communication and interaction and to facilitate cooperative learning in an online course.
The authors delineate the definition and history of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs),
and describe current uses of MMORPGs in education, including their experiences with constructing
and using the MMORPG Second Life. In addition, the authors detail with practical examples
the process of using MMORPGs to support cooperative learning activities, and explore future uses
and research questions for using MMORPGs in education and training.

The article investigates the shift of much interpersonal communication from phone or face-to-face interaction to instant messaging, especially among teenagers. This objectification of conversation enabled changes in myriad social practices, as well as in regimes of intimacy and truth: new, invisible audiences are introduced to hitherto intimate situations for real-time consultations; intimacy, traditionally based on exclusivity in access to events and information, has to be reshaped under the new conditions as ‘network intimacy‘; formerly separate events collapse into new frames, challenging traditional temporal sequencing of sociability; conversations are imbued with performativities of different sorts; and proof and evidence are introduced into interpersonal spheres where they weren‘t common before.