Last night I took my first tentative steps into the world of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) by creating an account to play, for free, the medieval fantasy game RuneScape. Registration was merely a simple task of creating a user name (Hi, I'm Rhay Ader by the way) - something obscurely medieval I thought would be good, password, and then designing my avatar from a simple menu of hair and clothes colour choices - I have grey hair and a green suit - I look like Robin Hood's dad, which is maybe not such a bad thing.

Once the Java applet had fully loaded I took part in a tutorial where I was prepared to enter the main world of the game - I was shown how to light fires, cook, mine minerals, make weapons, do magic, kill things, make money. I'm not sure that I want to be mining, killing and doing magic, although making money might be helpful

Kolo and Baur (2004) have studied these types of games by thinking about their social dynamics. they want to know why people spend so many hours playing, who are playing, when, how and why they play and what effects this has in 'offline' life.

In RuneScape you begin the adventure in the town of Lumbridge - I am bound to be carrion for some vultures who will try to kill me or fleece me of stuff, daylight-lite people who have had no sleep for days and are not thinking straight, you know, under-socialised young men escaping the demands of conversation and housework. Maybe you will see me there, and if you do, remind me that I have too much of a life anyway without living another one in that game space.

Digital technologies are putting new possibilities in the minds of media producers about consumer choice. This can be seen in the development of technologies of 'empowerment' of the audience to take control of their media consumption, and of course for media producers to strengthen or consolidate their market position. Typical technologies might include personal video recorders (PVRs) or podcasting that allow audiences to have their media 'on demand'. One of the latest areas of development in cinema is the 'simultaneous release' in which a film is released in a number of formats at the same time. Steven Soderbergh's film Bubble was recently simultaneously released in digital cinemas, on DVD and on cable television. This is the first of six planned productions to be made on HD video for HDNet Films to be simultaneously released in this way. The time gap between the theatrical release of a film in cinemas and subsequent release on DVD has been closing. Are we witnessing the shift towards the economic power of consumers watching home cinema?

The development of moving image technology on the web is driven by social and economic factors such as the desire to make the web an entertainment medium. Technologies such as Flash and streaming video have provided the opportunity to turn the web into an interactive form of on demand televison and branded entertainment. Two interesting case studies are the American sites UGO and Heavy that are aimed at the 15-30 male demographic with their mix of music, games, sport, television, films and girls.

Game Studies is an academic international journal of computer game research. Some of the articles are quite heavy and difficult but you might find some relevant and useful research here for your essays. I thought that this article on the social dynamics of the massively multiplayer game Ultima Online looked interesting when I had a quick browse through the list of topics.