Clan

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What Does Clan Mean?

A clan is a group of gamers who play as a group in multiplayer online games. The clan can be official and enabled through a function in a game’s mechanics, or it may be an unofficial clan by mutual agreement. Clans may have entrance requirements that a player must meet, such as a certain level of prowess or the completion of tasks as part of an application process. In massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) clans are referred to as guilds, but the concept is the same.

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Techopedia Explains Clan

Clans add an often unintentional level of immersion to online gameplay. The psychology of group dynamics works in clans just as it does in real life. This can work to keep gamers coming back to a game. If someone is slacking – that is, not gaming – they’ll hear about it from their fellow clan members. Similarly, the sense of inclusion that comes with having a clan (or guild, or gang, and so on) helps to make the virtual world even more attractive to gamers. Clans can act as a form of emergent gameplay, as the storylines and drama within a clan – played out over in-game chat – run independent of a game’s central storyline.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.