Clans in first-person shooters

These games initially only offered "deathmatch" play, where gameplay is focused solely on killing the characters of the other players. The popularity of clans and team-based versions of deathmatch led to the design of objective-based team games such as capture the flag.

Due to the relatively unorganised structure of first-person shooter games the players tend to take on the organisation themselves. This has led to the genre generating a large number of websites to help organise these gaming communities as well as the vast number of different styles of clans in these games. Some clans are large and have loose associations with each other and may only play on public servers with each other for social reasons. At the other end of the spectrum other clans may prefer to keep a small, tight team of players and concentrate on playing competitively against other clans in arranged matches and possibly in leagues. While the clan itself provides the social element in larger clans, the social aspect for the smaller, more competitive clans comes more from interaction with other clans.

Competition between clans is common but also takes many forms. Some clans have been known to be content with playing against each other on public servers, while others organise matches with other clans. Notably, some take this further and take part in leagues and tournaments. A lot of the time this is purely for fun but some of these leagues and tournaments have become fiercely competitive to the extent that practice and planning will become highly organised. This kind of competition is starting to be referred to as electronic sports (e-sports), though there are many other similar terms for this. E-sports can be purely amateur over the Internet or for large cash prizes on local area networks. This kind of competition also applies to other genres, particularly strategy games.

Many clans have their own private servers to play their game of choice on. These are most handy for holding practice matches against other clans and other forms of practice. Private servers are also convenient since they do not have problems that plague public servers, such as team killers and other behaviour that is the gaming equivalent of the anti-social behaviour when people have anonymity over the Internet such as spamming and trolling on message boards and chat rooms. As a side note, there are even clans who set up just to perpetuate this kind of abuse.

Clans in first-person shooters; Military Based

The growth of military driven gaming has tripled by the year. One game, Americas Army, objectively set out for US Army educational and recruitment status in the gaming world. In this aspect of clan gamers, the label is turned to Squadrons to appreciate the realism.

Clans in strategy games

Most popular multiplayer strategy games such as Warcraft and Command and Conquer series' offer a matchmaking service to find matches provided by the publisher or developer of the game. Often these services have their own structures for organising clans. Some of these services offer tournaments and ladders for clans to compete on either directly clan versus clan or indirectly by giving clan members points for winning 1v1 or 2v2 games and adding that to clan totals.

Clans in RPGs

Clans also exist in other genres, where they often go by a different name and serve a purpose more suited to the game. Many online massively multiplayer and computer role-playing games tend to call them 'guilds' or invent their own term (for example Star Wars Galaxies calls them 'player associations'). Earth: 2025, a web browser-based game, formerly called them 'alliances', but switched to 'clans' as the word increased in popularity. In EVE Online, they go by 'corporations', who in turn join up to form larger 'alliances'; in this game, however, the default structure and organization of corporations is defined in more detail by the developers of the game than is common in most MMOs.

There are few guild versus guild tournaments in online RPGs, although the number of games with guild versus guild combat is increasing. Guilds usually are a cooperative planning and play group in these games, sometimes paralleling the functions of medieval guilds. In Neverwinter Nights, where the first such guilds appeared, they declared their own quests and scheduled cooperative play. Sometimes in MMORPGs, guilds take on the role of vigilante groups or the mafia, protecting its members from other players and guilds. These guilds form in the most literal sense in games that feature player versus player combat.

EverQuest led to the birth of so-called überguilds, which are highly specialized guilds formed by the most dedicated players on the server for the purpose of securing for its members all the newest and most powerful abilities and loot. These guilds typically have regimented and selective application procedures that may take into account not only the desirability of an applicant's virtual character and playing skill but also a recruit's time commitment and even, in some cases, computer hardware and bandwidth. They typically do not share strategies or admit non-members to their adventuring groups or "raids"; during the days of EverQuest guilds would invariably censor the in-game chat display when posting screenshots to avoid revealing their strategies. Uberguilds often race to be the first to accomplish some particular task in the game; in the case of new items, such guilds place their logo on screenshots of the item's properties in order to record their accomplishments. Most of these guilds, particularly in EverQuest and World of Warcraft, use an often-intricate variant of DKP to determine loot distribution.