As the first-person shooter (FPS) genre became increasingly popular, the idea of a competitive clan became widely accepted.
Many massively multiplayer online (MMO) and role-playing video games (RPGs) tend to call them "guilds" or invent their own term.
Examples of this include Star Wars Galaxies ("player associations"[3]) and EVE Online ("corporations"[4]).
This third-tier arrangement isn't supported by the game software as such; instead, coalitions are purely player driven creations.
In Final Fantasy XI, such clans are called "linkshells" and players of the game have the tendency and ability to be in more than one at once.