Modding in massively multiplayer games : a case study of Elite: Dangerous

The aim of this thesis was to study played-created third-party tools in the massively multiplayer online game Elite: Dangerous through the lens of modding and argue that Elite tools constitute a type of game mod. Modding historically refers to players modifying game software, but modding in Elite is not sanctioned by the game developer. Elite players have instead created standalone tools (both web applications and downloadable programs) that harvest and utilise the game's informational content, or game data, to enhance Elite gameplay. The existing academic typology of game mods do not account for standalone tools, largely due to a lack of precise definition on what modding is and what player-creations can be considered as game mods. Both Elite tools and their creators are studied. First, an empirical research on Elite tools was conducted that produced a typology of third-party tools and analysed their relation to the game. Second, a survey on Elite tool developers carried out to find out how they relate their creations as well as inquiring about their modding habits and views on the concept. Although third-party tools can be considered as game mods as per academic definitions, the main finding of the thesis was that there is a disconnect in how players and academia define mods and modding. For players, game mods are those creations that explicitly alter game software, while academic definitions are more wide-ranging and include the notion of changing how a game is played

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation utilizes law and society research, as well as communication advocacy, to frame analysis and offer an extra-legal solution to conflicts between modders, fans who create new content from existing videogames, and game companies. It utilizes grounded theory and the traditional legal adversarial documentary method to abstract and analyze conflict caused by a cease and desist (C&D) letter sent to Kajar Laboratories concerning Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes - Kajar's mod to Square Enix's Chrono Trigger. Through qualitative analysis of websites, forum posts, and blog comments about the C&D this dissertation discovers the grounded theory Legal Threats Break Moral Communities. Utilizing the grounded theory and legal argumentation a critique is made of proposed legal solutions. A nonlegal solution to ameliorate future conflict is then suggested as a means to satisfy both the needs of modders and game companies. In analyzing the conflict this dissertation illustrates how the threat of law stops modders, disrupts the community, and chills future mods. This dissertation reinforces a regulatory understanding of copyright law arguing limited monopolies on intellectual property serve to advance the arts and sciences. Modding, like many forms of participatory culture, promotes valuable science, technology, engineering, and math through self-learning. Mods promote the original games while also generating new art. The dissertation also shows that both regulatory and proprietary interpretations of copyright law benefit from modding. Through critique of status quo solutions and analysis of a Microsoft exemplar this dissertation suggests a generic game content usage guide as an extra-legal, feasible solution that advances the goals of all parties involved without requiring legal intervention

Heroes and Hooligans: The Heterogeneity of Video Game Modders

Video games are hugely popular, generating more than twice the revenue of global movie and music industries combined. Whilst technically illegal and often carrying negative connotations, modding constitutes a moral grey area that is commonly accepted, often encouraged by proprietary owners and forum-centred gaming communities. Literature reflects a disparity between outsider and insider perceptions of modding, with a paucity of studies reflecting insider perspectives. Using Reddit forum data, this study contributes insight into perceptions of modding held by gamers and ‘modders’, as described in their words and their territory. Thematic analysis revealed four main themes relating to unfairness in the vendor community, modders as antagonists, differences between modders and modding as forms of self-defence. Conclusions include that modding appears to have both pro- and antisocial applications, but many people and organisations demonise modders as a homogeneous group, which may encourage antisocial behaviours

Sub-Versions: Investigating Videogame Hacking Practices and Subcultures

“Hacking” is an evocative term — one that is mired in tropes that reduce a diverse range of practices into a few stereotypically malicious activities. This thesis aims to explore one hacking practice, videogame hacking, whose practitioners make unauthorized alterations to videogames after their release. Through interviews, game analysis, and reflective writing, this thesis investigates videogame hacking subcultures of production — communities of creative labour that exist in the margins of mediamaking and the fringes of the law. This thesis begins by reviewing popular media and existing accounts of computer hacker culture, primarily Steven Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Gabriella Coleman’s Coding Freedom, in order to contextualize videogame hacking in broader histories of computer culture. Using this analysis as a starting point, the author then proposes a reflexive methodological framework for studying videogame hacking subcultures, designed to accommodate the ephemerality of virtual communities and the apprehensions of participants. The following two chapters refer to participant interviews to pursue two avenues of research. First, drawing upon Michel de Certeau’s writing on strategies versus tactics and Henry Jenkins chronicling of prohibitionist and collaborationist models, this study explores how intellectual property law serves as a site of tension between media companies and videogame fans. Second, the author explores the diverse motivations of videogame hackers who create works that are undistributable through commercial markets and may face the risk of legal action

Players Unleashed! Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming

Siirretty Doriast

Players Unleashed ! Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming

The author of this hugely informative study explores the question of what happens when players practise and negotiate computer code, various ideologies, and the game itself by modding (modifying a game) in the context of The Sims, the bestselling computer game of all time.Sihvonen examines the technical and material specificities of The Sims mods, as well as their cultural context. Viewed as a manifestation of participatory culture, modding makes PC games ultimately malleable: players reconfigure the game by creating new content, altering the code and changing the behaviours of the game engine. Using a semiotic framework, Sihvonen suggests a signification process that includes representation, interpretation, investigation and experimentation with the game system and rules. From its historical roots in the shoot’em up games, the author bares the fascinating evolution and dynamics of modding, where gender stereotypes, the thrills of hacking and living the Sims’ American Dream intersect with the aesthetic and operational dimensions of modding

Why Speed Matters: Collective Action and Participation in Speedrunning Groups

This major research paper focuses on the practice of speedrunning a videogame and how speedrunning’s interactive and cooperative nature establishes groups through alternative forms of social interaction and participation. In challenging traditional ideas of a hegemonic, unified community, I seek to bring in theories outside of community formation to present different ways to think about and with community formation. By interviewing speedrunners, I highlight how speedrunning does not form concrete communities with rigid social structures, but instead assemblages of individuals that co-create through a collaborative practice. Looking at social groups in this way can help us better understand how people in these groups can remain an individual collaborating with other individuals without being forced to conform to predetermined social expectations or structures

Master of Arts

thesisThe aim of this thesis is to examine the way that the videogame industry has evolved as a complex sociotechnological system and how the discourse surrounding the industry, as well as videogames as a medium of expression, has shaped that development. This shift in the nature of videogame creation from individual authors and small studios to the monolithic entity known as "the Industry" was accompanied by the creation of an ideology that defines the identity of a community and places constraints on videogames as a medium. This is the ideology of the "hardcore" gamer. In order to understand this ideology, its impact and its significance, I will focus on the discourse surrounding the videogame industry and particularly on the limits of this discourse. One such area of discourse where antagonisms arise is in the growing community of independent game developers. The independent games movement can be looked at as a direct result of what Laclau and Mouffe refer to as articulation - the process by which relationships are established in such a way as to alter the identities of the elements themselves. As the videogame industry became increasingly articulated, the identities of games, gamers and game makers became more and more narrowly defined. This increased areas of antagonism within the discourse, allowing for resistance and the possibility of disarticulation. Though the independent games movement has grown substantially in recent years, the degree to which this movement resists the ideology of the videogame industry is unclear, as is the role of the technology in this process. This paper will examine these relationships through the discourse of both the mainstream videogame industry as well as that of the independent games community

Wargames: Non-Linear Experiential Modes of Historical Knowledge

This project is on wargames, a type of board and digital game concerned with the practice of war, leadership, command, strategy, tactics, and decision-making. The goal of the project is to explore whether wargames, as non-linear experiential forms of historical knowledge have any value in understanding how the public views, understands, and relates to the historical past. Moreover, the goal of the project is to help historical academia understand what wargames are as they have not been studied in any substantial way and open the door for further research projects regarding wargames, or in fact use wargames as a research aid