The co-evolution of the “social” and the “technology": a netnographic study of Social movements in virtual worlds

Virtual worlds provide new forms of social interaction. They offer alternative spaces where social functions can be carried out in online three-dimensional virtual environments. One social phenomenon which has moved into the virtual world is the social movement, which are an important means of bringing out social, cultural and political changes through collective action. These social movements exist in an immersive technological ecosystem which is constantly evolving as designers release patches which change the way users “live” within these environments. Using a biography of artifacts approach, we explore not just the evolution of the technological artifact itself (the virtual world), but also its co-evolution with the social phenomena (a social movement). Using Netnography, a modified version of ethnography, and actornetwork theory, we explore a social movement in World of Warcraft, and observe how it evolves over time as changes to the virtual world are implemented

Navigating Sociotechnical Power Structures: Dynamics of Conflict in World of Warcraft\u27s Player versus Player Events

As a result of technological advancement and exponential increases in global access, cross-disciplinary research has recently turned to digital online video games. Most anthropological research within this area has centered around player self-identification, gender construction, and gaming communities. Yet many interactions occur at nodes of dynamic conflict where agentic players navigate intersections of power, which are unaddressed in the scholarly corpus. By utilizing ethnographic methods in World of Warcraft\u27s player versus player events, I examine resources, relationships, and tools that underpin player actions and understandings. My findings reveal layered and dynamic patterns of sociotechnical conflict. Players\u27 geographical location impacts access to infrastructure while hardware and software constrain in-game action in fundamental and inescapable ways. Player versus player events add additional restrictions and create fluid situations where players continually negotiate fluctuating social tensions while event-dependent dispersions of power fluctuate between groups and individuals. Players become leaders by legitimizing power in contextually unique ways, and competing imaginaries generate conflicts that are interpreted through game-specific subjectivities. In exploring these occurrences and utilizing theoretical explanations within World of Warcraft contexts, this research contributes to disciplinary understandings and discussions addressing conflict, leadership, and power, and to methodological techniques utilized in virtual world study. By foregrounding how players navigate power differentials in conflict situations, this research informs broader conceptions of how individuals and groups manage social disputes within and outside digital social events, informs game design, and has policy implications for resolving virtual world conflicts in real world courts

Communicative Implications of the Modern Video Game: An Audience-Centered Approach

The advent of the home video game console and three decades of continuously evolving gaming technology has had a profound impact on American culture. While many studies have investigated various sociocultural outcomes and conducted behavioral correlation analyses of video games, few have examined how individuals talk about, or share meaning from the game outside of game play. This analysis first briefly reviews extant video game research and arguments for the increasingly immersive aspect of playing video games, then identifies a lack of focus in the literature on the communicative aspect of audience-centered analysis of these games via gamer-generated blogs and message board interactions. Subsequently, a rhetorical analysis of two independent blogs for World of Warcraft (WoW), a massively multiplayer online (MMO) video game examines, from a communication perspective, the inherent structure of the game, as well as the various methods by which the gamers discuss and share meaning about in-game and out-game experiences. A rhetorical analysis of gamers' out-game talk on WoW-centered message board forums and blogs is then conducted via the lens of dramatism. The theoretical underpinnings of this analysis further concretize the value and necessity of a communicative lens as a privileged voice in the field of video game studies

A Phenomenological Inquiry of Virtual Worlds

In synthetic worlds, such as Second Life, World of Warcraft, or SIMS, the dichotomy between reality and virtuality still remains one of the unsolved philosophical inquiries of our time. There remains skepticism regarding the value of virtual experiences versus those of real life. This research presents a starting point for an ethical discourse on the technology of virtual worlds and addresses two questions: What are unique affordances of virtual worlds? And, what are the ethical implications that emerge due to these unique affordances? Four unique affordances of the technology of virtual worlds - self-expression, co-experience, co-creation, and crowd-sourcing, are identified. Questions from positivist, social-constructivist, and phenomenological perspectives of ethics are recognized and preliminary phenomenological insights of societal pressures contributing to the emergence of virtual worlds are ascertained. This research attempts to analyze virtual worlds from multiple ethical perspectives, starting with a broad phenomenological inquiry within which subsequent impact and discovery studies can be framed. Understanding the societal attitudes and moods that make technologies necessary and valuable help uncover the interests and constraints they embody as well as their potential impacts

The Principles of Esports Engagement: A Universal Code of Conduct

Section I of this article provides a brief background of esports and the ESA. Section II states the four principles of esports engagement announced by the ESA. Section III applies these four principles by reviewing specific problems that have plagued the video game and esports industries, such as toxicity (especially towards women and other minorities), swatting, cheating, and other malicious behavior. This article concludes by discussing implementation of a universal code of conduct in esports based on the principles of esports engagement

Playing with Identity. Authors, Narrators, Avatars, and Players in The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide

This article offers a comparative analysis of Davey Wreden’s The Stanley Parable (Wreden 2011 / Galactic Cafe 2013) and The Beginner’s Guide (Everything Unlimited Ltd. 2015) in order to explore the interrelation of authors, narrators, avatars, and players as four salient functions in the play with identity that videogames afford. Building on theories of collective and collaborative authorship, of narratives and narrators across media, and of the avatar-player relationship, the article reconstructs the similarities and differences between the way in which The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide position their players in relation to the two games’ avatars, narrators, and (main) author, while also underscoring how both The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide use metareferential strategies to undermine any overly rigid conceptualization of these functions and their interrelation

Analysing qualitative data from virtual worlds: using images and text mining

There is an increasing interest within both organisational and social contexts in virtual worlds and virtual reality platforms. Virtual worlds are highly graphical systems in which avatars interact with each other, and almost every event and conversation is logged and recorded. This presents new challenges for qualitative researchers in information systems. This paper addresses the challenges of analyzing the huge amounts of qualitative data that can be obtained from virtual worlds (both images and text). It addresses how images might be used in qualitative studies of virtual worlds, and proposes a new way to analyze textual data using a qualitative software tool called Leximancer. This paper illustrates these methods using a study of a social movement in a virtual world

Program Management Through the Lens of a Massive Multiplayer Online Gamer: A Pilot Study

Learning can occur through many media types. This thesis explores the possibility that guild leaders in the Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) video game World of Warcraft learn and use similar skills to those that professional program managers learn and use in the corporate world. I evaluate World of Warcraft literature, present guild member interviews and use online forums to compare gaming leadership attributes to attributes in the program manager competency model described by Partington, Pellegrinelli, and Young (2005). The results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that a bridge exists between these two leadership roles

Raising awareness on Archaeology: A Multiplayer Game-Based Approach with Mixed Reality

International audienceOur research deals with the development of a new type of game‐based learning environment: (M)MORPG based on mixed reality, applied in the archaeological domain. In this paper, we propose a learning scenario that enhances players' motivation thanks to individual, collaborative and social activities and that offers a continuous experience between the virtual environment and real places (archaeological sites, museum). After describing the challenge to a rich multidisciplinary approach involving both computer scientists and archaeologists, we present two types of game: multiplayer online role‐playing games and mixed reality games. We build on the specificities of these games to make the design choices described in the paper. The proposed approach aims at raising awareness among people on the scientific approach in Archaeology, by providing them information in the virtual environment and encouraging them to go on real sites. We finally discuss the issues raised by this work, such as the tensions between the perceived individual, team and community utilities, as well as the choice of the entering point in the learning scenario (real or virtual) for the players' involvement in the game