Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Online Games and Virtual Worlds
Methodology: Multi-Sited Cyberethnography
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Methodology: Multi-Sited CyberethnographyWhat research strategy could possibly collect information on unpredictable outcomes? Social anthropology has one trick up its sleeve: the deliberate attempt to generate more data than the investigator is aware of at the time of collection. Anthropologists deploy open-ended, non-linear methods of data collection which they call ethnography; I refer particularly to the nature of ethnography entailed in anthropology's version of fieldwork (Arizpe 1996: 91). Rather than devising research protocols that will purify the data in advance of analysis, the anthropologist embarks on a participatory exercise which yields materials for which analytical protocols are often devised after the fact. In the field the ethnographer may work by indirection, creating tangents from which the principal subject can be observed (through 'the wider social context'). But what is tangential at one stage may become central at the next. (Strathern 2004, p.#) Marilyn Strathern’s description of the anthropological method, quoted by anthropologist Tom Boellstorff in the inaugural issue of Games & Culture (REF: Boellstorff 2006), resonates on a variety of levels with the larger project of the study of game cultures. In particular, her description suggests that ethnography itself is an emergent process, and thus is uniquely suited for studying “cultures of emergence” in online games and virtual worlds, and potentially elsewhere. The ludic environments of online games are characteristically open-ended, non-linear and participatory, unpredictable and labile, and thus require an agile and responsive approach to research. They are also characterized by lived experience, which is one of the central concerns of ethnography. Contemporary, post-colonial, post-structuralist cultural anthropology avoids arriving at cultural contexts with “hypotheses” or preconceived scenarios about what might occur and what it might mean. This is a particularly useful approach in the social studies of games because of their inherent unpredictability and emergent qualities. Ethnography has been widely adopted among researchers from computer-mediated communication, computer-supported collaborative work, game studies, and a range of other disciplines related to networked communication. Variants of this method have been used to study various aspects of network culture, including the World Wide Web, irc/chat, MUDs and MOOs, and blogs (Kendall 2002; Markham 2003; Miller and Slater 2000; Mnookin 1996; Nocera 2002; Paccagnella 1997; Reed 2005; Turkle 1995) as well as networked work environments (REFS: Dourish, Nardi, and??) “Virtual ethnography” has come into popular use in Internet studies, although I prefer the term “cyberethongraphy” due to the baggage that “virtual” inevitately carries with it. Christine Hine has described “virtual ethnography” as: …particularly provocative in exploring the ways in which the designers of technologies understand their users and the ways in which users creatively appropriate and interpret the technologies which are made available to them. Among the questions preoccupying workers in this field has been the extent to which values, assumptions and even technological characteristics built into the technologies by designers have influence on the users of technologies. A view of technology emerges which sees it as embedded within the social relations which make it meaningful. (Hine 1998, p.#) It is unfortunate that the design of these environments is so often overlooked, let alone their underlying values. Many of the articles featured in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, for instance, have little reference to the software or interfaces within which the social interaction being described takes place. Social network analysis, similarly, often lacks the sense of context that is vital to understanding games from a cultural perspective. Scholars of human interface design, in particular those who study networked collaborative workspace, devote far greater attention to software design. REFS (Bardram and Czerwinski 2005; Dourish 2001; Nardi and Kaptelinin 2006 in press). Approaches drawn from this discipline, such as Nardi’s studies of social interaction and collaboration in World of Warcraft, can help us better understand the specificities of how software serves as not only a context but a medium for social interaction (REF: Nardi). While there is a significant body of writing about the underlying values of software (Nissenbaum), as well as the cultures of the environments in which software is produced, (REF: Georgina Born, etc.), it has not been until fairly recently either the values or cultures of game-making have been a subject of study. (REFS: Losh, Flanagan and Nissenbaum, Mallaby, etc.) There is a great deal of room for further exploration of the game design process both in terms of methods used and the socio-economic and cultural contexts in which game design takes place. Borrowing from Marcus’ concept of “multi-sited ethnography,” which addresses the problem of anthropology in a global system (Marcus 1995), the method used here blends techniques from anthropology, sociology and “virtual ethnography” which I characterize as “multi-sited cyberethnography.” Although not in its original conception developed as a method for studying networked cultures, Marcus anticipated the applicability of multi-sited ethnography to media studies, which he describes as “among a number of interdisciplinary (in fact, ideologically antidisciplinary) arenas” that might find utility in such a concept (p#). Because of the nature of this study, concerning the migration of game communities between virtual worlds, Marcus’ multi-sited ethnography provides a means to, in his words, “examine the circulation of cultural meanings, objects and identities in diffuse space-time” and “…investigates and ethnographically constructs the lifeworlds of various situated subjects…” as well as “aspects of the system itself through the associations and connections it suggests among sites” (p.#). This last point is key because Marcus sees multi-sited ethnography as a means of understanding a “world system,” or in this case a “virtual world system,” encompassing the totality of networked games and virtual worlds on the Internet—what I am calling “the ludisphere.” Marcus’ framework of the complexity of anthropology within the world system, and especially the transmigration of peoples, cultures and artifacts across borders, is highly applicable to the project at-hand in which players are migrating across borders of “magic circles” in virtual worlds. It also allows for the multi-scaled approach of looking at both the individual players and the system as a whole, our repeating theme of looking at the “forest and the trees concurrently.” Thus, in a multi-sited ethnography, comparison emerges from putting questions to an emergent object of study whose contours, sites, and relationships are not known beforehand, but are themselves a contribution of making an account that has different, complexly connected, real-world sites of investigation. (Marcus 1995, p.#) In describing this method, Marcus outlines a number of approaches each of which entails “following” some aspect of culture across borders. The two being applied here are “follow the IP,” or intellectual property, in this case the Uru game and its emergent fan cultures, and “follow the people,” specifically, the migrations of players between different game worlds after the closure of the original Uru game. I would also add to this the methods of “following up” and “following leads,” which often entail taking on the very tangents to which Strathern alludes above, and are particularly relevant in a play space where much of the activity is unstructured and unscheduled. Not only do “cultures […] not stand still for their portraits,” they constantly change their orientation to their portraitists. (REF) This is particularly true in ethnographies of play, where the strategy of “following” requires a highly improvisational approach, and one which I would characterize as opportunistic: being in the right place at the right time and “going with the flow” of whatever is happening in the moment. Play is by nature spontaneous and unpredictable, requiring what Janesick describes as a choreographic approach (Janesick 2000) that is flexible, responsive, and playful. Playing and Performing Ethnography All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify. —Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959 Live in your world. Play in ours. —Sony Computer Entertainment, Marketing Campaign Slogan, 2003 Erving Goffman’s “dramaturgical” approach to sociology (Goffman, 1959) is experiencing a bit of a renaissance: at a historical moment when the role of audience and performer increasingly conflate. In his manifesto “Performance Ethnography,” on Norman Denzin invokes Goffman when he points out that: “We inhabit a performance-based, dramaturgical culture. The dividing line between performer and audience blurs, and culture itself becomes a dramatic performance” (Denzin 2003, p.#). To illustrate, Denzin draws our attention to the “nearly invisible boundaries that separate everyday theatrical performances from formal theatre, dance, music, MTV, video and film” (p.#) Yet Denzin somehow neglects to include in his analysis the medium that has, more than any other, has brought the conflation of performer, audience and state to its fullest realization. With proliferation of personal web sites, blogs, photosites and forums, YouTube and MySpace, as well as online games and virtual worlds, the Internet is perhaps the largest stage in human history. A number of digital media scholars have made this correlation (REF: Laurel, Virtual Theater, Murry), and networks have only enhanced the performative nature of computing. The Internet has transformed computers from singular participatory theaters to complex and populous discursive performative space where every participant is both performer and audience. Online games and virtual worlds, with their fantasy narratives and role-playing structures, are arguably the most dramatic instantiation of the digital stage. While all the real world may not be a stage, it can be argued that all virtual worlds most definitely are. Performance ethnography has been defined in two ways. The first, epitomized by the work of Turner and Schechner, entails the study and analysis of the role of performance and ritual in cultures. (REFS) This form of anthropology has typically embraced play and games as a subset of ritual and performance, although generally not as its focal point. In this regard, Victor Turner’s notions of the “liminal” and “liminoid” space are particularly apt. Both concepts, like Huizinga’s “magic circle,” occupy a space outside of the everyday. For Turner, the “liminal” space of ritual serves a kind of transitional gateway from one dimension or stage of life to another (such as between seasons or phases of life, or between the world of the living and the dead), while liminoid space serves as a respite between daily activities of production, characterized by leisure practices in industrialized, Western cultures {Turner, 1982 #62}. Ritual events such as online weddings taking place in virtual worlds suggest a blending of the liminal and the liminoid. They redefine virtual worlds as “space between,” as well as a site of transformation, as mentioned earlier and corroborated by other research. (Damer 1997; Dibbell 1998; DiPaola 1998-2005). (REF: Turkle, Bartle, Taylor, etc.) Turner and Schechner also collaborated to pioneer the second type of performance ethnography described by Denzin, the theatrical performance of ethnographic texts and narratives, often with audience participation (Manning 1988). Yet Denzin’s assertion that “performance approaches to knowing insist on immediacy and involvement” (Denzin 2003, p.#) suggests a third type of performance ethnography, that in which the ethnographic method of participant observation is itself framed as a performance. The study of game culture demands such an approach because its object, play, can only be adequately understood through immediate and direct engagement. Virtual worlds present us with a unique context for ethnographic research because they are inherently performative spaces. Unlike traditional ethnography, one cannot enter into an online game or virtual world without joining in the performance. There is no defined distinction between performer and audience; they are one and the same. Goffman’s concept of the performance of everyday life (Goffman 1959), especially in the context of public space (Goffman 1963), provides us with a starting point for understanding network game space as a kind of “everyday” co-performance. Thus when we talk about the phenomenon of “seeing and being seen,” we are also implicating the importance of both having and being an audience. As has already been discussed, this co-performative framework can be seen in myriad forms of participatory culture, from fan conventions to renaissance faires to the annual Burning Man festival, all of which blur the boundaries between Turner’s liminal and liminoid spaces. (REFS) Play contexts where behavior that might not ordinarily be sanctioned is not only allowed but lauded recall Goffman’s concept of “occasioned” behavior. (REF: Goffman 1963) Here, and in his essay on frame theory, Goffman points out that our roles are constantly shifting depending on the context. (REF) Similarly, when people enter into a “play frame,” they are literally and figuratively playing by a different set of social that allow them to take liberties with their roles and identities that they might not take in ordinary life. The entrée into this co-performative space is the creation of the avatar, a pseudo-fictional character, an alter ego. The first gesture of a player entering a virtual world is to invent a character name. This becomes the signifier of her situated identity going forward: the marker of reputation, the vehicle of her agency, and the representation of her cumulative actions. This character and even its appearance may change and be transformed over time, but the name remains the same. The player also crafts her initial visual representation in the world, given a kit of parts provided by the designers. This creative act, much like choosing a costume for a masquerade ball, is the first performative gesture, the scaffolding on which her future identity will be built. From this point forward, players both play and play with their emergent identities through an intersubjective process. Far from being singly a creation of the individual, the avatar is a mechanism for social agency; and the player’s identity-creation will emerge in a particular social context through a set of interactions with a particular group of people. Avatars do not exist in isolation, and through this intersubjective co-performative framework players may discover sides of themselves that may not have other avenues of expression in the other aspects of their lives, even sides of themselves of which they may not previously have been aware. At times, these forms of expression can be subversive, in both negative and positive ways. Part of what this study reveals is the relationship between the emergence of individual and group identity through the performance and practice of play. For in practicing the ethnography of play, we are playing ourselves. The ethnography is a mystery to be unraveled, and the identity we form in this context is at once a scientific discipline and an art practice. When he coined the term in 1984, science fiction author William Gibson characterized cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination” (REF). When we enter an online game or virtual world, we enter a space of the imagination, and as researchers, we take on the task of studying consensual hallucinations populated by real people, all of whom share in this performative and productive act. The ethnographer is no exception, and very quickly will find that she is drawn into the play space. Yet, she also stands outside the magic circle to some extent. As an observer, she must play the game, but at the same time, she plays a meta-game, the game of ethnography itself. And like her subjects, she never knows where this identity will take her. In spite of her objective stance, she is not immune to the very emergent processes she seeks to understand. Download 0.83 Mb. Share with your friends:
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