Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Online Games and Virtual Worlds
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The CrisisIn October of 2004, about a third of the way into my Uru study, a journalist from a local newspaper called me and wanted to know if she could interview me about my online research. What she wanted to do was sit with me while I did my ethnography and watch how I worked. She came over to my house one evening and watched me while I conducted a field visit, interviewing me as we went. A few weeks later, the article was published on the front page of the paper. Because this was the first public unveiling of the work, I decided it would be a good idea to send a link to Leesa, just so she would be aware that the article was published. The following events chronicle what happened next. I come into There.com one night and IM both Leesa and Lynn as I often do upon arrival. Neither responds. As soon as I appear in a group, people started acting strange or in some cases leaving. I am not sure if this has directly to do with me, or if they are on their way to some other event. Social nuances can be very hard to read in an online world, but there was definitely what in California we would call a “vibe.” Then I receive an IM from Wingman, another member who I’ve gotten to be good friends with, saying “Jeeze, what did you WRITE about us?” I mention to him that I had been trying to get hold of Leesa and Lynn but had not had any success. He tells me that he is “avoiding a meeting,” implying that’s where they all are. Later, he invites me on a hoverboat ride with some other Uru-Thereians. When I arrive, one of them, Ember, jumps off the boat. The others on the boat are baffled and ask where she went. I IM her and she respond with an expletive, extremely out of character for her and indeed for anyone in TGU. Then I receive an email from Raena via the Koalanet forum. I don’t know her well, but had some discussions and interviews with her when I first started working with the Uru refugees in There.com. The email reads: “Are you all right? Do you need anything?” I have no idea what she is talking about. A day or two later, I get an IM from her in Until Uru saying “tristan is really a nice guy…he’s not as bad as he sounds.” I finally connect with Raena in Until Uru. At first what she is saying makes no sense to me, but then in the course of the conversation, it comes out that she is referring to a conversation going on in the Koalanet forum. I immediately log onto the forum on my other machine to have a look, still logged into Until Uru. A new thread has been created called “Artemesia, the Researcher.” I have been checking in with the forums periodically but had not logged on since this thread was started. The first post is the interview from the newspaper. Based on what people are saying, it seems the article had both been posted on the forum and read aloud in-world, probably on the day I was getting strange reactions from people. Following the article is a firestorm of postings. The posts are flaming. They accuse me of “dumbing down” my research into sound bites for the journalist and distorting facts to support my own bias. Another says if she were my PhD professor, she’d send me back to the drawing board. One critique is that my “arms-length” approach has given me little insight into TGU, let alone on-line gaming, and that “my” article showed my ignorance of my subject. They refer to the article as my “report.” Suddenly all the pieces are fitting together. Most likely when I logged on the day everyone was acting strange was only moments after the article had been read. It is also apparent to me that many have somehow conflated the journalist’s interpretation of my comments, indeed reduced to newspaper-worthy sound bites, and my own words. Although most of the article is fairly neutral, I can understand some of her comments might seem offensive, such as: “Online, characters do crazy things that they might not do offline, like establishing the Uru subculture.” Naturally, this is not a direct quote, nor is it even paraphrased from something I actually said. One of the most scathing posts is a lengthy diatribe by Tristan, and I at once realized the meaning behind Raena’s words. In it, he refers to the article as my “so-called report” and describes feeling “Like we were under the microscope.” Although few are as strident as his, most are equally negative. Most devastating are posts from the people within TGU who I know fairly well, especially group leaders with whom I have by this time developed a rapport. A small handful also chimes in to say they really didn’t see what the big deal was (possibly because they recognized that it was not my actual report or my words). As I sit reading the posts, I feel like my life has come to an end. I realized that I have to find a way to amend the situation…not only to salvage my Ph.D. work but, more importantly, because I genuinely care about the TGUers. In spite of their feeling that I had held them at arms-length, which I now believe was an accurate critique, I feel profoundly concerned and connected with them and their well-being on a variety of levels. Still in Until Uru while reading this text, I immediately begin this process by making contact with Tristan, who happens to be in-world. He invites me to his relto, where we sit, along with D’evon and Petrova, for a long and talk about what happened. I explain to him that the article, by a journalist, is her interpretation of what she and I talked about, not my words, and certainly not my report. The outcome is positive. Tristan had been one of those TGU members who I did not know well before this event. Raena was right, however. He turns out to be a really nice guy. Due to what happened to his community, he is fiercely loyal and protective, and that is the root of his ire. As a result of this interchange, Tristan and I become and remain very good friends. I’ve also made a new friend along the way, Raena, who was very generous to stick her neck out and help me when most of her community was furious with me. I realize now how vital it is to set things right with Leesa and Lynn. So I send an email to Wingman telling him I want to somehow patch things up and could he please help me out. It’s clear that he really doesn’t want to get involved, but he reluctantly agrees anyway and sets up a meeting with Lynn and Leesa a few days later. The day of the planned meeting, by an unfortunate coincidence, I have a horrible day at work, precipitated in part by the article. Whoever said “no publicty is bad publicity” clearly has no idea what they’re talking about. In this case, regardless of whether the publicity itself was good or bad, the outcome seemed to be an increasing pile of negatives. I get home from work so beaten down that I end up missing the meeting with Leesa and Lynn. This only exacerbates the problem and now Wingman is furious with me and will no longer intervene on my behalf. *** It has been a hard week. I have tried to connect with Uru people for the past couple of days, and after several failed attempts, was not able to. This afternoon, I notice Lynn is on, so I IM her. She is working on building something but agrees to come and talk with me. We talk for quite some time, maybe an hour or more. I am glad we get a chance to talk, because most of what she tells me was not at all what I expected. I am also keenly aware that I am experiencing firsthand the very process I have observed others undergo, with Lynn taking the role of resolving conflict. Only this time, instead of watching the conflict from the outside, the conflict is me. She starts by saying she isn’t angry with me, and that I am free to say whatever I wanted about the community. I try to clarify that not all of what was in the article represented anything I said or would ever say. But there are other issues as well. The first and perhaps most surprising issue is that Leesa is angry with me because I don’t use voice. Lynn explains that a lot of TGU people cannot use a keyboard comfortably, due to a disability, repetitive stress disorder, arthritis or other conditions. I hadn’t realized this was such an important issue, but having just talked to Wingman, who admonished me about it as well, I had gone off to a private place and tried to get my voice working prior to meeting with Lynn. This shift in cultural conventions had slipped by me in part due to a technical problem. The study began before voice was introduced, and initially we communicated exclusively via text. Once voice was introduced, I had had difficulty getting it to work on my computer. As a result, I was unable to hear others’ voice chat, and since I hadn’t heard anyone talking about it, I did not realize it had become so important to the group. When she mentions this, I said absolutely I have no trouble at all with that. She says it’s okay to use text chat when doing interviews, but when I’m hanging around with the group, I should use voice. The second surprise was that Leesa doesn’t understand my research techniques. She has an educational background in anthropology and she feels I am “observing them from afar.” This really surprised me because I had been making a great effort to be as unobtrusive as possible, but I guess she is looking for a deeper level of engagement. I suppose this is a question/challenge from the perspective of anthropology that I need to investigate further, but since this is an “experiment” it may turn out that some variation of “going native” is exactly what is called for. The funny thing is that I feel drawn to the community in a personal way because their core values resonate with me. Lynn also recommends that I post on Koalanet, maybe starting with a response to the current thread, and then initiating another. I had been reading Koalanet fairly regularly but had never posted, so apparently this was also considered a sign of my arms-length approach to the group. She also says something else that is interesting: “You are always asking us questions, but we never get to ask you questions.” This may have been what people meant by saying they felt “under the microscope.” In some way I felt like I was supposed to let them do all the talking… but clearly the TGUers have a different idea. The conversation with Lynn is hard but very helpful. Lynn is wonderfully candid and direct. She is really a fantastic person and the more I get to know her the more I appreciate her. She told me she has a spinal condition and is in a wheelchair and that is why it is uncomfortable for her to type. She tries to introduce to some of the subtleties of etiquette issues around typing versus speaking. It’s okay, she says, to do my interviews with text. No, I say, I can take notes. Then she takes me to visit Uno and sort of interviews him for me, switching to text to do so. Even though she prefers speech, she will type on some occasions. In Uno’s case, she explains, he feels more comfortable with text, because he is both shy and not a native English speaker, so everyone accommodates his preference for typing. Download 0.83 Mb. Share with your friends:
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