Prosthetic Metaphors, Rejection, and Representation in Games

On the de-familiarizing and re-ontologizing effects of glitches and glitch-alikes

Interactive digital experiences are understood as disclosing possibilities of being that can extend beyond the actual. The ways in which those experiences prompt their audiences to interactively apply and repurpose their cognitive faculties are constrained by the technical possibilities of the digital medium. This entails that the transformative activities invited and upheld by the computer depend on the functional affordances of digital technology as well as on the specific ways in which it errs and malfunctions. In this paper, I discuss non-catastrophic computer malfunctions (i.e. glitches) as potentially introducing aspects of surprise, ambiguity, and humor in the interactive experience of a virtual world. Computer glitches can also be intentionally designed to be a constitutive part of a virtual world and triggered deliberately; these types of glitches are used as expressive tools that can stimulate critical thought and make us suspicious of the stability and the validity of our world-views.

Towards an analysis of virtual realism

That VR media are realistic, or more realistic than other traditional forms of depictive media, has sometimes claimed to be a “common-sense” view (Murphy, 2017). Exactly what comprises the realism of virtual media is not entirely clear and needs careful analysis, however. This paper offers the beginning of a philosophical analysis of the concept of “virtual realism” as it applies to videogames and related media. The term turns out to have several different senses that though related, are materially distinct and of differing credibility. This paper will add depth and clarity to the growing literature on virtual reality media by providing analysis of a key concept that is currently undertheorized.

Fusing Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Virtual Worlds Behavioral Research

In this study, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) developed a quantitative-qualitative mixed methods research technique to investigate the extent to which real world characteristics of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) players can be predicted based on the characteristics and behavior of their avatars. SAIC used three primary assessment instruments to quantitatively rate videos of participant gameplay sessions, while GT produced detailed qualitative descriptions of avatar activities and behavior. Automated textual analysis was then used to identify conceptual themes across all of the descriptions produced by the qualitative team. Using the themes generated by the automated textual analysis in combination with the quantitative variables, we were able to demonstrate the efficacy of the hybrid method for the prediction of real world characteristics from avatar characteristics and behavior.

Regulating Virtual Worlds: Considering Participant-Driven Approaches

There are a number of pressing issues facing contemporary online environments that are causing disputes among participants and platform operators and increasing the likelihood of external regulation. A number of solutions have been proposed, including industry self-governance, top-down regulation and emergent self-governance such as EVE Online’s “Council of Stellar Management”. However, none of these solutions seem entirely satisfying; facing challenges from developers who fear regulators will not understand their platforms, or players who feel they are not sufficiently empowered to influence the platform, while many authors have raised concerns over the implementation of top-down regulation, and why the industry may be well-served to pre-empt such action. This paper considers case studies of EVE Online and the offshore gambling industry, and whether a version of self-governance may be suitable for the future of the industry.

Virtual Worlds in Asia: Business Models and Legal Issues

This paper uses two Asian case studies to illustrate the issues that developers of virtual worlds should address as they mature. The Korean case emphasizes the phenomenon of item trading. This involves emergent markets linking real world currency to items existing on company servers. The practice has resulted in controversial and unresolved legal issues. Companies such as ItemBay have grown to take advantage of these opportunities. The Chinese case emphasizes the transformation of business models over time as well as community control. The paper discusses feedback effects between broadband adoption and online games as well as issues such as Waigua, private servers, virtual property trade, and developer control. The experience of these countries shows that initial technical challenges for business models were overcome but new ones are beginning to emerge as the industry evolves. The new environment requires a change in the assumptions under which the game industry has operated.

Who owns my avatar? – Rights in virtual property

This paper presents a framework for discussing issues of ownership in connection to virtual worlds. We explore how divergent interests in virtual property can be mediated by applying a constructivist perspective to the concept ownership. The simple solutions offered today entail that a contract between the game producer and the gamer gives the game developer exclusive rights to all virtual property. This appears to be unsatisfactory. A number of legitimate interests on part of both producers and gamers may be readily distinguished. More complex distributions of rights would allow many of these interests to be consistently respected.

Boys’ Play in the Fourth Space: Freedom of Movements in a Tween Virtual World

Over a decade ago, Henry Jenkins wrote “‘Complete freedom of movement’: Video Games as gendered play spaces” in which he argued that video games provide a contemporary alternative to the out of doors freedom of movement boys historically accessed. Video games operate like a ‘fourth space’ (a term coined by Van Vliet), a muchneeded alternative to the adult-supervised and structured spaces of home, schools and playgrounds. These findings echoed the work of many developmental psychologists and others who have long understood that children’s access to play in particular spaces is gendered. We draw on Jenkins’ understanding of “freedom of movement” and developmental psychologists’ research into gender play and gendered play spaces to examine boys’ play within Whyville.net, a virtual world that had 1.5 million registered users between the ages of 8 and 16 at the time of our study. While we have a lot of quantitative information about boys’ play in video games and virtual worlds, we know little qualitatively about how they play. This stands in contrast to our nuanced understandings of why girls and women do or do not play, and how they play. Our goal was to extend Jenkins’ notion of “freedom of movement” into virtual worlds, which differ from console games in that players are responsible for constructing much of the content and they often lack a finite goal and story. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, we analyzed logfile data of 595 players involved in online gaming over a sixmonth period. Twenty-one players also participated in an afterschool gaming club with online and offline spaces. We looked at activity frequencies across 13 categories and analyzed logfile data qualitatively, supplementing our understandings with data from field notes, interviews, and video. Three case studies of boy players were developed, with each player representing a different level of expertise and participation (core, semi-core, peripheral). In extending “freedom of movement” into virtual worlds, we address boys’ navigation of virtual spaces as a process with geographical, personal and social dimensions. We also view these play spaces as gendered along three dimensions; mobility within the space, access to the space, and control over the space. An overview of the boys’ day-to-day activities in Whyville and discussion of their establishment of “home bases,” or spaces which they used as platforms for further exploration in Whyville, shows commonalities across boys’ play. These overviews are supplemented with in-depth analyses of boys’ activities in Whyville, which show nuanced differences connected to their varying levels of expertise. The fact that boy players have “home bases” where they settle for greater or lesser periods of time is compelling and contrasts with the perpetual motion of boys playing console video games. It also contrasts with previous studies of gendered play, which emphasized girls playing closer to home while boys ventured further afield. Along the social dimensions of boys play we found echoes of Jenkins’ characteristics of boys’ historical outdoors play and monster chasing in console video games. Finally, we found it difficult to compare the personal dimension because the possibilities offered to boys for gender play through avatar design activities are more expansive than their ability to choose from a set number of stock characters in console video games. The increased importance of body image in relation to masculinity was also evident in the boys’ attention to avatar design. We conclude that virtual worlds allow for freedom of movement, but in slightly different ways than console video games. Without a finite goal to their play, boys are able to place an increased emphasis on historical dimensions of boys play and create their adventures through interaction with one another and the space of the virtual world simultaneously, rather than through following a prescribed adventure.

‘What sort of Fish was it?’ How Players Understand their Narrative in Online Games

Online worlds have become a fundamental element of the virtual landscape. The development of MMORPGs has helped give credence to the idea that online spaces can support valid social communities. Having proved that these communities exist, scholars must now decide whether these communities are different to those in the 'real' world. What makes gaming communities stand out? This paper looks at how players contextualise their behaviour within game narratives. In particular, the ways that players manipulate the divergent narratives of each game, and the paradoxes that these structures create is investigated. MMORPGs are rife with social tension. Players appear to use a series of different social codes when they justify their behaviour, borrowing from different rules sets dictated by circumstances in the game according to their need. To contextualise this, this paper examines how players express and argue their ideas through their understanding of the game world and narrative. Like fan communities , players appropriate the MMORPG text for themselves, reinscribing it according to their own conceptions. However, whereas fans must do this away from their key source, in MMORPGs, players discuss the text as they enact it. Narratives are deliberately dynamic – purporting to give players agency to move at their own pace or to chose the routes and standpoints they take throughout each game. Thus fans actively work upon the text in a much broader context, and their discussions are often visible to large amounts of people within the game. If all players consider themselves as fans, then how does this affect the perception of the text itself?

Collaboration, Creativity and Learning in a Play Community: A Study of The University of There

This paper is the first in a series presenting findings from a yearlong mixed-methods study of the University of There (UOT), a player-run distributed learning community within the online graphical 3D world There.com. UOT is both a large-scale collaborative project and a learning environment within a virtual world originally designed as a social play space. The study employed in-world participant observation, in-world and face-to-face interviews, analysis of player-created virtual artifacts, study of extra-virtual and supplemental media (such as web sites, videos and forums), as well as a survey instrument, to understand the dynamics of this distributed, collaborative learning community. The study centered on the following research questions: - How does distributed play motivate creative collaboration and learning? - How is creative collaboration in game communities sustained over time? What motivates players to maintain engagement in both the long and short term? - How does the game software itself support or hinder collaboration and learning? How do players exploit, subvert or augment play software to support these activities? - What interaction tools and methods do players use to undertake creative collaboration and support learning and teaching? - What can practices of both collaboration and teaching within the play-driven context of the University of There teach us about distributed collaboration and learning in general? Can these principles be translated into other contexts? The study found the following: - Play creates forms of affinity, commitment and attention, three factors which, according to Nardi, enhance collaboration. - Staff and faculty reported that their volunteer contribution to the UOT was a source of happiness. Personal relationships, creative activities, and a love of learning were other motivating factors. - The play context provided staff and instructors with a framework in which to play with teaching, resulting in experimental “folk” methods, many of which reflected well-studied theories of learning in games. - In addition UOT’s being a peer-based constructionist learning community, the study concluded that There.com’s “culture of constructionism” makes it a learning environment by definition, since players must learn in order to create.