Co-Creative Game Design in MMORPGs


Prax Patrick
2015 DiGRA '15 - Proceedings of the 2015 DiGRA International Conference

This paper proposes a model for co-creation of games as alternative media. The model uses actual play practices to understand the political and cultural influence co-creation might have in the relationship between the owner of the game and the players. The model requires for player creation of a text or communication infrastructure that changes the properties of the game from which play emerges not only for the player herself but for a considerable group of players who share a particular practice of play. This change has to be accomplished not only by playing the game but through changing how others play it in a distinct creative activity. It needs to have the potential to subvert or contest the original design of the game. This model is useful for understanding different kinds of player co-creation as well as the extend of co-creative game design and can be a tool for political work towards participatory cultural production in games.

 

Experts and Novices or Expertise? Positioning Players through Gameplay Reviews


Kirschner David Williams J. Patrick
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

In this paper we attempt to unpack the meanings of “expert” and “novice” in games research. A literature review reveals unreliable definitions and inadequate operationalization of these concepts. Nonetheless, researchers default to recruiting experienced players for games research projects to the exclusion of novices. We take an interactionist approach to argue for reframing the expert/novice dichotomy in terms of expertise, which all players possess. To support this empirically, we explore how players’ interactions with video recordings of their gameplay exhibited their expertise with digital games. We report on the analysis of the gameplay of one research participant who played 20 hours of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft over a six-week period in 2012. By involving the participant in focused discussions on selected recorded segments of his gameplay, called a gameplay review, we leveraged his insight and interpretations of his own activity. The gameplay review method creates reflexive space, positions the player as an expert in his or her own understanding, and draws on player expertise as interpretive data.

 

Elements of Social Action: A Micro- Analytic Approach to the Study of Collaborative Behavior in Digital Games


Williams J. Patrick Kirschner David
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

In this paper we articulate an empirical approach to the study of social action in digitallymediated contexts. Our approach extends Carl Couch’s theory of cooperative action, which is based on a set of “elements of sociation”: acknowledged attentiveness, mutual responsiveness, congruent functional identities, shared focus, and social objective. Three additional elements of sociation, adapted from studies of jazz performance, are added to the list of elements that characterize coordinated action: a formal theory of task performance, an informal theory of task performance, and synchronicity of individual actions. Using audio-visual recordings of gameplay, the minutiae of social action were captured and subjected to repetitive, reflexive and collaborative analysis in order to identify these patterns, including their potential causes and consequences. We use data from two games—the single-player real-time strategy game Eufloria and the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft—to illustrate how gameplay can be dissected into such elemental units.

 

Play as Transgression: An Ethnographic Approach to Queer Game Cultures


Sundén Jenny
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper is based on an ongoing ethnography of a GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) guild in the MMOG World of Warcraft. Drawing on queer/feminist theory, the argument concentrates on sexuality as resource for ‘transgressive play’. The notion of transgressive play is usually taken to mean play against the ‘ideal’ or ‘implied’ player of the game, of playing the game in ways not anticipated by design. For queer gamers, sexuality comes into play in ways that make visible the cultural norms of the ideal player – a player who is at least symbolically male and straight. This ethnographic work indicates that there are queer uses of game spaces that in significant ways make visible – and play around with – norms and expectations that are shaping what online game communities are, and what they could be.

 

Playing another Game: Twinking in World of Warcraft


Glas René
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper investigates one the more controversial player practices in MMORPG's, twinking, not in terms of value judgment but as a play from negotiating, working against and even transforming a MMORPG's intended structure and design. Making use of participatory ethnographic observations of one of World of Warcraft's particular forms of twinking, this devious behavior is discussed as being luxury play, dominance play, transformative play and standardized play, each form having its own influence on the way these virtual worlds are experienced by the player community and, notably, twinkers themselves.

 

Social Play? A study of social interaction in temporary group formation (PUG) in World of Warcraft


Eklund Lina Johansson Magnus
2010 DiGRA Nordic '10: Proceedings of the 2010 International DiGRA Nordic Conference: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players

One of the main components and reasons for the success of the Massive Multiplayer Online Games genre (MMOG) is that these games are seen as arenas for social interaction. The focus of this paper is the phenomenon of “Pick up Groups” (PUGs), a neglected aspect of online gaming. How is the social interaction structured in these temporary groups? The results of a participant observation study reveal a low level of social interaction between PUG players. Communication is held to a minimum and dungeons completed at high speed. Even in the event of downtime, interaction is rare. What little interaction has been observed is divided into instrumental and sociable interaction. A higher level of sociable interaction was found when several players from the same guild played together in the same group. But looking at greetings and goodbyes, normally used to acknowledge an ongoing social situation, we see that the social engagement in most PUGs is low. In summary, social interaction in PUGs, if any, is mainly instrumental, making these temporary groups unsocial game experiences; something not normally associated with group play in the MMOG genre.