Fulfilling a promise
When I did my Honors thesis about Hamidon Raiding I think I promised to make my thesis available on this blog and then hesitated to do so because I worried that the project wasn't polished enough. Now that City of Heroes is about to close down I think I'd better hurry up and post it so that at the very least somebody gets to benefit from it. Please excuse typing, logic, and grammar errors I have gone through the text as much as humanly possible but there's only so much I can do. Also LiveJournal hated my footnotes so I had to do an emergency reformat in order to preserve them as endnotes. And it turns out I will have to cut it up into smaller sections
Part 1: Introduction, Literature Review, and Context
The Life Cytoplasmic:
Group Play and Community Dynamics in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games
by
Charles Grey
Presented to Dr Christine Jourdan
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of
the requirements for an Honours in Anthropology
at
Concordia University
2010
The first time I led a Hamidon raid I was terrified, my heart was racing, my stomach was in knots, and my hands were trembling. The raids I had attended over the past months, the research I had conducted, all of it had prepared me for this moment. I knew how raids worked, I knew what I had to do, and I had everything I needed to do it. As prepared as I was I knew I would only have one chance to get it right because raid leading is a sink or swim trial by fire. So I took a deep breath, I started typing out orders, and I led the raid.
Hamidon raiding is an activity that takes place in a virtual game world called City of Heroes wherein between thirty-five and fifty players gather to fight a monster called Hamidon. Virtual worlds are a kind of on-line community centred around a fictional (often graphically rendered) environment. There is a great deal of scholarly interest in what can be learned from virtual worlds. Some scholars have argued that virtual worlds provide an opportunity for reflection about reality, while others have argued that virtual worlds should be studied as societies. These perspectives are not as diametrically opposed as they might seem and scholars invariably end up adopting both, viewing them as objects of culture and subjects at the same time.
In this thesis I have taking an approach that borrows more from the latter perspective than the former, choosing to study Hamidon raiding as a cultural practice. Hamidon raiding is embedded in distinct social contexts unique to s specific virtual world. If we are going to accept that virtual worlds are societies then Hamidon raiding must have a social context. As I attended and participated in the raids I came to see Hamidon raiding as part of a larger whole. The question was then to attempt to figure out the precise relationship between the Hamidon raiding and the community behind it. In other words could Hamidon raiding be understood as a community practice?
The answer to this question is yes. As a practice Hamidon raiding was started by a community that it has both shaped and been shaped by. To explain what I mean will begin with a review of the relevant literature in order to present the concepts and themes central to my work. Once I have outlined the theoretical basis for my project I will then discuss the particularities of my field site and research methods. After these preliminaries I will present my data. I will begin by presenting by talking about what is most immediately observable and build on them to show how Hamidon raiding is equal part game and community event. As I present my data I will also analyze it first placing it into its context and then explaining its significance. I will then summarize my findings and conclude with a discussion of community, and the outcome of my first attempt at raid leadership.
I must begin this literature review with a caveat, this is not a review of all the literature written about the themes that I mention in this thesis. Instead I will simply discuss the works that I have found relevant for the purposes of this study. This is a choice I have made for because there is so much existent literature that a literature review making covering all possible works too onerous an undertaking for this project especially when one considers that literature is not my only source of data. I therefore start my literature review acknowledging that there are more things in heaven and earth than can be contained in this thesis. That being said I will present the literature I used as it pertains to the themes I discuss, meaning that instead of presenting them by discipline I present them as they become relevant to the discussion. In doing so my aim is to make what could be a rather technical discussion flow more organically.
The first thing to realize is that City of Heroes is an massively multi player on-line role playing game (MMORPG), that is to say a specific genre of game. It is crucial for me to define the term because the genre carries with it some far reaching implications about game play that need to be examined. As of yet there is no single widely accepted definition for the term so I will propose a partial definition for the term and supplement it as I see fit. The simplest way to imagine MMORPGs is as a "scenic chat room with a variety of interactive tasks." (Yee; 2005) Immersed in naturalistic three dimensional environments players (1) interact with each other mostly through text chat and templated actions and expressions called emotes (Yee, 2005). This partial definition is a good starting point for a discussion of what an MMORPG because it cuts through many of the vagaries of the MMORPGs while still conveying a sense of game play. The problem with this definition is that it is an oversimplification and thus glosses over many of the defining features of the MMORPG as a genre.
In an essay on identity in MMORPGs Miroslaw Filiciak (2003) estimated that for a game to be massively multi-player over a thousand people had to be able to play simultaneously. In fact Blizzard entertainment (2) has over nine million subscribers worldwide. In order to accommodate these large populations, game companies run multiple instances of the game world at the same time, these instances of the game world are called servers. Every game server is a copy of a game world and while some games have different types of servers the differences between servers is minimal (3). What is interesting here is not the nature or population limits of servers but that MMORPGs use multiple instances of a single world to accommodate their players.
Game worlds contain vast and diverse digitally rendered environments for the same reason that there are multiple instances of the same world, in order to accommodate the players. There is an important caveat to be made here, unlike instantiation (4) a mechanism whose purpose is to permit many players to engage in the same activity at the same time, the vastness and variety present in game worlds is intended to provide a sense of immersion to players (5) (Yee; 2005). The world is literally intended to draw players in, not only are they aesthetically pleasing but they are designed to engage players. Gameplay in an MMORPG is very open ended and is more akin to a tabletop role playing game. Like a pen and paper role playing game players create a character which they then use to interact with the world. Much like an RPG (6) these characters are described by statistics which then determine how the character interacts with the world (Filiciak; 2003). Like in an RPG, MMORPG players improve their avatars by gaining experience points which they use to improve their abilities or acquire new skills. In both MMORPGs and RPGs there is a level cap, that is to say a level beyond which a character can no longer progress. In any kind of RPG, MMO or otherwise getting to a character to the highest level possible is a possible goal for players but not a necessary one. It is a lack of necessary goals that makes play in MMORPGs so open ended. Programmers use a variety of reward systems to motivate players into playing game content but ultimately players are under no obligation to do so.
The most significant difference between pen and paper games and online computer games is that pen and paper games are played in sessions but that MMORPGs are persistent worlds. The game world is always running and does not depend on the presence or absence of any individual player. Events take place in real time in MMORPGs meaning that the world you log into is not the one you last logged out of. To paraphrase Heraclitus you can never log into the same persistent world twice. This also means that players can log in at any time of day or night and usually do so. It's important to remember that MMORPGs are games and are designed to be such. Every element of a game is chosen in order to serve some purpose whether it be aesthetic or functional. MMORPGs are designed, they are constructed to function a certain way. However, the game as designed and the game as played are two different games (Steinkuehler 2005). This dichotomy becomes more interesting when one considers the fact that MMORPGs are not finished products. In order to maintain player interest game companies update their product constantly attempting to work out any programming errors (bugs) but also adding new content to the games. This means that one of the hallmarks of MMORPGs is that they evolve as games and as worlds.
As a genre MMORPGs are spaces designed both for socialization and game play. They are persistent on-line worlds played by thousands if not millions of people simultaneously.
This in and of itself makes them inherently social because at any given moment it's safe to assume one is not alone in the world. As worlds they are vast interactive digital environments players navigate with an avatar. The open ended nature of play in MMORPGs and the intensity of their graphics give players the freedom combine to make them immersive environments. And finally because of the way MMORPGs are constantly evolving, it's not simply that the world is persistent but that there's always something new going on in the world.
Beyond the fact that MMORPGs are designed to favour group play they can also be seen as social spaces. Like chat rooms game worlds are places in which people can log on and talk with each other about things and the game serves as an excellent starting point for conversation. It's not for nothing that educational psychologist Constance A. Steinkuehler (2005) asserts that MMORPGs are"... persistent virtual worlds with emergent sociological cultural characteristics..." (Steinkuehler ;2005, p 10). Borrowing the term big-D Discourse Gee's discourse theory which refers to the different ways in which people integrate linguistic and non linguistic stuff in order to create meaning (Gee in Steinkuehler; 2005) Steinkuehler argues that players collaborate in order to transform game worlds from designed environments into places. As players participate in the game world they draw on their lived experience and knowledge in order to understand their actions as meaningful. This happens at both the individual and the collective level and in essence she argues that through shared practices players interpret the game world and make it meaningful.
Golub(2010), like Steinkuehler, associate culture in MMORPGs with shared meaning making. Where Steinkuehler argues that meaning is generated as players bring their experiences into the game contexts, Golub argues that meaning is generated as the game spills over into out of game contexts. Meaning for Golub (2010) is not generated by immersion in the game but rather in breaking down the visual realism of the game world. Realism in MMORPGs is not generated through immersive realistic environments but through social interactions. For Golub (2010) game worlds aren't social spaces at all, they are social contexts that are sites for the production of meaning. This may seem like a stark opposition to Steinkuehler's emergent cultures but it isn't. Both Steinkuehler(2005) and Golub (2010) argue that these meanings are generated in a broad variety of contexts and that game worlds are contexts in which meanings are produced. The difference is that Steinkuehler sees the worlds as meaningful when people bring culture into them and Golub (2010) views the meaning as produced when players bring the game out into the wider world.
Wherever meaning is produced, it is produced. Game worlds are not as simple static contexts for people to assign meaning to but are constantly evolving environments. Things happen in one part of the world that don't happen in others and even the kinds of interactions that take place in one part of a game world are not possible in others. Not to mention the fact that game servers, instanced copies of the virtual world, have diverse populations making virtual game worlds ensembles of contexts or places. This means one could argue that even within a game world meaning is created as it is shared beyond the context in which it was first established. At the same time players draw on their lived experience to situate themselves in the game making the flow of meaning bi-directional (Steinkuehler 2005); players situate themselves in the contexts game and the game in the contexts of their lives.
At this point it's probably a good idea for me to take one step back and talk about culture. After all this is an anthropology paper and anthropology is the study of human culture, so at some point I am going to have to define the term. Both Golub and Steinkuehler's visions of culture are based or influenced by Clifford Geertz so it seems that a Geertzian perspective on culture is a good place to start our discussion. Geertz (1973) defines culture as shared systems of meanings. Here culture is not a discrete entity which can be measured and quantified but rather the things that make people's habits and behaviours seem normal. Culture is a kind of social script which people draw on to make sense of the world. In essence culture is the symbol systems, the ways of understanding or interpreting things, that guide the way people live (Geertz; 1973). The role of the anthropologist is then to read and interpret this script, to look for the hidden connections which underpin even the most mundane daily practices (Keesing; 1987).
As people live together, as they go about their daily lives together they construct a story, a narrative that is meaningful to them. Culture isn't just about interpretation it's something that is performed. Every day people are not only navigating the symbol systems that comprise their culture they are enacting them. Through their performances people not only represent but also interpret and comment the cultural scripts that guide their lives. These constant re-enactments allows people to better understand themselves both as individuals and as a community. Wherever these meanings are produced what's important is that for them to be cultural they have to be organized into systems which people use to make sense of everyday life.
Culture is thus about shared meanings and it is embedded into everyday practices. This vision of culture is very neatly echoed in Gee's big D discourse theory, so much so that there is a sense in which Gee's big D Discourse (Gee in Steinkuehler; 2005) is indistinguishable from Geertz's (1973) definition of culture. Thus Golub and Steinkuehler both agree that MMORPGs can be understood as cultures, or at least sites where culture in Geertzian sense of the term is produced. Through shared practices communities create systems of meaning, they create culture, and they create social order. In other words as people play together they establish a system which makes certain kinds of behaviour (play in this case) better than others, defines right and wrong, and even establishes some sense of normalcy. This process isn't accidental or chaotic and it's helped along by the fact that most gamers are at the very least familiar with Western culture.
Social order is the ensemble of organizations, institutions, and practices that a group of people, a society, uses to maintain order and many scientists have studied the question over the years. In making the transition into virtual worlds the question one must ask oneself is where or how does social order fit into a video game. After all, these are designed experience. It is tempting to view the end-user licence agreements (EULAs) that players have to accept in order to accede to the game which contains a code of conduct as the natural law of the land but a careful study of the social dynamics of online game worlds presents a very different picture. In his study of the social dynamics of online games Dave Myers (2008) decided to approach the question of social order and came up with some very interesting results.
Drawing inspiration from Harold Garfinkel (1967) Myers approached the social order with the understanding that the best measure of social order can be seen in its violation. The approach Myers used called 'Garfinkeling' (7) which entails breaching norms in order to observe the consequences of that behaviour (Garfinkel in Myers; 2008). For Myers MMORPGs provided an ideal laboratory for Garfinkeling because he believed that the rules coded into the game by developers or established by the EULA acted as a form of natural law which he could use as a yardstick in order to measure player reactions. Like me Myers chose to study City of Heroes but he chose to study a very different aspect of the game as well as a very different methodology. Using a character named Twixt, Myers studied player versus player combat and figured out a way to violate the social norms of the game without violating the EULA (8). For violating the social norms established by the community Myers was ostracised.
Myers was insulted by players regularly, faced death threats, and when he had to take a leave of absence from the game players speculated that he had been convicted of pedophilia. Players refused to team with Myers and when they did it was in order to work against him driving him to mistrust players and eschew group play. Even though they could not get the game moderators (9) to enforce them players had the ability to enforce their own social norms and Myers was ultimately drummed out of the game (Myers; 2008). What Myers demonstrated was that the social order established by players often ran parallel to game design. Myers(2008) was playing the game as designed and yet these rules seemed to have little importance to the community at large. If the social order were founded on the code of behaviour and coded in rules which Myers viewed as natural law then he wouldn't have been vilified and ostracised. While this didn't entirely surprise Myers he was taken aback by the vehemence with which people detested him. This serves to underscore the dichotomy between play and design.
Myers isn't the only scholar who's work underlines this dichotomy, though it is to my mind one of the more controversial works in the field of game studies at the moment. In a 2009 article for an online journal called Game Studies: the international journal of computer game research sociologists Bart Simon, Kelly Boudreau, and Mark Silverman argued that it was only in looking at the experiences of gamers that we could begin to understand how video games were social. While MMORPGs are designed to facilitate group play Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman (2009) argued that "the specific forms of played sociality experienced by players may differ from the designed sociality intended by designers."(Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman; 2009) Though the researchers didn't deny that played sociality was influenced by game design they were sceptical of the notion that design determined play and in their article chose to call attention to the lived experiences of players as an object of study. More particularly Simon Boudreau and Silverman were interested in studying the life cycle of players using a biographical approach to get what they called 'player histories' (Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman; 2009)
Taking two player histories as examples Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman examined how players talked about their experiences in the game. In examining these biographies they discovered how complex interactions in game worlds can be but also how experience transcends specific contexts and must be understood as part of a larger whole. In other worlds Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman were confronted with the ways in which game contexts cannot be isolated from the other parts of a person's life. Not only does play spill out into other aspects of player's lives (Golub, 2010) but that players bring in cultural resources and experience from other contexts into the game (Steinkuehler, 2005). What's striking about the player accounts in the article is how different they are one from the other, and how even in the same game with the same basic designed social mechanisms experiences vary so much. Throughout the article what's noticeable is how players choose to use or ignore elements of the game as they see fit.
As with Myers (2008), Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman (2009) saw how players would appropriate the game design for their own use. In talking about socialization and social events it is then important to understand how players form identities and even relationships in online game environments. In a dissertation entitled Pixels, Parts & Pieces: Constructing Digital Identity Boudreau (2007) suggests that player identity is established in relationship to other elements of the game. More specifically Boudreau (2007)suggests some of these relationships are the relationship between player and avatar, between avatar and environment, between avatars and between players. In other words when players create their avatars and then use those avatars in order to interact with the virtual environment players they are establishing a relationship between themselves and their fictional alter egos (Boudreau; 2007). These relationships are what gets players to want to learn more about the game amassing knowledge from research in game forums and by talking with other players about the game. In addition to players relating to their avatars and avatars relating to the virtual environments players must learn to play with others. In doing so they need to figure out how two different kinds of characters can work together to best effect and as players work this out they socialize. Again we see how it is through shared practices that players co construct systems of in game knowledge (Steinkuehler; 2005). Again we see how play is meaningful as it extends beyond the confines of the game world (Golub; 2010). We also see an understanding of play a situated in Boudreau's work that echoes Steinkuehler's (2005) assertions and is echoed in Golub (2010).
If I'm going to talk about play, however I think it only fair that I propose a definition for the term.
Taking a cue from Stephen Miller's 1973 article "Ends, Means, and Galumphing: Some Leitmotifs of Play" I believe that play has to be understood as highly contextual. In looking at play Miller(1973) argued that while we all have some intuitive grasp of the term that doesn't lend itself to articulation. In his article Miller set out to look at different activities classified as play in order to see if there was some justification in talking about play as a category of behaviour. Miller examines the behaviours of human and non human primates in an attempt to establish a definition for the term play. In doing so Miller (1973) argues that if play is a category it isn't because of the specific activities involved in any particular kind of play but rather that play is a context. Play is thus less about a particular activity and more about one's approach, Miller (1973) views play as emphasizing process over results and us defined by "a relative autonomy of means."(Miller; 1973, p 92) It is not that the ends are unimportant but that play is as much if not more about the game itself then any outcome. For Miller play is ultimately "activity... in which the center of interest is process rather than goal." (Miller; 1973, p 97). Play is thus highly contextual or situated, and intimately linked with experience.
In an article about play among persons with severe developmental disabilities Gleason (1990) argued that observing how residents at a state school for the mentally retarded behaved outside of clinical settings could provide a more complete understanding of their abilities. For Gleason it was an interaction between two residents which made him aware of the limits of the clinical gaze that is often used to diagnose and even define them. Watching how the residents played together when nobody was there to structure the activity provided Gleason (1990) with unexpected insight into their abilities. In the same vein Golub (2010) argued that by playing sometimes up to six hours a day with the same group of people he came to know his fellow players in ways that people in their real lives might not. It's not that play provides a unique insight into a person's soul but rather that through play both Gleason and Golub got a chance to see things from the perspective of another. Something that begins when one takes seriously the things people say about themselves or at least when one tries to see things from their point of view.
For Gleason (1990) it was clear that the residents of the special school generally displayed a range of abilities above and beyond the assessments found in institution records. In assessing the abilities of residents in clinical settings the specialists at the school could only evaluate what they did in those settings and in doing so they discounted the experiences and perspectives of the people they were trying to help. Ultimately what Gleason found was that to assess a person's abilities to their truest extent one must see how they extend beyond any particular setting or context. The clinical descriptions that the professionals used reduced the experiences of residents to clinical facts and it is this which Gleason found problematic. Assessing the residents as people for Gleason (1990) meant moving beyond labels and trying to understand how they experienced their disorders. More generally it implies that attempting to study human behaviour means figuring out how people how people understand and experience those activities.
If we can understand play as situated, as meaningful in relation to other social contexts, and experiential, meaningful first and foremost as a experience, we still have little in terms of a practical way to approach the phenomena at hand. This is where the notion of goals can come in handy. Nasir (2000) argues that goals mediate between individual sense making processes and social and cultural ones. On other words goals are structured by the practices one studies, the resources at hand, and the interactions that occur in the confines of the practice. Applying this approach to the ways that African American students understand basketball statistics Nasir (2000) showed how as the underlying purpose behind basketball teams shifted so did the ways in which players evaluated their statistics. In essence "...different social purposes and relationships and access to resources..." transformed people's practices. We're not talking about the goals of the game of Basketball which don't change but the reasons why players would join school basketball teams. At the junior level players were in it for fun but at every level of practice there was less room for casual players. Ultimately the goals were embedded into the practice and it was through shared practice that players internalized those goals or didn't.
For Steinkuehler (2005) the establishment of a frame of reference, a body of knowledge and related practices means the formation of a linguistic community. People come together in a virtual world and they talk about how to play, what's right, what's wrong, and why. While it is true that communities in online games bond through chat, I believe that Steinkuehler's assessment of online communities as linguistic is imprecise. The communities Steinkuehler talks about in her work are linguistic in the same sense that all communities are linguistic, in that events and practices are meaningful when they are discussed by members. This is holds true about all communities and it doesn't mean that all communities are speech communities. To quote Marcyliena Morgan (2000) "...a speech community is constructed around the knowledge of communicative practices..." and while communities in MMORPGs must develop a lexicon of terms they are based more on (virtual) material practices than communicative ones. In essence I'm arguing that people establish bodies of knowledge about how to play the game rather than how to communicate with other players, as Steinkuehler implies in her use of the term linguistic community (10).
Steinkuehler's linguistic communities ultimately have more in common with Wenger's communities of practice than they do any linguistic community. Wenger defines communities of practice as groups of people with a common set of problems, goals, or concerns who seek to deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis. Through their participation in communities of practice members acquire the knowledge and skills that have been honed by the group. The community itself is centered on the management of knowledge as well as the shared practices through which this knowledge is created and disseminated. In essence communities of practice form spontaneously around a specific projects, they work to establish a body of knowledge about the practices entailed by their project.
This knowledge can be thought of as a culture in the Geertzian sense of the term because community members refer to it draw on it in order to make sense of the group's practices (Geertz ; 1973). In other words communities of practice don't simply amass knowledge about a subject they also elaborate ways of thinking about and understanding the subject at hand. However, Communities of practice are evanescent as membership is predicated on the relevance of the community's practices to the lives of its members. In addition to this the members of a community of practice are drawn together by a common interest, membership is defined by participation. And it is both the evanescent nature of these communities and their open membership policy that make them ideal for understanding online communities.
Through shared practices people form a community, they construct systems of knowledge and a narrative that is meaningful to them (Geertz; 1973). Culture isn't just about interpretation, it's about performance. Every day people are not only navigating the symbol systems that comprise their culture they are enacting them. Through their performances people not only represent but also interpret and comment the cultural scripts that guide their lives. These constant re-enactments allows people to better understand themselves both as individuals and as a community (Geertz 1973). And these performances as Aristotle put it " describe what has happened, but the kinds of things that could happen..." (Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry) and in doing so they act as interpretations of the things they are supposed to represent. Culture thus comes with built in interpretations and it is the role of the anthropologist to figure out how to read them.(Geertz; 1973, p. 453)
A Hamidon raid is an event in an MMORPG called City of Heroes at which between thirty-five and fifty heroes gather to face a monster called Hamidon. Once a brilliant but overly zealous scientist named Hamidon Passalima, the Hamidon has transformed himself into a god like being through dark magic and genetic manipulation. The Hamidon is the creator of a group of plant and earth based monsters known as the Devouring Earth who seek to destroy human kind. At least that's what game lore tells us about Hamidon. In (virtual) reality the Hamidon is a unicellular organism who looks like a big blob of Jell-O. Like most elements of play in an MMORPG Hamidon raiding comes with a built in reward system and the rewards that a player can get for raiding are among the most coveted in the game.
City of Heroes is a hero themed MMORPG. Instead of typcial classes like wizard and unicorn players pick a heroic archetype. In addition to this City of Heroes is different from most MMORPGs out there because it doesn't use an equipment system. In a fantasy themed MMORPG you make wizards, paladins, and elves and spend your time equipping them with gear. In City of Heroes instead of gear players use a system of enhancements where they enhance their powers. Like all MMORPGs though players make avatars which they use to interact with the world. As they participate in the game they gain more powers and the player can further customise his or her character. It's also important to note that City of Heroes has a more mature and tolerant player base. At the same time that World of Warcraft was attempting to ban gay player organizations or guilds (11), City of Heroes game company representatives would attend events organized by LGBT player associations. In World of Warcraft it's commonplace for people insult strangers by calling them fags (12), it's less common for City of Heroes players to be so insensitive.
Part 1: Introduction, Literature Review, and Context
The Life Cytoplasmic:
Group Play and Community Dynamics in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games
by
Charles Grey
Presented to Dr Christine Jourdan
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of
the requirements for an Honours in Anthropology
at
Concordia University
2010
The first time I led a Hamidon raid I was terrified, my heart was racing, my stomach was in knots, and my hands were trembling. The raids I had attended over the past months, the research I had conducted, all of it had prepared me for this moment. I knew how raids worked, I knew what I had to do, and I had everything I needed to do it. As prepared as I was I knew I would only have one chance to get it right because raid leading is a sink or swim trial by fire. So I took a deep breath, I started typing out orders, and I led the raid.
Hamidon raiding is an activity that takes place in a virtual game world called City of Heroes wherein between thirty-five and fifty players gather to fight a monster called Hamidon. Virtual worlds are a kind of on-line community centred around a fictional (often graphically rendered) environment. There is a great deal of scholarly interest in what can be learned from virtual worlds. Some scholars have argued that virtual worlds provide an opportunity for reflection about reality, while others have argued that virtual worlds should be studied as societies. These perspectives are not as diametrically opposed as they might seem and scholars invariably end up adopting both, viewing them as objects of culture and subjects at the same time.
In this thesis I have taking an approach that borrows more from the latter perspective than the former, choosing to study Hamidon raiding as a cultural practice. Hamidon raiding is embedded in distinct social contexts unique to s specific virtual world. If we are going to accept that virtual worlds are societies then Hamidon raiding must have a social context. As I attended and participated in the raids I came to see Hamidon raiding as part of a larger whole. The question was then to attempt to figure out the precise relationship between the Hamidon raiding and the community behind it. In other words could Hamidon raiding be understood as a community practice?
The answer to this question is yes. As a practice Hamidon raiding was started by a community that it has both shaped and been shaped by. To explain what I mean will begin with a review of the relevant literature in order to present the concepts and themes central to my work. Once I have outlined the theoretical basis for my project I will then discuss the particularities of my field site and research methods. After these preliminaries I will present my data. I will begin by presenting by talking about what is most immediately observable and build on them to show how Hamidon raiding is equal part game and community event. As I present my data I will also analyze it first placing it into its context and then explaining its significance. I will then summarize my findings and conclude with a discussion of community, and the outcome of my first attempt at raid leadership.
I must begin this literature review with a caveat, this is not a review of all the literature written about the themes that I mention in this thesis. Instead I will simply discuss the works that I have found relevant for the purposes of this study. This is a choice I have made for because there is so much existent literature that a literature review making covering all possible works too onerous an undertaking for this project especially when one considers that literature is not my only source of data. I therefore start my literature review acknowledging that there are more things in heaven and earth than can be contained in this thesis. That being said I will present the literature I used as it pertains to the themes I discuss, meaning that instead of presenting them by discipline I present them as they become relevant to the discussion. In doing so my aim is to make what could be a rather technical discussion flow more organically.
The first thing to realize is that City of Heroes is an massively multi player on-line role playing game (MMORPG), that is to say a specific genre of game. It is crucial for me to define the term because the genre carries with it some far reaching implications about game play that need to be examined. As of yet there is no single widely accepted definition for the term so I will propose a partial definition for the term and supplement it as I see fit. The simplest way to imagine MMORPGs is as a "scenic chat room with a variety of interactive tasks." (Yee; 2005) Immersed in naturalistic three dimensional environments players (1) interact with each other mostly through text chat and templated actions and expressions called emotes (Yee, 2005). This partial definition is a good starting point for a discussion of what an MMORPG because it cuts through many of the vagaries of the MMORPGs while still conveying a sense of game play. The problem with this definition is that it is an oversimplification and thus glosses over many of the defining features of the MMORPG as a genre.
In an essay on identity in MMORPGs Miroslaw Filiciak (2003) estimated that for a game to be massively multi-player over a thousand people had to be able to play simultaneously. In fact Blizzard entertainment (2) has over nine million subscribers worldwide. In order to accommodate these large populations, game companies run multiple instances of the game world at the same time, these instances of the game world are called servers. Every game server is a copy of a game world and while some games have different types of servers the differences between servers is minimal (3). What is interesting here is not the nature or population limits of servers but that MMORPGs use multiple instances of a single world to accommodate their players.
Game worlds contain vast and diverse digitally rendered environments for the same reason that there are multiple instances of the same world, in order to accommodate the players. There is an important caveat to be made here, unlike instantiation (4) a mechanism whose purpose is to permit many players to engage in the same activity at the same time, the vastness and variety present in game worlds is intended to provide a sense of immersion to players (5) (Yee; 2005). The world is literally intended to draw players in, not only are they aesthetically pleasing but they are designed to engage players. Gameplay in an MMORPG is very open ended and is more akin to a tabletop role playing game. Like a pen and paper role playing game players create a character which they then use to interact with the world. Much like an RPG (6) these characters are described by statistics which then determine how the character interacts with the world (Filiciak; 2003). Like in an RPG, MMORPG players improve their avatars by gaining experience points which they use to improve their abilities or acquire new skills. In both MMORPGs and RPGs there is a level cap, that is to say a level beyond which a character can no longer progress. In any kind of RPG, MMO or otherwise getting to a character to the highest level possible is a possible goal for players but not a necessary one. It is a lack of necessary goals that makes play in MMORPGs so open ended. Programmers use a variety of reward systems to motivate players into playing game content but ultimately players are under no obligation to do so.
The most significant difference between pen and paper games and online computer games is that pen and paper games are played in sessions but that MMORPGs are persistent worlds. The game world is always running and does not depend on the presence or absence of any individual player. Events take place in real time in MMORPGs meaning that the world you log into is not the one you last logged out of. To paraphrase Heraclitus you can never log into the same persistent world twice. This also means that players can log in at any time of day or night and usually do so. It's important to remember that MMORPGs are games and are designed to be such. Every element of a game is chosen in order to serve some purpose whether it be aesthetic or functional. MMORPGs are designed, they are constructed to function a certain way. However, the game as designed and the game as played are two different games (Steinkuehler 2005). This dichotomy becomes more interesting when one considers the fact that MMORPGs are not finished products. In order to maintain player interest game companies update their product constantly attempting to work out any programming errors (bugs) but also adding new content to the games. This means that one of the hallmarks of MMORPGs is that they evolve as games and as worlds.
As a genre MMORPGs are spaces designed both for socialization and game play. They are persistent on-line worlds played by thousands if not millions of people simultaneously.
This in and of itself makes them inherently social because at any given moment it's safe to assume one is not alone in the world. As worlds they are vast interactive digital environments players navigate with an avatar. The open ended nature of play in MMORPGs and the intensity of their graphics give players the freedom combine to make them immersive environments. And finally because of the way MMORPGs are constantly evolving, it's not simply that the world is persistent but that there's always something new going on in the world.
Beyond the fact that MMORPGs are designed to favour group play they can also be seen as social spaces. Like chat rooms game worlds are places in which people can log on and talk with each other about things and the game serves as an excellent starting point for conversation. It's not for nothing that educational psychologist Constance A. Steinkuehler (2005) asserts that MMORPGs are"... persistent virtual worlds with emergent sociological cultural characteristics..." (Steinkuehler ;2005, p 10). Borrowing the term big-D Discourse Gee's discourse theory which refers to the different ways in which people integrate linguistic and non linguistic stuff in order to create meaning (Gee in Steinkuehler; 2005) Steinkuehler argues that players collaborate in order to transform game worlds from designed environments into places. As players participate in the game world they draw on their lived experience and knowledge in order to understand their actions as meaningful. This happens at both the individual and the collective level and in essence she argues that through shared practices players interpret the game world and make it meaningful.
Golub(2010), like Steinkuehler, associate culture in MMORPGs with shared meaning making. Where Steinkuehler argues that meaning is generated as players bring their experiences into the game contexts, Golub argues that meaning is generated as the game spills over into out of game contexts. Meaning for Golub (2010) is not generated by immersion in the game but rather in breaking down the visual realism of the game world. Realism in MMORPGs is not generated through immersive realistic environments but through social interactions. For Golub (2010) game worlds aren't social spaces at all, they are social contexts that are sites for the production of meaning. This may seem like a stark opposition to Steinkuehler's emergent cultures but it isn't. Both Steinkuehler(2005) and Golub (2010) argue that these meanings are generated in a broad variety of contexts and that game worlds are contexts in which meanings are produced. The difference is that Steinkuehler sees the worlds as meaningful when people bring culture into them and Golub (2010) views the meaning as produced when players bring the game out into the wider world.
Wherever meaning is produced, it is produced. Game worlds are not as simple static contexts for people to assign meaning to but are constantly evolving environments. Things happen in one part of the world that don't happen in others and even the kinds of interactions that take place in one part of a game world are not possible in others. Not to mention the fact that game servers, instanced copies of the virtual world, have diverse populations making virtual game worlds ensembles of contexts or places. This means one could argue that even within a game world meaning is created as it is shared beyond the context in which it was first established. At the same time players draw on their lived experience to situate themselves in the game making the flow of meaning bi-directional (Steinkuehler 2005); players situate themselves in the contexts game and the game in the contexts of their lives.
At this point it's probably a good idea for me to take one step back and talk about culture. After all this is an anthropology paper and anthropology is the study of human culture, so at some point I am going to have to define the term. Both Golub and Steinkuehler's visions of culture are based or influenced by Clifford Geertz so it seems that a Geertzian perspective on culture is a good place to start our discussion. Geertz (1973) defines culture as shared systems of meanings. Here culture is not a discrete entity which can be measured and quantified but rather the things that make people's habits and behaviours seem normal. Culture is a kind of social script which people draw on to make sense of the world. In essence culture is the symbol systems, the ways of understanding or interpreting things, that guide the way people live (Geertz; 1973). The role of the anthropologist is then to read and interpret this script, to look for the hidden connections which underpin even the most mundane daily practices (Keesing; 1987).
As people live together, as they go about their daily lives together they construct a story, a narrative that is meaningful to them. Culture isn't just about interpretation it's something that is performed. Every day people are not only navigating the symbol systems that comprise their culture they are enacting them. Through their performances people not only represent but also interpret and comment the cultural scripts that guide their lives. These constant re-enactments allows people to better understand themselves both as individuals and as a community. Wherever these meanings are produced what's important is that for them to be cultural they have to be organized into systems which people use to make sense of everyday life.
Culture is thus about shared meanings and it is embedded into everyday practices. This vision of culture is very neatly echoed in Gee's big D discourse theory, so much so that there is a sense in which Gee's big D Discourse (Gee in Steinkuehler; 2005) is indistinguishable from Geertz's (1973) definition of culture. Thus Golub and Steinkuehler both agree that MMORPGs can be understood as cultures, or at least sites where culture in Geertzian sense of the term is produced. Through shared practices communities create systems of meaning, they create culture, and they create social order. In other words as people play together they establish a system which makes certain kinds of behaviour (play in this case) better than others, defines right and wrong, and even establishes some sense of normalcy. This process isn't accidental or chaotic and it's helped along by the fact that most gamers are at the very least familiar with Western culture.
Social order is the ensemble of organizations, institutions, and practices that a group of people, a society, uses to maintain order and many scientists have studied the question over the years. In making the transition into virtual worlds the question one must ask oneself is where or how does social order fit into a video game. After all, these are designed experience. It is tempting to view the end-user licence agreements (EULAs) that players have to accept in order to accede to the game which contains a code of conduct as the natural law of the land but a careful study of the social dynamics of online game worlds presents a very different picture. In his study of the social dynamics of online games Dave Myers (2008) decided to approach the question of social order and came up with some very interesting results.
Drawing inspiration from Harold Garfinkel (1967) Myers approached the social order with the understanding that the best measure of social order can be seen in its violation. The approach Myers used called 'Garfinkeling' (7) which entails breaching norms in order to observe the consequences of that behaviour (Garfinkel in Myers; 2008). For Myers MMORPGs provided an ideal laboratory for Garfinkeling because he believed that the rules coded into the game by developers or established by the EULA acted as a form of natural law which he could use as a yardstick in order to measure player reactions. Like me Myers chose to study City of Heroes but he chose to study a very different aspect of the game as well as a very different methodology. Using a character named Twixt, Myers studied player versus player combat and figured out a way to violate the social norms of the game without violating the EULA (8). For violating the social norms established by the community Myers was ostracised.
Myers was insulted by players regularly, faced death threats, and when he had to take a leave of absence from the game players speculated that he had been convicted of pedophilia. Players refused to team with Myers and when they did it was in order to work against him driving him to mistrust players and eschew group play. Even though they could not get the game moderators (9) to enforce them players had the ability to enforce their own social norms and Myers was ultimately drummed out of the game (Myers; 2008). What Myers demonstrated was that the social order established by players often ran parallel to game design. Myers(2008) was playing the game as designed and yet these rules seemed to have little importance to the community at large. If the social order were founded on the code of behaviour and coded in rules which Myers viewed as natural law then he wouldn't have been vilified and ostracised. While this didn't entirely surprise Myers he was taken aback by the vehemence with which people detested him. This serves to underscore the dichotomy between play and design.
Myers isn't the only scholar who's work underlines this dichotomy, though it is to my mind one of the more controversial works in the field of game studies at the moment. In a 2009 article for an online journal called Game Studies: the international journal of computer game research sociologists Bart Simon, Kelly Boudreau, and Mark Silverman argued that it was only in looking at the experiences of gamers that we could begin to understand how video games were social. While MMORPGs are designed to facilitate group play Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman (2009) argued that "the specific forms of played sociality experienced by players may differ from the designed sociality intended by designers."(Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman; 2009) Though the researchers didn't deny that played sociality was influenced by game design they were sceptical of the notion that design determined play and in their article chose to call attention to the lived experiences of players as an object of study. More particularly Simon Boudreau and Silverman were interested in studying the life cycle of players using a biographical approach to get what they called 'player histories' (Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman; 2009)
Taking two player histories as examples Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman examined how players talked about their experiences in the game. In examining these biographies they discovered how complex interactions in game worlds can be but also how experience transcends specific contexts and must be understood as part of a larger whole. In other worlds Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman were confronted with the ways in which game contexts cannot be isolated from the other parts of a person's life. Not only does play spill out into other aspects of player's lives (Golub, 2010) but that players bring in cultural resources and experience from other contexts into the game (Steinkuehler, 2005). What's striking about the player accounts in the article is how different they are one from the other, and how even in the same game with the same basic designed social mechanisms experiences vary so much. Throughout the article what's noticeable is how players choose to use or ignore elements of the game as they see fit.
As with Myers (2008), Simon, Boudreau, and Silverman (2009) saw how players would appropriate the game design for their own use. In talking about socialization and social events it is then important to understand how players form identities and even relationships in online game environments. In a dissertation entitled Pixels, Parts & Pieces: Constructing Digital Identity Boudreau (2007) suggests that player identity is established in relationship to other elements of the game. More specifically Boudreau (2007)suggests some of these relationships are the relationship between player and avatar, between avatar and environment, between avatars and between players. In other words when players create their avatars and then use those avatars in order to interact with the virtual environment players they are establishing a relationship between themselves and their fictional alter egos (Boudreau; 2007). These relationships are what gets players to want to learn more about the game amassing knowledge from research in game forums and by talking with other players about the game. In addition to players relating to their avatars and avatars relating to the virtual environments players must learn to play with others. In doing so they need to figure out how two different kinds of characters can work together to best effect and as players work this out they socialize. Again we see how it is through shared practices that players co construct systems of in game knowledge (Steinkuehler; 2005). Again we see how play is meaningful as it extends beyond the confines of the game world (Golub; 2010). We also see an understanding of play a situated in Boudreau's work that echoes Steinkuehler's (2005) assertions and is echoed in Golub (2010).
If I'm going to talk about play, however I think it only fair that I propose a definition for the term.
Taking a cue from Stephen Miller's 1973 article "Ends, Means, and Galumphing: Some Leitmotifs of Play" I believe that play has to be understood as highly contextual. In looking at play Miller(1973) argued that while we all have some intuitive grasp of the term that doesn't lend itself to articulation. In his article Miller set out to look at different activities classified as play in order to see if there was some justification in talking about play as a category of behaviour. Miller examines the behaviours of human and non human primates in an attempt to establish a definition for the term play. In doing so Miller (1973) argues that if play is a category it isn't because of the specific activities involved in any particular kind of play but rather that play is a context. Play is thus less about a particular activity and more about one's approach, Miller (1973) views play as emphasizing process over results and us defined by "a relative autonomy of means."(Miller; 1973, p 92) It is not that the ends are unimportant but that play is as much if not more about the game itself then any outcome. For Miller play is ultimately "activity... in which the center of interest is process rather than goal." (Miller; 1973, p 97). Play is thus highly contextual or situated, and intimately linked with experience.
In an article about play among persons with severe developmental disabilities Gleason (1990) argued that observing how residents at a state school for the mentally retarded behaved outside of clinical settings could provide a more complete understanding of their abilities. For Gleason it was an interaction between two residents which made him aware of the limits of the clinical gaze that is often used to diagnose and even define them. Watching how the residents played together when nobody was there to structure the activity provided Gleason (1990) with unexpected insight into their abilities. In the same vein Golub (2010) argued that by playing sometimes up to six hours a day with the same group of people he came to know his fellow players in ways that people in their real lives might not. It's not that play provides a unique insight into a person's soul but rather that through play both Gleason and Golub got a chance to see things from the perspective of another. Something that begins when one takes seriously the things people say about themselves or at least when one tries to see things from their point of view.
For Gleason (1990) it was clear that the residents of the special school generally displayed a range of abilities above and beyond the assessments found in institution records. In assessing the abilities of residents in clinical settings the specialists at the school could only evaluate what they did in those settings and in doing so they discounted the experiences and perspectives of the people they were trying to help. Ultimately what Gleason found was that to assess a person's abilities to their truest extent one must see how they extend beyond any particular setting or context. The clinical descriptions that the professionals used reduced the experiences of residents to clinical facts and it is this which Gleason found problematic. Assessing the residents as people for Gleason (1990) meant moving beyond labels and trying to understand how they experienced their disorders. More generally it implies that attempting to study human behaviour means figuring out how people how people understand and experience those activities.
If we can understand play as situated, as meaningful in relation to other social contexts, and experiential, meaningful first and foremost as a experience, we still have little in terms of a practical way to approach the phenomena at hand. This is where the notion of goals can come in handy. Nasir (2000) argues that goals mediate between individual sense making processes and social and cultural ones. On other words goals are structured by the practices one studies, the resources at hand, and the interactions that occur in the confines of the practice. Applying this approach to the ways that African American students understand basketball statistics Nasir (2000) showed how as the underlying purpose behind basketball teams shifted so did the ways in which players evaluated their statistics. In essence "...different social purposes and relationships and access to resources..." transformed people's practices. We're not talking about the goals of the game of Basketball which don't change but the reasons why players would join school basketball teams. At the junior level players were in it for fun but at every level of practice there was less room for casual players. Ultimately the goals were embedded into the practice and it was through shared practice that players internalized those goals or didn't.
For Steinkuehler (2005) the establishment of a frame of reference, a body of knowledge and related practices means the formation of a linguistic community. People come together in a virtual world and they talk about how to play, what's right, what's wrong, and why. While it is true that communities in online games bond through chat, I believe that Steinkuehler's assessment of online communities as linguistic is imprecise. The communities Steinkuehler talks about in her work are linguistic in the same sense that all communities are linguistic, in that events and practices are meaningful when they are discussed by members. This is holds true about all communities and it doesn't mean that all communities are speech communities. To quote Marcyliena Morgan (2000) "...a speech community is constructed around the knowledge of communicative practices..." and while communities in MMORPGs must develop a lexicon of terms they are based more on (virtual) material practices than communicative ones. In essence I'm arguing that people establish bodies of knowledge about how to play the game rather than how to communicate with other players, as Steinkuehler implies in her use of the term linguistic community (10).
Steinkuehler's linguistic communities ultimately have more in common with Wenger's communities of practice than they do any linguistic community. Wenger defines communities of practice as groups of people with a common set of problems, goals, or concerns who seek to deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis. Through their participation in communities of practice members acquire the knowledge and skills that have been honed by the group. The community itself is centered on the management of knowledge as well as the shared practices through which this knowledge is created and disseminated. In essence communities of practice form spontaneously around a specific projects, they work to establish a body of knowledge about the practices entailed by their project.
This knowledge can be thought of as a culture in the Geertzian sense of the term because community members refer to it draw on it in order to make sense of the group's practices (Geertz ; 1973). In other words communities of practice don't simply amass knowledge about a subject they also elaborate ways of thinking about and understanding the subject at hand. However, Communities of practice are evanescent as membership is predicated on the relevance of the community's practices to the lives of its members. In addition to this the members of a community of practice are drawn together by a common interest, membership is defined by participation. And it is both the evanescent nature of these communities and their open membership policy that make them ideal for understanding online communities.
Through shared practices people form a community, they construct systems of knowledge and a narrative that is meaningful to them (Geertz; 1973). Culture isn't just about interpretation, it's about performance. Every day people are not only navigating the symbol systems that comprise their culture they are enacting them. Through their performances people not only represent but also interpret and comment the cultural scripts that guide their lives. These constant re-enactments allows people to better understand themselves both as individuals and as a community (Geertz 1973). And these performances as Aristotle put it " describe what has happened, but the kinds of things that could happen..." (Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry) and in doing so they act as interpretations of the things they are supposed to represent. Culture thus comes with built in interpretations and it is the role of the anthropologist to figure out how to read them.(Geertz; 1973, p. 453)
A Hamidon raid is an event in an MMORPG called City of Heroes at which between thirty-five and fifty heroes gather to face a monster called Hamidon. Once a brilliant but overly zealous scientist named Hamidon Passalima, the Hamidon has transformed himself into a god like being through dark magic and genetic manipulation. The Hamidon is the creator of a group of plant and earth based monsters known as the Devouring Earth who seek to destroy human kind. At least that's what game lore tells us about Hamidon. In (virtual) reality the Hamidon is a unicellular organism who looks like a big blob of Jell-O. Like most elements of play in an MMORPG Hamidon raiding comes with a built in reward system and the rewards that a player can get for raiding are among the most coveted in the game.
City of Heroes is a hero themed MMORPG. Instead of typcial classes like wizard and unicorn players pick a heroic archetype. In addition to this City of Heroes is different from most MMORPGs out there because it doesn't use an equipment system. In a fantasy themed MMORPG you make wizards, paladins, and elves and spend your time equipping them with gear. In City of Heroes instead of gear players use a system of enhancements where they enhance their powers. Like all MMORPGs though players make avatars which they use to interact with the world. As they participate in the game they gain more powers and the player can further customise his or her character. It's also important to note that City of Heroes has a more mature and tolerant player base. At the same time that World of Warcraft was attempting to ban gay player organizations or guilds (11), City of Heroes game company representatives would attend events organized by LGBT player associations. In World of Warcraft it's commonplace for people insult strangers by calling them fags (12), it's less common for City of Heroes players to be so insensitive.