Final part of the Honors thesis
Here is the last and final part.
End notes
1.Because most classical game definitions don't apply to MMORPGs most scholars who study games call the people who play them users. I have chosen to break with tradition and use the term player instead because I feel it is more appropriate.
2.The company behind World of Warcraft, one of the most popular MMORPGs currently on the market.
3.Regardless of what kind of server a person plays on they are playing playing the same game as their fellow subscribers.
4.The practice of generating multiple instances of either a game world or a zone in a game world.
5.It bears mentioning that these game worlds are fictional worlds and that they come with a body of lore, a fictional history which adds to the sense of immersion.
6.I'm using the term RPG to talk pen and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons.
7.Obviously named after the man who developed the approach, Harold Garfinkle.
8.If Myers had violated the game's user agreement he would have been banished from the game, in finding a way to play without violating the rules set out by the company he was in a perfect position to study social norms in video games.
9.Game companies encourage players to report inappropriate behaviour and while I cannot make a serious comment about the system my observations lead me to believe that it leads to an uneven application of the rules.
10.I'm not saying that Steinkuehler's entirely wrong but that in regards to the basis of communities in MMORPGs her assessment of them as linguistic communities is inaccurate. MMORPG communities often share ways of communicating with each other which may seem like a foreign language to outsiders but these communicative practices aren't central to the communities.
11.Blizzard entertainment claimed that basing membership on sexual orientation was discrimination forgetting or perhaps not realizing that the reason people wanted to make gay guilds was to get away from the homophobia prevalent in their player population.
12.I know that sometimes people use terms like gay or fag to mean stupid and they don't realize the implications of what they are saying. I don't have very much patience for this kind of excuse, it doesn't take a PhD to take five seconds to think about what one is saying, just a little self awareness. It's fine to use such language in private among friends but when one is in public one should remember that there are other people around, people who could be offended by that kind of language, so maybe it's a good idea to show some respect.
13.This isn't to say that they were the only raiders with something to say but that given my time constraints they were the only ones I managed to interview.
14.The term spawn is used to refer to both the location and the process of monsters appearing when they are generated in the virtual world. In this case I am talking about the process by which players can make Hamidon appear in the world.
15.Since the raid zone has a cap of fifty players it doesn't require hundreds of players, once the zone is filled multiple instances or copies of the zone are generated. When the raid zone is filled a second raid zone is generated and if both zones are filled at the same time a third is generated and so on. While it is uncommon to see a third raid zone there have been instances where this has happened.
16.Level 45 or higher.
17.Doubly funny when you consider the way that Jell-O quivers.
18.A meme is an idea or concept that evolves as it is transmitted, the koala meme probably started as a joke about villains using endangered species as cannon fodder but as people told it we went from endangered cannon fodder to vicious carnivorous marsupials.
19.For those not in the know a drop bear is a fictitious Australian marsupial commonly said to be a kind of large unusually vicious carnivorous species of Koala.
20.Catapaults designed for the launching of koalas.
21.Perhaps it is best to imagine an MMORPG's chat box as a bunch of chat rooms or channels each defined by their range. Player made chat channels or global channels cross servers so that players who are a member of the channel can choose to follow the conversations that take place there from anywhere in the game. This is what can make a global channel an important hub for social networking in City of Heroes and it enabled me to coordinate with Jeanne in order for us to team together.
22.A super group is a group founded an run by players to facilitate forming teams, sharing in game resources, and socialization. Much like a global channel a super group or SG has its own chat channel, unlike a chat channel only the characters who are members of a super group can participate in group life.
23.I have been playing the game since 2006, I am a member of several global channels, and a pretty friendly guy when it comes down to it.
24.A wipe is when most of the raiders are vanquished and the rest are forced to retreat.
25.Canasta and the Canaries have a history of trying to contribute to community life on their server, this is what makes them one of the most respected player groups around.
26.The term literally means 'causing grief' and it covers a broad variety of behaviours that are designed to upset or otherwise hurt others.
27.MMORPGs hire people to monitor player behaviour, part player and part game company employee these people are called game moderators.
28.I use the term guardedly because although I learned a great deal from my observations I also found myself disheartened by what I saw
29.Ganking is another gamer term and it means to kill or cause the death of another player out of malice, the term usually implies unfavourable odds and is used to largely describe undesirable behaviour .
30.I must temper this assessment since I am not the best judge of who belongs or doesn't belong to a community, near the end of my time in the field I was shocked when I realized I was a member of the community.
Bibliography
· Abu-Lughod, Lila. (1991) “Writing Against Culture” in Recapturing Anthropology, R.G. Fox (Ed.), Santa Fa, N.M.: School of American Research Press, pp. 137-162.
· Aristotle (trans 1965 by T. S. Dorsh) ,On the Art of Poetry in Classical Literary Criticism, Middlesex: Penguin Classics
· Collins, Jeff and Mayblin, Bill (1998) Introducing Derrida Cambridge: Icon Books UK
· Filiciak, M. (2003). Hyperidentities: Postmodern identity patterns in massively multiplayer online role-playing games. In The video game theory reader. M.J.P Wolf\& B. Perron eds. New York: Routledge. Pp 87-102.
· Geertz, C. (1973) “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” in The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, pp. 3-32.
· Geertz, C. (1973) “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” in The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, pp. 412-453.
· Gleason, J (1990) “Meaning of Play: Interpreting Patterns in Behavior of Persons with Severe Developmental Disabilities” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 21, p 59- 77
· Golub, Alex. (2010) "Being in the World (of Warcraft): Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Anthropological Quarterly - Volume 83, Number 1, Winter 2010, pp. 17-45
· Keesing,Roger.(1987)“Anthropology as Interpretive Quest” in Current Anthropology, 28(2) pp.161-176.
· Morgan, Marcyliena (2000) "Community" in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1-2) pp 36-38
· Miller, Stephen (1973) "Ends, Means, and Galumphing: Some Leitmotifs of Play in American Anthropologis, New Series, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Feb. 1973), pp 87-98
· Myers, Dave. Play and Punishment: The Sad and Curious Case of Twixt available at http://www.sirlin.net/storage/post-images/Myers_PlayPunishment_031508.pdf (Last accessed 21/04/2010)
· Nasir Na'ilah Suad (2000) "'Points Ain't Everything': Emergent Goals and Average and Percent Understandings in the Play of Basketball among African American Students" in Anthropology &Education Quarterly 31(3) pp. 283-305
· Ochs Elinor and Capps Lisa (1996). “Narrating the self.” , Annual Review of Anthropology, 25: 9-43.
· Pirius, L. K. (2007) Massively Multiplayer Online Game Virtual Environments: A Potential Locale for Intercultural Training, ProQuest database (UMI Microform 3263133)
· Scheper-Hughes, N. (2000) “Ire in Ireland” in Ethnographic Fieldwork: An anthropological reader, Antonius C.G.M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka (Eds.), Blackwell Publishing ltd.; pp. 202-215.
· Simon, B. Boudreau k. and Silverman M. (2009)“Two Players: Biography and ‘Played Sociality’ in EverQuest” the International journal of Computer Game Research volume 9 issue 1 April 2009 http://gamestudies.org/0901/articles/simon_boudreau_silverman
· Steinkuehler, C. A. (2005). Cognition and learning in massively multiplayer online games: A critical approach. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison, United States -- Wisconsin. Retrieved March 18, 2010, from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text.(Publication No. AAT 3186279).
· Yee, Nick (2005)The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, Jun2006, Vol. 15 Issue 3, p309-329.
Appendix One: Interview protocols
My consent form
Before we begin I have a few things to go over with you,
First things first the consent form
The purpose of this project is to understand how Hamidon raiding is part of the cultural landscape of Virtue. In order to get the information I want I am participating in the raids as well as observing them but I'm also interviewing raiders and looking at what is said about Hamidon on the official game forums. In essence I believe that what people say about Hami raiding can tell me a great deal about the social aspect of Hamidon raiding.
I'm conducting my research for the purpose of furthering scientific knowledge so there are no projected benefits of my work. There are no risks to participating in this project but I will be protecting your identity and for the purposes of this project you will be be both anonymous ( I won't know your real life identity) and confidential ( I will try to make it so that nobody can identify you from reading my study).
As a participant you can choose to withdraw from the project at anytime during the research and writing of the proposal. I will also try to show you what I write before I finish the final draft of my thesis. I may or may not publish my thesis at some point in the future so I am worning you of that possibility. I will definitely be posting aa version of my thesis on my project blog.
Here is the link in case you are curious http://taonta.livejournal.com/
This is to state that I agree to participate in a program of research being conducted by Charles Grey of the Sociology and Anthropology department of Concordia University e-mail address xyz
If you have any questions these are some people you can contact Dr Jourdan is my thesis adviser
If at any time you have questions about the proposed research, please contact the study’s Principal Investigator, Dr Christine Jourdan, at Jourdan@alcor.concordia.ca
If at any time you have questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the Research Ethics and Compliance Advisor, Concordia University, Dr. Brigitte Des Rosiers, at (514)
848-2424 ext7481 or by email at bdesrosi@alcor.concordia.ca
Second thing
Since I will be using pseudonyms I want to give you the opportunity to choose your own pseudonym
um... so whatever pseudonym you want you can use I guess (within reason)
Once you've consented and picked a pseudonym I guess I will send you the questions on and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask me.
thanks for participating =D
My interview questions
1. When did you start Hamidon raiding?
2. How did you learn about it?
3. What made you want to raid?
4. What was your first raid like?
5. Why do you participate in raids?
6. What do you do to prepare for the raids?
7. Have you ever taken a leadership position during a raid?
8. If so what was it like?
9. How many different characters have you ever raided with?
10. Which characters do you prefer raiding with and why?
11. How do you decide which character to bring to the raid?
12. Where do you raid and when?
13. Is there a particular reason you attend these raids and not others?
14. What is a typical raid like for you?
15. What is a successful raid?
16. What does it take to make a raid successful?
17. Is a successful raid a good raid?
18. If not what makes a raid a good raid?
19. How do you define a bad raid?
20. What makes a person a god raider?
21. Can you give an example of the kind of behaviour typical of a good raider?
22. What make a person a bad raider?
23. Can you give an example of what makes a person a bad raider?
24. Do you think Hamidon raiding has affected the way you play the game and why?
End notes
1.Because most classical game definitions don't apply to MMORPGs most scholars who study games call the people who play them users. I have chosen to break with tradition and use the term player instead because I feel it is more appropriate.
2.The company behind World of Warcraft, one of the most popular MMORPGs currently on the market.
3.Regardless of what kind of server a person plays on they are playing playing the same game as their fellow subscribers.
4.The practice of generating multiple instances of either a game world or a zone in a game world.
5.It bears mentioning that these game worlds are fictional worlds and that they come with a body of lore, a fictional history which adds to the sense of immersion.
6.I'm using the term RPG to talk pen and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons.
7.Obviously named after the man who developed the approach, Harold Garfinkle.
8.If Myers had violated the game's user agreement he would have been banished from the game, in finding a way to play without violating the rules set out by the company he was in a perfect position to study social norms in video games.
9.Game companies encourage players to report inappropriate behaviour and while I cannot make a serious comment about the system my observations lead me to believe that it leads to an uneven application of the rules.
10.I'm not saying that Steinkuehler's entirely wrong but that in regards to the basis of communities in MMORPGs her assessment of them as linguistic communities is inaccurate. MMORPG communities often share ways of communicating with each other which may seem like a foreign language to outsiders but these communicative practices aren't central to the communities.
11.Blizzard entertainment claimed that basing membership on sexual orientation was discrimination forgetting or perhaps not realizing that the reason people wanted to make gay guilds was to get away from the homophobia prevalent in their player population.
12.I know that sometimes people use terms like gay or fag to mean stupid and they don't realize the implications of what they are saying. I don't have very much patience for this kind of excuse, it doesn't take a PhD to take five seconds to think about what one is saying, just a little self awareness. It's fine to use such language in private among friends but when one is in public one should remember that there are other people around, people who could be offended by that kind of language, so maybe it's a good idea to show some respect.
13.This isn't to say that they were the only raiders with something to say but that given my time constraints they were the only ones I managed to interview.
14.The term spawn is used to refer to both the location and the process of monsters appearing when they are generated in the virtual world. In this case I am talking about the process by which players can make Hamidon appear in the world.
15.Since the raid zone has a cap of fifty players it doesn't require hundreds of players, once the zone is filled multiple instances or copies of the zone are generated. When the raid zone is filled a second raid zone is generated and if both zones are filled at the same time a third is generated and so on. While it is uncommon to see a third raid zone there have been instances where this has happened.
16.Level 45 or higher.
17.Doubly funny when you consider the way that Jell-O quivers.
18.A meme is an idea or concept that evolves as it is transmitted, the koala meme probably started as a joke about villains using endangered species as cannon fodder but as people told it we went from endangered cannon fodder to vicious carnivorous marsupials.
19.For those not in the know a drop bear is a fictitious Australian marsupial commonly said to be a kind of large unusually vicious carnivorous species of Koala.
20.Catapaults designed for the launching of koalas.
21.Perhaps it is best to imagine an MMORPG's chat box as a bunch of chat rooms or channels each defined by their range. Player made chat channels or global channels cross servers so that players who are a member of the channel can choose to follow the conversations that take place there from anywhere in the game. This is what can make a global channel an important hub for social networking in City of Heroes and it enabled me to coordinate with Jeanne in order for us to team together.
22.A super group is a group founded an run by players to facilitate forming teams, sharing in game resources, and socialization. Much like a global channel a super group or SG has its own chat channel, unlike a chat channel only the characters who are members of a super group can participate in group life.
23.I have been playing the game since 2006, I am a member of several global channels, and a pretty friendly guy when it comes down to it.
24.A wipe is when most of the raiders are vanquished and the rest are forced to retreat.
25.Canasta and the Canaries have a history of trying to contribute to community life on their server, this is what makes them one of the most respected player groups around.
26.The term literally means 'causing grief' and it covers a broad variety of behaviours that are designed to upset or otherwise hurt others.
27.MMORPGs hire people to monitor player behaviour, part player and part game company employee these people are called game moderators.
28.I use the term guardedly because although I learned a great deal from my observations I also found myself disheartened by what I saw
29.Ganking is another gamer term and it means to kill or cause the death of another player out of malice, the term usually implies unfavourable odds and is used to largely describe undesirable behaviour .
30.I must temper this assessment since I am not the best judge of who belongs or doesn't belong to a community, near the end of my time in the field I was shocked when I realized I was a member of the community.
Bibliography
· Abu-Lughod, Lila. (1991) “Writing Against Culture” in Recapturing Anthropology, R.G. Fox (Ed.), Santa Fa, N.M.: School of American Research Press, pp. 137-162.
· Aristotle (trans 1965 by T. S. Dorsh) ,On the Art of Poetry in Classical Literary Criticism, Middlesex: Penguin Classics
· Collins, Jeff and Mayblin, Bill (1998) Introducing Derrida Cambridge: Icon Books UK
· Filiciak, M. (2003). Hyperidentities: Postmodern identity patterns in massively multiplayer online role-playing games. In The video game theory reader. M.J.P Wolf\& B. Perron eds. New York: Routledge. Pp 87-102.
· Geertz, C. (1973) “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” in The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, pp. 3-32.
· Geertz, C. (1973) “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” in The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, pp. 412-453.
· Gleason, J (1990) “Meaning of Play: Interpreting Patterns in Behavior of Persons with Severe Developmental Disabilities” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 21, p 59- 77
· Golub, Alex. (2010) "Being in the World (of Warcraft): Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Anthropological Quarterly - Volume 83, Number 1, Winter 2010, pp. 17-45
· Keesing,Roger.(1987)“Anthropology as Interpretive Quest” in Current Anthropology, 28(2) pp.161-176.
· Morgan, Marcyliena (2000) "Community" in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1-2) pp 36-38
· Miller, Stephen (1973) "Ends, Means, and Galumphing: Some Leitmotifs of Play in American Anthropologis, New Series, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Feb. 1973), pp 87-98
· Myers, Dave. Play and Punishment: The Sad and Curious Case of Twixt available at http://www.sirlin.net/storage/post-images/Myers_PlayPunishment_031508.pdf (Last accessed 21/04/2010)
· Nasir Na'ilah Suad (2000) "'Points Ain't Everything': Emergent Goals and Average and Percent Understandings in the Play of Basketball among African American Students" in Anthropology &Education Quarterly 31(3) pp. 283-305
· Ochs Elinor and Capps Lisa (1996). “Narrating the self.” , Annual Review of Anthropology, 25: 9-43.
· Pirius, L. K. (2007) Massively Multiplayer Online Game Virtual Environments: A Potential Locale for Intercultural Training, ProQuest database (UMI Microform 3263133)
· Scheper-Hughes, N. (2000) “Ire in Ireland” in Ethnographic Fieldwork: An anthropological reader, Antonius C.G.M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka (Eds.), Blackwell Publishing ltd.; pp. 202-215.
· Simon, B. Boudreau k. and Silverman M. (2009)“Two Players: Biography and ‘Played Sociality’ in EverQuest” the International journal of Computer Game Research volume 9 issue 1 April 2009 http://gamestudies.org/0901/articles/simon_boudreau_silverman
· Steinkuehler, C. A. (2005). Cognition and learning in massively multiplayer online games: A critical approach. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison, United States -- Wisconsin. Retrieved March 18, 2010, from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text.(Publication No. AAT 3186279).
· Yee, Nick (2005)The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, Jun2006, Vol. 15 Issue 3, p309-329.
Appendix One: Interview protocols
My consent form
Before we begin I have a few things to go over with you,
First things first the consent form
The purpose of this project is to understand how Hamidon raiding is part of the cultural landscape of Virtue. In order to get the information I want I am participating in the raids as well as observing them but I'm also interviewing raiders and looking at what is said about Hamidon on the official game forums. In essence I believe that what people say about Hami raiding can tell me a great deal about the social aspect of Hamidon raiding.
I'm conducting my research for the purpose of furthering scientific knowledge so there are no projected benefits of my work. There are no risks to participating in this project but I will be protecting your identity and for the purposes of this project you will be be both anonymous ( I won't know your real life identity) and confidential ( I will try to make it so that nobody can identify you from reading my study).
As a participant you can choose to withdraw from the project at anytime during the research and writing of the proposal. I will also try to show you what I write before I finish the final draft of my thesis. I may or may not publish my thesis at some point in the future so I am worning you of that possibility. I will definitely be posting aa version of my thesis on my project blog.
Here is the link in case you are curious http://taonta.livejournal.com/
This is to state that I agree to participate in a program of research being conducted by Charles Grey of the Sociology and Anthropology department of Concordia University e-mail address xyz
If you have any questions these are some people you can contact Dr Jourdan is my thesis adviser
If at any time you have questions about the proposed research, please contact the study’s Principal Investigator, Dr Christine Jourdan, at Jourdan@alcor.concordia.ca
If at any time you have questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the Research Ethics and Compliance Advisor, Concordia University, Dr. Brigitte Des Rosiers, at (514)
848-2424 ext7481 or by email at bdesrosi@alcor.concordia.ca
Second thing
Since I will be using pseudonyms I want to give you the opportunity to choose your own pseudonym
um... so whatever pseudonym you want you can use I guess (within reason)
Once you've consented and picked a pseudonym I guess I will send you the questions on and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask me.
thanks for participating =D
My interview questions
1. When did you start Hamidon raiding?
2. How did you learn about it?
3. What made you want to raid?
4. What was your first raid like?
5. Why do you participate in raids?
6. What do you do to prepare for the raids?
7. Have you ever taken a leadership position during a raid?
8. If so what was it like?
9. How many different characters have you ever raided with?
10. Which characters do you prefer raiding with and why?
11. How do you decide which character to bring to the raid?
12. Where do you raid and when?
13. Is there a particular reason you attend these raids and not others?
14. What is a typical raid like for you?
15. What is a successful raid?
16. What does it take to make a raid successful?
17. Is a successful raid a good raid?
18. If not what makes a raid a good raid?
19. How do you define a bad raid?
20. What makes a person a god raider?
21. Can you give an example of the kind of behaviour typical of a good raider?
22. What make a person a bad raider?
23. Can you give an example of what makes a person a bad raider?
24. Do you think Hamidon raiding has affected the way you play the game and why?