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The Expression and Constraint of Human Agency Within the Massively Multiplayer Online Games of World of Warcraft and Eve-Online: a Comparative Case Study Max Keatinge M.Litt 2010 The Expression and Constraint of Human Agency Within the Massively Multiplayer Online Games of World of Warcraft and Eve-Online: a Comparative Case Study By Max Keatinge, B.A. Submitted for the degree of Master of Literature in Sociology to the National University of Ireland Maynooth Department of Sociology July 2010 Head of Department: Dr. Séan Ó Riaín Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Aphra Kerr Table of Contents Table of contents i Acknowledgements iv Abstract v 1.0: Chapter 1: Introduction 1 2.0 - Chapter 2: Literature Review 5 2.1: Bourdieu: field, capital, and symbolic violence 5 2.1.a: Critique of field theory, and the problem of 'technology' in Bourdieu's work 12 2.2: Foucault and 'Government' 16 2.2.a: Critique of the panopticon, and problems of its contemporary use 23 2.3: Actor-Network Theory 28 2.3.a: Madeline Akrich and 'De-Scription of Technical Objects 34 2.4: Conclusion 38 3.0 - Chapter 3: Defining a ‘MMOG’ 39 3.1: Defining a 'MMOG' 39 3.1.a: Establishing the boundaries of a MMOG 42 3.1.b: A genealogy of MMOGs 43 3.2: Key issues in Computer Mediated Communication research 45 3.3: Technology, capital, and governance in MMOGs. 49 3.3.a: The role of non-human agency in MMOGs 50 3.3.b:MMOGs and capital 52 3.3.c: Governance in MMOGs 58 4.0 - Chapter 4: Methodology, and the construction of ethnographic participant observation within the gameworlds of WoW and Eve 70 4.1: Statement of the research question 70 4.2: Methodologies utilised in existing MMOG research 72 4.3: Ethnographic approach, data collection, and ethical considerations 78 i 4.4: Coding and analysis 83 4.5: World of Warcraft – introduction 86 4.5.a: World of Warcraft – accessing the gameworld 87 4.5.b: World of Warcraft - User Interface 88 4.5.c: WoW: participant observation 90 4.6: Eve-Online - Introduction 96 4.6.a: Eve-Online – accessing the gameworld 96 4.6.b - Eve-Online - User Interface 97 4.6.c: Eve-Online - Participant observation 100 5.0 - Chapter 5: Constructing the field 104 5.1: Macro-level field context, and publishers 106 5.2: Meso-level field - situating Eve and WoW in the digital games industry 112 5.2.a: Meso level - the MMOG genre 116 5.3: Outlining micro-level fields of WoW and Eve 121 5.3.a: The Micro-Level Field of Game Play in WoW 124 5.3.b: Micro-level field of game play in Eve 140 5.4: The Micro-Level Paratextual Sub-fields of World of Warcraft and Eve-Online 144 6.0 - Micro-level governance in WoW and Eve 149 6.1: Negotiation of human agency through code 150 6.2: Player-to-player governance within the gameworld 161 6.3: Governance of players through player-run organisations and publishers 172 6.3.a: micro-level government of human agency through paratexts 178 6.4: The micro-level legal field of governance in WoW and Eve 182 Chapter 7 – Conclusion 195 7.1: Theoretical discussion and findings 195 7.2: Methodological conclusions 200 7.3: Conclusion and future work 203 References 205 Endnotes 213 ii Appendices 1 Appendix I – User Interface diagrams 2 I.1: Figure 1 – User Interface of World of Warcraft 2 I.2: Figure 2 – User Interface of Eve-Online 3 Appendix II - Full text of passages from legal documents quoted in text II.1: World of Warcraft Terms of Use 4 II.2: Eve-Online Terms of Service 5 II.3: Eve-Online End User License Agreement 7 Appendix III - Player consent 9 III.1 - Eve-online 9 III.2 - World of Warcraft 11 iii Acknowledgements I am first greatly indebted to my supervisor Dr. Aphra Kerr for the guidance and tireless support she has provided to me over the course of writing this thesis, without which I could never have completed it. I wish to thank Dr. Seán Ó Riain for his tutelage during my first year in the M. Litt program in the Sociology department at Maynooth, and for inspiring me to adopt a comparative method for this thesis. I also express gratitude to Dr. Mary Corcoran for her support as a referee during the postgraduate application process. I am also grateful to the members of the Privateers and <BM>, for their goodwill and enthusiasm during the participant observation, and in particular, I wish to thank 'F' and 'P' in particular for their invaluable support as gatekeepers. Finally, I wish to express my thanks and gratitude to my beleaguered family for their continuing support and patience over the past three years in my course of negotiating the travails of postgraduate study. iv Abstract This research aims to explore the human and nonhuman means by which human agency in MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) is governed and negotiated. In this thesis a theoretical framework incorporating three theoretical perspectives is adopted to cope with the composite virtual, technical, and social 'spaces' of MMOGs. The spaces of the MMOG are situated within Bourdieu's theories of field and capital, while the strategies and position-taking by actors within these fields are framed in a post-Foucauldian dialectic of governance, with particular emphasis on themes of control and surveillance. Finally, the complexity and agency of MMOGs in comparison to the architecture of the traditional panoptic institution, as arrays of interrelated technical objects, is accounted for by incorporating an actor network (ANT) perspective on non- human agency, with specific reference to Madeline Akrich's 'De-Scription of Technical Objects'. Participant observation has been selected for the methodological approach to data collection for this study, conducted in two month-long participant observation periods in two vastly different MMOGs: 'World of Warcraft' (WoW) and 'Eve-Online' (Eve). Mixed methods are used in analysis, consisting of a grounded theory approach to open coding, supported by documentary sources. Findings are discussed in comparative mode, allowing for a greater level of understanding of the human and nonhuman forms of governance and the different impact the coded game environment has upon human agency. v Key findings highlight that the most significant forms of player agency and governance in each case are those are those negotiated by players, through obtaining authorial control over the coded rules that define the gameworld, despite publishers' vast power to define the gameworld through inscribing the code itself. These player-mandated practices of governance are usually framed as game play, and as they may be negotiated, their form and function are complex and shifting. This study aims to illustrate this by contrasting players' practices of governance and with coded rules in each case. vi 1.0 - Introduction Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are complex socio-technical systems and commodified cultural products which utilise contemporary computer-mediated- communications (CMC) technologies and design to facilitate interaction between humans over the internet in the form of game play. As human agency within MMOGs must be translated through these technologies, action within MMOGs - their 'gameworlds' players act in - is entirely digital. Thus, in participating in MMOGs, humans enter into a heterogeneous network of non-human agents which both act as a medium for their actions, but this process also innately shapes them. As a result, in any context pertaining to computer mediated technologies, human agency is thus never entirely human, but circumscribed by the non-human actors which facilitate humans' use of these technologies. In this manner, human agency within the setting of MMOGs - the spatial 'gameworlds' they construct - is preconfigured to match the affordances granted to humans in these settings as 'players'. Thus, MMOGs differ in how they govern human agencies through design. As they are commodified cultural products, underwritten by economic imperatives set by their publisher, MMOGs are designed with specific objectives and tastes in mind, which may conflict with those of the players who use them. Players cannot directly contest publishers' agency to design the gameworld in this regard, except in instances where they directly negotiate the technologies which compose it, such as through cheats or 'hacking' of the computer software used to access the gameworld. However, publishers' vision for the design of MMOGs and the allowances players take 1 within them are never perfectly realised. Humans must be yielded a certain level of freedom within the gameworld to negotiate its rules and game structures; in this way, the final, end use of the design of the MMOG is contingent upon players' acceptance of it. Similarly, publishers of most MMOGs (including both cases in this study) continuously amend the rules of their game or add new content to it. These changes - called 'patches' contain flaws in the publishers' assumptions inherent in their design, or they attempt to correct the flaws of previous patches exposed by players. The continuous development of a MMOG signifies it as never 'finished', and its design - and thus how players are governed in the gameworld - is in a state of constant negotiation between players, publishers, and the code constituting the gameworld and its rules. Aware of this, publishers of MMOGs (again this includes both cases here) attempt to govern players outside the context of the MMOG in their capacity as legal individuals, in order to maintain their authorial power to constitute what defines the MMOG as a game. This serves to delimit players' legal interest with regard to their actions in the gameworld, and through the agency legal authority provides, govern the agencies of players outside it which are still relevant to the publisher's interests, which in turn often refer to the economic objectives they possess in relation to the production and maintenance of the MMOG.
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