Communities of Play

Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Online Games and Virtual Worlds

Editorial Notes Table of Contents Introduction Conclusion

Celia Pearce Version .08

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 1 Editorial Notes

 An overview of what I’m trying to do here: This book is meant to be “academic but accessible.” The writing style is designed to be somewhat formal and academic yet at the same time readable and accessible, not obtuse. It is not a mass-market book like some of the recent Second Life books that have come out; but it might be comparable to something like “Guns, Germs and Steel” in that it makes an academic argument in a way that the average, reasonably well-educated reader can understand. I am also grappling with the challenge of giving people who have no prior experience with MMOGs an overview without talking down to the more knowledgeable reader. I anticipate the audience will be the following: o Academics interested in MMOGs and fan culture o A text book for MMOG design and ethnographic methods classes o Anthropologists and Sociologists with no prior exposure to MMOGs o MMOG designers their industry counterparts o MMOG gamers who like to read about game culture o An educated, curious general public

Scope of the task:  Look at the sequence and see if it makes sense (might need to do this last after reading everything)  See if tone is even throughout, except in Part IV where it’s not supposed to be  Part II needs to remain relatively intact, due to comments from subjects, but stylistic edits are perimissable as long as they don’t make substantive changes in meaning  See if there is content missing or transitions needed  Look at intro and conclusion (Part V) to see if they are doing what they are supposed to  Language stuff (I have a bad habit of tossing extra “no food value” worlds in like “indeed” and sometimes lapse into passive voice, which I know you hate)  Check for redundancies in content that are repetitive rather than reinforcing  Cut stuff that seems unnecessary or not relevant  The final manuscript will also be copy-edited and proofed by the publisher

Notes on formatting/style  Don’t worry about the references. I am doing those last because of the issues with Endnote.  The original thesis had to be “anglicized” for British readers, so it might have to be de-anglicized as you go along. If you see weird stuff like single quotes and commas in the wrong place relative to quotations, just to ahead and change them.  I’m also sending you the page formatting so you can make sure it conforms to that  There may be editorial notes/questions, but I think many of those have been resolved

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 2 Table of Contents (Revised 4/23/08)

Acknowledgements

Preface (two facing pages; one page by each author) Stephen Johnson & one of the following (others can be reviewers)  Tom Boellstorff (confirmed)  T.L. Taylor (declined)  Janet Murray  George Marcus

INTRODUCTION Applied Cybersociology as Design Research Scope Why a Book?

PART I: Games, Community and Emergent Cultures

CHAPTER 1: COMMUNITIES OF PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT Play Communities Multiplayer Games: The “Next Big Thing” Since 3500 BC Networked Play and Virtual Communities The MMOG Boom MMOWs Through the Ages Communities of Research: Traditions in Game Studies The Return of Player-Centric Digital Game Studies Defining MMOGs vs. MMOWs Spatial Media and Spatial Literacy Common Characteristics of Persistent Virtual Worlds Ludic vs. Paidiac Worlds

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 3 Play Ecosystems: Fixed Synthetic vs. Co-Created Worlds Playing with Identity: The Rise of the Avatar Virtual Worlds/Real Communities

CHAPTER 2: EMERGENCE IN CULTURES AND GAMES Emergent Cultures Games as Emergent, Complex Systems

CHAPTER 3: READING, WRITING AND PLAYING CULTURE Situating Culture The Social Construction of Virtual Reality Methodology: Multi-Sited Cyberethnography Playing and Performing Ethnography Feminist, Alternative and Experimental Ethnography Reading and Writing Cultures: Ethnography of Fictional Worlds Virtual Worlds Covered in This Study

PART II: The Uru Diaspora

CHAPTER 4: AN IMAGINARY HOMELAND: A POLYPHONIC CULTURAL HISTORY A Polyphonic Cultural History History & Context: Myst, Uru and Beyond Laying the Groundwork: Myst Players Come Together Understanding Uru Players Myst Uru: Story, World, Game The Uru Experience [Description of each of the areas in Uru]

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 4 The Gathering of Uru: Birth of a Hood The Rise and Fall of Uru/Becoming Refugees Virtual World/Real Grief Yearning for the Homeland Immigration: The Quest for a New Home A Home of Their Own Assimilation/Transculturation Uru Reclaimed Self-Determination The Inner Lives of Avatars Avatar Representation Becoming and Losing an Avatar The Social Construction of Identity Avatar Presence and Intersubjectivity Communities and Cultures of Play The Power of Play A Community of Loners Communities of Play Intersubjective Flow Group Cohesion: The Role of Values in the Play Community

CHAPTER 5: PATTERNS OF EMERGENCE

Porous Magic Circles and the “Ludisphere” Communities of Play The Social Construction of Avatar Identity Intersubjective Flow Play Styles as an Engine for Emergence The Gathering of Uru Signature Play Styles Spatial Literacy Exploration

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 5 Puzzle-Solving Cleverness and Creativity Mastery Games-within-Games Togetherness Wordplay & Multimodal Communication Horseplay Dancing/Acrobatics Bottom-Up Leadership The Inventive Urge Productive Play: Cultural Production, Meaning-Making and Agency Restoring a Lost Culture The Longing for a Homeland Artifacts as Carriers of Meanings Creating New Ages Porous Magic Circles and the “Ludisphere” Ludic Leakage and Multitasking Traversing Magic Circles Migrating Individual and Group Identities Migrating Play Patterns Migrating Identities and Play Patterns to the Real World

CHAPTER 6: EMERGENCE AS A DESIGN MATERIAL Emergence and Design A Narrative of the Movement from Synthetic to Co-Created Worlds Contributing Factors to Emergence

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 6 Fixed Synthetic vs. Co-Created Worlds Communities of Play The Social Construction of Identity Intersubjective Flow Productive Play Porous Magic Circles Ages Beyond Uru

PART III: Playing Ethnography: Research Methods

CHAPTER 7: METHOD: PLAYING ETHNOGRAPHY My Avatar/My Self Fieldwork Analysis and Interpretation: The Search for Patterns Writing Ethnography The Ethnographic Memoir

PART IV: Being Artemesia: The Social Construction of the Ethnographer

PART V: Beyond Uru: Communities of Play on Their Own Terms Applied Anthropology: Uru Resurrection Online Games and Virtual Worlds as the New “Global Village”

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 7 INTRODUCTION

Applied Cybersociology as Design Research

In 1983, I began a career as a designer of games and interactive media, a lifetime passion that has gone through several transmogrifications leading me to my present “avatar” as an academic games researcher. These transmogrifications have occurred in tandem and intertwined with major paradigm shifts in the world and the communication landscape.

1983 was the year before “The Internet” and the Macintosh computer were born, two years before the first mass-market CD-ROM hit the streets, and ten years before the

“World Wide Web” transformed the communication and economic landscape forever.

When I first began my career in New York City, there was no term to describe what I did.

This was probably for the best since I wasn’t allowed to talk about it anyway due to the nondisclosure agreement I had signed along with my contract. A decade later, returning to my hometown of Los Angeles, “interactive multimedia” was the big buzz. The first exposure I had to the Mosaic web browser, later Netscape, was in the office of a record company executive. The Electronic Entertainment Expo was launched during my first year back in Los Angeles. Everything was changing, and changing rapidly.

For me the thread that pervaded through all my different instantiations can be summed up in three words: social mediated play. The first games I designed were multiplayer games, and I went on to work on public venues for museums and theme parks. I was fascinated by the power of networks to augment social play. It was also very apparent that there was

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 8 a great social need for expanded play opportunities among adults. In my initial role as director of play testing, I was constantly surprised by people’s responses to the games we were designing. Over and over again, I adults using multiplayer games as a way to experiment with social roles, to reveal and explore sides of their personalities that might not be accommodated in their regular, day-to-day lives. An example of this could be seen in a stock trading simulation game we designed. Players sat in a semi circle in front of touch screen consoles that allowed them to trade items. Each player position had a phone.

On numerous occasions, I witnessed players turning to the player to the right or the left and asking: “Do you want to trade?” When the other player answered “yes,” the first player would say: “Great. I’ll call you.” It was if the telephone somehow gave them permission to take the role of a wheeler-dealer.

Through this and other experiences in testing, designing and playing games, I realized the tremendous power of mediated play. Throughout the nineties, I continued to work on high tech attractions and museum projects, less interested in the single-player games that pervaded at that time. I also developed an interest in the emerging field of online virtual worlds, open-ended play spaces that had the same kind of social and public character as the projects I was accustomed to working on. During this period, I began to be dubbed a

“cybersociologist” by some of my clients and peers.

By the end of the 1990s, things started to change, once again. The Internet and gaming merged, and online multiplayer games grew from an arcane niche to a mainstream

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 9 entertainment genre. Similarly, virtual worlds have grown an order of magnitude or two in size, although admittedly, they still remain much smaller than their game counterparts.

Why is this background in design important? Although my research into multiplayer games and virtual worlds borrows extensively from both traditional anthropology, sociology and Internet research, at the core, I am still a game designer. Thus, my research continues to be about the intersection between play and technology, between interaction and design. I am interested not just in how people play in mediated spaces, but specifically in what it is about specific mediated spaces that enables them to play in particular ways. This work is meant to compliment writing that focuses primarily on behavior, and writing that focuses primarily on design, by bringing these two elements together in a form of “design research” that might be termed “applied cybersociology.”

What do I mean by “applied cybersociology?” Today’s multiplayer games and virtual worlds are vast in their scope, housing hundreds of thousands, to millions to tens of millions of players. They are three-dimensional, graphical representations of entire worlds that players, in the guise if “avatars,” can explore, communicate through, and, in some cases, take part in building. Sometimes rivaling nations, they have become their own mini-societies that both reflect, contrast and illuminate the larger societies they inhabit and connect. Because they are framed as spaces of “play,” they create their own unique massive mediated playgrounds, in which players just as often invent their own rules as they follow those of the designers.

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 10 And this is an important point: these worlds are designed. Even worlds that are largely emergent, in which most of the content is created by players, are designed. And the types of behaviors that occur within them constitute a collaborative interchange between designers and players. Designers may have various ideals and ideas, goals and visions, as to how their game should be experienced and played. But once the game is “turned on,” the game is no longer in their hands, but in the hands of its players.

The role of design in the sociological phenomena that play out in online games and virtual worlds, and indeed most online spaces, if often under-explored. But it helps to understand the affordances (features) of software applications in order to understand the emergent behaviors that propagate within them. It is through the intersection of play and software that emergent behavior develops; they do not happen in a vacuum. Key to this study is the investigation of the features of software applications themselves and the roles they play in permitting or, in some cases, hindering emergent behavior. These affordances may not always be deliberate on the part of the designer, and in fact, it is of often the very features that designers take for granted, the errors, oversights or even bugs, that provide the raw material for emergent behavior. Players, who are at liberty to explore a world for many more hours than the developers often know more about these worlds than the designers themselves. In fact, in this case, they know enough about the world to recreate it, and even to extend its content. Emergent behavior is highly creative, and also sets up a kind of meta-game with or against the designers themselves. In some cases, such as in the instances of cheats and exploits (REF), this can take a very antagonistic character. In some cases, as in the story told in this book, the relationship is much more

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 11 dynamic, with tensions and contentions, but also with a great deal of mutual, if sometimes uneasy, respect. Indeed, for the community this study concerns, its relationship to the developers is a very important factor in the overall trajectory of its narrative.

The scope of this book is both broad and narrow. It is broad in that it attempts to look at general principles surrounding its theme of play communities and emergent cultures. At the same time, keeping a narrow focus can sometimes help us arrive at broader, more generalizable concepts precisely because we are looking in-depth at something very specific.

As its title implies, this book is about two things: communities of play and the emergent cultures they create, as manifest in networked play spaces. I will go into much more depth about the meaning of all of these these terms in Part I, but here I’d like to expound upon them a bit by way of an overview.

By “community of play” I mean simply, groups of people who come together and form an affinity around some form of collective play. Communities of play are not unique to the Internet. They have existed “offline” in many forms over the centuries. In traditional cultures, they take from in rituals where participants adopt alternative persona, or take a symbolic, transformative journey from one life mode to another. In modern Western culture, they can be seen in forms as diverse as chess clubs, an amateur sports leagues,

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 12 Dungeons and Dragons role-playing groups, to larger-scale play communities such as a

Renaissance Faires, historical reenactment groups, Mardi Gras or the Burning Man festival. All of these communities share in common that their members are drawn together by a common interest in a particular type of play that is fundamentally social in nature. Each play community provides its denizens with unique identity as expressed through play.

Why is this important? Isn’t play for kids? In Western culture, in fact, play is viewed as primarily the domain of children (although arguably, the very concept of “child” is largely a construct of Western thought.) Yet as the examples above show, there are many forms of adult play and many communities that form around these shared interests. Many of these activities are discounted as a form of “escapism” for people who need to “get a life.” Yet these forms of adult play culture are on the rise. More and more adults are engaging in online games and virtual worlds, as well as new and traditional “offline” forms of play, such as those cited above. Part of what this research will explore is why.

The goal is not to identify some deep pathos in our culture that causes people to feel they need to escape from “real life.” Rather, it is to understand the appeal of these worlds, to take them on their own value, and to describe what is actually taking place within them.

We are not concerned with placing any particular value judgment on these worlds, rather with observing them as they really are, and trying to understand them from the points of the view of the people who inhabit them.

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 13 I join an esteemed group of colleagues in this endeavor, many of whom will be invoked in the pages that follow. One of the goals I believe we all share, regardless of our disciplinary orientation, is to pull back the veil on networked play cultures, step away from stereotypes, and paint more nuanced portraits of who is inhabiting these worlds. We wish to understand and to communicate to others what, beyond the sensationalistic and often misleading accounts of journalists, is actually going in these worlds.

The second question addressed by this book is that of emergent cultures. Part I will explore both the broader question of emergence in cultures, as well as its specific application to online games. The term “emergence” describes phenomena that unfold through a process of bottom-up self-organization. In fact, the phrase “emergent cultures” turns out to be somewhat of a pleonasm, a redundant expression. In fact, all cultures are emergent: they typically develop over time, through a series of incremental collective and group actions. In some cases, these may come into conflict with the top-down agendas of institutional power structures.

Similarly, while player behavior in online games and virtual worlds is highly emergent, game design, on the other hand, is not. The design of games and virtual worlds is in a very top-down, highly controlled process. These environments are typically developed by designers, under a highly controlled structure in which a) a production entity decides what gets made; b) a design team envisions the project and makes a plan, which is c) followed by a production team. But when the cultural artifacts produced as a result of these top-down processes intersect with large groups of individuals who form their own

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 14 collectivities of various types, they come into collision with bottom-up processes of social emergence. This is at the crux of what this book is about: how do these top-down and bottom up forms of culture intersect with one another, and what sort of outcomes arise as a result.

At the center of this book is a story, a very human story, about a specific community of play, a community whose collective affinities were so strong that they transcended and outlived the environment that created them. It is a story about an all-to-common narrative of the corporate, top-down institutional structure that creates, owns and manages games, deciding a game has outlived its economic goals, and casting its players out into the world to fend for themselves. This is not the first time this has taken place, and it certainly won’t be the last.

This is the story of the Uru Diaspora, a group of some 10,000 players who were made refugees when their online game, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst was aborted after just six months of beta testing. These players immigrated into online games and virtual worlds, specifically There.com and Second Life, and formed fictive ethnic communities that sustained the culture and play styles they had developed in Uru. They took advantage of for content-creation affordances in these new worlds to develop cultural artifacts that expressed their collective identities. They adapted to the new communities they inhabited, as these communities adapted to them. Throughout this process, they were engaged in constant negotiations with corporate entities regarding their status as

“community” versus “consumer.” Over time, they developed a sense of self-

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 15 determination and autonomy that ultimately emboldened them to reclaim Uru in various forms and shape it in their own image.

This “trans-ludic narrative,” spanning multiple games and virtual worlds provides us with insights that are not available through looking at only a single game or virtual world. It reveals common practices and customs across all virtual worlds, e.g., etiquette, cultural customs, communication protocols, social status, etc., , as opposed to those distinct to a certain culture. It also reveals that virtual communities typically comprise sub-cultures that overlap and interact with each other in interesting and emergent ways, and each of these also has its own customs, protocols, etc.

One of the critiques I make of earlier research into MMOGs is that it has tended to be very game- and genre-specific. At the time this research began in 2003, the vast majority of research into massively multiplayer games had been done not only on a single genre but on a single game, EverQuest. This research was incredibly valuable because we learned a great deal about the players of this game and their culture. We also discovered that many research outcomes were repeatable, thus reinforcing scientific veracity. We even learned that game cultures are porous and leakages in the boundaries are an integral part of gaming culture. What we did not learn, however, was how much of these findings were unique to this particular genre its players. The original impetus for this study was an attempt to remedy this. And while in the intervening years, an explosion in this research has occurred, we are still seeing a vary narrow selection of subject matter

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 16 addressed, with the most popular games (i.e., World of Warcraft) and virtual worlds (i.e.,

Second Life) continuing to take precedence over everything else.

Why a book?

A book, among the most accessible means of storytelling, provides an intimate glimpse into world with which some readers will be fully familiar, but which many others will be approaching for the first time. Virtual worlds and online games are not for everyone, but there is no reason why the insights they elicit cannot be shared. For those who already participate in the cultures of virtual worlds and online games, this narrative provides an insight into a different subset of that culture to which they may not be otherwise exposed.

As Ryan points out, all narratives are a kind of virtual realty in that they seek to transport us to imaginary worlds. (REF: Ryan) In this case, I attempt to transport readers to a world that is at once imaginary and real. There is an inherent contradiction here: I assert repeatedly through these pages that there is no real way to understand the dynamics of play cultures without playing. Yet humans have the remarkable ability of empathy, to imagine and experience things vicariously, to put themselves in another avatar’s shoes.

This is the art and craft of ethnography: to imagine another’s role and position in the world, and to convey that in a compelling way to the reader.

And who is my imagined reader? No doubt, a scholar or student of virtual worlds, multiplayer games, digital media, or Internet culture will find this book of interest and of use. I imagine it will be of particular value to those who are interested in research

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 17 methodologies, as there have been very few books on this topic that describe their methodologies in detail. More broadly, sociologists and anthropologists might find this book informative and useful as a way to draw parallels between their own interests and those of Internet and games researchers. The trans-ludic narrative parallels many narratives of post-colonial cultures that have been addressed by contemporary anthropologists, and its analysis builds on a number of sociological principles that both transcend and are informed by new technologies. I also imagine (and have already experienced) a reader who has no expertise, knowledge or professional interest in any of these topics. He may be completely inexperienced in virtual worlds and online games, but merely be curious. Lacking the motivation or technical proficiency to engage in these worlds himself, he may find a linear book an easier avenue to an experience to which he might not otherwise have access. Or, she may be an ardent online gamer who is either just beginning or has become very knowledgeable and savvy about virtual worlds, and enjoys narratives that provide insight into the lifestyles of play communities.

Even for experienced denizens of virtual worlds, it can sometimes be difficult to get an in-depth glimpse of a play community without becoming fully immersed in its cultural practices. While many Thereians and Second-Lifers, for instance, may have had passing encounters with the Uru Diaspora and its emergent cultures, they may not have a complete picture of the culture, its origins and its meanings. They may have landed inadvertently on an Uruvian-owned island, or even purchased Uruvian-created artifacts for purely aesthetic or practical reasons, never realizing that these artifacts are embedded with specific cultural meanings. Even Thereians who live among the Uruvians may not

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 18 be aware of their cultural history of the trials they endured before enjoying their current level of security and influence. This focused, linear, account allows us to explore in more detail, to interpret these events, to understand both their relationship to each other and their role in the larger cultural milieu. We may understand these events in terms of real- world metaphors, or we may merely see this is a kind of fairy tale, an archetypical chronicle of diasporic cultures.

Part I of this book provides an overview and definitions: What exactly are online games and virtual worlds? How are they similar and different from each other? What is the relevance of their status as “games” or “not games”? What is emergence? How do we define emergent phenomena? What are emergent cultures and how do emergent cultures in games parallel emergent cultures in the real world? What are the best methods and perspectives for studying emergent cultures in online games and virtual worlds? What is the benefit of studying play communities in situ, in the wild, on their own terms? Here we will look at anthropological and sociological perspectives and also explore the problem of online games-as-performance. What are the implications of conducting research into a domain in which the researcher must become implicated as a co-performer in order to study?

This book follows the tradition of feminist ethnography which, rather than taking an

“objective,” “scientific” approach, acknowledges that all accounts of people by people are subjective by definition. Instead of trying to eradicate my own subjectivity, which would be impossible and disingenuous, I choose instead to privilege multiple subjectivities.

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 19 Thus, I cast myself in the role of translator, interpreter, folklorist, and steward of a polyphonic narrative that allows, more often than not, the subjects to speak for themselves. In addition to direct quotes from subjects throughout the central monograph, which comprises Part II of the book, I also invite them to reflect on and annotate my own interpretations of their culture, thus allowing them to take an authorative and authorial role in their own story.

In Part III, I provide a detailed description of my methodology, describing the day-to-day mechanics of conducting participant observation, the primary tool of ethnography, in virtual worlds and online games. I also describe the analytic process and the tools and methods that were used to identity patterns of emergence. I also elucidate ethnography as a meta-game, a constant solving and unwrapping of mysteries and puzzles. In Part IV, I follow traditions of reflection and autobiography from anthropological writing, drawing back the curtain to reveal some of the more messy aspects of ethnography, and also describing how my method was modified in situ in direct response to my subjects. This narrative also reinforces conclusions made in Part II by revealing that the ethnographer is ultimately implicated in the very processes she is studying.

Part V provides an extended mediation on the implications of this research both to design and to larger trends in the culture as a whole. Here I make an argument that online games and virtual worlds have defined a new subset of the the Global Village as a Global

Playground. This Global Village, unlike the televised village to which MacLuhan referred when he first coined the term, is dynamic discursive and participatory. It is also

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 20 improvisational, unpredictable, and emergent, properties which we see being discussed on broader levels across the culture (e.g., tipping point, guns, germs, etc.)

I also posit that we may be witnessing what I term a “play turn” in culture, where not only are adults increasingly engaging in a wide array of play practices and communities, but that games and play are beginning to infiltrate other aspects of our lives. Rather than set aside as a distinct and separate domain, we now see games finding their way into areas as diverse as corporate and military training, advertising, education and activism.

Today’s teenagers are twice as likely be in a virtual world as the generation above them.

When this generation comes of age, are we likely to see this “play turn” grow further? As the “medium of the 21st Century,” do games and virtual worlds have something unique to offer in representing the complex, large-scale, and emergent systems that increasingly comprise our world?

Celia Pearce & Artemesia Communities of Play-v.08 –TOC/Intro Page 21