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Virtual Reality: an Ethnographic Study of Sociality, Being, and Money in a Multi-Player Online Game-World

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Virtual Reality: an Ethnographic Study of Sociality, Being, and Money in a Multi-Player Online Game-World ResearchOnline@JCU This file is part of the following reference: Morgan, Rhian (2014) Virtual reality: an ethnographic study of sociality, being, and money in a multi-player online game-world. PhD thesis, James Cook University. Access to this file is available from: http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/41004/ The author has certified to JCU that they have made a reasonable effort to gain permission and acknowledge the owner of any third party copyright material included in this document. If you believe that this is not the case, please contact [email protected] and quote http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/41004/ Virtually Reality An Ethnographic Study of Sociality, Being, and Money in a Multi- Player Online Game-world Thesis submitted by Rhian Morgan B.A.(Hons) U.K., M.A. James Cook University, Australia in June 2014 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in the School of Arts & Social Sciences James Cook University i Statement on the Contribution of Others This thesis has been made possible through the support of the following people: Supervisors: Primary supervisor: Dr Robin Rodd, School of Arts & Social Sciences, James Cook University Secondary Supervisor: Associate Professor Ian Atkinson, Faculty of Science & Engineering, James Cook University Permissions granted by: David Simmonds, CEO, MindArk PE AB Screenshots are included with the permissions of MindArk PE AB and the society hierarchy template included in figure 7 was obtained from the Entropia Planets Wiki and used under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 3.0 license. ii Ethics Declaration The research presented and reported in this thesis was conducted within the guidelines for research ethics outlined in the National Statement on Ethics Conduct in Research Involving Humans (1999), the Joint NHMRC/AVCC Statement and Guidelines on Research Practice (1997), the James Cook University Policy on Experimentation Ethics. Standard Practices and Guidelines (2001), and the James Cook University Statement and Guidelines on Research Practice (2001). The proposed research methodology received clearance from the James Cook University Experimentation Ethics Review Committee, approval number: 3962. 28/11/2014 X Rhian Morgan Rhian Morgan Mrs iii Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to acknowledge the Entropian player community and all those that took part in this study. This project would not have been possible without their input, encouragement, reflection, and critique. So, thank you to all those who allowed me insight into their lives. I would also like to acknowledge MindArk, for allowing me to conduct this research, and creating and sustaining Entropia Universe. In addition, I would like to thank my supervisors Dr Robin Rodd and Professor Ian Atkinson for their feedback and encouragement. Thank you for reading my messy drafts, listening to my crazy ideas and helping me refine them. I also owe special thanks to Professor Rosita Henry and Dr. Theresa Petray for all the moral and intellectual support they have provided throughout this process. I am further indebted to the wider academic community at JCU. In particular, everyone in the school of arts and social sciences who asked questions and listened to stories about my research, thus helping to maintain my enthusiasm for this project. A PhD is not a single-player process and I am particularly grateful to all the post- graduate students who have accompanied me on this journey. Thank you to Tania Honey, Christine Pam, Ryl Harrison, and Kristin McBain-Rigg for joining me on this massively multi-player adventure. I would also like to acknowledge the support of my husband, my son, and my parents; thank you for putting up with me, supporting me, and believing in me throughout the entire process. I could not have done it without you. iv Abstract Entropia Universe (EU) is a science-fiction themed massively multiplayer online role- playing game (MMORPG), with a real-cash economy. The cash economy means that players can deposit and withdraw money from the game, at a fixed exchange rate of US$1 to 10 Project Entropia Dollars (PED). This study explores the impacts of this monetisation on the collective lifeworlds of players. The study focuses on online sociality, culturally located ontologies, understandings of virtual monies, and the experience of being in a multiplayer game-world. The primary methods of investigation are participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and the discursive analysis of Entropia related forums, websites, and player created media. The study applies post- phenomenological, ludological, and economic theory, in conjunction with cyber- ethnographic research methods, in order to analyse experiences of being in this digital capitalist space. The resultant ethnography draws together data gathered during a year of online participant observation and twenty semi-structured interviews with players, in a documentation of the existential, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of life in EU. In doing so, the study reveals how the monetisation of an MMORPG influences the composition and characteristics of a virtual world community. The study demonstrates how the virtual lifeworld, in EU, is comprised of an amalgam of embodied, social, cultural, and economically situated experiences. Embodied relations with gaming technologies, play relations with the game artefact, and the in- world experience of re-embodied presence, converge to create a sense of being in the game-world. Social identities are reconfigured within the game-space through the interactions of actual world and game based, ludo-narrative, identity constructs. The subjective experience of being in the game-world is consequently complemented by the v intersubjective experience of being with others. The virtual lifeworld is also shaped by the socio-ludic structures and conventions of interaction that develop in response to the game mechanics and real cash economy. The capitalist structures of the game economy promote self-seeking behaviours, while also creating avenues for the formation of meaningful trust relationships and in-game displays of altruism. The game economy also means that work, play, production, and consumption converge, as self-interest confronts sociality in an economically meaningful, yet fictitious, online world. The virtualization of trade, labour, commodities, and money is just the latest stage in the development of capitalism, and we are only just beginning to see what the implications of these processes may be. This study explores how the legitimate two-way exchange of game currency for actual world currency links occurrences in a game-world to the experiential realities of monetary value, thus rendering the experience of being in the game-world virtually real. Consequently, the study provides industry relevant insights into the formation of MMORPG communities and the impacts of bidirectionally exchangeable virtual currencies on these communities. vi Table of Contents Statement of the Contribution of Others ............................................................................ i Ethics Declaration ............................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................... x Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1: Life on Planet Calypso ................................................................................ 1 The Beginning ............................................................................................................... 1 Entropia Universe .......................................................................................................... 2 Playing and Studying .................................................................................................... 7 A New Arrival ............................................................................................................... 9 A Virtual Universe ...................................................................................................... 14 Ethnography ................................................................................................................ 18 Aims and Methods ...................................................................................................... 20 Entering the Virtual Field-Site .................................................................................... 28 Thesis Overview .......................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 2. Ethnography in a Virtual World ............................................................. 37 Virtual Worlds and Cyber-Ethnography ..................................................................... 38 Play as Method ............................................................................................................ 44 Ludology and Narratology .........................................................................................
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