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Cyborg Ethnography Expanding the Borders of Virtual Worlds

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Cyborg Ethnography Expanding the Borders of Virtual Worlds 1 Supervisor: Anders Kristian Munk Student number: 20172050 Pages: 80 Cyborg Ethnography Expanding the Borders of Virtual Worlds Morten Christian Heuser Aalborg University 2019 2 Abstract _______________________________________________________________________________________ Det videnskabelige felt Game Studies rækker i disse dage ud efter nye metoder til at undersøge og problematisere computerspillets allestedsnærværende indvirkning på samfundet. Dette speciale er skrevet med det formål at validere den etnografiske tilgang som et værktøj til at udforske spilverdener, samt konkretisere hvordan etnografien rekonfigureres når den bruges til at udforske sådanne verdener. Specialet etablerer sit teoretiske udgangspunkt gennem en nærlæsning af tre hovedværker, som omhandler studiet af virtuelle verdener, et koncept som er blevet indskrænket af forfatterne (Boellstorff 2006, Nardi 2009, Pearce 2009) til kun at omhandle visse typer af computerspil, de såkaldte MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) og MMOW (Massively Multiplayer Online World). Formålet med denne nærlæsning er at forstå de metodologiske tilgange og mest betydningsfulde konventioner bag virtuelle verdener. På denne baggrund argumenteres der for at man set i lyset af den moderne forståelse for kultur inden for antropologi kan udvide dette felt, også kaldet virtual etnografi til også at inkludere andre typer af spil. Dette argumenteres der for, gennem et feltarbejde foretaget i skydespillet Counter-Strike. Her analyseres begreber som “embodiment, spatiality og persistence” og hvordan disse begreber skifter etnografisk betydning, når de optræder i verdener, som ikke ligner virtuelle verdener. Baseret på Donna Harraways tænkning omkring cyborgs og menneske-maskine relationer udvikles begrebet cyborg etnografi som en ny tilgang indenfor den virtuelle etnografi, der kan undersøge kulturer i og omkring computerspil, som hidtil har været oversete eller umulige at undersøge med den virtuelle etnografi. 3 Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................ 2 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 5 Ethnography of the digital ........................................................................................................................ 7 Dissolving the online/offline dichotomy ................................................................................................. 8 Why study video games with anthropology? ...................................................................................... 10 Literature review and analysis ................................................................................................................... 11 Tom Boellstorff – Coming of Age in Second Life ................................................................................. 11 Staying Within the Virtual World ...................................................................................................... 13 Boellstorffs concept of Techné ............................................................................................................ 14 Celia Pearce - Communities of Play ....................................................................................................... 16 The process of Avatarization .............................................................................................................. 17 Intersubjective Flow ............................................................................................................................. 18 Bonnie Nardi - My Life as a Night Elf Priest ............................................................................................ 19 An Artistic Skinner Box ....................................................................................................................... 20 Aesthetic Rules ...................................................................................................................................... 22 Ethnography and Virtual Worlds........................................................................................................... 25 In Defense of Ethnography ................................................................................................................. 26 Multi sited virtual worlds .................................................................................................................... 26 Staying True to Classic Ethnography ................................................................................................ 28 Defining key concepts .................................................................................................................................. 29 The Virtual World..................................................................................................................................... 29 Immersion and Flow ................................................................................................................................ 31 The body and the machine ...................................................................................................................... 32 Observing the bodily experience ............................................................................................................ 33 Avatars ....................................................................................................................................................... 34 The conventions of the virtual world .................................................................................................... 35 Other types of game worlds .................................................................................................................... 36 Counter-Strike explained ............................................................................................................................. 40 Maps ........................................................................................................................................................... 42 Methodology ................................................................................................................................................. 44 Field Work ................................................................................................................................................. 44 4 Observing and writing culture as a native ............................................................................................ 45 Participant observation ............................................................................................................................ 46 Different states of participation .............................................................................................................. 47 Using a notepad as an ethnographic artifact ........................................................................................ 48 The Advanced Player and the Transparent Machine .......................................................................... 49 The Cyborg Ethnographer ....................................................................................................................... 52 Exploring Counter-Strike as a hybrid world ............................................................................................ 56 Embodiment in Counter-Strike .............................................................................................................. 60 Observations of bunnyhopping .............................................................................................................. 63 Expanding the barriers of the virtual world ......................................................................................... 69 Persistent Hybrid Worlds ........................................................................................................................ 72 Towards a new trajectory for virtual inquiry: Cyborg ethnography ................................................ 74 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 76 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................. 77 5 Introduction Game studies is still in a relatively young field of study. Because of this, it is constantly evolving its approach and engagement with the cultural, political, artistic and technological dimensions of the increasingly ubiquitous and important media form, video games. Game studies, or ludology as it is sometimes called, began as the study of play. Dutch philosopher, John Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, considered the founding text of game studies, did the important work of detrivializing the idea of play and centralizing it in the history of human behavior and culture (Dovey and Kennedy, 2004). Since then, game studies have taken on video games as an object of inquiry, often using a sociologically-informed research approach to study video game cultures. Video game cultures can be said to be the ultimate representation of our increasingly mediated everyday lives, in which we have learned to flow seamlessly between the virtual and the
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