ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper

Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the nature of social acceptability, found in “Language and Symbolic

Power”, can be applied to online games that Steinkuehler, C., & Williams, D. (2006) argue are “third spaces”. With references to the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) “Old School

RuneScape” (OSRS), I will be analyzing the various performativity practices of players in the game and how they are contrived of varying degrees of social power in-game. The purpose of this analysis will be to attempt to extend Steinkuehler’s defining of digital third spaces by analyzing OSRS through Pierre

Bourdieu’s framework of symbolic power. By looking at how players choose to represent their character’s in game through speech, itemization, and movement I seek to demonstrate the prevailing forces making

RuneScape a digital third space susceptible to social power dynamics. This work exists in conjunction with research being done in the field of digital anthropology and other interdisciplinary fields that are turning virtual environments such as World of Warcraft, SecondLife, and Lineage into field sites.

RuneScape, the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game founded by Jagex in 2001 is a virtual online environment that can be accessed across the globe. It has gone through several major reworks in the past 17 years and as a result is not the same game as it began. RuneScape 3, the latest version of the game released in 2013, continues to evolve today (RuneScape). RuneScape was built using

Java code, but as development with this computer language became increasingly difficult to manage bugs, software mediated pathogens, Jagex made the switch to C++. Because RuneScape has gone through drastic developmental changes in the last 17 years, it is important to distinguish which version of RuneScape we are looking at and why. For the sake of the simplicity, RuneScape refers to all iterations of the game and the entirety of the community that plays any of the versions released by

Jagex while OSRS refers to specially the style of game that stays true to its original design and functionality. ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper

RuneScape has gone through three major reworks while also splitting into two separate games through the course of its online existence. In 2004, RuneScape was relaunched as RuneScape 2 and

RuneScape Classic, a far more basic version of the game – sticking to its original design, was released.

The major difference between the game was its updated graphical interface and smoothness of character and environmental aesthetics. The most notable version of RuneScape was released in 2007 as a game that stayed true to pixelated animations while also expanding on the gameplay by adding new quests and skills. which will be discussed later. Then, in February 2013 a poll was given to the RuneScape community to see if the 2007 version of RuneScape was worth preserving. With an astounding 500,000 votes in favor of keeping a classic version of the game, Jagex released the game as Old School

RuneScape. RuneScape 2 was upgraded and repackaged as RuneScape 3 in July 2013 with even more graphical, structural, and functional updates. However, this rerelease was met with resistance from the

RuneScape community. Players from across the world had felt as if this version of the game had distanced itself from the simplicity of the original game. Combat became more convoluted and classic styled buildings received texture updates that changed the entire feeling of the game. When Jagex began to update RuneScape’s graphical capabilities, the players felt it lost its novelty along with it.

Contrary to what Jagex expected, their attempts to make the game look better backfired with a majority of their original userbase. Jagex soon realized that with every attempt to improve the look of the game, they were losing part of the originality that allowed the game to become popular. OSRS is still one of the biggest MMORPG’s on the market today, with over two-hundred-sixty million accounts, the game has become a haven for nostalgic players and first-time video gamersavi alike.

The purpose of RuneScape is whatever the player wants it to be. In OSRS, there are 15 nonmember and eight member skills making a total of 23 skills that can be leveled up for members.

Being a member on RuneScape originally required a monthly subscription. However, in 2015, Jagex ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper released an in-game item known as a bond which can be bought from other players or the Grand

Exchange, RuneScape’s “Wall Street”, which gave the player one month of free membership. Other than buying a bond with in-game currency, a player can also use a credit card or PayPal service to use out-of- game currency to buy a membership. Other than having access to more skill options, members also have access to more locations in the game, more quests, and more items. As a result, the incentive for becoming a member is quite high for players that enjoy the game and want to progress their characters.

With each skill in RuneScape, there is the ability to train it to level 99, or the max level, which can take anywhere from a week to a year depending on the level of time dedicated to the pursuit. Some players can grind, or spend consecutive hours doing repetitive actions in game, certain skills to the max level in less than a week of in game time. In OSRS, there are combat skills and noncombat skills. Combat skills like attack and strength allow the player to equip weapons and deal more damage with each attack. Noncombat skills like cooking and fishing allow the player to receive different raw fish – depending on the players level, location, and fishing tool and then cook them by chopping down a tree, which requires the woodcutting skill, and lighting the wood on fire with a tinderbox, which requires the firemaking skill, and then clicking on the fire after clicking on the fish. Depending on the cooking level, the fish will either be cooked or burnt. Players with a higher cooking level have less chance burning their food. The cooked fish can either be eaten by the player to regain health while killing NPC’s (non-player characters) or other players (‘PKing’ – or player killing) or sold to general shops or the Grand Exchange.

OSRS also offers a unique variety of quests, achievement diaries, and mini-games that generate different in game rewards such as weapons, armor, or stat enhancing wearables such as rings, necklaces, and capes. Each of these items allows the player to customize their character to add combat or skill bonuses or just fashion to their appearance. Higher-level items generally have more interesting design features while lower-level items tend to look more generic. Each of these items can be identified ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper or not identified by other players in the game as holding a relative value with ever other item in the game based on it’s in game value, stat bonuses, and style. If a new player cannot identify an item, they will normally be able to identify the items value due to its sophistication and cosmetic appeal and associate it with a higher value than the items they start out with. If a reoccurring player cannot identify an item, they will either attribute it to a seasonal event, occurring every Halloween, Christmas, and

Easter and offer rewards unique to that season, or a new item addition which will make the new item – depending on its bonuses relative to the cost of getting it – their newest pursuit. An example of this would be the release of a new weapon with higher combat bonuses then a weapon the player is currently using.

Generally, players in OSRS have multiple item sets that they choose to wear depending on the activity they are doing. For example, a player standing in the Grand Exchange might choose to wear items that make them look stylish over items that are good for combat. Such items used to be the party hats and the dragon masks until Jagex made them more accessible for players to get and as a result forced their price down on the Grand Exchange and as a result: their perceived value in the game.

Before the party hats were made accessible, the price would sometimes exceed one hundred ‘mil’, or

10,000,000 GP (in-game currency), depending on the color. The blue party hat was and still is the highest priced party hat but now the it is only worth approximately 50K, 50,000 GP. Therefore, the blue party hat is no longer a symbol of wealth and status anymore for OSRS players. Though it once was a way to distinguish oneself from other players and transfer wealth, it now stands as a relatively benign homage to a simpler time in RuneScape.

What was interesting about the blue party hats, was not their bonuses – because they didn’t offer the player any bonuses in the game – it was what they represented to other players. Someone who does not play RuneScape might see the blue party hat on a low-resolution graphic of a digital avatar and ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper question this claim. RuneScape, in the early days, was defined by it’s low resolution graphics and was venerated for its minimal design. Unlike other MMORPGs, RuneScape didn’t boast to having the best graphical interface but merely the ability to give the player the freedom to make their own stories in game. There were quests that took place in RuneScape and unlocked new locations and skills for the player, but they did not supersede the rest of the game. What I mean by this is that directionality of the game was less dependent on following a linear progression of activities. The process of raising skills, earning money, killing other players (and chickens), and playing mini-games were the driving forces in

OSRS that could be undergone in a variety of different ways. If a player wanted to spend a few hours training fletching, a member’s noncombat skill, and then got bored of that and wants to try ‘flipping’ or buying items low and selling them high on the Grand Exchange, they could do that. Even more, they had the opportunity to do both at the same time. The game offered players a certain degree of freedom that reduced the necessity of accomplishing the task at hand in specific way that added a leisure component to the game which makes it relax. MMORPGs are specifically known for this characteristic of not having the storyline in which a player cannot continue without doing certain actions that must take place to proceed the game. However, OSRS was unique in the variety of options a player had for spending their time.

Aside from the pixels, lag, and frequent bugs in OSRS, the game was built using quantitative reasoning and logic that allowed it to seem more realistic than games that were coming out 10 years later. At some moments there are skill requirements that must be met to do certain tasks but at no point is the player ever forced to do those tasks. If the player chooses, they may decide that they want to focus on another aspect of the game and wait some time before undertaking the task. In a lot of ways, OSRS is built on the freedom it gives its players to make their own decisions. The driving force in

RuneScape from the start is about bettering a player’s character in whatever way they see fit. The only ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper difference with other games is the abundance of choices and paths the player can make to acquire those things. It is entirely possible for a player to kill cows found at the starting area from level 3 combat level

(minimum), based on the total level of each combat stat, to level 126 combat level (maximum). While many players don’t do it, because they want to fight higher level NPCs to train faster, it is still a possibility. The amount of options that OSRS presents its players is one of the reasons the game remains popular today, even with its low-resolution graphics and bugs. With this level of freedom comes an unspoken admonition of how to use the space.

In Steinkuehler and Williams’ paper Where Everyone Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as Third Spaces the two team up to tackle Ray Oldenburg’s (1999) eight deﬁning characteristics of third places and explain how the criteria for each characteristic can be applied to virtual spaces (Steinkuehler

& Williams 2006). Their argument extends Oldenburg’s observation of the declining use of “brick-and- mortar” third spaces to studying a few virtual spaces that that they argue are third spaces themselves

(Steinkuehler & Williams 2006). These “brick-and-mortar” third spaces refer to informal meeting places such as local libraries, bars, and parks. In congruence with Steinkuehler & Williams’ argument, I will be ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper breaking down Old School RuneScape using Oldenburg’s eight defining characteristics of third spaces.

Starting with ‘neutral ground’, OSRS exists as a space that is noncommittal. Because OSRS is a video game, there is no mandatory edict to play it. It is a place one goes out of their own volition. An example of this would be a casual player who logs into RuneScape to train their strength skill. The player goes to the bank, gets a weapon and some armor, and goes to the cow fields. They spend about an hour fighting cows and when they are tired, bored, or both they decide to log off. OSRS exists as a space were this player is afforded the opportunity to choose what they will do, how the will do it, and for how long they will do it for. In this way every player is free to come and go as they please and it is not obligated to perform any specific tasks.

Continuing with ‘leveler’, success in OSRS is not dependent on out-of-game occupation or status in society. The only thing that matters to other players in OSRS is the accomplishments and capabilities ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper of other players in-game, such as achieving a skill cape at level 99 or wearing an expensive armor set such as gilded rune armor. No matter who is playing the game, the rules do not favor socioeconomic advantages out-of-game because membership which can now be earned without paying out-of-game currency. Because membership no longer requires out-of-game payment, anyone that can generate enough in-game currency to afford a bond can have access to the benefits of being a member.

With regards to ‘conversation is main activity’, OSRS is a perfect example of a space that fosters communication. Whilst ‘skilling’, or raising a certain skill such as fishing, the click system is not very intensive. Simply one clicks on a fishing spot will automatically start the fishing animation and the player can focus on other things like reading the news or watching TV out-of-game. This is known as ‘AFK fishing’, or away-from-keyboard fishing. During this time, many players will engage in friendly banter with other players who are also skilling to pass the time. While it could be argued that conversation is not the focus of the game, it is important to note that when engaging any level of click-intensive behaviors in OSRS, players will often communicate with other players despite not knowing who they are.

For example, if players who are skilling level up in front of other players, an animation of fireworks will occur over their head indicating to other players they have leveled up. In response to this, other players in the surrounding vicinity might say “Gratz”, or congratulations. Despite not having any previous history speaking to one another, this is a common behavior witness in OSRS that shows when given a subject or topic for comment, players will engage with each other.

In terms of ‘accessibility & accommodation’, OSRS requires even less barrier to access than

“brick-and-mortar” third spaces. With physical spaces, transportation is often a requirement for access.

OSRS can be accessed without leaving the house. It can be argued that some people might not have access to a computer or a phone (to play OSRS Mobile). However, as the internet becomes more accessible to places throughout world, this argument slowly loses its basis. Geographically speaking, ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper poorer areas are likely to have less of an opportunity to access OSRS than wealthy areas. However, these may be places were physical third spaces themselves do not exist if but merely a campfire or shrine.

Relatively speaking, OSRS is quite accessible and accommodating. It requires a download of Java or can be directly downloaded to a player’s computer so that they can access it right from their desktop. For people who are wheelchairs, access to physical spaces is almost impossible without forethought on the construction project of that third space. OSRS defeats this barrier by allowing anyone in the world with internet access to play the game. Once there, tutorials for playing the game are everywhere. One can talk to a ‘guide’ for each skill they want to learn more about as well as for learning about the different locations they can travel to. RuneScape as a site has community forums for new players to ask questions and get information for how to play the game.

In terms of ‘the regulars’, OSRS has a prolific history of players that have changed the game forever. Specifically, I will be talking about Zezima, a cyber celebrity that was the highest ranked player in RuneScape overall. Whenever other players would spot Zezima they would often gather around praising him and following him where ever he went. Zezima represented the epitome of what ever

RuneScape player wanted, max skills, money, and fame. As a result, several players took to naming their characters based off Zezima’s name such as Zezima203 or ZezimaFan4. The reason Zezima is significant is because he managed to do what seemed at the time as impossible, achieve 99 in every skill. Even today, Zezima’s status is still recognized even though he is not the number one player anymore. Without a doubt, Zezima’s accomplishment inspired many other players to get 99 in every skill.

OSRS is also characteristic of ‘a low profile’. On OSRS, people only know other people by their in- game name unless they are friends outside of the game. In this way, players are anonymous and have no obligation to the players they pass by in-game. While OSRS is not devoid of pretention, it is characteristic of a homely place where players can feel comfortable doing their own thing. Generally, ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper members of the same combat level/skill level stay together in their respective training areas. This gives

OSRS a relatively non-combative interaction between players. While I can’t speak on the subject of

“Pking”, as it involves trying to kill another player, the training areas allow players to focus on killing non-player characters which makes the game homelier and inviting to the less experienced players.

All over OSRS there is a feeling of playfulness and cheer. Most NPC’s have seen to this. Most

NPC’s have been given slightly exuberant personalities to make the game more entertaining. Even when pursuing the hardest of quests, many NPC’s along the way will be given strange backstories or request certain in game items, like a specific kind of cabbage, that makes the game slightly childish and humorous. Due to the nature of the NPC’s, the nature of player conservations is slightly derivative of these witty dialogues. For example, a player might be fishing and say, “My, what a beautiful day this is”.

In this remark, the player recognizes the implications of this statement in context with a digital world.

Because the game climates do not change unless traveling to different locations, remarking on the weather in such a way is reminiscent of what one would say about the weather out-of-game and implies the notion that this person believes they are their character not recognizing they are in a video game.

This type of dialogue often elicits other players to either join in on the imaginary abstraction of OSRS to extend the joke or just simply reply with ‘LOL’ (laugh out loud).

Finally, OSRS is a ‘home away from home’. While OSRS is a video game, it is still a space that fosters rootedness and ownership. In the game, players can build their own houses with the construction skill and give their gameplay a degree of permanence. Even when their character dies, they always have their house. While some activities are more intensive than others, the nature of the simple one-click interface brings a certain inescapable leisure to the game even when player killing. Unlike other games that are built-in with a wide variety of buttons and functions that make the game more physically demanding, OSRS falls on the lighter side of energy requirements. Most functions in game, ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper even combat functions require a simple click to cause the character to interact with something. Skills like magic require a little bit more work but relative to First Person Shooter (FPS) games, with crouching, aiming, shooting, running, and jumping, the interaction in-game is extremely easy. This promotes a game environment that can be slightly challenging in some areas but predominantly relaxing in most aspects of the game. As a result, people log on to enjoy their time on the game rather than engage in laborious and demanding tasks that would be associated with the work domain.

When observing OSRS as a digital third space we can also draw connections on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical work in the area of social acceptance with linguistic choice and habitus, or communication through the body. I want to extend the relationship between communication and power that Bourdieu introduces in his book Language and Symbolic Power, to OSRS in order to further promote its importance in the field of digital anthropology as a virtual space subjected the same cultural forces that occur offline. “Language is a body technique, and specifically linguistic, especially phonetic, competence is a dimension of bodily hexis in which one’s whole relation to the social world, and one’s whole socially informed relation to the world, are expressed” (Bourdieu 2011). So, the question that this presents is: how does bodily hexis translate to digital worlds, specifically OSRS? If we conclude that OSRS is no less of a third space than our local bar, then we must determine how the forces of communication change in the context of this social environment that has different mediums through which to communicate.

One aspect of communication that separates players on OSRS is the typing field. Although audio communication over video games is much more common place today, in the past there was only the text bar. Therefore, in the context of OSRS, which does not auto-assign audio chatrooms with strangers, players are required to use the typing field to communicate. This promotes several power dynamics to appear in the game. Just as with spoken language, written language is also a tool that certain players have varying masteries over. Except, within OSRS, because the language is not audio it cannot convey ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper mood or intent, therefore players can sometimes come to misunderstandings with other players or even trick them. An example of this is known as luring, which still occurs in the game. Luring is when a player asks another player to follow them into the wilderness with all their items and then kills them. The way in which this is done is through the typing field. Although this was more prevalent in the initial stages of the game, it is still possible that new players who have never heard of OSRS can be lured. Another example is money doubling. Money doubling is when a player says “money doubling” at the Grand

Exchange in order to trick other players into giving them money. Once they have the money, they will keep it. Unless a player has experience with both luring and money doubling, they are at risk of falling victim to it because they are not aware that it is even possible until it is too late. What this represents with respect to Bourdieu’s work, is a significant power dynamic that is a play between people who know what money doubling is and people who do not. People who know what it is and are eloquent with written language can convince players who have less linguistic ability or experience in the game to give them money. Here power is displayed through both knowledge of the game itself, but also over written communication. It represents a significant gap between those who can derive intent from written language and those who are not.

Another way in which players distinguish themselves from other players is through habitus, or itemization. By acquiring rare items and equipping them, a player can nonverbally communicate their superiority. For example, a skill cape requires level 99 in a certain skill. If a player wears a skill cape, they can communicate to other players (roughly) how much energy they put into the game. Some skill capes have more value than others depending on how hard they are to obtain. Prayer, for example, which requires burying bones is an expensive skill to raise but not an intensive one. Slayer, on the other hand, requires one to defeat high level monsters and could be less expensive but more difficult to obtain.

Another aspect of this would be if a member took their member only items to a nonmember world. In ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper displaying their member items, they are effectively displaying their items as superior because they are unobtainable for nonmembers. This can influence the way in which players address each other. Often, these member players will go to nonmember worlds and initiate trades with low level players and give them the most expensive nonmember items as a token of generosity but as a sign of their superiority in both an affluence and virtue. Other times, they will initiate a trade, put up a high gold amount, and cancel the trade just to show the other player how much gold they have. The longer one is exposed to

OSRS the more certain items will appear as having value over other items, whether it be for their rarity, expense, or bonuses. Players use these items to differentiate themselves from lower level players, associated with nonskilled players. Some low-level players will attempt to combat this by equipping themselves with items that give no bonuses but come from random events. Random events are mini- games that occur in OSRS periodically when the player is often participating in another activity. They require the player to follow an NPC to a non-accessible area and complete a basic task to be rewarded with an item associated with that random event. Some random events offer different costume pieces.

As a lower level that does not want to be distinguished as a non-skilled player by wearing bronze armor, the cheapest and weakest of the metal armors, they will instead opt to wear various random event pieces to communicate to other players that they know they are a lower level but do not associate with a lower-skill bracket. In this way, higher level players are less likely to engage in combative or domineering conversations with these players but communicate on equal ground and see these players in a way that is different than a low level with bronze armor, even if it does offer slightly higher armor bonuses than the random event pieces.

In this way, OSRS serves as a digital third space while also containing power dynamics inherent in verbal and nonverbal communication that occur in physical third spaces. While in-game nonverbal communication does not take place in the same way as it does offline with respects to Bourdieu’s ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper analysis of “the mouth” – in that the mouth, in terms of its shape when speaking and eating, factor into power dynamics – it is still seen in other ways in OSRS, specifically movement..

Another nonverbal display of power OSRS is movement. The way in which a character moves can indicate to other players how skilled that player is at the game and thus how they should treat that player. For autonomous movements, players are likely to attribute this behavior with botting and devalue the character they see engaging in this behavior. This normally looks like repetitive behavior followed by unresponsiveness when provoked by other players in the vicinity through chat. Another example of low skill would be the opposite of autonomous movements. For players that lack directionality in that their character walks almost absently to locations and fails to react quick enough to in game stimulus, when combat training for example, this can be attributed to low-skilled behavior.

When killing cows for example, after all the players in an area kill all the cows, they must wait for a cow to respawn. A player that reacts too slowly will be attributed as being inferior to the person who clicks on the cow first. However, the player that clicks first rides an invisible line because if their behavior appears consistently the same without any variation and without saying anything, they will be attributed to a bot and then seen as even lesser than the person who failed to click on the cow fast enough. Thus, humans take their varying perceptions offline and bring them to the game creating meaningful worlds that are rooted in underlying power dynamics that influence the way players interact with one another.

In defense of OSRS as a third space and an extension to the topic of video games as public spaces of interaction I want posit the notion that we look at digital third spaces in response to termination. Although RuneScape, like a local bar, can be argued as a pleasure rather than a necessity, those who frequent the space will fight against its termination. When Jagex announced that it would be going through major aesthetic updates in 2013, players used the community forums to combat this decision by the developers. In response, Jagex had to create a poll to see what they actual consensus ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper was about the game’s current interface and graphics. With slightly less than 500,000 responses in favor of preserving the game, Jagex rereleased the current version of the game as OSRS. This response to termination is an extension of Oldenburg’s seven characteristics of third places.

In the event of an announced termination of a digital third space, players, depending on their attachment to the game, will seek to preserve it. In the example of a church receiving lower membership numbers, members will often contribute more proceeds in the form of tithing to fund the preservation of the church property. In a similar fashion, some RuneScape members sent Jagex emails and letters pleading that they continue hosting the site. What physical and digital third spaces share are the same innate fears to termination and attempts to justify why they should not. How they differ, is the way in which they can gather information and resources that will allow the space to survive.

Technologically speaking, digital spaces are able harness more human capital because of accessibility.

Due the number of people that frequent OSRS even today, we find that this space survived because the community was there. If a community happens to be losing members and therefore human capital, it is significantly harder to keep these spaces alive in a hyper-competitive capitalist society which derives from human and economic capital. In the context of OSRS’s survival, we may learn that survivability of a third space is directly related to the number of individuals who are there to vote or advocate for it at the required time. I, for example, was not playing RuneScape at the time when this vote occurred.

Therefore, I was not even aware that the vote was happening. If the poll had showed a significantly a smaller number of people advocating for its survival, it would most like be terminated and would not even be the topic of this paper. However, because the game was able to keep players engaged and active during the time when it was necessary to transition and terminate the existing style of play, it was able to survive. Therefore, as a implication to all third spaces, digital and physical, survival is derivative ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper of specific temporal decisions by active community members and is contingent upon their belief that the current characteristics of that third space are worth preserving.

As we continue to study digital environments, we must remember who we are studying. Though the medium has changed, the actors – being humans – have not. As demonstrated from the verbal and nonverbal aspects of communication in OSRS, this digital third space contains the same competing forces of social power that are present in physical spaces. As the method of communication transitions between language, itemization, and movement, the patterns that define human sociality remain evident and observable in these spaces. Despite any notion that these digital spaces are ‘less authentic’ or ‘less relevant’ to everyday operations, would be to dismiss the humanity that we bring to these platforms. In understanding digital culture, we must be mindful of the anthropocentric bias we have towards these digital environments to effectively determine the sophistication of the humanity that exists in these programmable third spaces.

ANP 489: Anthropology Capstone Course Adam Weickersheimmer-Austad Final Paper

Bibliography

Bourdieu, Pierre, et al. Language and Symbolic Power. Polity Press, 2011.

Steinkuehler, C., & Williams, D. (2006). Where everybody knows your (screen) name: Online games as

"third places". Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), 885-909. doi:10.1111/j.1083-

6101.2006.00300.x

“RuneScape.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Nov. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape.

“RuneScape Classic: Farewell.” RuneScape, services.runescape.com/m=news/runescape-classic- farewell?oldschool=1.

“RuneScape 2.” RuneScape Wiki, runescape.fandom.com/wiki/RuneScape_2.

“Zezima.” RuneScape Players Wiki, rsplayers.wikia.com/wiki/Zezima.