Modes of Play A Frame Analytic Account of Video Game Play Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades des Doktors der Philosophie an der Fakultät Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Hamburg im Promotionsfach Medienwissenschaft vorgelegt von Sebastian Deterding Hamburg, 2013 Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 14. August 2013 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Uwe Hasebrink Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Rolf Nohr 2 Eidestattliche Erklärung Hiermit versichere ich an Eides statt, dass ich die vorliegende Dissertation selbst verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Hilfsmittel benutzt habe, namentlich die Transkription von 18 aufgezeichneten Interviews durch studentische Hilfskräfte. Ich versichere des Weiteren, dass die Arbeit nicht schon einmal in einem früheren Promotionsverfahren angenommen oder als ungenügend beurteilt worden ist. _______________________________________ Sebastian Deterding 3 Acknowledgements Is there any thing whereof it may be said, see, this is new? It has been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. Ecclesiastes 1:10-11 Few texts in the canon of game studies are as under-appreciated as Steven Sniderman’s essay ‘Unwritten Rules’ (1999). If there is anything in the following pages whereof it may be said, ‘see, this is new’, it is but an extended footnote that borrows from Goffman the words to express what Sniderman so presciently pointed at but ultimately found ‘unstatable’: ‘what we must know and do to play the simplest game in our culture’. But maybe our task was never to say something new to begin with. Maybe it is just to restate in a language that speaks to the pre- sent what has been forgotten and will be forgotten again. One must imagine Ecclesiastes happy. Over the course of a life, we reassemble our lost family of choice, across continents, centu- ries, disciplines, and if we are lucky, meet them in the living years. We are them: the intersec- tion of the people with whom we connect. I thank all who helped to shape the ideas in this book in discussions with me in the past years, and made me feel at home in this invisible col- lege of ours: Espen Aarseth, Kars Alfrink, Kristine Ask, Pippin Barr, Robert M. Biddle, Staffan Björk, Maaike deJong, Bernie deKoven, Dan Dixon, Stephan Dreyer, Dan Hunter, Rilla Khaled, Julian Kücklich, Jonas Linderoth, Dan Lockton, Thomas Malaby, Markus Montola, Bonnie Nardi, Markus Oermann, Christian Pentzold, Valentina Rao, Leonard Reinecke, Jan-Hinrik Schmidt, Miguel Sicart, Jaakko Stenros, Jan-Noel Thon, Roger Travis, Steffen P. Walz, and many more. I thank William Uricchio, Joost Raessens, and Paul Kirshner for teaching me kindness. I thank my supervisors Uwe Hasebrink and Rolf Nohr and my mentor Sabine Trepte for giving me all the autonomy and support I could ever ask for. I thank my colleagues and friends at the Hans Bredow Institute and the Graduate School for Media and Communication at Hamburg University for being true colleagues and friends. I thank my interview partici- pants for graciously sharing their experience. I thank Steffen P. Walz for shouldering our crazy little book while I was busy finishing this one, and for overlooking my random bouts of inter- ference. I thank Mathias Crawford for lending a critical eye when one was needed, and quickly. I thank Liz Lawley for too many things to say, but among them for finally making me write the damn thing, showing me that you can spend a wonderful month in a medieval city overlook- ing the Adriatic while doing so, and for bringing to my attention Tricia Wang’s email hack of the century that made writing possible to begin with. I thank Peter Goßens who over ten years never lost faith that if there is one person who could do this, it’s me. I thank my godson for 4 reminding me that playing is less about having fun than seeking something that is fun to- gether. And I thank my friends for reminding me to live. Like all scholars working today, I am also deeply indebted to the Open Access movement. Who can find and access what research how easily is maybe the central issue of the means of academic production today. Ten years ago, when I was writing my master’s thesis, I became deeply aware of the privilege entailed in visiting an Ivy League university library with access to digital journal repositories like JSTOR, which would not become available at my home univer- sity for another five years. I could not have written what I wrote back then without that privi- lege. Today, I could not have written what I wrote without the continued political push, every- day practice, and occasional civil disobedience of countless academics that make their re- search openly accessible online. I especially wish to thank the Internet Archive: searching and reading Durkheim or Cooley or Mead in original full text without ever once having to leave my desk and writing flow has been nothing if not transformative. I hope to return my share. A popular saying has it that the most important person is always the person in front of you, but that, unfortunately, is not always true. Sometimes the absent outweigh the present infinitely, and the person (or page) in front of you is really only a conduit to try and continue, futile as it may be, a conversation that was interrupted long ago. For J. 5 Table of Contents 1 Introduction............................................................................................................................. 9 2 What We Talk About When We Talk About Frames .......................................................18 2.1 Cognitive Science: The Minsky Line ...................................................................................18 2.2 Social and Cultural Approaches to Frames ........................................................................20 2.3 Frames and Technology: STS and HCI ...............................................................................21 2.4 Situational Frames in Media and Communication Research ............................................23 2.5 Frames in Game Studies .....................................................................................................25 2.6 Summary and Conclusions ................................................................................................30 3 Theory: Frame Analysis .......................................................................................................34 3.1 Historical Contexts .............................................................................................................34 3.2 Erving Goffman: Charting the Interaction Order ..............................................................41 3.3 Frame Analysis ....................................................................................................................54 3.4 Where the Action Is: Processualising Frames ....................................................................71 3.5 Meadiating Affordances: Frames and Materiality .............................................................92 3.6 Summation I: Frame Analysis ..........................................................................................116 4 The Frame Analysis of Games.......................................................................................... 122 4.1 Play and Playfulness ..........................................................................................................130 4.2 Gamelike Interactions and Games: Material Orders of Safe Action ................................142 4.3 Games and Rules: From Formal Objects to Situational Processes ...................................156 4.4 The Game Frame: The Unwritten Rules of Gaming .........................................................173 4.5 Games and Fiction (as Play) ..............................................................................................192 4.6 The Magic Circle ...............................................................................................................206 4.5 Summation II: A Frame Analytic Account of Gaming .....................................................219 5 Methodology ......................................................................................................................232 5.1 Goffman’s ‘Hidden Method’ ..............................................................................................232 5.2 Research Strategy ..............................................................................................................234 5.3 Research Design ................................................................................................................238 6 Leisurely Modes .................................................................................................................245 6.1 Modes of Gaming ..............................................................................................................247 6.2 Participation Norms and Social Closeness ......................................................................261 6.3 Settings and Objects .........................................................................................................276 6.4 Internal Organisation, Actors, and Metacommunication ..............................................284 6.5 Attention and Involvement ..............................................................................................292 6.6 Emotion and Emotion Display .........................................................................................297