This document is downloaded from DR‑NTU (https://dr.ntu.edu.sg) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Gameplay socialization : meaning‑making, player‑computer and player‑player interaction in digital games David Kirschner 2014 David Kirschner. (2014). Gameplay socialization: meaning‑making, player‑computer and player‑player interaction in digital games. Doctoral thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/61618 https://doi.org/10.32657/10356/61618 Downloaded on 28 Sep 2021 06:09:00 SGT GAMEPLAY SOCIALIZATION: MEANING-MAKING, PLAYER-COMPUTER AND PLAYER-PLAYER INTERACTION IN DIGITAL GAMES DAVID KIRSCHNER SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 2014 GAMEPLAY SOCIALIZATION: MEANING-MAKING, PLAYER-COMPUTER AND PLAYER-PLAYER INTERACTION IN DIGITAL GAMES DAVID KIRSCHNER School of Humanities and Social Sciences A thesis submitted to the Nanyang Technological University in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank first and foremost my supervisor and friend, Patrick Williams, for the invaluable guidance, opportunities and experiences over the years. None of this would have been possible without him or the other wonderful teachers and students I have had the pleasure of learning from. My girlfriend, Allison, has been a constant source of support, entertainment, diversion and love. I can’t imagine having completed this without her. I thank my brother, Danny, for being a constant inspiration to follow dreams and be a better person. I also thank my parents and my grandparents, Nanny, Mimi and Grandpa for always being interested in what I’m doing and making sure I keep doing it. I dedicate the thesis to Grandpa, who gave me, among many other things, a very thoroughly marked and obviously well-loved copy of Shibutani’s Society and Personality from his college days. To the friends I’ve made in Singapore and the ones I’ve kept stateside, I owe immense gratitude. I thank my research participants for sharing this experience with me. I think about them nearly every day and am convinced I had the best participants in the world. Last but certainly not least, I thank the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and criticisms. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………6 CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………...8 +Background …………………………………………………………………….8 +Motivations for research ……………………………………………………….12 +Research questions ……………………………………………………………..16 +Thesis chapter outline ………………………………………………………….18 CHAPTER 2 – DIGITAL GAMES AS SEMIOTIC DOMAINS + A PRIMER ON WOW AND PORTAL 2 ……………………………………………………………….22 +Semiotic domains ………………………………………………………………22 +Digital games as semiotic domains …………………………………………….28 +Portal 2 …………………………………………………………………………32 +World of Warcraft ……………………………………………………………...37 +A Note on Games, Play and Fun ……………………………………………….44 +Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………...48 CHAPTER 3 – LITERATURE REVIEW ……………………………………………49 +Interactionism and meaning ……………………………………………………49 +Social interaction ……………………………………………………………….54 +Subject-object and subject-subject interaction …………………………………58 +Socialization ……………………………………………………………………66 +Entrance ………………………………………………………………...70 +Individualization ………………………………………………………..72 +Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………...74 CHAPTER 4 – METHODOLOGY ……………………………………………………76 +History of previous studies ……………………………………………………..76 +MMObility ……………………………………………………………...76 +Social interaction in World of Warcraft ………………………………..77 +Visual elements of meaning-making in digital game worlds …………..78 +Choosing the games …………………………………………………………….80 +Sampling procedure …………………………………………………………….81 3 +Data collection ………………………………………………………………….87 +In-depth interviews ……………………………………………………..91 +Observations and field notes …………………………………………...92 +Audiovisual recording ………………………………………………….93 +Think-aloud protocol …………………………………………………...94 +Gameplay review method ………………………………………………96 +Self-play ………………………………………………………………..97 +Ethical considerations ……………………………………………………..…..100 +Data processing and analysis ………………………………………..………...101 +Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….109 CHAPTER 5 – MEANING-MAKING IN SEMIOTIC DOMAINS ………………110 +World of Warcraft …………………………………………………………….113 +Corey: The gung-ho warrior …………………………………………..114 +Diane: The task-seeking sneaker ……………………………………...124 +Portal 2 ………………………………………………………………………..134 +Frances: “You really have to understand why you do every single thing.” …………………………………………………………………………..136 +Discussion and conclusion ……………………………………………………141 CHAPTER 6 – GAMEPLAY SOCIALIZATION …………………………………144 +Previous gameplay experience and domain literacy ………………………….147 +Entrance ……………………………………………………………………….151 +Entrance in World of Warcraft ………………………………………..153 +Entrance in Portal 2 …………………………………………………...161 +Scaffolding and game designers as agents of socialization …………...163 +Individualization ………………………………………………………………170 +Harry and the Bow of the Great Hunter ………………………………172 +From ludus toward paidia …………………………………………………......179 +Discussion and conclusion (recurrence) ………………………………………182 CHAPTER 7 – DIGITAL OBJECTS AS SIGNIFICANT OTHERS …………….186 +Classifying objects ……………………………………………………………187 +Player-characters and embodiment …………………………………………...189 4 +NPC actors ……………………………………………………………………194 +Turrets ………………………………………………………………………...200 +The game designer as generalized other ………………………………………205 +Discussion and conclusion ……………………………………………………210 CHAPTER 8 – RISING COMPLEXITY AND GAMEPLAY SOCIALIZATION IN SEMIOTIC DOMAINS ………………………………………………………………214 +Harry, Ian and the infinite loop ……………………………………………….218 +The context ……………………………………………………………218 +The infinite loop ………………………………………………………219 +Shared meaning-making and the appropriateness of ceiling tiles …….222 +Negotiating roles for first attempts ……………………………………223 +Communicative modalities ……………………………………………226 +The infinite loop and concretization of cultural elements …………….228 +Ian and loot in Shadowfang Keep …………………………………………….232 +The context ……………………………………………………………232 +Violating loot norms …………………………………………………..234 +Communicating loot norms …………………………………………...237 +Increasing complexity ………………………………………………...244 +WoW raiding ………………………………………………………………….245 +Discussion and conclusion ……………………………………………………250 CHAPTER 9 – LITERACIES AND SOCIALIZATION ………………………….254 +Dealing with increasing complexity in semiotic domains …………………….255 +Leveraging information systems ……………………………………………...259 +Theories of task performance …………………………………………………263 +Designer mentality and transfer ………………………………………………267 +Literacy and expertise ………………………………………………………...270 +Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….276 APPENDICES …………………………………………………………………………280 RFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………….323 GLOSSARY……………………………………………………………………………346 5 ABSTRACT New media technologies are ubiquitous. Among these, digital games continue their rise in significance, constituting a visible domain within which people learn and develop specific sets of skills and practices. This study addresses a lack of research into the socialization experiences of new media technology users. I explore how participants experienced socialization into two digital games that they had never played before, World of Warcraft and Portal 2. Using a symbolic interactionist approach and an array of qualitative methods such as observations, talk-aloud protocols, audiovisual recordings of gameplay, “gameplay reviews” and in-depth interviews, I extracted rich data from the gameplay and interpretations of eight university student participants who each played approximately 20 hours of each game. Players engaged in micro-level meaning-making processes through which they made sense of the virtual environments. I outline a process of gameplay socialization that organizes the development of meaning-making over the course of their participation, and show how players had varied socialization experiences. A significant portion of their gameplay was spent interacting with digital objects, some of which became significant others. Such human-object relationships can be complex and social, and digital objects are major agents of socialization into digital games. Complexity in digital games rises with the potential addition of human interactants, and I analyze player- to-player interactions in cooperative and conflictual situations to show how players socialized one another in terms of game rules and social norms. Finally, I discuss some methods players developed to pragmatically handle increasing complexity in terms of outcomes of gameplay socialization. Analyzing gameplay socialization provides insight into the significance of user experience with new media technologies, which has 6 implications for media creators and users. Being attentive to user experience increases reflexivity in media development and use, as well as enhances communication between creators and users. 7 CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND Modern societies in the early 21st century are characterized by mediated culture (Jenkins et al. 2006). Developing such a mediated culture, where people spend a bulk of time interacting with and through media rather than the traditional face-to-face channel, seems to be considered a hallmark of technological, social and personal progress. In heavily mediated societies, media are ubiquitous. They are “differentiated, dispersed and multi-modal…pervade our bodies, cultures and societies…enable direct communication…[and] offer greater possibilities for capturing, recording and transmitting images