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Play As Transgression: an Ethnographic Approach to Queer Play as Transgression: An Ethnographic Approach to Queer Game Cultures Jenny Sundén Department of Media Technology Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm, Sweden [email protected] ABSTRACT knight, even if her proper name in the game is something This paper is based on an ongoing ethnography of a GLBT different altogether. In fact, all names have been changed (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) guild in the MMOG for the sake of anonymity. Lulu is my researcher character, World of Warcraft. Drawing on queer/feminist theory, the but certainly also a co-player, as well as a member of a argument concentrates on sexuality as resource for guild to which Viljhalm and Ebon also belongs. They are ‘transgressive play’. The notion of transgressive play is both male blood elves. Dragonred, together with a few other usually taken to mean play against the ‘ideal’ or ‘implied’ players (one of which was also a male blood elf), were player of the game, of playing the game in ways not picked up along the way. They didn’t know us, and we anticipated by design. For queer gamers, sexuality comes didn’t know them. One of the first thing Dragonred, a male into play in ways that make visible the cultural norms of the druid warrior, said upon greeting us at the summoning stone ideal player – a player who is at least symbolically male and was “yack, 3 belf males, how gay”, finished off with a straight. This ethnographic work indicates that there are confused smiley “:S”. (Male blood elves are routinely read queer uses of game spaces that in significant ways make along the lines of male femininity – or ‘gay’ – and as such visible – and play around with – norms and expectations cherished among queer gamers). This utterance gave rise to that are shaping what online game communities are, and both slight hesitation, but mostly amusement, since it what they could be. unwittingly with absolute pitch stroke the very chord that functions as the prime baseline for this particular guild. Author Keywords embodiment, ethnography, game studies, gaymers, queer Put differently, this is a GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, theory, sexuality, transgressive play, World of Warcraft transgender) guild. In my writing, I have chosen to call the guild The Others. There is nothing innocent about the INTRODUCTION: OF SEXUAL DISORIENTATIONS comment itself in its characteristic bordering on compulsory way of expressing homophobia in the game. The comedy of [Party] Dragonred: yack, 3 belf males, how gay :S the situation sparks from the fact that the player of [Party] Viljhalm: uhm Dragonred has no clue that ‘gay’ is what binds these [Party] Lulu: :) particular players together. Furthermore, it is unclear if s/he [Party] Viljhalm: :P figures it out along the way, since my comment “well you [Party] Lulu: well you have no idea... have no idea... how gay this truly is” was left without Dragonred is now the group leader. comments. I got a supportive “hahaha nice said” from Ebon [Party] Lulu: how gay this truly is in guild chat (not shared by the full party), as well as the [Guild] Ebon: hahaha nice said killer finale “he doesn’t know that bears are even gay-er”. [Party] Viljhalm: hehe [Party] Lulu: lol “Bears” have a double function in this quote, both alluding [Guild] Ebon: he doesn’t know that bears are even gay-er to the bear shape which druids may shape-shift into, and simultaneously evoking gay male bear culture. This conversation took place late one evening when a group Queer gamers – or ‘gaymers’ – are a vibrant part of game of players of the MMOG World of Warcraft from across culture [17, 18, 19], yet virtually invisible within game Europe got together to defeat monsters and loot treasures in studies. To make visible that which is not fully of the norm, a high-level dungeon in Northrend. This land of the north is but which nonetheless is essential for the norm to work, is the most recent of continents, a snow-clad, frost-bitten not merely writing from sexual margins. Far from being landscape that draws heavily on Norse mythology, swept in only of relevance to like-minded, queer sexuality and queer musical references to, for example, the classical composer theory speak volumes about the configuration of hetero- Arvo Pärt. Lulu is me, or rather my female blood elf death normal bodies, games, and ethnographies. The term queer Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. Proceedings of DiGRA 2009 © 2009Authors & Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author. in this paper is used as shorthand for multiple ways of At the moment of writing, the ethnography in The Others defining and positioning oneself as non-straight. It also has been going on for eight months. It is primarily an in- signals an affinity with queer theory and ways of unsettling game ethnography, but it also includes the web forum or troubling the stability of identity categories. Then again, belonging to the guild (as well as the official World of there is always a risk with queer. While offering a critique Warcraft forums and other communities where intersections of how straight norms produce a whole range of deviant of sexuality, queer perspectives and gaming are explored). sexual practices and oppositional others, these others may More specifically, it consists of field notes from sessions of have little else in common, indeed their various ways of play, chat logs, screen shots, and informal interviews. being other may make queer communities dense with Despite the growing body of ethnographic research on tension. Elizabeth Grosz [5] discusses the usefulness “to online games, and despite decades of self-reflexivity in talk about queerness, or even gayness when theorizing qualitative research, few game researchers appear to discuss sexed bodies and their sexual relations” and argues for ways their own roles as co-players and co-producers of of “specifying at least broadly the kinds of bodies and knowledge based on fieldwork [15]. Within my work, I am desires in question.” (p 219). It is thus my intent to make to perform, balance, and take into account at least four explicit some of the differences, specificities, and types of subjectivity or presence in the game: as researcher, contradictions in relation to queer as analytical strategy. as non-straight, as woman, and as player. These different modes of moving through and playing the game operate as This paper is based on an ongoing ethnography in World of principles of difference, but also of sameness (and Warcraft with a focus on embodiment and sexuality. The sometimes in unpredictable ways). Simply put, the argument moves between self-play and the play of others, positions as non-straight and as player are what most clearly and concentrates in particular on sexuality – understood as bind me to this group, whereas the fact that I am a female actions and desires that shape and orient bodies – as player, as well as a researcher, most of the time marks me resource for ‘transgressive play’. There is a tendency within as different. game studies and queer theory alike to favor a player/subject who is active, creative, unruly, transgressive It may be useful to point out that this ethnographic work is (be it in relation to the game as norm or to preceded by a one-year ethnography exploring queer heteronormativity). While this paper certainly invests in the moments and strategies in more mainstream World of promises of transgression, it simultaneously explores its Warcraft contexts. The focus of the initial ethnography was limits. on ways of exploring the game world and leveling up, on solo play and play in smaller groups, and came to The notion of sexuality as forms of action that shape and concentrate on the critical potentials of affect, desire and direct bodies toward certain objects (and not others) is closeness for ways of knowing online game cultures [13, informed by Sara Ahmed’s [2] queer phenomenology. 14]. The players I encountered and played with at this Ahmed takes up the question of ‘orientation’ in ‘sexual earlier stage had little interest in fast leveling, even if orientation’. She articulates how bodies are turned toward leveling up certainly was part of the draw. They took the objects around them, and how this (sense of) direction pleasure in explorative movements and detours through the matters in understanding orientation. Our actions create gamescape. They took their time, and so did my lines of direction that shape our perception and how we ethnography. My current guild/ethnography is different. orient ourselves. Different objects create different lines of Although there is a lot of room for casual play, questing and direction. Lines of direction are neither neutral nor leveling, this guild is more aimed at high-level content and originary, and yet heterosexual orientation creates ‘straight experiences. lines’ of direction as if this process was nothing but natural. Ahmed speaks of this naturalization in terms of TRANSGRESSIVE PLAY ‘straightening devices’, which comes close to Adrienne The concept of transgressive play is usually taken to mean Rich’s [12] ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, and Judith play against the ‘ideal’ or ‘implied’ player of the game, of Butler’s [3] ‘heterosexual matrix’. What happens, then, if playing the game and bending the rules in ways not our orientation turns our bodies in ways they are not anticipated by design [1, 10]. Transgressive play is play as supposed to be turned, toward the objects that are not innovation and, possibly, subversion, of finding, exploring supposed to be there? What happens when our bodies are and exploiting loopholes in the game fabric.
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