Games As Complex Social Spaces: an Ethnographic Investigation Into the Distributed

Games as Complex Social Spaces: An Ethnographic Investigation into the Distributed

Cognition and Problem Solving in World of Warcraft

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

The Patton College of Education of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Jeffrey Kuhn

April 2017

This dissertation titled

Games as Complex Social Spaces: An Ethnographic Investigation into the Distributed

Cognition and Problem Solving in World of Warcraft

JEFFREY KUHN

has been approved for

the Department of Educational Studies

and The Patton College of Education by

Greg Kessler

Associate Professor of Educational Studies

Renée A. Middleton

Dean, The Patton College of Education 3

Abstract

KUHN, JEFFREY, Ph.D., April 2017, Curriculum and Instruction,

Instructional Technology

Games as Complex Social Spaces: An Ethnographic Investigation Into the Distributed

Cognition and Problem Solving in World of Warcraft

Director of Dissertation: Greg Kessler

This dissertation is a qualitative case study that examines the collaborative problem-solving practices of players of the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMOs) game

World of Warcraft (WoW). A five-person team was investigated as they ran dungeons within WoW and were documented across three distinct, yet interconnected, spaces: in- room, in-game as software, and within their Game social space.

The purpose for this investigation was to understand the distributed cognition and problem solving that occurs within MMOs by documenting how players, hardware, game-as-software, and Game-as-social-space interact as a cohesive whole to form what is referred to here as the gamespace. Documenting this gamespace provides insight into players self-organization, why they play the games they do, and aspects of gameplay that have been overlooked in the games and learning research (Consalvo, 2007). I further sought to operationalize Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation and document how they occur within an iterative cycle of learning.

The findings of this study indicate that players devote the majority of their gameplay time to solving problems generated by the Game-as-community. In addition, the findings indicate players move through two distinct cycles of learning within the 4 gamespace: one at the game level, and another at the Game level. In both of these cycles of learning, Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation are operationalized.

My findings suggest that to effectively leverage games for learning, educators need to design for and support the social aspect of gaming and move beyond the player- software dyad.

Keywords: problem-solving, distributed cognition, MMOs, games and learning,

World of Warcraft

Dedication

To my 11th grade guidance counselor Mr. Rudy who told me,

“The AP courses are only for kids who will go on to college.”

and taught me spite can carry you far in life.

Acknowledgments

My completion of this dissertation is in large part thanks to the help and friendship of my advisor Dr. Greg Kessler. His encouragement, dedication, and brainstorming on the big ideas kept this dissertation going. I also want to thank my committee for their help and assistance in completing this endeavor as well. Throughout the process they encouraged me to take risks and tackle the questions driving my passion for this field. Dr. Min Lun Wu’s breadth of knowledge in games and learning pushed me keep my findings focused and on track. These finding would not mean anything without

Dr. Krisanna Machtmes generous assistance in helping me shape and refine my methodology to capture the complex spaces of games. I would also like to thank Dr. Sara

Helfrich for her insights from teacher education and how these finding can benefit the larger field of education. I was fortunate to have such an outstanding committee and cannot thank them enough for their time and efforts.

I would also like to thank the Patton College of Education and OHIO University for the support they provide students through the entire process. I also appreciate the help of Dr. David Moore and Dr. Teresa Franklin in providing the foundations I needed to write this dissertation in their coursework. In addition, my thanks go to Dr. Seann

Dikkers for introducing me to much of the games and learning literature.

Most importantly, I want to say thank you to my loving wife Ella. Her patience and understanding during this challenging and exhilarating process knew no bounds.

When the path to this PhD grew dark, your smile lit my way.

Table of Contents

Page

Abstract ...... 3 Dedication ...... 5 Acknowledgments...... 6 List of Tables ...... 11 List of Figures ...... 12 Chapter One: Introduction ...... 13 Understanding games and Games ...... 15 The Hard Fun of Problem Solving ...... 18 Need for Research ...... 20 Purpose of the Study ...... 21 Research Questions ...... 23 Significance of the Study ...... 25 Delimitations of the Study ...... 25 Definitions of Terms ...... 25 Organization of the Study ...... 28 Chapter Two: Literature Review ...... 29 Games for Learning ...... 29 Gaming: The New Media Literacy ...... 31 The Hard Fun of Games ...... 34 games and Games ...... 36 The Evolution of Games ...... 37 Learning in Games - The Example of Kerbal Space Program ...... 39 Games as Communities of Practice ...... 46 From MUDs to World of Warcraft: A History of MMOs ...... 48 Games as Social Spaces: Steinkuehler and MMOs ...... 50 Social Role of Thinking ...... 52 Distributed Cognition ...... 54 The Way Forward ...... 58 8

The Next Stage of Research ...... 60 Chapter Three: Methodology ...... 65 Case Study Approach ...... 66 Description of the Case ...... 68 World of Warcraft ...... 69 The guild ...... 70 The big-G Game ...... 73 The computer hardware ...... 74 The Role of the Researcher and Ethical Considerations ...... 75 Pilot Studies ...... 77 Participants ...... 77 Participant information ...... 78 Data Collection ...... 80 Grounded theory ...... 81 Video and audio recording of gamespace activities...... 82 Observations ...... 83 Interviews ...... 84 Data Analysis ...... 86 Themes of research question one ...... 86 Themes of research question two ...... 87 Themes of research question three ...... 87 Validity ...... 90 Internal Validity ...... 92 Maturation ...... 92 Experimental mortality ...... 93 External Validity ...... 93 Reactive effects of experimental arrangements ...... 93 Chapter Summary ...... 94 Chapter Four: Findings ...... 96 Participant Demographics ...... 96 Data Sources in Different Spaces ...... 99 9

Data analysis ...... 100 Research Question 1 ...... 101 Game-related problems ...... 102 Player-related problems ...... 103 Problems of cognitive dissonance ...... 104 game-presented problems ...... 111 Research Question 2 ...... 114 Keybindings as a memorization tool ...... 115 Using add-ons to manage information ...... 117 Operating in multiple simultaneous spaces ...... 119 Research Question 3 ...... 123 Moving through modes of participation...... 130 Complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition ...... 130 In the real world...... 131 In World of Warcraft ...... 132 In Vent ...... 132 Collaborative problem solving practices...... 133 Novel literacy practices...... 135 Scientific habits of mind...... 138 Forms of computational literacy...... 140 Mechanisms for learning such as reciprocal apprenticeship...... 142 Summary and Conclusion ...... 146 Chapter Five: Discussion ...... 148 Research Question One: Problem Solving ...... 150 Research Question Two: Distributed Cognition ...... 157 Keybindings as a memorization tool ...... 158 Using add-ons to manage information ...... 159 Operating in multiple, simultaneous spaces ...... 160 Research Question Three: Cycles of Learning and Modes of Participation ...... 163 game-level cycles ...... 169 Game-level cycles ...... 171 10

Limitations of the Study ...... 173 Validity Issues ...... 176 Implications ...... 177 Implications for teaching and learning...... 179 Learning in games derives from context not content ...... 180 21st Century Skills are inherent in games...... 181 Design appropriate social structures ...... 182 Mind the reciprocal apprenticeship ...... 182 Teachers need games literacy ...... 183 Modifications matters ...... 184 Implications for research ...... 185 Move beyond the game-as-designed object ...... 186 Capture the full extent of the Game ...... 187 Conclusion ...... 189 References ...... 194

List of Tables

Page

Table 1 Biodata of the participants and time spent with WoW...... 97

List of Figures

Page

Figure 1. Proposed conceptualization of the iterative cycle of learning in games...... 61 Figure 2. The iterative cycle of learning with Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation in MMOs...... 62 Figure 3. The iterative cycle of learning with gamespace actions at each step in the cycle...... 63 Figure 4. Spaces in which data were collected...... 85 Figure 5. Data collection was completed across three distinct yet intertwined spaces: ... 99 Figure 6. The in-game screen of one participant during the transcription below...... 105 Figure 7. Wash’s 36 spells hotkeyed to his mouse...... 116 Figure 8. Team engaged in chat discussion (bottom left)...... 121 Figure 9. Proposed iterative cycle of learning based on Dewey (1938) and Jørgensen (2003)...... 123 Figure 10. Proposed iterative cycle of learning with Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation...... 124 Figure 11. The researcher’s stock user interface in WoW...... 140 Figure 12. A participant’s heavily modified UI in WoW...... 141 Figure 13. The proposed iterative cycle of learning in games...... 164 Figure 14. The proposed iterative cycle of learning in games and the predicted gameplay actions that occur at each stage of the learning cycle...... 165 Figure 15. Modified cycle of learning...... 166 Figure 16. The cycle of learning in the Game...... 167 Figure 17. Occurrences of modes of participation in the game-cycle of learning in WoW...... 169 Figure 18. The Game-cycle of learning with the six modes of participation as they occur in the cycle...... 171 13

Chapter One: Introduction

After decades of slow adoption, video games as part of classroom practice have gained mainstream acceptance. The attributing factors of this growth being the maturation of videogames into a media literacy for childhood gamers now turned educators, and videogames’ place as the preferred media entertainment of the current generation of students. Statistics bear out this growth. In 2003, the entertainment software industry recorded $6.9 billion in revenue (Interactive Digital Software Association,

2003), while in 2013, revenue exceeded $21.5 billion (Entertainment Software

Association, 2013). According to 2008 statistics from the Pew Internet and American

Life Project 97% of teens ages 12-17 play some form of digital game. Much of the academic research to date has centered on that youth demographic (see Cordova, &

Lepper, 1996; Squire, 2004; Stevens, Satwicz, & McCarthy, 2008) which would seem to be the largest demographic of gamers. Yet the Electronic Software Association (ESA,

2013) reports a more nuanced portrait of the video game landscape with 59% of

Americans playing video games and “women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (36%) than boys age 18 or younger

(17%)” (p. 3). The data indicates that nearly everyone plays videogames.

These statistics on the popularity of games have fostered an academic discussion that seeks to understand the ability of videogames to engage players and leverage this engagement for educational purposes (see Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Garris, Ahlers, &

Driskell, 2002; Dickey, 2005). In doing so, much of the research to date has focused on the engagement of a player with the software-as-a-designed-object to understand what 14 aspects of the software foster this engagement and how it might be used to bolster students time on task in assignments or enhance student uptake of academic content (see

Miller & Hegelheimer, 2006; Lee & Probert, 2010).

Yet as research investigates the ability of games-as-designed-objects to deliver content and learning opportunities, how games are played is shifting due in part to the success of games such as World of Warcraft, Destiny, and Minecraft, games which rely heavily on social engagement to drive gameplay. These games and the Games (Gee,

2008), or social communities, aka affinity spaces, around them, engage players in a media-rich environment which includes guilds and groups, community forums, game- streaming services such as Twitch, and Youtube videos. Videogame play no longer represents solely an interaction with software but comprise ecosystems that players inhabit in-game, online, and in-real-life. Even as videogames increasingly become a part of classroom practice, how players access, distribute, and create information with games and Games is not clearly understood. Understanding the complex problems that players tackle in these environments and how they work to solve these problems could provide a more nuanced insight into how to leverage games for education.

In the dynamic spaces of videogames, players are presented with complex problems that are solved by leveraging information held by the players, the game, the

Game, and the gaming hardware. This environment consisting of the players of a game, the videogame-as-software, the hardware such as the mouse and keyboard, and the social community or Game, which I herein refer to as the gamespace, constitute models of behavior and practice that are “not in anyone's head, but embedded in the history and 15 social practices of the group” (Gee, 1992, p. 105). Understanding this gamespace requires, as Steinkuehler (2008) asserts, a research agenda that seeks to understand not individual identities but how these identities are constructed within these spaces. I seek to extend Steinkuehler’s assertion by arguing that it further requires an understanding of how these identities and the knowledge players bring to the game are shared within the gamespace.

Understanding games and Games

It seems that players use videogames and the digital spaces around these games to engage in a digital cognitive apprenticeship, where “conceptual and factual knowledge is exemplified and situated in the contexts of its use” (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989, p.

3). This situated cognition allows gamers to generate a deeper understanding of concepts and create a matrix of associations between concepts and contexts that could lead to solving the complex problems presented by games. The caveat to Collins et al. (1989) is where they originally envisioned a single teacher, learners now, via the participatory culture around games, can become the digital apprentice of a legion of experts and their collective knowledge.

Research has investigated these spaces and the social dynamics that occur (see Ito et al, 2008; Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Robinson, 2009). However, these investigations have largely focused on how youth engage with individuals in their own real-world social networks through digital media, or how they engage with the digital media itself. Where the field needs more investigation is in the interactions of members of these digital communities within a gamespace as they seek to solve the challenges 16 presented by videogames. What is learned could provide a foundation to understanding how information is held and distributed in these spaces. An understanding of this phenomenon could provide a framework on how to design more naturalistic learning opportunities using video games within the classroom.

The phenomenon of how gamers solve problems and learn through this problem solving within a gamespace, appears chaotic and unstructured from the perspective of outsiders lacking a literacy in games. However at their core the nexus of games and

Games appear to have highly structured environments designed to solve problems presented within a game or designed by the players themselves.

In early 2014 Twitch played Pokemon. At the time Twitch was a new video streaming service that allowed players to live stream their videogame play over the

Internet. Live streaming of games at the time was predominately a spectator sport, at least until Twitch Plays Pokemon (TPP). Began by a single player, the project handed control of the single-player game Pokemon to the Twitch community of users. In Pokemon the goal is to collect monsters, known as Pokemon, and pit them against other Pokemon in duels. The game contains 151 unique monsters to capture, train, and fight. This is a challenge for a single-player to accomplish with the luxury of controlling every aspect of the game. In TPP this control was given to more than a million users over the course of sixteen days (Chase, 2014). This evolving, self-organizing group of game players developed, on the fly, a system to crowdsource the control of Pokemon to the extent that as one side of the planet slept, the other hemisphere continued to play. 17

Since the initial challenge, the community has gone on to play every Pokemon game achieving success each time (Hernandez, 2015). As Twitch VP Matthew DiPietro commented to gaming website Gamespot “[b]y merging a video game, live video and a participatory experience, the broadcaster has created an entertainment hybrid custom made for the Twitch community” (Makuch & Heywald, 2014, para. 2). In this case the players created their own problem to solve and within their gamespace developed and implemented the tools they needed to succeed. This organization around a challenge self- created by gamers is a phenomenon that encapsulates modern gaming, but that is still underexplored by research.

Twitch Plays Pokemon is perhaps the largest example of the game community organizing around a challenge, but not the first. In 2011 a team of researchers announced the discovery of the structure of an enzyme related to the AIDS virus (Khatib et al.,

2011). The decade old problem of how this enzyme folds was cracked within three weeks by a team playing the game Foldit - a puzzle game akin to Tetris in which players must fold puzzle pieces into shapes. Foldit is unique in that these shapes represent the folding structures of proteins and enzymes. Understanding these structures allow biochemistry researchers to create new drugs to combat disease. Gamers have been so pivotal to the discoveries made that players are listed as authors on the research articles produced by these discoveries (see Cooper et al., 2010; Khatib et al., 2011).

What these examples demonstrate is the evolving nature of videogames and game play from a single player-game experience to a multiplayer experience that occurs across game software and the Internet. They are experiences centered on the solving of 18 challenges whether self-imposed or game-imposed. As Steinkuehler (2004) notes games, such as these two examples, are not only a designed object, but serve as a social practice as well. It is this social practice that is driving the most innovative use of videogames as problem-solving spaces as exemplified by TPP and Foldit.

This use of the leisure hobby of videogames as a platform to create and defeat challenges muddies assumptions of much of the early social researchers, up until Lave and Wenger (1991), that defined leisure as an avoidance of work (Stebbins, 1992). More recent research indicates that these informal learning communities, often centered on hobbyist pursuits such as videogame play, are “active and participatory; it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills” (Leadbeater & Miller, 2004, p.

20). Understanding these communities and how these publicly accredited knowledge and skills are learned and distributed within the gamespace can assist researchers in understanding how to tap this hard fun for education.

The Hard Fun of Problem Solving

Videogames represent a fundamental shift from the consumptive forms of media that have defined leisure over the last fifty years such as books and film. These media forms positioned consumers as passive participants that bear witness to a story that unfolds before them. Videogames are unlike traditional storytelling media, as they

“create events people can experience and then tell a story about” (crtl500.com, 2015). In

Twitch Plays Pokemon, the dominant narrative was not that of the game Pokemon but the

Game community’s collaboration, in-fighting, and collective problem-solving and eventual victory. For gamers is not the narrative of the media that is paramount but the 19 telling of their own personal experience within that narrative that matters. It is these personal experiences and how they may influence learning that are under documented in the games and learning research.

As videogames have evolved, the role of the consumer, or player in the narrative framework of games, has grown increasingly complex. Pong placed players in control of a simple, vertically-moving rectangle. Whereas modern games require players engage in multiple, simultaneous activities in-game (see League of Legends; Fallout 4; Stardew

Valley). What these multiple, simultaneous activities have created is a complex problem- space where players strategize, make choices, and fail. Critically, players share these strategies, choices, and failures in a sophisticated network of interrelated Web 2.0 tools.

These tools, are increasingly an important, and expected, part of the literacy of videogames and for researchers a gateway into understanding the problem-solving process of the players.

The problem-solving processes inherent in games provide opportunities for players to engage in impasse learning or “a gap in prior experience or lack of knowledge necessary to solve a given task” (Blumberg & Sokol, 2004, p. 1531). As gamers move to documenting more and more of their gameplay and utilize the support of online services such as Twitch or via the recording functionality of the Playstation 4 and XBox consoles, it may be possible to gather a rich descriptive analysis (Geertz, 1973) of how gamers engage in this impasse learning and problem solving via videogames. Documenting all aspects of gameplay while players engage in problem solving through impasse learning 20 may provide researchers a more nuanced understanding of how gamers learn through games and what makes the hard fun of games so enjoyable.

Need for Research

Research into the videogames as problem-solving spaces has to date been largely theoretical (see Gee, 2003) or focused on player-software interaction (Blumberg,

Rosenthal, & Randall, 2008). This research has provided a theoretical framework with which to understand how players engage with videogames. Specifically, Steinkuehler

(2008) suggests that when inside the complex systems of games, gamers engage in:

 complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition

 collaborative problem solving practices

 novel literacy practices

 scientific habits of mind (see Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008)

 forms of computational literacy

 mechanisms for learning such as reciprocal apprenticeship (pp. 12-13)

Games and learning research has theorized the occurrence of these phenomenon while players are engaged with videogames, but it has yet to gather a comprehensive understanding of how and under what conditions these phenomenon occur. Furthermore, the research to date has focused on games for learning in the classroom context or other conditions amenable to the researcher (Young, et al., 2012) or investigated the gamer- game dyad as the single unit of analysis. What is needed to further the theoretical understanding of gameplay set forth by Gee (2003) and Steinkuehler (2008) is an examination of the gameplay actions of a group of players to understand how players 21 engage with games as complex systems and distribute their cognition (Hutchins, 1995) across this system in order to solve problems.

By removing the classroom context from the research agenda it may be possible to eliminate two assumptions that underlie research in the field of games and learning.

The first assumption is the student-player as the single-unit of analysis. This assumption diminishes the role of the Game in the phenomenon and how it plays a part in the student/player learning process. The second assumption that could be eliminated is the need for the gameplay to foster the learning of a particular subject matter or research- driven content.

The elimination of these two assumptions could be facilitated by a move away from a laboratory approach (Lave, 1998) toward everyday settings in the environments natural to the gamers themselves. By doing so, research can answer the challenge of

Young et al. (2012) that, “[t]o make substantial progress, we believe that current methodologies must extend beyond their current parameters to account for the individualized nature of game play” (p. 62). The challenge facing researchers is that this individualized nature is increasingly intertwined with the gameplay of others through face-to-face play and online interactivity. What constitutes individual play is growing increasingly murky, which poses challenges to current laboratory-based research approaches, but possibilities for new approaches to games and learning research.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to capture gameplay in situ among players of a

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) or MMO for short. Much 22 of the research to date has focused on the player as a single unit of analysis. However, in the MMO environments, players rarely play alone. Instead, players form teams to engage in extended game play activities called dungeon runs. This research will investigate these dungeon runs as a single unit of analysis. Using an ethnographic approach to understand how cognition is distributed in dungeon runs will allow them to be understood as having an “interwoven nature and the fact they are situated within an intricate network of social interaction” (Rogers & Ellis, 1994, p. 120). This interwoven nature requires research that documents the entirety of the gamespace much of which exists beyond the boundaries of the player-software dyad.

This research proposes to investigate this network of social interaction via a five- person team in an MMO as a single unit of analysis to understand how cognition is distributed across players, the game, the Game, and hardware/software configurations such as keyboard layout and game modifications, which I refer to as the gamespace.

Specifically, identifying how the players determine where information is stored and by whom and how that information is accessed during the problem-solving process will be documented through observation and interviews. This may provide researchers in games and learning an understanding of how to effectively leverage games in the classroom by providing a better understanding of how gamers interact with games naturally and without the added variable of classroom context.

This focus on the gamespace as a unit of analysis necessitates an assumption that the classroom or laboratory environment is detrimental to a true understanding of how gamers solve problems within the gamespace. The classroom environment, as 23

Steinkuehler (2004) asserts, has information delivery as its primary focus and activity as secondary. However in games the activity is paramount and information is used as a mechanism to drive activity forward. Therefore this research will remove the classroom factor and capture data on gamers’ learning through problem-solving in-situ. This assumption also advocates for the need in games research for the participants to use their own hardware inside their own gaming space. For gamers, hardware set-up including keyboard layout and shortcuts, mouse style and sensitivity level are finely tuned and removing gamers from their rig, or hardware configuration set-up, could influence gameplay. As a result it is an assumption of this research that to collect an accurate and rich-descriptive analysis of how gamers learn through problem-solving it is necessary to allow them to play in their own space (see Barab & Squire, 2004; Steinkuehler &

Duncan, 2008) and not within laboratory settings that are not tailored to a gamer’s particular play style.

This assumption further attempts to answer the challenge of Young et al. (2012) to develop methodologies that account for the individualized and unstructured nature of game play. Adding constraints to gameplay for the purposes of researcher control limits the ability to understand how gamers self-organize, utilize available tools, and interact within the gamespace. This study attempted to document a baseline understanding of gameplay as directed by the gamers themselves to understand how they solve problems during gameplay and leverage their games literacy to do so.

Research Questions

The following research questions are the focus of this study: 24

1. How do players, the game, the Game, and hardware interact as a cohesive unit in

problem-solving as a gamespace?

2. How do players distribute cognition across the gamespace?

3. How do players move through an iterative cycle of learning while problem-

solving in game and at what stages of the cycle do they engage in Steinkuehler’s

(2008) six modes of participation?

These questions were answered through an ethnographic research approach that documented the gamers in-situ as they play World of Warcraft (WoW). After the recorded gameplay was reviewed by the researcher, the gamers were interviewed to further clarify the actions and decision making processes they used during the recorded gameplay session. Participants will be self-selected due to their preexisting inclusion in WoW and membership in a guild.

Two initial pilot studies were conducted to determine the technological considerations needed to record the gameplay of five individuals simultaneously. The first pilot study was conducted with one player to determine software setup and camera placement. A second pilot study was conducted with two players to serve as a dry run of the technology and understanding of the logistics of the documentation process. These pilot studies served as technology tests as well as to identify initial gameplay characteristics that warranted further focus during the full scale study. Additionally, stimulated recall interviews were conducted after the second pilot study to gain insight into the mental processes of the players during the game events. 25

Players were selected based on their current involvement in a World of Warcraft guild. Guilds are player collectives that provide assistance to one another in order to gain higher-level equipment, create efficiency in the gathering of resources for crafting new equipment, and serve as a social network for players.

Significance of the Study

Understanding how video game players distribute cognition across the gamespace is important because this construct represents how players self-organize within videogames in order to problem-solve. Because of the increased use of videogames for education it is imperative for the field to have an understanding of how videogames are played without the classroom condition first being applied. Increased understanding of how players self-organize to solve problems in videogames may enable educators and game designers to provide educational opportunities that better reflect players’ natural learning style within videogames.

Delimitations of the Study

This study was limited to five players and limited to one game. This game however is one of the largest on the market with a player base of over 5 million players.

The focus on World of Warcraft was made to identify a specific group of individuals and the gamespace in which they operate.

Definitions of Terms

The following terms have been defined due to their specificity in the literacy of videogames. As games jargon, these terms may vary in specific definitions depending on the game played. For the purposes of this study these terms are used and defined within 26 the context of World of Warcraft. Readers who lack, or have a cursory, literacy in games may benefit from these definitions. add ons - Similar to modifications add-ons are extra scripts of code added to the game in order to make in-game information available or easier to access. alt - Less commonly used characters the player has on their World of Warcraft account. In contrast to their main or a player’s most frequently played character.

BC - Burning Crusade. The first major expansion of World of Warcraft. This expansion, and succeeding expansions, featured new game content such as zones, dungeons, and raids.

Cata - Cataclysm. The third major expansion of the game World of Warcraft. content drought - time when World of Warcraft does not have fresh content added via patches and high-end players have completed all of the dungeons and raids.

DPS - Damage per second. A player role in MMOs that has as a focus the dealing of high levels of damage to enemy characters. drawing agro - Engaging an enemy character in combat whether intentional or not dungeon - An area within an MMO that isolates a group from the rest of the game to battle tougher than average computer controlled villains, such as bosses. game - The specific software with which players engage.

Game - The social community around a specific game in situ - Occurring in its original or natural place guild - Player collectives that provide assistance to one another in order to gain higher- level equipment, create efficiency in the gathering of resources for crafting new equipment, and serve as a social network for players

Legion - The sixth expasion of World of Warcraft. loot - Items and gold acquired in massively multiplayer online games. This loot can be sold to vendors or other players or equipped to a player’s character. main - A player’s most frequently played character. In contrast to alts, or less commonly used character the player has on their World of Warcraft account. 27 mobs - Generic, computer-controlled enemies in videogames. These mobs often contain loot that players can aquire for sale or to improve character statistics. (see trash mobs) mods - Short for modifications. Mods add additional features to the game and typically change the underlying function of the game itself.

MMO - A massively multiplayer online game. These server-based games have individual players share large virtual worlds where they can engage in a variety of game related content.

MoP - Mists of Pandaria. The fourth World of Warcraft expansion. pull - To attract the attention of a computer controlled enemy which will then attack the players. raid - A gameplay objective within multiplayer games where players, from five to forty in number, work to defeat powerful foes, or bosses. rig - The specific hardware/software configuration a player sets for the own computer terminal. A computer but personalized to a high degree. tank - A player role in MMOs that has as a focus the the taking of damage for the team (see drawing aggro) and delivering damage to enemy characters. trash mobs - Generic, computer-controlled enemies in videogames that must be defeated before moving to a boss enemy. These mobs are often seen as more of a nuisance due to carrying items of lesser value. wipe - The occurrence of an entire raid party being killed by a boss typically resulting in a reset to a predetermined point in a dungeon.

WoD - Warlords of Draenor. The fifth expansion of the game World of Warcraft.

Wrath/Lich - Wrath of the Lich King. The second expansion of World of Warcraft. Unlike the other expansion, this one is typically not referred to by its initials (see BC, MoP) but referenced as either Wrath or Lich King

Zone - An area of World of Warcraft. The game features several continents made up of zones designed for players of specific levels. On the continent of Northrend, the Grizzly Mountains contains game content for players level 70-75 for example. 28

Organization of the Study

This dissertation will be organized into five chapters. This first chapter has included the introduction, the statement of the problem, the research questions, significance of the study, the study’s scope, its limitations, definitions of terms that may be unfamiliar to the reader, and finally the organization of the study.

Chapter Two will include an overview of examples of the complex problem- solving that occurs in games. It will also include a review of the literature in relation to games and learning, communities of practice, problem-solving, and distributed cognition.

This chapter concludes with a proposed framework with which to investigate problem- solving within videogames.

Chapter Three will explain the research methodology for the study, including the selection of participants, data collection procedures, and an overview of how the data will be analyzed.

Chapter Four will describe the findings of the study. These findings will be categorized under the three research questions and then subcategorized by the emergent themes around that research question.

Chapter Five will extrapolate on the findings in chapter four and how the findings of the research study support previous research in games and learning and how the findings of this study differ from the findings of previous studies in games and learning.

The chapter will then describe the implications of this research study in regards to teaching and learning and games and learning research. 29

Chapter Two: Literature Review

Games for Learning

From the time video games entered the collective conscious, teachers have pondered their potential for classroom instruction. Bowman (1982) recognized how sensory feedback in Pac Man bolstered motivation in players but also understood there was more to player engagement with the game than extrinsic aspects. Bowman theorized the state of flow that Pac Man instilled in players was key to its appeal and carried potential for learning. Driskell and Dwyer (1984) note the interactivity in early videogames and how their adaptability could be leveraged for increased instructional efficacy.

Loftus and Loftus (1983) champion videogames as “combin[ing] two ingredients- intrinsic motivation and computer-based interaction-that make them potentially the most powerful educational tools ever invented” (p. x). This early research identified what makes things fun to learn (Malone, 1980) are the characteristics that videogames have - the clear goals, the immediate feedback, and progressive challenges which engage in ways traditional classroom practices may not.

The early research on the integration of videogames into standard classroom activities focused on increased motivation and engagement that this new media could provide. Cordova and Lepper (1996) build upon this early research with an investigation into the added benefits of the choice and customization of videogames and how these influence learner gains. They found gains in the intrinsic motivation of learners when educational content was delivered via computer games featuring fantasy contexts. In their 30 study Cordova and Lepper found gains in learning amongst participants (n = 70), yet warned “it would be an unwarranted extrapolation to suggest that the use of motivational embellishment strategies of the sort used in this study will always, or even typically, have such beneficial effects” (p. 727). However follow-up research continued to center on the motivational effects of computer games on learners (see Barab & Duffy, 1998; Hidi &

Harackiewicz, 2000; Deci, Koestner, & Ryan 2001).

Garris, et al. (2002) advance the motivational aspects of games for learning research by proposing a framework for evaluating instructional games. This framework considered both instructional content and game characteristics as equal components of a learning cycle that led to persistent reengagement which they described as “the cornerstone of computer game play and epitomizes the behavior that is coveted by instructional designers” (p. 454). Dickey (2005) furthers this research trajectory by outlining a more expansive set of video game characteristics such as narrative, perspective, and interactive design that could be used to foster engaging learning environments. This research frames games as designed objects that engage learners, and the goal of much of this early research was how to use games as a vehicle to deliver educational content.

Gee (2003) pushes the field into a larger domain with a conceptual framework for the potential of games for education and learning by moving beyond the designed object focus of earlier research. He champions video games as more than an object but a literacy. An academic understanding of this literacy requires thinking of games as more 31 than designed software but as a community of practice that “is not in anyone’s head, but embedded in the history and social practices of the group” (Gee, 1992, p. 105).

Gaming: The New Media Literacy

In the first half of the 2000s a research focus emerged that examined games as more than designed objects but a cultural literacy that fostered learning. Gee (2003) asserts that games need not be designed for learning, but that the nature of games themselves prompt learning and literacy. Games, Gee argues, by nature foster student learning if allowed to be used in a natural context - that is without educational goals layered on. He further asserts they allow for communities of learning (see Brown, 1994) that could encourage students to be active participants in their learning process. Gee pushes the field to consider as legitimate learning what earlier research had documented as restlessness (Bruckman & De Bonte, 1997). Doing so requires less focus on games to deliver education and more investigation into games for learning.

Bruckman and De Bonte (1997) in their investigation of MOOSE Crossing, a text- based virtual environment, were early documenters of the nature of games to disrupt educational norms while promoting learning. In their investigation into public school classrooms using MOOSE Crossing, they observed students moving freely around the room to question and assist one another as they explored the game. While the researchers understood this activity to be signs of learning, this activity was perceived by one teacher-participant as “restlessness and lack of engagement with the activity” (p. 26).

However, as the research of the early 2000s argues, it is this restless movement that is key to learning with games (see Gee, 2003; Squire 2002; Squire, 2003; Steinkuehler, 32

2004; Prensky, 2006) as it encourages an investment in games that allows players to develop a purposeful context for the content being learned (Reiber, 1996).

The teacher perception of restlessness in students as observed by Bruckman and

De Bonte (1997) is one of the earliest examples of the cultural gap between game players and non-game players. As Ito et al. (2010) suggest, spaces where expectations differ over the use of new technology and media are “a site of struggle over what counts as legitimate forms of learning and literacy” (p. 23). Ito argues further that learning and literacy are closely aligned with cultural values that are negotiated between social groups.

Perhaps nowhere else in the current media landscape is this negotiation between groups and accepted literacy more prevalent than in video games.

The extent of this literacy and its influence on players is still largely unexplored.

Consalvo (2007) critiques the field of games and learning research stating, “there is still a comparatively small amount of research concerning how players themselves organize their gameplay time and space(s), how they make choices about which games to play and why, and what else might be involved in their gameplay experiences” (p. 83).

The issues that Ito et al. (2010) and Consalvo (2007) raise play an implicit role in the classroom implementation of games. In the site of struggle that is games in the classroom there may be an assumption on how games should be used and with that assumption a set of cultural values regarding games. This could result in the teacher framing the gameplay within the context of a classroom activity, creating what Brown,

Collins, and Duguid (1989) argue is an activity “implicitly framed by one culture, but explicitly attributed to another” (p. 34). In this case the activity is attributed to the domain 33 of game and game culture (ie kids will enjoy the activity because it is a game) but the activity is under the implicit constraints of classroom goals and expectations to deliver content. Teachers may bring games into the classroom with the best intentions but, if lacking a literacy in games they may sabotage their own goals by seeing games as content-delivery. Meanwhile, their students perhaps view games as a new form of literacy that delivers context instead of content.

Squire (2003) suggests the field examine player viewpoints to measure how players perceive games and their correlation to other activities. Without a clear viewpoint of player expectations the field risks building a theoretical framework upon ideas that lack an empirical understanding of the cultural divide in the use of games for learning. As

Salen (2008) notes, the field needs a more robust literature on the interaction between players, the games they play, and the context in which they play. Without this empirical evidence on how gamers play in the wild the field may be building its classroom approach to games and learning on false assumptions.

Squire (2003), Salen (2008) and Ito (2010) all highlight the underlying gap in much of the games and learning research: the lack of an empirically-driven understanding of the phenomenon as much of the research in this field has the potential of games as its focus. As O’Neil, Wainess, and Baker (2005), argue “the evidence of potential is striking, but the empirical evidence for effectiveness of games as learning environments is scant”

(p. 468).

Vogel et al. (2006) in their meta-analysis of cognitive gains in game-based learning reinforce this claim. The authors could only use 32 studies of an original sample 34 size of 248 due to methodological or reporting flaws such as a lack of a clear description of the intervention used in the studies. They cite this lack of a research base as hindering the creation of positive learning outcomes in games and learning. Young et al. (2012) encountered much the same with only 39 articles acceptable for analysis out of an initial

363 due to lack of clear treatment variables. Young et al. further stress the need to examine the metagame and the social learning outside of the software itself as the Game allows for a richer understanding of in-game material. These meta-analysis studies highlight the field’s uncertainty on what exactly should be sought in games and learning research. There is agreement that games have potential for learning, but how that learning should be harnessed for educational purposes still warrants further research.

Van Eck (2006) argues much the same when calling for research that does more than advocate for games in learning. Instead, he stresses, research is needed that explains why and under what conditions games for learning are effective. Research, led most notably by Steinkuehler (see Steinkuehler, 2004; Steinkuehler 2006; Steinkuehler, 2008), has begun to make headway into answering the questions posed by Van Eck by exploring games as not only designed-objects in classroom environments but as complex social spaces where players create their own opportunities for learning. The research of the

2000s argued that players find games engaging not only because they are entertaining, but because they are also hard.

The Hard Fun of Games

Games as a media are unique in that failure is an integral part of the entertainment process. To engage with games is to fail. Failure within the magic circle of games 35

(Huizinga, 1950) runs in contrast to educational activities where there is active effort to avoid failure. As Juul (2013) argues, “while games uniquely induce such feelings of being inadequate, they also motivate us to play more in order to escape the same inadequacy” (p. 7). This failure is identified by game designers as a key point in the hard fun (Lazzaro, 2008) of games that is “the overcoming of obstacles: the pursuit of a goal, the rewarding of progress and the presence of compelling challenges that demand sophisticated strategies” (Chatfield, 2010, p. 50). Fun, in the world of videogames is hard work (Yee, 2014).

It is this hard fun of games and the sophisticated strategies that players are able to test and refine within a challenging, complex problem-space that appears to be the primary engagement mechanisms that bring players to video games. Koster (2014) asserts that “games grow boring when they fail to unfold new niceties in the puzzles they present” (p. 42). The process of players discovering all those new niceties has created an extensive data exhaust in the form of forum posts, Youtube videos, Twitter feeds, and

Twitch streams where they share successful strategies and engage in collaborative problem-solving on a global scale. This rich exhaust needs more in-depth investigation by games and learning researchers in combination with traditional games-as-designed- objects research in order to gather a holistic understanding of how players solve problems and learn via games. After three decades of research in the potential for games for learning this hard fun of games is primed for exploration. This exploration needs to understand the connection between games-as-software and Games-as-community to fully understand the potential of games for learning. 36 games and Games

Framing the academic investigation into games as one of activity both inside and outside the actual software of the videogame itself is key to understanding how games can and do promote learning uniquely as a medium. They are “models of experiences rather than textual descriptions or visual depictions of them” (Bogost, 2011, p. 4). These models of experiences allow for players to explore novel new behaviors while testing and refining this exploration through clear, immediate feedback. As models, games embody the essence of what Dewey (1938) champions as effective learning, the opportunity for the learner to intertwine both thought and experience. An opportunity Dewey (1916) argues is missing in formalized education, “thinking is often regarded both in philosophic theory and in educational practice as something cut off from experience and capable of being cultivated in isolation” (p. 159).

Games and their unique ability as a media to allow players to think through problems, then apply that thinking to an experience, and then reflect on their choices seem to embody the principles of Dewey’s (1938) process of learning. He states that knowledge is gained “partly by recollection and partly from the information, advice, and warning of those who have a wider experience” (Dewey, 1938, p. 69). The recollection aspect of Dewey’s learning process is embedded into the software of games themselves via game mechanics such as feedback loops and button prompts. However the

“information, advice, and warning of those who have a wider experience” (p. 69) is perhaps the defining characteristic of Games and a characteristic that is still not fully understood by games and learning research. 37

The Evolution of Games

Social communication via online message boards dates from the earliest days of the Internet (see Myers, 1987) appearing at much the same time as the earliest online games - text-based adventures known as Multi User Dungeons or MUDs As Internet connectivity increased, it became a communicative tool for more than these early multiplayer MUDs, but for single-player gamers as well. As the sophistication of single- player games increased players began to seek out advice from other players most notably in the form of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) websites. FAQs are fan-made strategy guides that provide complete walkthroughs of video games. These FAQs provide players with answers to particularly troublesome sections of a game or provide locations to treasures hidden in the most remote corners of the game. One of the earliest FAQ websites Video Game FAQ Archive (later known as GameFAQs and still operational today) appeared online in 1996. The Internet message boards and FAQs sites were the proto-Games community. FAQ writers exhaustively describe every aspect of a game for other players. Johnson (2006) describes one FAQ writer producing a walkthough guide for Grand Theft Auto III fifty-three thousand words in length. These websites became the

“locus of coordination” (Shirky, 2010, p. 37) between players where the social capital of having creating the best FAQ propelled players to generate substantial out-of-game content.

As Internet use accelerated game sites bloomed into larger social communities centered on wikis that host game information, game-related news, and forums for discussion related to the game. This content is often fan created and managed. The World 38 of Warcraft wiki, known as the WoWWiki, hosts over one hundred thousand articles and is second in size only to the Wikipedia wiki (WoWWiki, 2016). On websites such as

WoWWiki and World of Warcraft’s own forums users engage in a variety of discussions covering all aspects of the game.

Steinkuehler and Duncan (2008) discovered players in these forums engage in social knowledge construction and systems based reasoning as they argue and discuss minute details of character specifications. The work of Steinkuehler and Duncan is one of the few empirically driven investigations into the cognitive surplus and learning that occurs in Games and how the hard fun of this social community represents a form of engagement with the game. The next step in the research began by Steinkuehler and

Duncan (2008) is to investigate how players utilize, in real time, tools such as forums, and wikis as they solve problems in video game software.

The research of Steinkuehler and Duncan (2008) indicates that via games and

Games communities players can become the digital apprentice of a legion of experts as they seek to develop mastery over a game. Research has investigated similar digital spaces and the social dynamics that occur (see Ito et al, 2008; Jenkins, et al. 2009).

Where perhaps the field needs more investigation is in the interactions of these digital communities of practice that occur purely within the digital space with no face-to-face interaction. The field lacks a clear understanding of how members of these communities, specifically videogame players, talk within and about their practice (Lave & Wenger,

1991) and how this directly influences the games they play. 39

Where researchers can begin to investigate this is in the extensive content produced by players as a natural byproduct of their problem solving processes within games. As an example of this content, we can analyze a small segment of the community of practice around Kerbal Space Program (KSP).

Learning in Games - The Example of Kerbal Space Program

In the game KSP, players take control of a ragtag group of squat green aliens. The goal is to build a rocket and begin exploring the Kerbal solar system. What would perhaps pique the interest of games and learning researchers is the incorporation of real- world physics into the game. KSP requires players to develop an understanding of thrust, mass, gravitational pull, velocity, and trajectory calculations. These concepts are not explicitly covered in-game but must be discovered through in-game experience or through the game’s large player community.

The community contains a menagerie of players including at least one astrophysicist. Scott Manley has degrees in both Astronomy and Computational Physics

(Manley, n.d.). He’s known in the KSP community for his Youtube videos where he teaches fundamentals of KSP while explaining the real-world physics that govern the game. His channel has over 361,000 subscribers and a total of 74 million views.

Meanwhile, the KSP wiki site contains over 3,000 player-created articles with a total of over 72 million views. It is tremendous content being produced for what is considered an entertainment endeavor.

Players play KSP as a single player but engage with the Game of KSP across

Reddit, wikis, Twitch.tv, Steam, and Youtube among other socially-driven websites. 40

Each of these sites represents a segment of the KSP Game as a community of practice and a nexus of player interaction and learning. Yet what learning does occur is still largely unclear as these community driven sites have not been researched in conjunction with the game-as-software. Traditional research trajectories in games and learning would perhaps only investigate how a player engages with KSP as a game.

Jenkins, et al. (2009) assert engaging in communities of practice online, leads to learning and creation outside of formal education systems. The authors state that some participants, “will only dabble, some will dig deeper, and still others will master the skills that are most valued within the community. The community itself, however, provides strong incentives for creative expression and active participation” (p. 6). This process of dabbling, digging and mastery was investigated in parallel research by Ito et al (2008) which labeled this process as hanging out, messing around and geeking out.

Specifically, hanging out refers to participation to maintain social ties such as playing a game that friends play. Messing around is manifested as a more rigorous, media centered involvement such as viewing and commenting on Scott Manley’s KSP instructional videos. Geeking out represents a devoted commitment to a particular genre of media or technology (Ito et al, 2008) such offering advice and assistance to others in the online community around KSP. Jenkins et al. (2009) observed this phenomenon occurring in youth-driven, asynchronous, media-centric participatory culture and assert this participatory culture has the following characteristics:

 Relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement.

 Strong support for creating and sharing creations with others. 41

 Some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most

experienced is passed along to novices.

 Members who believe that their contributions matter.

 Members who feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the

least, they care what other people think about what they have created) (pp. 5-6).

Members of the KSP community appear to be developing a matrix of associations between concepts and contexts as theorized by Collins, Brown, and Newman (1989) as they geek out over the game. These associations are critical they argue as knowledge should not only be considered domain knowledge, or the domain of facts and procedures.

Instead Collins, Brown, and Newman describe cognition as containing heuristic strategies or tricks of the trade and control strategies. These control strategies are developed as learners acquire more domain knowledge and heuristic strategies. These control strategies guide learners in their completion of tasks and learners rely on these control strategies as a means to problem solve. If games and learning research focuses on the potential for games to deliver content, only domain knowledge may be observed. Broadening the focus of research to include these other forms of cognition will require more investigation of Games such as posting to community forms or playing games together in social groups.

Below is a Kerbal Space Program exchange that occurred on Reddit - a popular community driven website. On Reddit topics are organized into threads called subreddits, with posts that contribute the most to the subreddit getting upvoted by the community.

Top Reddit posts are an effective barometer for what a Game community considers vital 42 to a game’s Game. In this short exchange on the KSP subreddit, ifightwalruses is seeking help on constructing an orbital refueling station. This player receives assistance from bigorangemachine who offers advice while making associations to the real-world

International Space Station:

[question] Can someone help me with building a refueling station? ifightwalruses: I cannot for the life of me find a decent guide online so fi [sic] someone has one that'd be greatly appreciated

ARealRocketScientist: try to put it at a very circular 90km orbit with no inclination

[emphasis added]. bigorangemachine: I posted about my space station back in 0.23.5. You can see earlier the mistakes I made with the first station I had built.

The biggest lessons:

 Sketch out what you want to build ahead of time. Planning out your modules and

docking port locations will make more sense if you draw it ahead of time. Also

testing on the ground for large solar panels (make sure they don't expand 'into'

anything).

 Keep your part counts low. Having a high part count can really fudge up your

encounters (major lag when moving quickly)

 I haven't done this yet but I intend on doing it: Plan for module expansion like

the ISS [emphasis added].

 Ensure your docking ports for your ships are located away from your solar

panels. It can be a pain to constantly open and close panels. 43

 Try to orbit your station in a circular orbit with no inclination. (unless you

really want a polar station). Personally I don't recommend a specific altitude;

more so orbit at the altitude that you tend to engineer towards (I over build my

rockets a lot so I am almost always circularizing at 100,000 m).

 Launch manageable modules. A successful station is one you can build

In just this brief exchange between three members of the subreddit, we see an engagement with the community discourse with terms such as inclination assumed as domain knowledge. Contributor bigorangemachine then demonstrates heuristic strategies by advising ifightwalruses to craft the orbital refueling station after the modular build of the actual International Space Station. The inclusion of a link to a gif that illustrates this concept suggests bigorangemachine’s use of the gif as a control strategy.

This exchange reflects Gee’s (2008) description of Games as “communities of practice that create social identities with distinctive ways of talking, interacting, interpreting experiences, and applying values, knowledge, and skill to achieve goals and solve problems” (p. 24). He stresses that the social interaction around game software is as necessary as the software itself in facilitating learning via games. Yet games and learning research has yet to gather a holistic account of how this occurs within games.

Investigating exchanges such as the one above as part of the field’s research into games can provide a richer understanding of how gamers interact with games. What is needed in this example of the Kerbal Space Program subreddit exchange is descriptive data on the specific challenges ifightwalruses had during gameplay and how that prompted the seeking of assistance on the KSP subreddit, followed by data on how this 44 new information was incorporated into gameplay. Perhaps this player understood as

Seely-Brown (2004) suggests “that no one person was the expert; the real expertise resided in the community mind” (p. 17). However until the field of games and learning undertakes more thick descriptive (Geertz, 1973) ethnographic investigations of gameplay that includes more than the player-software dyad it will remain unclear how the participatory culture of Games influences player learning with a game.

Exchanges such as the KSP subreddit, Twitch Plays Pokemon, or the collaborative work around Foldit (see Chapter 1) demonstrate an evolution in the findings of Steinkuehler (2004) and her work of learning and teaching inside of Lineage that finds games exist as both designed object and social practice. Steinkuehler suggests that in our incorporation of games into formal learning we understand and design for the emergent social practices that surround them such as the collaborative atmosphere in the Game around Kerbal Space Program. What is needed prior to bringing the emergent social practice around games into the classroom is a richer understanding of what role these practices have in gaming.

As digital games enter the classroom, it could be easy to assume that engagement will come naturally, that the game will trigger the motivation and learning, yet perhaps this is not the case. More research is needed to determine what gamers identify as the source of their learning via engagement with games and Games. Using the examples above, teachers may bring games-as-software, such as KSP, into the classroom but could find their effectiveness diminished without including social communication channels that encourage Games-as-community cooperation. 45

Research indicates that games do outperform traditional classroom instruction in cognitive effects but these gains are influenced by whether the content was self-driven or teacher driven (Vogel et al., 2006). Yet much of the research to date on the effectiveness of games for learning assumes the teacher as an inherent variable (see Steinkuehler &

Squire, 2014) in the phenomenon for games and learning. It may be of benefit for the field to remove the teacher as a variable to investigate games as used naturally by the gamer/learner to better understand how Games inform and alter the gameplay of players.

This understanding will provide the field a stronger base from which to design classroom activities that allow for and encourage the use of the larger community of practice that is

Games.

Games and learning research proposes that both games and Games foster learning but evidence beyond that is scant. Or as Hung and Van Eck (2010) curtly describe the issue, “the majority of our discussion can be summed up as “Games are problems being solved by players; therefore, playing games will help people be better problem solvers”

(p. 2). Currently the field is in need of a more robust understanding of how players solve problems within games and what aspects of the larger social communities they access in doing so.

More investigation is needed to uncover how players are socialized into the culture of the game and the skillsets they utilize inside of these cultures (Turkle, 2005) unrestrained from the classroom/teacher-control variable. Without this empirical evidence on how gamers play in the wild the field may be building its classroom approach to games and learning on false assumptions. More empirical evidence on the 46 phenomenon of Games as community of practice will serve to answer the calls of Squire

(2003), Van Eck (2006), and Salen (2008) for more research on how and under which conditions digital game-based learning is effective.

Games as Communities of Practice

Communities of practice create opportunities for individuals to develop extensive skill sets by engaging in sustained, focused activities, and in the process move from novice to experts. Wenger (1998) asserts that communities of practice are defined by this shared learning process and the history it creates. Earlier, Lave and Wenger (1991) argued that these learning environments are not fully understood as previous studies have presumed too close an interconnection between learning and work. Much of the earlier research Lave and Wenger argue, sought to define leisure as an avoidance of work

(Stebbins, 1992) and as a result did not consider the learning that can occur in leisure pursuits.

However, more recent research suggests that informal learning communities, often centered on hobbyist pursuits such as games, are “active and participatory; it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills” (Leadbeater &

Miller, 2004, p. 20). The 3,000 fan-created articles on the KSP wiki page and active participation around the KSP Reddit would seem to support Leadbeater and Miller. The deployment of these skills is central to the community of practice as they serve as nodes for the distribution and internalizing of information valued by the community (Wenger,

2000). 47

With the rise of Internet technology, this distribution of information has taken on a new speed and scope and shifted the landscape from a context in which few produce and many consume to one in which many collaborate to produce (Jenkins et al., 2009).

Games are perhaps the most prolific spaces in which many collaborate to produce and research suggests learning does occur through collaborative practices. What is needed now is research that seeks to understand this phenomenon and the part it plays in games.

Steinkuehler & Duncan (2008) suggest that communities built upon shared interests or hobbies work as a bridging third space that allows practitioners in the community a space to engage in academic rigor even when engaged in activities that would be considered the domain of home life. This behavior fits the description of serious leisure defined by Stebbins (1992) as amateurs or hobbyists acquiring and expressing a set of specialized skills and knowledge through the pursuit of a voluntary activity. Inside these activities, amateurs discover strong self-identification formed through participation in a specialized community. These specialized communities engage in embodied expertise defined by Wenger, McDermott and Synder (2002) as “a deep understanding of complex, interdependent systems that enables dynamic responses to context-specific problems” (p. 9).

While research has identified the characteristics of specific participatory culture, most notably youth and digital media (Jenkins et al., 2009; Ito et al., 2010), the gap in the literature is a rich descriptive analysis of how these participatory cultures engage in embodied expertise within videogame culture. By utilizing an ethnographic approach that seeks to “study the shared patterns of behaviors, language, and actions of an intact 48 cultural group in a natural setting” (Creswell, 2014, p. 14), it could be possible to gain a deeper understanding of how a participatory culture functions within gaming and how these cultures are leveraged in the gamespace to solve problems. Within the realm of videogames perhaps the ideal place to search for these communities of practice and participatory cultures are within the subset of games known as Massively Multiplayer

Online games (MMOs).

From MUDs to World of Warcraft: A History of MMOs

Early research in games and learning operated under the assumption that games functioned in much the same way as earlier media: a solitary, consumptive activity, albeit one that showed promise through increased motivation and engagement in the consumer.

However, since the mid-1990s games have taken on new scope as Internet connectivity has allowed for the growth in popularity of socially-driven online games. These games brought to wider attention that videogames are not solitary activities as some early researchers argued (Provenzo, 1991), but serve as social hubs for player communities.

Players it seems are not bowling alone (Putnam, 2000), but use these multiplayer games to create social connections not available in their physical community. Steinkuehler and

Williams (2006) assert these massive online games represent third spaces that serve as a social gathering place outside both home and work (Oldenburg, 1999).

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMOs) originated from the earlier Multi User Dungeons (MUDs). Bruckman (1994) in her case study highlights how a core tenet of MUD culture is the helping of others and that social connections are formed from this activity. These connections provide MUD users the support structure to 49 take risks and engage in actions that have new and novel consequences (Dede, 1995), something that Gee (2008) argues is effective learning.

As technology and processing power increased these early MUDs began to utilize graphical interfaces that increased the complexity of the gameplay. By the late 1990s games such as Ultima Online and Lineage featured player-controlled avatars that quested and adventured in 3D virtual environments. While popular at the time, and still played by some today, these MMOs were overshadowed in the early 2000s by the launch of World of Warcraft in 2004 - a game still played by millions.

Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft’s is the most successful MMO to date. Over the game’s twelve year lifespan it has had over 100 million accounts created

(Sarkar, 2014) by players in 244 countries and territories. Subscriber numbers peaked during the third expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, with 12 million players while currently the game has 5.6 million subscribers (MMO Champion, 2015). According to

Yee (2014) the average age of U.S. players of WoW is 30 years old and these players spend an average of 20 hours per week in game. Part of WoW’s longevity comes from the periodic release of expansion packs. These expansions layer new content onto the original game in the form of more quests, higher level caps, and new raids and dungeons serving as end-game content.

The new dungeons and raids present opportunities to investigate player problem solving within World of Warcraft. Across the history of the game, dungeons and raids have operated under the same rules and design structure. However, new dungeons are filled with new enemies (called mobs) as well as end bosses - more powerful foes that are 50 the centerpiece of the dungeon. As a result, players are able to utilize past experience and apply that experience to the problems and challenges presented by a new dungeon. In

Silva and Mousavidin’s (2015) autoethnographic investigation into strategic thinking within World of Warcraft, initial in-game decision making was based on prior out-of- game experience. However as they developed a literacy within the game this decision making shifted from out-of-game experiences to wholly in-game experiences.

Documenting the gameplay action of more experienced players is key into understanding the phenomenon of problem solving in games as they have had the time to develop a literacy and set of experiences within games. At this stage in the research, the field must move past the “study of novices working on novel tasks or using novel applications”

(Hubbard, 2005, p. 363).

Documenting more advanced players within a gamespace as a single unit of analysis would allow for the observation of cognition as “a complex social phenomenon...distributed - stretched over, not divided among - mind, body, activity, and culturally organized settings” (Lave, 1988, p.1). Experienced players within a game will have previously established organizational settings that will aid their ability to solve problems based on the prior conceptual and procedural knowledge (Glaser, 1984) of their group.

Games as Social Spaces: Steinkuehler and MMOs

Steinkuehler (2004) was one of the first to note MMOs and the “paucity of research on the phenomenon as an important site for learning” (p. 522) and one that by design promotes communities of practice. She argued that to understand games and their 51 potential for learning they must be considered as form of social cognition that does not occur within the individual but functions within the greater social and material world. In her 2008 analysis of MMOs as educational technology Steinkuehler outlines six modes of participation that occur within MMOs:

 complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition - which

Steinkuehler defines as the coordination of people and tools across a variety of

platforms.

 collaborative problem solving practices - occurring in teams both in-game and

within the larger fan-driven communities surround a specific video game or game

genre

 novel literacy practices - that encompass, but are not limited to, the language and

communication styles that are “highly specialized forms of language for in-game

social interaction and genres of story-telling” (Steinkuehler, 2008, p. 12)

 scientific habits of mind including - hypothesis testing and model-based reasoning

(see Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008)

 forms of computational literacy - or the use of code to alter and modify in-game

materials

 mechanisms for learning such as reciprocal apprenticeship - which Steinkuehler

(2008) defines as an enculturation process into the practices of the game and the

shared knowledge of the members of the game community

These modes of participation occur in a continually shifting landscape of connectivity and interaction between the players and the games they play. This mangle of play 52

(Steinkuehler, 2006) has only escalated since Steinkuehler’s initial exploratory research.

In recent years, much of this player interaction occurs through synchronous activities in- game and out-of-game (through services such as Twitch) or asynchronous game-related activities (YouTube, Reddit). What is needed is an investigation into the characteristics of participation Steinkuehler outlines that considers how gamers learn and interact not only with the video game technology but the materials and activities around them as well

(Steinkuehler & Squire, 2014).

Using Steinkuehler’s (2004) modes of participation within MMOs as a lens to examine how players function within the gamespace in a learning cycle, and documenting gameplay as it occurs across the gamespace - be it the game, player interactions, or online player communities - could shed light on how players “actively construct knowledge through activity” (Hernandez-Ramos & De La Paz, 2009, p. 152).

An understanding of this knowledge construction can provide educators a framework on which to build their use of game in the classroom that incorporates thinking and learning that occurs in games through social interaction.

Social Role of Thinking

MMOs, contain far too much information for a player to memorize. World of

Warcraft has a player constructed wiki with over 100,000 articles (WoWWiki, 2016).

This suggests that players would need to leverage not only their own memory of WoW but outsource some of this knowledge to other game-related artifacts (the Game) or to other individuals with which they play. Success in WoW would seem to rest in social thinking. 53

Kruetzer, Leonard, and Flavell (1975) describe social thinking as the use of other people as storage and retrieval devices. Videogame environments would seem the ideal location in which to investigate social thinking as group-based nature of raids and dungeons would require players assist one another within a mutual goal through the retaining and sharing of information.

MMO raids and dungeons also require players to manage their own actions but also monitor the actions of the other members. This creates a situation where individual and group thought must be balanced to achieve the goal of the raid. As Barron (2003) states, “it is not that joint attention needs to be maintained at all times but rather that partners need to be able to regain it at solution-critical times” (p. 348). Documenting these solution critical times is perhaps key to understanding how players distribute their cognition within the gamespace.

In a problem solving context these solution critical times may occur at periods of impasse and understanding how players engage in impasse learning during gameplay could shed light on how to design classroom practices that mimic this problem-based learning. Blumberg et al., (2008) define impasse learning as “a gap in prior experience or a lack of knowledge necessary to solve a given task” (p. 1531). In an MMO setting, this gap or lack of knowledge would require negotiation amongst the players creating an opportunity to document the cognitive processes of the players as a single unit.

Vygotsky (1978) asserts that cognitive processes are not action taken for its own sake but a process meant to achieve a behavioral goal. Cognitive processes, Vygotsky argues, are isolated by researchers, thereby detaching them from the social events that 54 necessitated them. The argument put forth by Vygotsky applies to much of the early research in games prior to the work of Gee (2003) which isolated games from the social community around them. Considering cognitive process as part of the sociocultural process of players and documenting under what conditions these processes occur may provide insight into how players interact when playing a game. Furthermore these cognitive processes should not be considered as the isolated thinking of one individual within the gamespace but part of a larger network of thinking amongst the players.

Understanding how players engage with an MMO, like World of Warcraft, requires

“accounts of how an individual interacts with their material and social contexts, and how these interactions change over time, replac[ing] accounts of individual knowledge construction” (Steinkuehler, 2004, p. 523). Perhaps the best approach in answering

Steinkuehler’s call is to investigate a group of players in World of Warcraft as a single unit of analysis and investigate how their cognition is distributed.

Distributed Cognition

Distributed cognition is positioned as a framework that “is capable of capturing cognitive activities as embodied and situated within the context in which they occur: social and organisational” (Rogers & Ellis, 1994, pp. 119-120). Pioneered by Hutchins

(see Hutchins, 1994) distributed cognition argues for the social and organizational structures embedded within the mental actions of individuals to be considered within the domain of knowledge and knowing. In doing so, Flor and Hutchins (1991) argue, it is possible to understand intelligence beyond the individual cognitive level and instead understand cognition at a systems level. This notion of cognition as a action spread across 55 hardware and the minds of the hardware’s users appears uniquely situated for understanding how modern video games are played.

In the realm of video games and learning, the role of distributed cognition has yet to be fully explored. As gamers interact in multiplayer games such as MMOs they create a complex system through the interactions with each other and the game. These complex systems that “are larger than an individual may have cognitive properties in their own right that cannot be reduced to the cognitive properties of individual persons” (Hutchins,

1995, p. 266). Instead of being the domain of an individual person the information needed to effectively play an MMO is dispersed across the gamespace.

Research in games and learning have identified the role that distributed cognition may play within video games but has yet to fully document the distribution of thinking within games. Squire (2002) recognizes the role that tools play in guiding the thinking of the users, but stop short of examining the role of tools in videogames in favor of the role of transfer and its value in classroom learning. In their description of Quest Atlantis

Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, & Tuzun (2005) recognize the theoretical importance of distributed cognition, but limit discussion to fields that have felt the influence of

Vygotsky. Steinkuehler’s (2006) recognizes the role that distributed cognition has in videogame play but discussion of the phenomenon stays theoretical.

In the games and learning research investigation into distributed cognition is limited as the focus has rested largely on the role games can play in the classroom where the actions of a single student are the subject of focus. As Steinkuehler (2008) remarks this focus on games and the classroom is “a fixation whose symptoms include a near 56 obsessive focus on the question of what game-related knowledge and skills ‘transfer’” (p.

18). To address Steinkuehler’s concern once again calls for a need to remove the assumption of classroom practice from games and learning research to better understand how players distributed their cognition and how this plays a role in their distribution of intelligence as well.

Steinkuehler (2004) found in her ethnographic analysis of two players of the

MMO Lineage that in-game information was secondary to activity within the game that supported the development of newer players through a process of socialization by more experienced players. In Steinkuehler’s study, an experienced player Myrondonia

“engages JellyBean in joint participation in a meaningful activity with a mutually understood and valued goal” (p. 526) on how to collect mithril - an in-game item used for crafting equipment. In their interaction Myrondonia informs JellyBean as to how to navigate the game without accidentally engaging unwanted enemies (called drawing aggro in MMOs). Myrondonia then further instructs JellyBean on gathering mithril efficiently, before finally suggesting a best practice in sharing the dungeon space with other mithril hunters, “if you see someone go one way, go the other” (Steinhkuehler,

2004, p. 526). While this exchange is limited to an expert/novice discourse, it highlights how information is shared between the game, the Game, and the players. Ostensibly, the game instructed JellyBean on where to find mithril through in-game text or instructions.

Yet, while the game led JellyBean to the location, another player held the information need to successfully farm mithril, and the social practice needed to do so without invoking the ire of other players. 57

The Myrondonia/JellyBean interaction represents what Pea (1993) labels a social distribution of intelligence where knowledge is constructed within a scaffold of activity such as a shared goal and its completion. In the Lineage interaction documented by

Steinkuehler (2004) this social distribution of intelligence is decidedly lopsided due to

JellyBean’s lack of in-game experience but provided JellyBean with an opportunity to observe Myrondonia and explore new patterns of behavior that can be use for future success. With JellyBean’s newness to the game and the newness of Myrondonia and

JellyBean to one another a transactive memory between the two is left undeveloped.

However, should players with a shared history of a game be researched it could shed light on how transactive memory occurs in the gamespace.

Wegner, Erber, & Raymond (1991) describe transactive memory as a “shared system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information” (p. 923). In their study of how close couples retain information the authors found that when forced into an organizational scheme, close couples were hampered in their ability to retain information when compared with their ability when left to their own natural organizational structure.

This research provides a lens and rationale for investigating how players self-organize inside of games. Yet investigative research into games and learning brings gameplay into controlled contexts such as classroom or laboratory settings where these natural organizational structures may not manifest.

This natural organizational structure is ripe for exploration through a lens of distributed cognition. Research into this phenomenon will not only serve to explore 58 gaming and learning but could further theories of distributed cognition. Kirsh (2006) argues:

One key question which the theory of distributed cognition endeavors to answer is

how the elements and components in a distributed system - people, tools, forms,

equipment, maps and less obvious resources - can be coordinated well enough to

allow the system to accomplish its tasks (p. 258).

Games appear well situated to investigate Kirsh’s (2006) question as many of the components used in the distributed cognition within the gamespace are digital in nature.

As a result, they leave a rich data exhaust that can be captured, coded, and analyzed.

In the classroom context instructors perhaps place videogamers into unnatural organizational structures when the gamers may already have an organizational structure they follow when playing outside the classroom. Without a clear understanding of how gamers self-organize around the shared knowledge of information and how that information is distributed in the wild, it may be difficult to organize game-based classroom activities that make sense to the players.

The Way Forward

As noted by Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, and Gee (2005), games should not be considered simply entertainment, but simulated worlds. As worlds, games can serve as space for exploration and discovery where players can engage in new literacy skills, systems thinking, and new cultural identities (Steinkuehler, 2006). They are intentionally designed artifacts that are specifically built to entertain and engage, but more than that they are systems that allow complex social thinking and interaction. How gamers learn in 59 these environments has primarily been researched as small-scale case studies or as studies in a research setting detached from the social community of Games (Squire, 2004;

Steinkuehler, 2004; Thorne & Black, 2007).

Perhaps as Young et al. (2012) suggest, “to make substantial progress, we believe that current methodologies must extend beyond their current parameters to account for the individualized nature of game play” (p. 62). Young et al. also stress that “there appears to be a disconnect between the possible instructional affordances of games and how they are integrated into classrooms” (p. 80). Games and learning research needs to take a more open-ended approach that does not make assumptions on what is being learned or how until we have direct evidence from players themselves. Until then, we will continue to struggle with the incorporation of games into more formal learning.

In the effort to formalize game-based learning, teachers and researchers are perhaps removing the essential elements that most encourage learning through games: self-direction, exploration and community engagement. Instead we must examine these aspects of games and Games in order to have a more ecological understanding of how learning is supported in these digital spaces (Jenkins et al., 2009) and how the players transition from consumers to producers of content within these spaces. This will require not only a richer understanding of these spaces but require that teachers develop a literacy in these domains to better conceptualize how to best incorporate them into practice.

Doing so requires research that considers games for learning as more than the players- software dyad and considers how gamers operate within a complex social space that includes both games-as-software and Games-as-community. The next stage of research in 60 games and learning should seek to operationalize the modes of participation that have been identified by Steinkuehler (2008).

The Next Stage of Research

Modern video games are more than designed objects but instead act as complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition (Steinkuehler, 2008). In these spaces, players can and do cooperate to overcome challenges set by the game as software

(see Kerbal Space Program, Foldit) or challenges designed by the players themselves

(see Twitch Plays Pokemon). The key aspect of this is that players do so by choice.

Videogames appear to motivate players to engage in complex problem-solving and learning in ways that traditional classroom approaches do not. The question for researchers is what do they learn and how?

Dewey suggests learning is an iterative cycle of invention, observation, reflection, and action (Schön, 1992). This process Schön (1992) argues creates within the learner a

“reflective conversation with the situation” (p. 136) that creates opportunities for examining the way problems are perceived and providing insight into new perspectives on the problem leading to discovery and overcoming of the problem. 61

Figure 1. Proposed conceptualization of the iterative cycle of learning in games.

I suggest that by documenting this iterative cycle within videogame play (Figure

1) it may be possible to better understand how players learn within the complex space of videogames - a space that includes both software and community. To effectively document this learning cycle it will be necessary to document gamers in the process of problem solving. It is this problem and the search for its solution that provide the foundation for Schön’s (1992) “reflective conversation with the situation” (p. 136).

Problem based learning has been described by Barrows (2000) and Torp and Sage

(2002) as collaborative learning through exploring, conceptualizing and solving meaningful problems. Hmelo-Silver (2004) describes problem-based learning as partially small group work and partially teacher facilitated learning that promotes the understanding of complex, real-world problems. Barrows and Kelson (1995) argue that problem-based learning motivates learners to: develop effective problem-solving skills, become effective collaborators, and construct an extensive and flexible knowledge base. 62

All of which have been proposed as the hallmark of games/Games, what is needed is documentation of how these occur in games/Games.

I proposed that by using Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation as a coding mechanism it may be possible to document a group of MMO players engaging in this cycle of learning.

Figure 2. The iterative cycle of learning with Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation in MMOs.

In each step of the iterative cycle the players may access or modify various components in the gamespace as hypothesized in Figure 2. Documenting these will be key to understanding how these games are, as Steinkuehler (2008) argues, complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition.

Figure 3. The iterative cycle of learning with gamespace actions at each step in the cycle.

Jørgensen (2003) theorizes players move through a learning sequence that mirrors this iterative cycle of learning. Jørgensen’s case study analysis of players engaged with games-as-software describes this learning process as understanding the problem, strategy creation, and an implementation of the strategy through action taking. Much like

Dewey’s reflection and observation, Jørgensen’s understanding and strategy creation phases would seem to be where players are most likely to access the Game around their software of choice, but how they do remains undocumented.

By documenting the entirety of action of the players within the gamespace as they seek to solve a problem it may be possible to gain a richer understanding of how learning occurs within the complex problem space of videogames. I argue that by documenting the 64 game play of MMO players using this iterative cycle of learning as a framework it may be possible to operationalize Steinkuehler’s (2008) modes of participation within MMOs.

Feldon and Kafai (2008) recognize the challenge of data collection within game environments as it requires understanding that action occurs in two distinct yet interconnecting worlds, one virtual and one real. Feldon and Kafai (2008) state the

“challenge of online data collection is capturing relevant offline events that occur unobserved in user's physical surroundings which influence, complement, or give alternate meaning to their online actions” (p. 577). The challenge presented by Feldon and Kafai can perhaps be answered by incorporating a methodology that observes both in-game and in-world behavior. Further it may be possible to externalize player mental processes by documenting game play behavior that requires players to distribute their cognition across a group of players, the software, the Game, and hardware.

Chapter Three: Methodology

The purpose of this intrinsic case study research was to understand the phenomenon of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game players engaging in collaborative problem solving within a gamespace. I define gamespace as the environment consisting of the players of a game, the game-as-software, the hardware upon which the game is played, and the social community or Game that exists around the software. The players within this gamespace were a subset of guild members with extensive experience within the game World of Warcraft (WoW). This study investigated the process through which these guild members distribute their cognition as they attempt to solve problems presented within WoW. The study documented how players engage in

“complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition” (Steinkuehler, 2008, p.

12) by investigating a five-member team of WoW players as a single unit of analysis.

This study seeks to operationalize Steinkuehler’s (2008) modes of participation within an MMO by understanding when, or if, they occur within an iterative cycle of learning (Schön, 1992) by documenting the actions and behaviors of the five players as a single case. This research utilized a case study approach as outlined by Yin (1984) as the study attempted to unpack and understand a complex, socially-driven problem. The goal of this research is not to only understand the actions of this particular five-player team but how this team distributes and shares cognitive processes during problem-solving.

The study has the following research questions:

1. How do players, the game, the Game, and hardware interact as a cohesive unit in

problem-solving as a gamespace? 66

2. How do players distribute cognition across the gamespace?

3. How do players move through an iterative cycle of learning while problem-

solving in game and at what stages of the cycle do they engage in Steinkuehler’s

(2008) six modes of participation?

Case Study Approach

This study seeks to understand more than the single-player/software dyad that is the focus of much of the games and learning research (see Young et al., 2012). To answer

Van Eck’s (2006) call for more research on how and under what conditions digital game- based learning is effective, it is imperative for the field to have a richer understanding of the larger social environment around players and the games they play. Specifically there is a need to understand how players leverage these social spaces to progress within the video game software.

An intrinsic case study approach was used for this study to better understand the relevant contextual conditions (Yin, 2003) that surround video game play. The purpose in using an intrinsic case study approach is twofold. The first is to utilize this case study to understand the larger phenomenon of socially-driven play that is the hallmark of modern videogames. Steinkuehler and Squire (2014) contest this social component is missing in the integration of games into classroom practice and that a richer understanding of it is needed to maximize the potential of games for learning. The second rationale for the use of an intrinsic case study approach is to understand, through this case study, how the various components of modern videogame play - the players, the social community or big-G Game, hardware, and Internet resources - interact as a cohesive whole. What is 67 needed in games and learning research is an understanding of how these components comprise what Stake (1995) refers to as an integrated system.

If we considered the players, the video game-as-software, computer hardware, and the social community around the game as an integrated system it is imperative to understand the boundaries of this system. Miles, Huberman, and Saldana (2014) define a case as “a phenomenon of some sort occurring in a bounded context” (p. 28). This definition presents an interesting problem for games and learning research. With much of the previous research focused on establishing an understanding of how games can be leveraged for classroom learning it has had as its focus the interaction of one player with the videogame-as-software. With this traditional approach to games and learning research boundaries could be clearly delineated as what the player did and how the game responded.

However, the introduction of Games (Gee, 2003) as a component of gameplay has blurred the assumed boundaries of video game play. The resulting mangle of play

(Steinkuehler, 2006) has created an view of games as complex, socially-driven problem solving spaces and it is underclear where the boundaries of gameplay exist. As a result of this, the second purpose for this intrinsic case study approach is to use this research to better understand the boundaries of modern videogame play. Therefore a case study approach is warranted here as this study “investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (Yin, 1994, p. 13). 68

Merriam (1998) suggests that the case study approach is best utilized in contexts where the researcher cannot impose much control over events. In this particular study it is a goal of the researcher to limit, as much as possible, any control over events. This is in direct response to games and learning research that argues much of the fieldwork to date has been undertaken in situations amenable to the researcher and not amenable to authentic gameplay (Young et al., 2012). An investigation of gameplay in-situ, in conditions that are amenable to the players and not the researcher, may provide an emergence of dynamics that can provide researchers opportunities to rethink the phenomenon (Stake, 1981).

Rethinking the phenomenon of socially-driven videogame play and how players solve problems as a single unit requires a thick descriptive analysis (Geertz, 1973) of the entirety of the space in which the gamers play. This required an investigation into three separate but overlapping spaces: the real-world physical locations of the players in the five person team, and the virtual-world they inhabit, and the online social space that facilitates their gameplay.

Description of the Case

This description itemizes each aspect of the case as each will be purposefully selected for its potential in demonstrating the problem-solving nature of videogame play.

The goal of this research is to gain a holistic understanding of this complex space by utilizing multiple perspectives. Therefore it is necessary to not focus on a single aspect, such as player discourse or in-game activities, but instead research the sum of the parts of the gamespace. In doing so this research will attempt to document how players form a 69 cohesive whole that allows for learning inside the socially-driven problem spaces that are modern videogames.

World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft is a medieval fantasy game borrowing heavily from the established Tolkien-inspired norms of the fantasy genre. Players create a character and select from many races, such as human, elf, orc, or troll, and choose a class such as warrior, warlock, priest or rogue. These classes dictate the combat style the character utilizes in the game. Warriors are adept at both dealing and absorbing damage, priests use magic spells to heal themselves and others, rogues deliver high damage, but are themselves susceptible to damage. These classes complement each other and successful strategies in World of Warcraft require a balance of classes.

Players engage in quest-driven gameplay fetching various widgets or slaying beasts in exchange for loot such as gold or items they can equip on their character. Much of this questing can be completed as a single-player; however the game also offers dungeon and raiding content. This content has a higher difficulty level than questing but provides higher-level experience and loot. Raiding content requires groups of players to cooperate together in teams with a balance of classes and abilities. Teams must develop strategies and outline plans of attack in order to successfully complete these raids.

The game World of Warcraft was examined due to its position as the largest

MMO for the last decade. It has been further selected for its steady release of expansions.

These expansions provide new content in the form of new quests, dungeons, and raids that, while different than previous material, carry enough similarity for players to apply prior knowledge and experience to the new dungeons and raids. The timing of this 70 research was set to coincide with the release of Legion, the sixth expansion of World of

Warcraft. This ensured that there was in-game content that the participants have not experienced.

World of Warcraft is one of longest-lived Massively Multiplayer Online games and with a subscriber base of five million also one of the most popular (Kollar, 2015).

More importantly, the game has an active community and WoW’s parent company

Blizzard frequently engages with this community to address needs and concerns within the game.

Finally, WoW has an established place in the academic literature. Research studies have investigated a wide swath of WoW and its surrounding community. Steinkuehler and

Williams (2006) investigated WoW as a third space for socialization and community, while Williams et al. (2006) studied this socialization through the lens of guilds. Thorne

(2008) examined WoW as a platform for transcultural communication among players.

Scientific thinking in the WoW forums was investigated by Steinkuehler and Duncan

(2008). Yee’s (2014) expansive work on identity in virtual worlds leaned heavily on

World of Warcraft. Silva and Mousavidin’s (2015) autoethnography delved into strategic thinking in WoW. The longevity of World of Warcraft and the research literature around it make the game a prime candidate for the videogame software with which to conduct this study.

The guild. This research used a typical case sampling to identify the guild. This guild is an extant guild within the game and not created specifically for this research study. The rationale behind studying an established guild is to address the need in games 71 and learning research for a study of “the shared patterns of behaviors, language, and actions of an intact cultural group in a natural setting” (Creswell, 2014, p. 14). To date, games and learning research has not investigated the shared group interactions among players in a game that have self-selected in a holistic manner. As Consalvo (2007) argues, the research is scant into how gamers self-organize and in the decisions they make regarding the games they play. To address these concerns, this research investigated players in a game of their choosing and not a game imposed by the researcher.

Guilds within World of Warcraft have distinct personalities and many become the third space for players and serve as a social hub both in-game and in real life

(Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). Guilds with strong membership can be long-lasting with firmly established rules and protocols leading to global recognition for its achievements within the game. Individual players can be selective in guild membership as guilds tend to develop unique personalities and characteristics. However, the administration and routine of guilds is often similar due to the questing/raiding structure of World of Warcraft. For the purposes of this study, a guild was selected based on its history within the game and the levels of the players.

Stable guilds within World of Warcraft have an organizational structure ran by a guild leader and guild officers selected by the leader. This guild leader and their officers are responsible for the management of up to 50 plus guild members and have been of interest to real-world business leaders for the skills they develop managing these guids

(IBM, 2007). Although embedded in a leisure activity, guilds are serious business. Guild leaders and their officers establish protocols for the guild. This includes working with 72 guild members to establish schedules, preparing resources in preparation for a raid, and when needed handling conflicts of personality that may arise within a community.

The first stage in identifying a guild for this investigation was by identifying a a

World of Warcraft player with strong ties to an established guild. As a player of WoW myself I was able to connect with the community and canvassed guilds both online and through real world acquaintances. It was my real-world connection to another WoW player, going by the name Wash in this study that I was able to identify a guild to investigate. Wash had no prior knowledge of my research agenda, but when informed I was looking for a group to investigate offered to contact his WoW guild mates to participate in the study.

Through Wash it was possible to engage in a purposeful sampling of his guild mates to become the participants that comprised the five person team. The rationale for this purposeful sample was to identify highly expert players with a robust history of in- game experience and experience working together. Members of the team were selected based on input from Wash and based on the following characteristics:

 Time spent in-game with a minimum character level of 100. Higher character

levels indicate experience with the game that allows for the players to engage in

end-content such as dungeons and raids. This end content provides the players

new challenges where they can engage in problem-solving activities.

 Length of time in the guild. Longer guild membership provides the players the

experience of working in a group and developing a process for raiding as it is not

the goal of this study to investigate “novices working on novel tasks or using 73

novel applications” (Hubbard, 2005, p. 363) but how experienced players work

together.

 Frequency of time spent playing together. A longer period of time prior to the

research allows the team to develop a system to run dungeons that can serve as a

“shared system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information” (Wegner, Erber,

& Raymond, 1991, p. 923).

 Horde affiliation. In WoW two factions exist - the Alliance and the Horde. As an

Alliance player myself I sought out a Horde guild to eliminate the chance of

having ever played with any of the participants in the research.

These guidelines have been established to purposefully sample guild members with extensive in-game experience and group cohesiveness.

The big-G Game. Research in games and learning has positioned the videogame- as-software as mechanism for delivering content (see Garris et al., 2002; Dickey, 2005).

In a content-delivery scenario, success in the use of the game can be summarized as time on task such as the completion of in-game goals and activities. However, modern videogames exist within a rich ecosystem of supplementary websites, videos, and social communities that have been overlooked in the classroom application of games (see

Steinkuehler & Squire, 2014). Steinkuehler and Duncan (2008) has been one of the few studies to investigate how these communities are used by players, but not during the act of gameplay itself. Therefore one of the goals of this research is to understand if, or how, players utilize the social community, or Game, around World of Warcraft as they problem-solve within the game. 74

This Game community was documented in terms of how the players rely on it as a holder of information and how it plays a part in their engagement with World of

Warcraft. What is of importance to this case is what aspects of the Game are utilized and when to achieve goals within the game. Aspects of the Game were also analyzed by how the participants engage with it through Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation within MMOs.

The computer hardware. In videogame parlance a rig is the hardware on which games are played. Gamers take advantage of the high customizability of computers to adjust their rig specifically for their style of play. This customization extends beyond the computer hardware proper (ie motherboard, graphics card) to peripheral hardware such as keyboard, monitor, and mouse. The devices can be programmed with a variety of macro commands that enable players to set shortcuts in-game. These shortcuts allow players fast access to favored items, abilities, or information in-game. As a result videogame preferences can become quite personalized.

Hutchins (1995) notes in his ethnographic research of airplane cockpits that pilots rely on the tools that surround them to successfully operate the aircraft. The tools allow for pilots to work through sophisticated protocols that would be impossible if completed through mental computation alone. My research sought to understand if, or how, players of videogames do the same.

When running dungeons and raids, players often need to track a variety of in- game tools, information, and abilities while making time-sensitive decisions. Of interest to this research is if players, much like Hutchins’ (1995) pilots, distribute some of this 75 cognitive load to the hardware around them. This is needed to fully understand

Steinkuehler’s (2008) concept of complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition. The nature in which players rely on their hardware to remember information through macros and keyboard shortcuts is a vital component of this study as these hardware shortcuts become second nature for many players. Top tier World of Warcraft players will often relegate favorite spells or attack commands to muscle memory and button pressing rather than overt mental processes - a vital component in the speed at which they play. Therefore the hardware configurations of the players were documented in this study in order to understand how the physical hardware components play an active role in the problem solving process within the gamespace.

The Role of the Researcher and Ethical Considerations

In this study my role was positioned as both researcher and video gamer. I observed and recorded the gameplay of the guild members, interviewed the members of the guild once the gameplay sessions were complete, and attempted to fully document the gamespace in which the guild members operate. The success of this research was in part dependent on my ability to generate a good rapport with the guild. This rapport made it possible to integrate into the established functioning of the guild, promote guild members in engaging in authentic interactions during gameplay, and facilitate in-depth interviews with the guild members.

This also required an understanding of World of Warcraft and the types of activities players can engage in within the game. I have played WoW for the past five years logging over 1600 hours in-game. These 1600 hours have been played across five 76 expansions of the game and in both solo and group-play activities. This extended playtime has provided me an in-depth understanding of the game and its lore as well as the lexicon of jargon used by players of WoW and MMOs in general. Besides a practical understanding of World of Warcraft I have a theoretical understanding of what makes

MMOs and specifically World of Warcraft a product of such devotion and extended gameplay through my PhD coursework and studies.

Given my investment in World of Warcraft there is a concern the results could be influenced by researcher experience. However in this research study I argue that my experience within World of Warcraft and gamer culture at-large are more asset than liability. Ito et al. (2010) suggest, that digital media, and in this research videogames specifically, are “a site of struggle over what counts as legitimate forms of learning and literacy” (p. 23) and often there exists a cultural divide in the understanding of new forms of media. Previous research (see Steinkuehler, 2004; Dickey, 2007; Silva & Mousavidin,

2015) has examined new player experiences within massively multiplayer online games or described an outsider’s analysis of these spaces. As a direct result of this line of research this study considers an understanding of WoW and gamer/Game culture as a necessary component of advancing research in the field. By considering insider knowledge of the culture and community around WoW this research attempted to avoid data analysis that is “implicitly framed by one culture, but explicitly attributed to another” (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989, p. 34). In this case the actions of participants in this study and the cultural framing of the data during analysis were one and the same. 77

Pilot Studies

Two small-scale pilot studies were conducted before carrying out the full scale research project. The first pilot study was the documentation of a single player as they engaged in playing World of Warcraft. This study was limited to a technology test. The results of this study were used to make adjustments to proper camera placement for the full-scale study to ensure the camera can fully document the player’s screens and hardware configurations. This pilot study was used to stress test the use of a graphics card for gameplay recording and to test the recording of audio via Ventrilo.

The second pilot study was conducted to document player interaction. This pilot study recorded three players as they engaged in collaborative gameplay. A goal of this pilot study was to establish a foundation for the syncing of multiple sources of video and audio recording data. It also served as a test of informing the participants of how to set-up and use the data collection hardware, GoPro cameras, and screen recording software

(NVidia Shadowplay).

Participants

This study investigated five people who comprise one team. This study was limited to five participants as a result of structure of dungeon runs inside of World of

Warcraft. These dungeons runs are small-scale examples of raids, which are available for players in groups of five up to 30 players, with some old raids allowing up to 40 players.

The five-player dungeon run was selected due to it being the most manageable to document. This five player limit was also established to serve as a link to the format of 78 many of today’s most popular online games, such as Overwatch, Counter Strike, and

League of Legends all which use a five-versus-five person format.

Participant information. The communication and actions of a five person team playing World of Warcraft was analyzed for this study. This research was conducted after receiving approval from the Institutional Review Board of Ohio University and followed the procedures as described in the study’s IRB form. Participants of the study were interviewed online therefore an online consent form was utilized. Participants are described below and pseudonyms have been used.

 Mal - Mal serves as the guild’s leader and founder. She established the guild after

becoming a World of Warcraft player in 2006. Based in Florida, Mal also runs the

guild’s Vent channel.

 Zoe - Zoe has played WoW since 2007 and joined the team’s guild in 2013. Prior

to joining the guild she had played with Book in another guild. Zoe is currently in

Colorado and serves as a guild officer in charge of healing during raids.

 Book - While having known Zoe for years, Book is new to the guild having only

joined in the summer of 2016. He began playing WoW in 2006 and during his

early days ran with server first guilds. Server first guilds are highly disciplined

teams that seek to be the first guild on their server to complete endgame content.

Book was the only member of the study who does not serve as an officer in the

guild.

 Wash - After Book, Wash is the newest member of the guild, having joined in

2014. Wash began playing WoW in 2006, but has taken frequent extended breaks 79

from the game in the ensuing years. He serves as a recruitment officer for the

guild.

 Jayne - Jayne has been with the guild since its founding having played with Mal

in a previous guild. On the shuttering of that guild Jayne joined Mal in her new

guild and has remained since. He began playing WoW in 2007 and serves as an

officer of the guild in charge of the guild’s Facebook page.

The team has varying degrees of offline relationships. Mal and Jayne have had an extensive in real life relationship that extends to Jayne travelling from California to

Florida to visit Mal and her family. Mal and her family attend Blizzcon, Blizzard’s annual conference, with Jayne who lives in the vicinity of the conference. Mal also hosts yearly guild get togethers often around spring break which Zoe has been able to attend.

Wash and Book have an online relationship with the rest of the team. They have not established a real life connection with the other team members, but hope to attend the next guild get together.

It should also be noted the team has a significant presence in the lives of one another and frequently engage in communication via text messages, Snapchat, and the guild Vent server. The Vent server is the team’s de-facto third place (Oldenburg, 1999).

The team and their guild mates frequent the Vent server outside of WoW, including attending Jayne’s weekly Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) games played by Zoe, Book, and Wash. While Mal does not participate in D&D she often joins the Vent channel just to socialize. In the team’s own words:

Mal: The guild has encompassed into my real life. 80

Zoe: I like the social aspect. I mean before we got on this call I was in Vent just seeing who was in there and said ‘hi’ to everyone.

Book: I have friends all over the U.S. that are located right here in digital form.

Data Collection

The data collection process in this case study is based on the ethnographic research of Stevens et al., (2008). They sought to understand the informal video game play habits of youth and were one of the first to document video gamers in situ. The critical assumption of Stevens et al., is eschewing the separate worlds view of videogame play. This view considers the actions of a gamer to be a world apart from their real-life interactions and that the game world and the real world are distinct. To investigate these worlds as overlapping, the researchers utilized video recordings of both in-game and in- room to create a single account of simultaneous actions that occur during gameplay. As the authors state:

Our video-based ethnographic approach is similar conceptually and

methodologically to studies of technology use in workplace settings. Work of this

kind draws its boundary around “functional systems” in ways that are sometimes

willfully ambivalent toward received boundaries (either existing theoretical or

commonsense ones), such as those between “in-game” and “in-room.” We are

after the ways that activity and meaning circulate; if these circulations take us

across characters moving about in the game, to a conversation in a living room, to

a relationship with a friend, that is where our analysis goes (pp. 43-44). 81

This study seeks to extend this data collection approach by considering this circulation of meaning and activity that occurs in both the digital and physical spaces an integral component of videogame play. It is the documentation of this movement and how players do so as a component of distributed cognition in problem solving that is the focus of this research. This documentation produced a substantial amount of data and therefore utilized a grounded theory approach.

Grounded theory. This approach was utilized for its ability to aid in understanding the “patterns of actions and interaction between and among various types of social units” (Strauss & Corbin, 1994, p. 278) or in the case of this research how the players, software, hardware, and social community around World of Warcraft interact.

This approach further reinforces the need for games and learning research to understand what Strauss and Corbin (1990) describe as complex events and phenomenon occurring in real-world settings.

The first stage of the research process was the identification of a five person team to observe and document within World of Warcraft. The second, and main, component was the audio and video recording of this five person team as they engage in dungeon runs within World of Warcraft. This gameplay was analyzed, then coded and categorized based on emergent themes and Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation within an

MMO. The final stage was stimulated recall interviews with the participants to gain further insight into their actions within the gamespace. In an attempt to understand and document the boundaries of modern gameplay the data collection process was iterative and recursive. Gameplay documentation informed the coding which prompted the 82 interview questions. Answers to these questions clarified the gameplay actions documented in the gameplay recordings.

Video and audio recording of gamespace activities. This study began with the audio/video recording of the gameplay of a five person team of players as they played

World of Warcraft. This approach was selected as an extension of the ethnographic approach used by Stevens et al., (2008). In their study, cameras were placed in the rooms of the participants so that game activity, occurring on screen, and in-room activity could be recorded and then later compared side-by-side. I extended this approach by documenting the in-game and in-room activities of five separate players simultaneously. I further extended this research approach by also documenting the in-Game actions of the team through audio recording of their Vent server.

Each of the five participants were simultaneously recorded in-room using a GoPro camera positioned to the side of the participant - if the computer screen is 12:00 on an analogue clock this would place the cameras at either 4:00 or 7:00 roughly two to five feet from the participant. This positioning was designed to capture the in-room context for each player as well as their interaction with their hardware, and to capture the activity on their computer monitor. GoPros made this data capture easier due to their wide-angled lens, making it possible to capture extensive in-room data with one camera. Each player had their actions recorded such as keyboard actions and physical movements. These in- room cameras also recorded the content displayed on the player's screen or screens. The recording of any secondary screens is intended to capture if, or under what conditions, players access materials and resources outside of, but tangential to, the game. 83

Video recording was conducted in-game using Nvidia Shadowplay, a screen sharing and recording software developed by Nvidia. Recording directly from the graphics card is less resource intensive than traditional screen capture software such as

Camtasia therefore limiting the screen recording software’s influence on the game being played. Initially one participant was selected to record their screen. The participant selected, Wash, is the team’s healer. As a healer, Wash, stands farther away from the action, this allowed for the capturing of the actions of the whole team. A second screen capture was offered by Book, a DPS on the team, so a second screen recording was also conducted but served as a secondary reference to Wash screen capture data.

Audio was recorded both in-game and in-room. In-game chatter was recorded using Ventrilo or Vent as it was referred to by the participants. Vent is a server-based voice over Internet communication system that allows for group chat widely used by online gamers. The Vent recording was the primary recording mechanism as it documented exchanges between players. However, within Vent players may mute their audio for a variety of purposes which could result in missing data. The GoPro cameras also recorded in-room audio to mitigate this as a player who muted Vent still had their in- room audio captured via the GoPro camera.

Observations. Video and audio recordings of the gamespace were supplemented with observations of gameplay. These notes were used to as an initial annotation of the gameplay actions of the team. The notes served to add more depth to the analysis of gameplay actions and served as a resource for later analysis of the gameplay. 84

Interviews. I conducted five semi-structured post-gameplay interviews for this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to account for the fluid and flexible nature of video game play. Structured interviews may not be able to predict or fully account for the actions participants engage in within the gamespace. The interviews were limited in structure to encourage the players to describe their gameplay in general before a more focused line of questions on particular in-game choices or actions. The questions asked during the interview were informed by notes taken during the observation of gameplay as well as analysis of the gameplay recordings.

The interviews used a stimulated recall approach to encourage participants to elaborate on activities that occurred within the gamespace. I showed individual participants select footage of in-game or in-room actions and asked them to elaborate on the rationale for particular actions or comments. Along with the gamespace actions these interview responses were coded based on themes that emerged under each of the research questions.

Through the variety of data collection procedures above it was possible to triangulate the data, creating convergent evidence and a holistic representation of the gamespace activities of the participants. To do this data was collected across three overlapping yet distinct spaces (see Figure 4):

1. In-Room actions to document how players engaged with the real world and their

computer hardware. Audio and video data were collected in this space.

2. In-Game actions to document how the players engaged with each other during

World of Warcraft. Audio data were collected through the team’s Vent server. 85

3. In-game actions to document how the players worked together to problem-solve

within new World of Warcraft content. Video and audio data from World of

Warcraft were collected through Nvidia Shadowplay recording software.

Figure 4. Spaces in which data were collected. Initial data collection was captured in-room, in-Game, and in-game. Post-gameplay interview audio data were also collected.

Previous research into MMOs has been limited in data triangulation as they have focused on smaller subsets of activities of the MMO gamespace. Steinkuehler’s (2004) cognitive ethnography of two players within the MMO Lineage collected only in-game data to describe the discourse between two players. Thorne’s (2008) ethnographic account of the transcultural communication of two World of Warcraft players was limited to linguistic exchange, yet documented the use of tools both inside and outside the game software which enabled this conversation. Silva and Mousavidin (2015) undertook an 86 autoethnographic account of World of Warcraft gameplay that focused on strategic thinking; however out-of-game information that was utilized in their thinking process was not documented.

Each of these previous studies commented upon the need for future research to examine how knowledge is socially-constructed within these spaces. Through a convergence of data such as audio and video recordings of in-room, in-Game, and in- game alongside observations and interviews a holistic account of this socially-constructed knowledge can be fully documented.

Data Analysis

The data collected through audio and video recordings, observations, and interviews were transcribed then manually coded and categorized based on emergent themes.

Themes of research question one. Research question one sought to understand how players utilize the gamespace in the process of problem solving. During analysis of the data four themes emerged:

 Game-related problems - Problems that originated from the social space

surrounding gameplay including guild concerns, social discussions (text

messages, Facebook posts, Vent chat), and conversations occurring in the larger

World of Warcraft community.

 player-related problems - Problems either presented directly by a player in the

game (So I’m guessing…?, How do you…?) or as a result of confusion resulting 87

in an internal utterance spoken aloud (That’s weird...., What is this?) which is

then taken up by the remainder of the team.

 problems of cognitive dissonance - Problems brought about by confusion among

the team as they worked on a common goal such as the cause of a wipe, or a

misunderstanding of which trash mob to target.

 game-presented problems - Problems that exist as part of the challenge of the

game, such as an attack mechanic by a boss or mechanics that are new to the

game as part of the latest expansion.

Themes of research question two. Research question two sought to understand how players distribute their cognition as they function within the gamespace. During analysis of the data three themes emerged:

 keybindings as a memorization tool - The use of bindings for the mapping in-

game actions to keyboards and/or a mouse.

 using add-ons to manage information - The use specialized code that alters

aspects of the game-as-software.

 operating in multiple simultaneous spaces - The functioning of players in several

cognitive spaces simultaneously.

Themes of research question three. Research question three sought to understand how players move through an iterative cycle of learning and if and/or how they engage in Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation within MMOs. Chapter 2 highlighted Steinkuehler’s definitions of these six modes of participation. For the purposes of this study I specify these modes with the following definitions : 88

 complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition - how the players

use the entirety of the gamespace to process information. This includes how

individual players may retain specific information for the group or how their

hardware is used to retain information such as through macros or keyboard

shortcuts.

 collaborative problem solving practices - the practices the group undertakes as a

single-unit in order to overcome impasses in their gameplay progress and what

shared experience is leveraged in solving problems presented in-game.

 novel literacy practices - what language and discourse is used by the group during

gameplay and how this language is used in time-sensitive gameplay.

 scientific habits of mind - the hypothesis testing processes and model-based

reasoning strategies players use as they engage in gameplay. Of interest is if the

gameplay behavior shows signs of actively working through the problem or only

guessing at solutions.

 forms of computational literacy - how do the players use mods to create efficiency

in their gameplay and how are mods used in the distribution of cognition

 mechanisms for learning such as reciprocal apprenticeship - is the interaction

between players that created shared knowledge about the game and the best

practices for succeeding in the game.

These modes have been hypothesized as occurring within MMOs, but empirical evidence of them as they occur in gameplay is marginal at best. Studies have investigated these modes of participation either as individual events outside of actual gameplay such 89 as scientific habits of mind in the World of Warcraft forums (Steinkuehler & Duncan,

2008). Or in how these virtual worlds can promote new literacy skills (Black &

Steinkuehler, 2009). Yet as these modes underpin much of the assumptions that games and learning research has toward MMOs, these modes have not been fully captured as they occur in video game play. In an effort to confirm these assumptions, this research sought to operationalize these six modes of participation by using them as the coding mechanism for the data collected.

These coded data were then categorized based on an iterative cycle of learning

(Dewey, 1938; Schön, 1992, Jørgensen, 2003) which states that learning occurs in a continuous cycle of:

 action

 invention

 reflection

 observation

Dey (1993) recommends generating categories from the theoretical issues that encapsulate the study or categories based on initial research questions. The categories used in my study are generated from both the theoretical issues and one of the research questions. The theoretical issue surrounding this study is the field’s lack of robust empirically-driven data of how players learn using video games. Therefore the categories are derived from an iterative cycle of learning as a means of organizing the extensive data exhaust from video game play within a learning framework. I also use the third research question of this study to generate these categories: 90

How do players move through an iterative cycle of learning while problem-solving in game and at what stages of the cycle do they engage in Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation?

This question positions my investigation into games and learning as an attempt to operationalize Steinkuehler’s six modes of participation in MMOs as they occur within the process of learning in games. This question positions these six modes of participation as the codes for the study and the steps of the iterative cycle of learning as the categories.

These categories are not considered absolute and I as researcher do recognize the overlap that is possible between them and that some codes in my data may be subsumed into multiple categories (Saldaña, 2015).

Validity

As Messick (1987) states, “[v]alidity is an overall evaluative judgment of the degree to which empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy and appropriateness of interpretations” (p. 6). Validity was achieved through checking the data for accuracy and part of methodology strategy as advocated by Creswell (2014).

This study triangulated data through observation, recordings and interviews so that the data could be checked against several sources to determine if these sources are in agreement or in conflict. Validity was also achieved through member checking by allowing participants to review the data to check for inaccuracies or misrepresentation.

While I may not intend to misrepresent data it is possible that my bias as a researcher can play a role in the data analysis so the methodologies of this research also account for this by including relevant information on me as the researcher in terms of how my personal 91 story as both a gamer and researcher shapes my data collection process. Finally, as

Lincoln and Guba (1985) recommend, this research allows for outside and independent observers to review the total sum of the research to check for any inconsistencies that I may miss due to being invested in the material.

Jensen (2008) asserts that findings, “should be consistently linked to revealed data and that the findings should be an accurate expression of the meanings intended by the participants” (p. 209). This can be complicated by developing instrumentation prior to going into the field, which can blind researchers to events (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana,

2013). To limit this effect and to provide an accurate portrait of the participants this research was iterative and recursive. It used the recordings and observations to inform the coding which were used to generate the semi-structured interview questions. These semi- structured interviews were facilitated by a stimulated recall by reviewing with the participants the recorded observations.

The goal of this iterative and recursive research method was to allow for the methods to be verifiable to the point that I “have a complete picture, including

“backstage” information” (Miles, et al. 2013, p. 311) and that methodological process can be clearly understood and audited by an outsider. The need for outsider input has been considered since not all the data may clearly fit into the established codes and categories.

An outside researcher may be able to shed insight into the action and processes documented in the study. Conversely, there may be data that is revealed that a more experienced World of Warcraft player may be able to understand. By allowing for 92 outsider auditing of the data the validity of the data can be strengthened from both the researcher and gamer points of view.

Lincoln and Gruba (1985) also stress that member checks are a critical component in establishing dependability in a qualitative study. Therefore, the completed research study was presented to the participants so that they may comment on the findings

(Creswell, 2014).

Further concerns in the validity of this study were considered by addressing the following areas:

Internal Validity

Maturation. Kerlinger (1973) describes maturation as a general change in the organism that is being studied. Kirk (2004) specifies maturation as participants undergoing long term changes such as learning, but maturation can also be more temporary such as in a participant growing bored or hungry. This study attempted to mitigate the effects of maturation by limiting the study to several World of Warcraft dungeon runs. These runs are short by nature, lasting no more than two to three hours.

Furthermore by investigating an experienced group who has considerable experience with one another in the World of Warcraft context any changes in the group over time may be expected by the team itself. Temporal maturation in this context could be considered the natural ebb and flow of the group dynamic as they engage in gameplay. Within the short observation period any maturation will be documented and considered a valid component of the phenomenon under investigation. 93

Experimental mortality. Working with participants in a research study introduces the issue of experimental mortality. During the course of an investigation participants may withdraw from the study for a variety of issues and concerns. In more short-term studies, participants may withdraw from the study due to maturation or due to personal issues or concerns. Experiments that are longer in duration are more susceptible to mortality as over time participants may leave the study due to lack of availability, experiment apathy, or a participant may develop negative emotions toward the experiment.

Given these considerations this research was limited to short observation and recording windows - the time it takes to complete two dungeon runs which is typically two to three hours. I also limited experiment apathy and negative emotions toward the research by not requiring the participants to deviate from typical gameplay norms and behavior. Many guilds within MMOs function similar to workplace intramural sports teams or other community focused events with pre-arranged meeting times and dates.

Guilds often have days and times each week set aside for dungeons or raiding. To limit experimental mortality this study did not require the participants to extend dungeon and raid times or alter schedules, but instead asked that they adhere to normal weekly schedules and timeframes.

External Validity

Reactive effects of experimental arrangements. The reactive effects of experimental arrangements, also known as the Hawthorne effect, pose a threat to external validity by causing participants to behave outside their normal patterns of behavior. 94

French (1953) described the phenomenon as "a marked increase in production related only to special social position and social treatment" (p. 101). Of the concerns to validity, the Hawthorne effect poses the most risk to the validity of this study. The introduction of recording devices into the in-room and in-game space of the participants could result in a change in the group dynamic and how the group typically distributes cognition. Any group member that alters their behavior because of the recording process could alter the group dynamic. Five person teams in World of Warcraft rely on the cooperation and cohesive interaction of the entire group in order to successfully complete dungeons and avoid wipes. The team would suffer from the lack of participation if one of the raid members should alter their behavior because of the presence of data collection and equipment.

To mitigate the effects of the recording equipment the five person team were recorded across multiple dungeon runs. This provided the team time to become accustomed to the recording equipment as well as serve as an opportunity to make any needed adjustments to the data collection equipment. At the conclusion of the dungeon runs I checked with my initial participant, guild officer Wash, for his judgment on the behavior and performance of the team. His judgment on player behavior during a dungeon run was the evaluative factor on whether reactive effects were an issue.

Chapter Summary

This study was an ethnographic investigation into the gameplay practices of five

World of Warcraft players as they engaged in dungeon runs. Data were collected via the recording of the participants’ in-game, in-room, and in-Game actions. I analyzed the 95 team’s problem solving practices, distributed cognition, and movement through an iterative cycle of learning to inform games and learning research on how gamers self- organize within their gamespaces.

The participants for this study were five World of Warcraft players from the same guild each having a long in-game history and playtime with the other participants.

Participants were selected through purposeful sampling as this research had as its focus experienced players with an established history both in-game and in playing together as a team. The analysis of the data was qualitative and based on a coding scheme derived from established literature and emergent data from the findings. Analysis of the data resulted in a more holistic understanding of the phenomenon that occurs in self-initiated gameplay outside of formalized educational contexts. The results of this methodology are discussed in the next chapter.

Chapter Four: Findings

The goal of this qualitative study was to investigate how video game players function within the complex space of the MMO World of Warcraft. The questions guiding this research were (a) how do players, the game, the Game, and hardware interact as a cohesive unit in problem-solving as a gamespace? (b) How do players distribute cognition across the gamespace? (c) How do players move through an iterative cycle of learning while problem-solving in game and at what stages of the cycle do they engage in

Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation?

The findings discussed in this chapter are based on the gamespace actions of six

World of Warcraft players working as a team to complete two dungeon runs. Video and audio recordings of the gameplay were supplemented by interviews with five of the six participants. The purpose of this rich data collection was to understand the nature of videogame play as a bounded system (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014) and how the varied aspects of play comprise an integrated system (Stake, 1995) in which learning occurs.

Participant Demographics

The initial participants of this study were comprised of five players of the video game World of Warcraft. Two were female and three were male. Each of the participants has experience with the game starting in The Burning Crusade expansion released in

2007. In addition, one participant has over eight years of experience managing guilds, with most of that time having been as the guild leader of this team’s present guild. 97

During the course of data collection a sixth participant became an integral part of the data collection process. As the team plays World of Warcraft, they utilize the VoIP service Ventrilo, or Vent as they call it, for audio communication. This Vent server is the de facto social space for the team and their larger WoW guild. During data collection a member of their guild, Deffect, joined the audio channel and engaged with the group. He was not part of the in-room video recording or the post-gameplay interviews; however his influence on gameplay was significant enough to warrant his inclusion into the findings of this research.

Table 1 Biodata of the participants and time spent with WoW.

Real-Life Name Vent Name Character Name Time with Time with WoW Guild

Melissa Mal Phagerage 2006 Guild Founder Gina Zomalendra Zomalendra 2007 2013 (Zoe) Ron Bookfish (Book) Moosery 2006 2016 Alan Wash Preffix 2006 2014 Paul Jaynalayza Jaynalayza 2007 2007 (Jayne) Unknown Deffect Deffect n/a n/a

It should be noted that the participants in this study each made use of multiple names. Each has his/her given-name, the handle they use on Vent, and the name of the 98 character they are playing. During analysis of the data no specific pattern of name use could be determined so I inquired about name usage during interviews. Wash explained:

It sort of depends on who is in the channel in Vent. I generally call Phage by

either Melissa or Mal, which is her old character name way back in BC (Burning

Crusade) before I knew her, but everyone calls her Mal. So I just sort of picked up

on that so I’ll call her Mal. Very rarely do I call her Phage, usually Melissa or

Mal. Sometimes I say Phage and then I’ll immediately say Mal cause I am just so

use to saying Mal that it feels wrong to call her Phage. Pretty much call Zoe, Zoe

very rarely do I call her Gina. And Jayne or Paul usually Paul. Not Jaynalayza

because it takes too long to say. Like calling anyone by their full name, if it is

really long, is laborious so it gets shortened down to about four characters. Like

they don’t call me Preffix, because my other character, my character for most of

the last expansion was a priest named Washburn and that got shortened down to

Wash.

For the sake of clarity in the presentation of data in this chapter the participants Vent names are used in all references to name. Even though the team did use real life names on occasion, in the transcriptions below I have replaced those real life names with that participants Vent channel handle. I have done so for the purpose of making tracking the participants across the data easier for the reader and no other alterations to the transcriptions have been made. However, I determined it critical to the research to highlight the participants multiple names in the demographic data as an example of the complexity of the spaces in which they are engaged. 99

Data Sources in Different Spaces

Before describing the data through the lens of the research questions it is necessary to describe the complete picture of the space in which the team operated and what data were collected in each space.

Figure 5. Data collection was completed across three distinct yet intertwined spaces: in-room, in-Game, and in-game.

The data collection for this qualitative study occurred across three distinct yet intertwined spaces in which the players operated. This research was an attempt to better understand how these spaces interact and how the players operate within each space as a function of their gameplay actions (see Figure 5). To accomplish this, the players were video and audio recorded in-room with a video camera positioned to capture how they interacted with their mouse and keyboard hardware configurations. The positions of the 100 cameras also allowed for the screens of each participant to be recorded. Concurrent audio data was collected in-Game via the guild’s Vent server capturing in-game communication during the dungeon runs. Finally, in-game data was collected using video recording software via two of the participants’ graphics processing cards (GPUs). Post gameplay data was collected through semi-structured interview sessions with each participant separately to gain further insight into the gameplay and how this instance fits within their larger World of Warcraft gameplay.

Data analysis. Over the course of the data analysis, themes emerged from the data that are categorized under each of the three research questions:

1. How do players, the game, the Game, and hardware interact as a cohesive unit in

problem-solving as a gamespace?

Themes: Game-related problems, player-presented problems, problems of cognitive dissonance, game-presented problems

2. How do players distribute cognition across the gamespace?

Themes: keybindings as a memorization tool, using add-ons to manage information, operating in multiple simultaneous spaces

3. How do players move through an iterative cycle of learning while problem-

solving in game and at what stages of the cycle do they engage in Steinkuehler’s

(2008) six modes of participation?

Themes: complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition, collaborative problem solving practices, novel literacy practices, scientific habits of 101 mind, forms of computational literacy, mechanisms for learning such as reciprocal apprenticeship

While the themes are reported as being discrete and each the findings of each research question is reported separately, there is considerable overlap. The fluid and flexible nature of the spaces in which the participants engaged make for concrete categorization impractical and most of the findings can be applied to each of the three research questions. Further, participants’ responses and in-game behaviors often addressed more than one theme. In those cases, the interview data are described where they appear to fit most logically in my goal to present a more holistic understanding of the spaces in which gameplay exist and the norms of those spaces.

Research Question 1:

How do players, the game, the Game, and hardware interact as a cohesive unit in problem-solving as a gamespace?

This section describes the actions that occurred across the ecosystem of gameplay.

It describes how they players interact with each other as well as the social community around the game, and the hardware they use to play the game.

Perhaps most critical to this research question is understanding what is meant by the term problem-solving. At the onset of research the assumption made was that boss encounters would be the challenge and defeating these bosses would be the problem- solving process to observe and analyse. However, the boss encounters were only one aspect of problem-solving within the game. The team spent more of their time and 102 conversation devoted to solving problems that occurred in the larger Game surrounding them.

Game-related problems. Perhaps the most enlightening example of a Game- related problem is when the team, whilst preparing to enter the first dungeon, tackles a question posted on the guild’s Facebook page:

21:09 Mal: Mini just posted a really good question on the Facebook group

[at this time Mal is outside the game as she is having a smoke, yet has kept her wireless headset on to remain in the Game]

21:17 Wash: What did he do? What did he ask?

21:25 Mal: It’s a long one. ‘So after 110 you start to raid artifact knowledge right? Which will increase the amount of power gained from using an item that gives power by a certain percentage. So a month from now you can be gaining a 1000 bonus on all AP items used so an item that gives me 300 AP right now will give me 3000 within a few weeks. I’m sure I’m overestimating the percentage you would gain in a month. But all that being said does it make more sense to hold onto the tokens and store them in your bank and wait til you get the bigger percentage?

21:56 Book: No, it’s (pause). The only reason that happens

21:56 Wash: The large [inaudible] is the world quests so it doesn’t matter.

22:08 Book: The only reason that happens is to scale up for or if you missed stuff. So maybe if you’re trying to level your alt. No, I don’t even see that happening. I literally don’t think there is going to be any difference from the people that try and do that to the ones that just go ahead and use all of their items. 103

22:38 Jayne: The only difference would be the ones that are holding them lack the current bonus that the other ones have.

22:46 Book: Well yeah you're assuming that it is going to be retro, or not retro.

22:56 Zoe: Well it makes it harder if you are not using it.

Instances where the team discussed Game-related problems were frequent and they spent more cognitive effort on these issues than specific problems-related to the immediate game of dungeon runs undertaken during this research. Repeatedly as the players engaged in conversations similar to the one above they would be actively engaged in dungeon-related activities up to and including boss fights. In instances of smaller scale problems, the team relied on the knowledge of one another to solve player- related problems.

Player-related problems. Player-related problems derived from challenges that individuals faced in their own gameplay. As a result of the problem, they would pose a question to the group in an attempt to solve the problem. Early in the first dungeon,

Neltharion’s Lair, Mal accesses the knowledge of the rest of the group to learn the use of

Curious Coins:

33:24 Mal: [gets coin as loot] What do we do with these coins?

33:28 Book: Which coins?

33:31 Mal: Curious?

33:33 Zoe: Oh, there is a vendor in Dalaran, um, to the left of the Horde Bank. I found him over there, he’s an etheral.

33:39 Mal: Is that the one that change out with what he has all the time? 104

33:44 Zoe: I don’t know maybe.

In general, when players were actively involved in a dungeon they tended to utilize each other, game-based information, and add-ons in order to solve in-game problems and accomplish tasks at hand. Often this occurred concurrently with the team engaging in multiple threaded conversations and gameplay actions that fluidly shift between the actions of the players both in-game and in-room, events occurring as part of

World of Warcraft’s narrative, and dungeon-related events that must be tracked to accomplish the task at hand. When problems did arise as players attempted to completed dungeon related events the problem frequently arose from cognitive dissonance within the group.

The term cognitive dissonance is grounded in psychology which is outside the scope of this research (see Festinger, 1962). For the purposes of this research cognitive dissonance is defined as being confronted with information that conflicts with a current view (Festinger, 1962). Where this research extends this definition is that this term applies not to the individual, but the team working together as one unit. In this context cognitive dissonance arises when players’ views of the situation are not in sync.

Problems of cognitive dissonance. In these situations the players ‘weren’t on the same page’ and events did not transpire as they expected. When cognitive dissonance occurred it stemmed from one player having information that was withheld or not readily apparent to the rest of the group. In one such example, the team learns about the ability of a trash mob only after Mal moves fully out of the game to answer a text message in- room. 105

Figure 6. The in-game screen of one participant during the transcription below. Screenshot taken at 1:19:56.

1:19:16 Jayne: They all had ignite on them, but I don’t know if they had it on them when they pulled or after they pulled.

1:19:16 Mal: [phone lights up on receiving a text message. Mal picks up phone answers text message]

1:19:48 Zoe: I interrupted

1:19:51 Jayne: Alright, so Oracles are healers.

1:19:53 Zoe: Yup

1:19:53 Jayne: No surprise

1:19:53 Mal: Yeah, I’ve been interrupting, but I was answering a text message so I missed one. 106

1:20:03 Wash: Look at all these people who need an item from this boss.

1:20:11 Jayne: He is the one that I think you, ah, get the uhh [checks quest add-on] no you are just gonna kill ‘em. Yup.

1:20:21 Mal: I know I have to pull water from one of the

1:20:24 Book: Ah! That time it was me [referring to an area of effect (AoE) spell Mal cast earlier]

1:20:29 Zoe: Yea! We killed it.

1:20:29 Jayne: But [attention focuses on role as tank]

1:20:33 Jayne: Yeah this is the guy; this is the guy that gets away from you in Azuna.

1:20:42 Jayne: So gotta make sure you chase them all the way into the dungeon to kill them

1:20:50 Wash: Yeah, you can’t let them get away with being loyal to Azshara.

1:20:59 Zoe: There is a Nagahulk coming down

1:21:03 Book: Alright, he turned around.

Through the approximately two minutes of gameplay from which the transcript above was taken the team shifted between topics and tasks occurring both in-game and in-room. Much of the conversation centered on the team’s immediate fight against trash mobs in the Eye of Azshara dungeon. During this particular fight, the team learned that

Hatecoil Oracles are able to heal other trash mobs. Jayne comments “Alright, so Oracles are healers”. Yet this is not the first Hatecoil Oracle the team had fought. In earlier fights

Mal had interrupted the Oracles’ healing ability, but missed the interrupt this time as she had shifted to being fully in-room to answer a text message. 107

While Mal shifted between in-room and in-game her teammates shifted between the immediate goals of the game and broader aspects of the game. Jayne contributes information regarding the backstory of the upcoming dungeon boss Warlord Prajesh to which Wash responds with more World of Warcraft narrative delivered in condensed shorthand “Yeah, you can’t let them get away with being loyal to Azshara”. While Jayne and Wash communicate on game narrative, Book and Zoe track an approaching trash mob Nagahulk that may be accidentally drawn into the fight.

This shifting between spaces was common throughout the dungeon runs and something the team finds commonplace. When interviewed about this behavior, Wash cited time spent with the game:

We’ve just been playing the game for so long, so we have a general idea of how

to handle most of the mechanics that Blizzard is going to throw at us. It is not

very often where they use mechanics that are not at least similar to something else

they’ve used.

Wash also commented on the playstyles of the other participants as being predictable as well:

I’ve been playing with them for about two years now so I know them pretty well.

I know the ones who are gonna stand in shit on the ground and the ones who

aren’t...I know that my mouse should be in the general vicinity of Mal because

she is going to stand in shit on purpose.

Mal also noted her extended experience playing with Jayne as one reason they did not need to focus too intently on the task at hand: 108

Me and Jayne tanked together during BC (Burning Crusade), Wrath (of the Lich

King) and I didn’t main switch til Cataclysm. So me and Jayne even though we

drive each other nuts can sync up perfectly while out and about doing things,

because we tanked side-by-side for years which obviously kind of have to be in

sync especially during that content.

Jayne stated:

Something like that there wasn’t too much communication needed. Mostly, I

mean, we were also just learning the fights, so none of us knew anything that the

others didn’t and we’re all just kind of playing off what we expect the others to

do.

During situations where participants did not sync and differed in their perceptions of an in-game experience, add-ons were used to access concrete data on the discrepancy.

In the Eye of Azshara dungeon the team wiped, or died in mass, when fighting the boss

Serpentrix. At the beginning of the fight Jayne pulled the boss too early, resulting in the team needing to fight Serpentrix and trash mobs simultaneously. After all the team members died they had a chance to regroup and discuss the event:

1:36:54 Mal: Jayne thought he was being cute pulling bosses. We knew we had to stop and do stuff.

1:37:01 Deffect: Good job Jayne.

1:37:01 Mal: Kind of obvious.

1:37:04 Jayne: Well I mean.

1:37:04 Mal: We’re all dead! We’ve all been dead. When the adds killed us. 109

1:37:10 Jayne: The adds didn’t kill you. The rage killed you.

1:37:13 Wash: I got killed by an add so

[Wash checks in-game tool Death Recap]

1:37:15 Jayne: Which add?

[Book checks add on Skada to see stats of each player and then what killed Wash]

1:37:18 Wash: Mak’rana Siltwalker.

[Zoe checks in-game tool Death Recap]

1:37:18 Deffect: Jayne are you still tanking?

1:37:21 Zoe: Siltwalker? That’s what got me.

1:37:23 Jayne: So you died to the thing that I was tanking?

1:37:27 Zoe: No, the Siltwalkers are the lobster dudes.

1:37:30 Jayne: The one I was tanking?

1:37:33 Wash: That we should have killed before pulling the boss.

This scenario from the beginning of the Serpentrix fight to Wash final comment lasted approximately two minutes. Within these two minutes the team encountered a discrepancy in perception of what caused the team to wipe. Jayne attributed it to a debuff of Serpentrix. Others doubting Jayne referred to software tools. Wash and Zoe referred to the in-game tool Death Recap, while Book refers to the add-on Skada to determine the cause of the team’s wipe and present that data-driven information to Jayne. Throughout the gameplay, the team appears to respect this data-driven information as the final word.

As the team regroups they head back to Serpentrix, yet before engaging the boss the team takes the time to clear out the trash mobs. Upon encountering another Mak’rana 110

Siltwalker, Jayne looks for information that supports his view of the team’s wipe.

Hovering his mouse over a Mak’rana Siltwalker, Jayne begins this exchange:

1:40:18 Jayne: Melee attack for additional divide evenly among enemies within five yards of target.

1:40:25 Jayne: So if you guys were stacked anywhere near me that’s what killed you last time.

1:40:29 Zoe: If it is divided it splits, we have to be stacked for that.

1:40:33 Jayne: No, every one of his attacks as in all the ones he’s hitting me with right now.

1:40:38 Zoe: I wasn’t anywhere near you.

1:40:39 Wash: You were the only one getting hit.

1:40:43 Jayne: I agree, it’s within five yards of me.

Zoe explained that this use of data to explore the cause of a wipe is commonplace for the team. She states, “If we are wiping on a fight, you immediately go and look and see what happened”. She continues, “Then I might say something or just link it in raid chat”.

Besides relying on in-game data to evaluate and judge the team’s performance they also relied on two levels of the meta-Game that exists around the game they were playing at the moment. The team overcame challenges and problems during gameplay by relying on their own past experiences as well as advice and pre-dungeon research from the larger WoW community. This expansive knowledge of the game made the final set of problems a minor issue, that of game-presented problems. 111

game-presented problems. At the onset of this research the expectation was that the new content presented in the Legion expansion would present problems to the players that they would then need to work to overcome. This new game content did not appear to cause much trouble for the team as they were able to solve new game challenges by relying on past experiences and by learning from the Game community.

Early in the team’s second dungeon run, Eye of Azshara, the team is presented with a new mechanic in the boss fight with Warlord Prajesh. Quickly, Wash noted the similarity between the boss they were fighting, Warlord Prajesh, and the boss Blackhand.

Blackhand served as a boss in the dungeon Blackrock Foundry in the previous WoW expansion Warlords of Draenor.

1:21:38 [Team pulls the boss Warlord Prajesh and begins the boss fight]

1:22:17 Wash: Watch out for that arrow.

1:22:20 Zoe: Stop running towards me! [to Mal who is under the influence of the spell]

1:22:26 Mal: Figure it better to go toward you than Wash [Wash as healer needs to be protected]

1:22:28 Zoe: I don’t know. I don’t want the arrow.

1:22:31 Mal: Well I figure I’d rather interrupt your casting than his.

1:22:42 Wash: This guy needs a couple more moves and he’d be Blackhand.

1:22:52 Book: It says ‘move to add’

1:22:56 Book: So, I guess maybe you can instakill the add?

1:22:57 Zoe: Oh! Yeah!

1:23:01 Mal: If you go behind the add it blocks it. 112

1:23:04 Book: Ah, so there we go.

1:23:08 Zoe: So then we don’t have to worry about killing them?

In his interview Wash explains his comment that “this guy needs a couple more moves and he’d be Blackhand”:

There is this boss fight right at the end, in the middle of the last expansion

Warlords of Draenor called Blackhand. He was the last boss of the Blackrock

Foundry and he has this ability, the first phase of the fight he chooses a person

and then he throws stuff at them and they have to stand behind a pillar...So the

first boss in Eye of Azshara has a mechanic where he throws a spear at you and if

you get hit by the spear it does a whole bunch of damage and is really hard to heal

through. But he also spawns adds and if you just, you know, move to these naga

and it’s basically the exact same mechanic.

This reliance on past experience to guess upcoming mechanics occurred throughout the dungeon run. Later in the same dungeon, Book also predicts the basic mechanics of a fight based on a previous experience he shared with Wash:

1:46:08 Book: Ohhh, I think I know what this fight is going to be.

1:46:16 Zoe: Oh yeah?

1:46:17 Book: (laughs) Uh, yeah. Me and Wash did a similar world boss.

1:46:26 Wash: You think it’s going to be ‘hide behind the rock’?

1:46:30 Book: Yeah.

During his interview Book commented on the amount of research and information available to players in the Game that can be applied to the game-presented problems: 113

I mean if you look at all these videos are 10-15 minutes long and just watching

and listening and studying what they are saying and watching the group go over

stuff. And then you go in and the boss only takes six minutes. There’s a lot more

research going on into defeating something that is a really short problem.

For the players these game-presented problems where the least challenging and solving them was a matter of relying on the team’s past experiences with the game or seeing the mechanic in the Game-related content online such as YouTube videos or

WoW-related web pages. As Jayne noted:

A lot of these things going on in the dungeons are things we’ve seen before, just

mixed around in different orders. Occasionally, there’s a little hint of a new thing

here, a new thing there. But you know, alright we know what to do in this kind of

situation.

When asked about other sources of information on game-presented problems Jayne continued:

Wowhead, MMO Champion, having other people talk about changes and then

you go and just Googling it, the change, and being like ‘oh that’s cool’. Or just

listening to other people talk about the change then when the change actually

comes being like okay that is what they meant by this.

This involvement with the Game was not visible during the gameplay data and was only revealed in the follow-up interviews. This muddles the notion of when problems are first encountered. My findings suggest that for high-level players such as this team, no problem is exactly a fresh problem. Players appear to be always thinking ahead and 114 much of the legwork Jayne describes above sits in reserve until called upon in-game.

Capturing the full extent of this process from start to finish will require a longitudinal study that follows a gamer or gamers from novice to expert in the game.

Research Question 2:

How do players distribute cognition across the gamespace?

In their gameplay behavior and in their interview responses, the players highlighted a variety of ways they distribute their cognition across the gamespace. Most notably was the use of keyboard and mouse bindings to manage their character information and add-ons to the game that allow them to track information about each other while simultaneously managing any current trash mob fights or boss battles.

During participant interviews, each noted their use of key bindings and add-ons to either assist in their roles during dungeon or raiding content or to add quality of life improvements to the game. Each specifically made mention of Elvui, an add-on for

World of Warcraft that allows for all the on-screen graphics to be placed anywhere the player prefers. Only Mal does not use Elvui, though she did in the past, she describes how it makes transferring computers challenging:

If I want to log on to my husband’s computer, my add-ons weren’t synced. Unless

I signed onto Curse [an online mods and add-ons repository] and downloaded all

my stuff onto his computer. And especially not playing with a standard UI, I had

Elvui and I was lost once I got on someone else’s computer and I didn’t have my

Elvui because IU had 3 or 4 action bars over here and over here and I also play 115

with a Naga with 12 buttons on the side of it and a gaming keyboard with 18

bindable keys on the side of it.

For Mal the use of key bindings and add-ons make it challenging to use other computers to play WoW as these tools assist them in remembering aspects of their character's role in the group and assist the player in accessing necessary information in the game.

Keybindings as a memorization tool. Each member of the team made use of keyboard and mouse bindings to respond to in-game events quickly. The bindings were almost exclusively player-centric and were used by each to manage their characters actions and abilities.

Wash walked through his keyboard and mouse bindings during the interview. He plays with an MMO gaming mouse that is equipped with 12 buttons on the side. Each of these buttons he has keyed to a specific spell or ability. He can then use shift or control to map an additional 24 spells on these keys. He explained:

My mouse has about 12 buttons on the side of it, it’s a gaming mouse. But you do,

I have a shift modifier and a control modifier, so I have buttons 1-12 on my

mouse which equates to 1-10, minus, and equal signs on the keyboard. I have all

those bound and then when I press shift it will go to the top rows and if I press

control it’ll be the bottom two rows and then it is just 1-12 on whether I, which

spells I do. So that is 36 spells I have hotkeys memorized for.

116

Figure 7. Wash’s 36 spells hotkeyed to his mouse. The hotkeyed spell icons are located at the bottom center of the screen.

Wash notes that during this expansion of WoW he has five alts that he plays in addition to his main each with 36 hotkeys to remember (see Figure 7). In order to keep these hotkeys memorized, Wash allows the hardware to handle the specific spells of each character.

Wash only needs to remember the general spell abilities:

I tend not to move them around. So much so that I have pretty much every

character I have similar spells on those buttons so I don’t have to learn 36 buttons

for 5 or 6 characters, depending on how many I am playing in an expansion.

Jayne also noted that he only remembers the general ability of a spell and hotkeys similar spells across classes to the same key bindings:

They are all different abilities and they all work a little differently and if I am

playing a character, especially if it is a character I’m not really familiar with

because I haven’t played it in a while or something I can be like ‘oh it is that spot,

that is what it does’. It might work differently, like a mage blinks as opposed to 117

getting a sprint, but the idea is that is the movement ability, If I need it I know

where to go for it.

He continues:

Or in the second grouping of the 12 the shift 1 button - the upper left, where it is a

picture of the fist, Rebuke, - it is an interrupt so any character that has an interrupt

goes there. So it doesn’t matter what character I’m on, if it has an interrupt, I

know what button I’m pushing to get that interrupt.

Zoe also uses a gaming mouse equipped with buttons which she uses as opposed to keyboard bindings:

I’ve got an MMO mouse with the 12 button grid on the side. And then I usually

use 1-6 and then shift 1-6 are my main ones. And then I can use 7 and 8 and 9, but

I tend not to very often.

This use of key bindings allows the players to react faster to in-game events without the need to spend much cognitive effort; they know what button to push even if they do not know specifically what spell is on that button. Players distributed the cognitive demands of remembering their characters actions across themselves and their mouse and keyboard bindings. The holding and retrieving of the results of those character actions however seemed to be the domain of in-game add-ons for the team.

Using add-ons to manage information. Gameplay data suggests that the add-ons the players use allow them to access information quickly during specific instances, yet marginalize that information when not needed. As Wash stated: 118

I mostly don’t even look at the health bars sometimes. I’m just looking to make

sure I’m not standing in stuff. I know where the health bars are on my screen.

They have always been in the same spot, so like if I see that someone needs

healing in my peripheral vision I’ll look over at the health bars and get them up.

Zoe, who typically plays a healer, also uses add-ons to create efficiency in her monitoring of the team members’ health status. When explaining a screenshot of her UI she noted:

Everyone is at full health right now, so all the bars are bright green, but I’ve got it

set as their life goes down the bars will turn yellow, then orange, then red as they

are almost at zero. So it is all very visual for me.

Besides using add-ons to monitor the health of the team, Zoe runs a host of add-ons for a variety of in-game performance tweaks:

I run a couple of big ones that have multiple parts. I run Tradeskill Master for

selling stuff on the Auction House. And it's got a whole bunch of different

modules. Deadly Boss Mods is the same way, it splits up all the different

expansions and then I’ve got a, I use Bartender so I can move my buttons around.

Titan Panel is a bar across the top of the screen that shows how much money you

have, how full your bags are, what your durability is, what your latency is. You

can customize different things.

Zoe continues:

And Recount for DPS meter or heal meter. I suppose I could actually look

(laughs) this is going off of memory. Deadly Boss Mods, Handy Notes, I can

delete Garrison Commander since we don’t have garrisons any more. Healbot for 119

healing. MogIt for making transmog sets or recommending transmog sets to other

people because every once in a while someone will be like ‘I don’t know what to

transmog’. Silver Dragon is broke at the moment. Rarity is the one that is doing

the screenshots. Loot Council one for raid and that is about it.

Book runs at odds with Zoe, Wash, and Jayne in his minimal use of add-ons. Besides

Elvui he only uses Deadly Boss Mods, Tidy Plates, WeakAuras, and Skada, an approach he attributes to advice from a YouTuber Preacher, owner of the channel PreachGaming.

Book explains:

The only thing that really pops up is Deadly Boss Mods and my rotational

information to keep track of my spells. That’s mostly because I am a firm

believer, actually a YouTuber I love to watch just because he has a really

interesting way of thinking about things and he was one of the best Warcraft

players in the world at one point. He’s since kind of retired from that and now he

just makes content to help other players be the best they can be. He has this

attitude that ‘You don’t want clutter to get in the way of you being able to see

your surroundings’ and that is a big thing for me. I want to be able to see what’s

around me.

Operating in multiple simultaneous spaces. Along with using key bindings and add-ons as a way to manage the flow of information in World of Warcraft the team also spent a considerable amount of their cognitive time and energy engaged in real world or

Game related contexts. These occurred concurrently with actions in the game. Even though the players are engaged in fighting multiple trash mob opponents at once they are 120 able to focus on other discussions and actions. In one instance the team engages in three simultaneous discussions: one on real world events, another regarding on-screen game events, and a third occurring in the guild’s chat channel:

1:41:47 Mal: Deffect, did you see all the flooding here?

1:41:49 Deffect: Flooding where?

1:41:51 Mal: In Florida.

1:41:43 Deffect: No, I don’t live in Florida. How would I see that?

1:41:55 Mal: Facebook.

1:41:56 Book: News.

1:41:56 Zoe: Via the Interwebs

1:42:01 Defect: I haven’t got time for the news.

1:42:05 Book: Wanna do hydra first?

1:42:07 Mal: All over Crest river, basically on 19 is under water.

1:42:14 Deffect: Is the power or nuclear reactor place underwater?

1:42:19 Mal: No, it is built up on ground. But the area around it is.

1:42:26 Deffect: Is it, ah, east or west of 19?

1:42:31 Mal: Have you ever seen the no name storm from ‘93 damage path?

1:42:36 Deffect: No

1:42:39 Mal: Well downtown Crystal River, it crossed 19.

1:42:45 Zoe: I got to say it!

1:42:46 Deffect: So not out by your parents’ house then?

1:42:48 Jayne: Oh damn, I was about to type it Zoe. I didn’t see you said that. 121

1:42:50 Mal: Ah yeah, there was flooding over there. Not extreme, but more wind and tree damage.

Figure 8. Team engaged in chat discussion (bottom left). This chat occurred while fighting trash mobs and during a Vent conversation.

The exchange begins with Zoe and Deffect engaging in a conversation on recent real-world flooding events with Zoe and Book chiming in briefly. This exchange occurs over the team’s Ventrilo voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) while a second concurrent conversation involving Zoe, Wash, and Jayne occurs in-game via the team’s text-based chat channel for the guild. That conversation involves other members of the guild not involved in this research study as they tease a player over a shortened version of their character name. Zoe’s comment “I got to say it!” at 1:42:45 and Jayne’s reply of “Oh damn, I was about to type it Zoe. I didn’t see you said that” reflect the fluid movement of the team’s occupation of several spaces at once: they are a part of Mal and Deffect’s real- 122 world conversation on Vent, engaged in-Game conversation with guild mates through

WoW’s built in chat function (see Figure 8), and fight several trash mobs in-game.

The findings of this study suggest that players engage in distributed cognition across several fronts. The first is that of technology. The players regularly made use of the affordances of technology to outsource mental processes. Hardware configurations in the form of mouse and keyboard bindings served as repositories of basic in-game functions. What spells to cast and when are automatized into muscle-memory functions and players only need remember the button sequence. Technology also served as a way to hold information until needed by the players. Software, in the form of add-ons, streamlines player-needed information often in the form of visualizations such as color- changing health bars, enlarged on screen text, and graphs holding the performance data of other players.

The second front of distributed cognition among the players was that of social spaces. Players, almost constantly, operated in multiple social spaces at once. They would be engaged in-game fighting mobs, chatting with fellow guild members in the WoW guild chat, conversing about Game-related issues in Vent, while also existing in real-world settings involving pets, family members, and other commonplace life events.

These findings suggest games are social spaces of considerable depth and complexity and the implications of such spaces will be discussed in the next chapter.

Prior to that discussion, the findings of research question three will be presented.

123

Research Question 3:

How do players move through an iterative cycle of learning while problem-solving in game and at what stages of the cycle do they engage in Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation?

The third and final question of this research study sought to understand how learning occurs when players engage in problem-solving in game and if or when players engage in Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation. This investigation sought to document this cycle of learning (see Figure 9) and modes of participation (see Figure 10) via capturing the gameplay data of the participants while the engaged in dungeon runs.

Figure 9. Proposed iterative cycle of learning based on Dewey (1938) and Jørgensen (2003). 124

Figure 10. Proposed iterative cycle of learning with Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation.

Analysis of the gameplay data suggests that this cycle occurs either on a large scale to improve players performance in WoW or on a smaller, rapid scale to meet the needs of a quickly changing environment in current gameplay. An example of this large scale iterative cycle comes from the interview with Book as he describes nearly taking time away from the game shortly after Legion was released:

I was doing so shoddy in performance that I was really kind of getting fed up with

everything, but I don’t know. There was something this week that I kind of threw

some stats around, changed up some stats and this Tuesday and Wednesday I

knocked it out of the freakin’ ball park compared to what it was previously.

When pressed to explain this reflection in more detail, Book discussed how he uses online tools to improve his in game statistics: 125

There are a couple of tools that I like to use. Of course there is the websites most

people go to. Which one of the big ones is Icy Veins and it has general info about

different classes and stats and stuff like that and it says stat priorities are this way.

And I was looking at it and that is what I currently am, you know. I started going

toward that but one of the other tools that I use is SimCraft where I actually take

all the information from my character and the gear and stats and stuff and what it

does. All the information about the character. And it basically runs it through

thousands and thousands of simulations and changes up the stats here and there to

try and figure out what you would do better damage as.

Book’s description of this process suggests an invention occurring after his reflection period. He was performing suboptimally in the action phase and observed his poor performance. As a result he reflected on this performance and then sought out Game tools that could help improve his performance. He then experimented with his character using

Icy Veins and SimCraft to invent new statistics-driven approaches to character performance. This level of reflection and invention in-game performance appears to tie closely with observation of performance from the larger World of Warcraft community.

Book further discussed how he would research fights. When asked where he’d go for research, Book explained:

YouTube, there’s Fatboss, a guy that’s on YouTube. Um, there’s a whole ton of

people that make ‘how-to’ videos and you know guide to this and guide to that.

However he noted that in this expansion he sought out less invention from the larger community: 126

For the most part I like to try and figure it out myself first at least right now. I

used to go look at all that stuff. But I’ve kinda gotten this idea to try and bring me

back to the days before everything was researched to the very ends of the earth,

data mined, and all this other stuff. It just seemed like it was more fun to me back

when I didn’t have to worry about all that stuff.

Jayne also noted his use of websites and guides when modifying a character or perhaps considering to play a new class:

Sometimes I’ll go if I’m thinking I’ll level this character or play this character

maybe go and glance at some guides or the websites that have, at least look at stat

priorities.

When asked about which websites he frequents Jayne continued:

For like class information usually Icy Veins. It is easily navigable and you can

quickly go like ‘cool classes, this class, this spec’ stat priorities. It has boom,

boom, boom, stat priorities. If any of them are like this stat above all or like get

this stat up to 18% then this stat up to 30% and then you focus on the first stat

again until this and then this and they’ll have the numbers like that.

This higher level reflection, observation and invention phase was not captured in the gameplay recordings, but became apparent in the interview data and suggest that the invention stage is steep in scientific habits of mind.

The gameplay recordings suggested this action, reflection, observation, and invention phase occurred at much smaller scales as the team engaged in the dungeon runs. When engaged in demanding fights during their dungeon runs, the team would 127 move through this cycle within the span of several minutes or less. In the Eye of Azshara dungeon, the boss Warlord Prajesh utilized the mechanic Impaling Spear that caught the team off guard:

1:22:17 Wash: Watch out for that arrow.

1:22:20 Zoe: Stop running towards me! [to Mal who is under the influence of the spell]

1:22:26 Mal: Figure it better to go toward you than Wash [Wash as healer needs to be protected]

1:22:28 Zoe: I don’t know. I don’t want the arrow.

1:22:31 Mal: Well I figure I’d rather interrupt your casting than his.

1:22:42 Wash: This guy needs a couple more moves and he’d be Blackhand.

1:22:52 Book: It says ‘move to add’

1:22:56 Book: So, I guess maybe you can instakill the add?

1:22:57 Zoe: Oh! Yeah!

1:23:01 Mal: If you go behind the add it blocks it.

1:23:04 Book: Ah, so there we go.

1:23:08 Zoe: So then we don’t have to worry about killing them?

In this instance, occurring in under a minute, the team observes the situation - how to avoid Impaling Spear - and begins reflecting on the situation: Book’s “So, I guess you can maybe instakill the add?” During this discussion Book moves behind a trash mob, taking the action needed to confirm the team’s hypothesis. Mal confirms Book’s action worked. 128

Another of these smaller cycles of learning occurred in the dungeon Neltharion’s

Lair as the team engaged in a fight with the boss Ularogg Cragshaper. One of the mechanics used by Ularogg is to disappear into one of three stones, which are then shuffled as in the old cup and ball magic trick:

44:41 Zoe: Uhh...run away!? [Ularogg casts attack Bellows of the Deep]

44:58 Zoe: Oh look it's the smashy hands from the one guy [Ularogg casts Strike of the

Mountain]

45:01 Book: Yeah (laughs)

45:06 [Ularogg Cragshaper disappears into one of three rocks]

45:07 Mal: Now what?

45:07 Wash: Oh, we got to pick the right cup.

45:07 Book: Cups

45:11 Zoe: Yeah?

45:12 Book: Shit!

45:12 Wash: Good thing we were paying attention.

45:18 [Rocks have stopped shuffling]

45:18 Zoe: This one! [Zoe chooses the middle rock]

45:23 Book: DPS all of them

45:30 Zoe: Dammit!

45:36 Zoe: Nope. [Team has destroyed one of the three rocks]

45:38 Book: (exasperated sigh then laughs)

45:40 Jayne: I mean it could be 50-50-90 [Team has destroyed two of the three rocks] 129

45:47 Zoe: There he is!

45:49 Zoe: Last one is the charm.

In the above exchange the participants are engaged in an action, fighting Ularogg

Cragshaper, when the action is interrupted by a new mechanic, that of the cup and ball game. The team observes the new mechanic and invents new strategies to accommodate this change in action. Zoe’s invention is to randomly pick one rock to attack, while Book suggests the team attacks all three simultaneously. After each of the inventions is tried out Jayne reflects on the results stating “I mean it could be 50-50-90”.

This rapid fire cycle through the phases of learning occurred in more banal situations as well. In one particular situation in the Eye of Azshara dungeon, the team encounters some crabs. These crabs are some of the many beasts in the game, non- playable creatures in the game that are neutral and only attacked when attacked first.

Players can kill beasts for an opportunity for food ingredients to drop. In this instance, several members of the team are looking to use a toy, the Crab Shank, on this particular beast. This toy gives the crab a knife:

1:34:20 Wash: [Has the in-game menu Toy Box open, scrolling through his toys. He does a word search using the word ‘knife’ then closes the menu]

1:34:28 Wash: I don’t remember what the crab knife is called.

1:34:31 Book: Yeah, I was looking for it too. [Book refers to a previous instance, but again opens his Toy Chest]

1:34:32 Zoe: It’s a shank.

1:34:36 Wash: [opens toy box and does a word search for ‘shank’] 130

1:34:37 Zoe: See if you can give it to the Mak’rana [Mak’ranas are hostile mobs]

1:34:41 Book: Oh, it’s got to be yellow crabs.

1:34:42 Wash: Invalid target

1:34:44 Zoe: Awww!

1:34:48 Book: There were some at the beginning of the instance, that I was trying to find it for.

This occurred during a lull in the action as the team moved across a beach toward the next boss. This downtime still contained a brief learning cycle where the team members reflected on if giving the Crab Shank was possible. Here they took action then reflected on the outcome as well as utilized the team’s shared cognition to remember the name of the toy. Book and Wash, try the toy out on smaller trash mob crabs, but Zoe suggests they invent and try it out on the larger hostile mobs, the Mak’ranas.

As the team demonstrated these aspects of the cycle of learning they further showed instances of Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation in Massively

Multiplayer Online games. The second aspect of this research question was to determine at what stages of the learning cycle do they engage in these modes of participation.

Moving through modes of participation. Steinkuehler (2008) outlines six modes of participation in MMOs. Each are itemized below with brief descriptions and evidence from this study:

Complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition. Steinkuehler defines this as the coordination of people and tools across a variety of platforms. 131

A common practice of the team was to shift between spaces frequently while in game. Early in the video recording data, when the team was still preparing to enter a dungeon, Zoe engaged in an example of this mode of participation. In-game she was looking around a mountain for the item Totally Safe Treasure Chest. While engaging in the errand she turns away from her screen for a brief discussion with those in-room with her in real life. She then turns back to the screen to participate in banter with the team on the Vent server and in the process gets advice from Book who tells her “ahh, it is down, I believe, in the cave. At like where the bridge crosses over.” During this exchange, Zoe is also chatting with guild members currently online in WoW. Their discussion centers on receiving quests for profession skills. Zoe informs them via the WoW guild chat that

“some of the quests are just gained from gathering”.

This example is a snapshot of how all the participants engage with the game and each other across a multiple set of tools. Over the course of the study the participants operated in three distinct yet interconnected spaces:

In the real world. As noted earlier in the chapter, most of the players in this study configure their hardware tools to fit their particular in game role and playing style. Each uses specialized hardware in the form of a MMO gaming mouse and keyboards that maximize their ability to respond quickly to in-game events. Furthermore, this hardware serves as the repository for their add-ons and modifications that they depend on in-game.

As Mal stated:

And especially not playing with a standard UI, I had Elvui and I was lost once I

got on someone else’s computer and I didn’t have my Elvui because I had 3 or 4 132

action bars over here and over here and I also play with a Naga with 12 buttons on

the side of it and a gaming keyboard with 18 bindable keys on the side of it.

In World of Warcraft. The participants used the game as their centralized gathering place. It served as the ‘physical space’ where they could could be together and interact albeit digitally. WoW however is not the sole space for these players. As Mal explained:

During, like content droughts, a lot of us went over to Heroes of the Storm

together, a lot of us were playing Hearthstone together in content drought. During

the Wrath content drought a lot of us played League of Legends together. We

found things to do with each other.

In Vent. Ventrilo is a VoIP system through which individuals can set up a audio communication server. For the team it served as a communication channel when playing in WoW. More critically, it served as the third space (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006) for the team where they can always find their friends. In her interview Mal described how other members of the research study have a game of D&D occurring weekly on the vent channel. Although she did not play D&D, she was on the vent channel:

When they venture into that stuff but they still stay in Vent and while they are in

Vent doing that I’m doing homework or I was doing Little League stuff. Like last

night Wash was grading papers in Vent. He’d been out of the game (WoW) since,

for I don’t even know if he logged in other than to reset his class hall but he was

in Vent. So it is definitely more than just a game anymore and I wish more people

understood that about WoW. 133

Zoe also briefly hinted at the social space that Vent provides:

I mean before we got on this call I was in Vent just seeing who was there and said

‘hi’ to everyone. A lot of the people I play with are legitimately my friends so I

like to hang out with them. And this is the only way we can hang out.

In his interview, Wash also confirmed the central role the Vent server has in the team’s social space:

Usually when people get in Vent they’ll go to the channel that has people in it

because they are there to talk to people. Unless they are looking for a very

specific person then they might go to the channel they’re in. But usually, we all

hang out, we have tons of channels in Vent, but we only ever hang out in four of

them.

The hangout nature of the Vent server ingrained itself in the study when a member of the guild going by the name Deffect joined the team’s channel and listened along during their dungeon runs, something that became important to Steinkuehler’s (2008) second mode of participation.

Collaborative problem solving practices. Occurring in teams both in-game and within the larger fan-driven communities surround a specific video game or game genre.

Over the course of the video recording of gameplay, Deffect joined the team’s

Vent channel and began offering advice and suggestions to the team as he had run the

Eye of Azshara dungeon days earlier. What we ended up calling the ‘Deffect Effect’ influenced the team’s dungeon run as he became a part of the collaborative problem solving the team undertook. In their fight with Serpentrix, the team had challenges in 134 determining which of the serpents, the green boss Serpentrix or his red minions, was casting spells:

1:43:43 Mal: I don’t have another interrupt for this time.

1:43:51 Jayne: Wait, you guys don’t interrupt the red ones.

1:43:52 Zoe: The druid ones work great on those.

1:43:55 Jayne: It’s not the red ones to interrupt. It is the green one to interrupt.

1:43:57 Zoe: I haven’t seen anything on the green one I can interrupt.

1:43:58 Mal: Um, the red one was doing a blazing thing that burned the shit out of me.

1:44:02 Jayne: That rampage?

1:44:09 Deffect: You interrupt the red ones not the green one.

As he chimed in to offer advice, something commonplace within the guild and on the Vent channel, the team considered how this may influence the research project.

1:44:11 Zoe: Hey Deffect, do us a favor and don’t tell us anything. Seriously.

1:44:17 Deffect: Why?

1:44:19 Wash: Because we are participating in research right now.

1:44:19 Book: Because you are ruining the experiment.

1:44:23 Deffect: Oh.

1:44:27 Deffect: What’s the experiment?

1:44:29 Zoe: To play WoW.

1:44:33 Book: Learning the fights. Literally.

1:44:35 Jayne: I mean technically he’s not ruining it, because it’s just another source of information. 135

This example and those presented under earlier research questions indicate a near constant flow of information between players when engaged in actual gameplay. Deffect simply jumped into the fray occurring in the Vent audio, was able to determine where they team was at that moment and began providing his assistance, which is a commonplace event for the guild.

The data suggests that this mode of participation occurs frequently during the action stage of the learning process as critical information is provided to one player from another to meet demands presented by a particular challenge occurring at that moment.

Interview data indicates that this collaborative approach to problem solving also occurs during the reflection stage of learning as players move onto the Internet to verify information. Jayne explained where he goes for information:

Wowhead, MMO Champion, having other people talk about changes then you go

and just Googling it, the change and be like, oh, that’s cool. Or just listening to

other people talk about the change then when the change actually comes, being

like okay that is what they meant by this.

As stated at the beginning of this research question the team will make use of the larger

Game community when considering ways to improve character performance, or to improve their gameplay efficiency such as in both Jayne and Book’s use of Icy Veins,

SimCraft or YouTube videos such as those by Fatboss or PreachGaming.

Novel literacy practices. These encompass, but are not limited to, the language and communication styles that are “highly specialized forms of language for in-game social interaction and genres of story-telling” (Steinkuehler, 2008, p. 12). 136

In both gameplay data and the post-gameplay interviews, the participants had specialized language that required a robust understanding of World of Warcraft and its lore. As the team moved through one of the dungeons, Wash spotted a trash mob that sparked an impromptu conversation on character building:

1:47: 41 Wash: I wanna play as a giblin.

1:47:44 Zoe: Right.

1:47:47 Jayne: Play as a giblin, like when you are making a goblin you should just have the choice to make a giblin instead. Just like when you are playing a Tauren, you should have the choice to make it a Tonka or...

1:48:00 Zoe: A yak or a moose

1:48:00 Jayne: Or one of the new moose ones.

1:48:05 Wash: I always wanted to play as a Taunka.

1:48:09 Jayne: That or the uh Yaungol.

1:48:14 Zoe: Or a moose.

1:48:20 Wash: Only if I can play as a Wretched.

1:48:20 Jayne: Yeah, Blood Elves should be able to select Wretched, Night Elves should be able to select Nightfallen.

1:48:32 Jayne: The dwarves should be able to go full like Dark Iron or Wildhammer war paint on them.

1:48:41 Zoe: That means orcs could get Mag'Har or um the grey dragon ones. There used to be red ones too.

1:49:22 Deffect: What about Trolls or Undead? 137

1:49:27 Jayne: Trolls should be able to be the different other troll races like Sandfury

1:49:30 Zoe: Forest Trolls

1:49:33 Jayne: The Amani or even Zandalarian’ll be able to stand up straight.

This exchange occurred amidst other Vent channel chat as the team worked their way through the dungeon. The players it seems are able to engage in this conversational banter filled with specialized game knowledge while occupied with the task of clearing trash mobs from the dungeon. This use of specialized language spilled over to interviews as well. During our discussion Jayne delved into his early days of WoW:

Got my Paladin up and started to do Karazan on my Paladin, which I’d been

doing on my Warlock for a while so it was geared. I’m going start tanking on my

Paladin so I was doing that but I want to take that next step. I want to go into Tier

5 and I want to try and get into Black Temple, which is Tier 6.

This jargon-ladened discourse was common practice among the participants in the study when interacting among themselves and during one-on-one interviews for the research.

During his interview Wash used the specialized term proc and when asked for its meaning replied:

Proc, it’s ah...the word we use when an ability we have has happened. So...um...I

think it mean basically anytime you use a spell, a specific spell, you have a

chance for a thing to happen. A chance on a hit, or a chance on use. So proc is

short for I think process, it’s triggered by something. I think it is what is used in

the actual coding. I don’t know. It’s just a word that we, I’ve picked up. I actually 138

don’t know what it means. I know what it means in-game, but I don’t know what

the actual meaning is.

This use of novel literacy practices appears to be distributed throughout the learning cycle as it is the basis for engaging with this community and learning the complex systems within World of Warcraft.

Scientific habits of mind. Players engaging in systematic thinking and hypothesis testing as a part of gameplay practice.

The rapid and ever-changing nature of dungeon runs does not appear to accommodate rigorous systematic thinking and hypothesis testing and this mode of participation did not seem to emerge from the gameplay data. In post-gameplay interviews players showed more scientific habits of mind as they discussed their reflections on their in-game performance and how it can improve. When asked about his game performance and stat priorities Jayne explained at length:

There is a lot of people, whether it is Icy Veins, Noxic kind of used to be, but

Noxic is kind of trash, Ask Mr. Robot, there are a number of sites that give good

information on like playing your class, stats, and stuff. There’s a lot of people that

put a lot of time and effort into those sites to figure out those numbers and figure

out those percentages. Where like there is a break point, like, figuring out there is

a break point for Haste at 18% and then you can start focusing on this other stat.

Like that is an important number for this reason. You know right at that number is

when this one ability gets just down to this cooldown which means you can use it

twice before you can use this, which then your whole DPS goes up or gets your 139

global cooldown to this, which allows for just more you know abilities so there is

sometimes very specific numbers.

This systematic reflection on in-game performance arose in Zoe’s interview as well when she described how the team could predict what would happen in the dungeon given that

Legion had been out less than a week when the gameplay data was recorded. She explained:

We generally, everyone has been playing awhile, so we recognize the basic

mechanics. It is like deconstructing a story. Once you know that there are specific

parts, you recognize them in their different forms so you know what to pay

attention to. Oh, this is a movement mechanic or you have to dodge this, or this

you have to soak with other people. So they just try and invent new mechanics but

there is only so many ways to deal damage to people that are not overly complex

for new people.

These instances of scientific habits of mind appear at the observation and reflection stages of the learning cycle. When scientific habits of mind occurred at the observation and reflection stages it appeared to occur on an extremely long cycle, such as the process Zoe described above when thinking about approaches to the game holistically. On a smaller scale players engaged in scientific habits of minds during the observation and reflection phases of the learning cycle when they considered their developing strategies to in-game events. Often this process involved data-driven results using information gleaned from the team’s use of add-ons. 140

Forms of computational literacy. The use of code to alter and modify in-game materials

The team made extensive use of code to alter the game. The add-ons and modifications made to the game by the players allow them adjust the game to meet their particular play style and roles within the guild. Much of this change is manifest in the player's user interface. Compared to a traditional WoW UI (see Figure 11) these heavily modified UI show how players customize their screen to meet their own needs (see

Figure 12).

Figure 11. The researcher’s stock user interface in WoW. 141

Figure 12. A participant’s heavily modified UI in WoW.

Each of the participants makes extensive use of mods, with each participant using, but not limited to the follow add-ons:

Zoe: Deadly Boss Mods, Titan Panel, Recount, Handy Notes, MogIt, Rarity, Tradeskill

Master, Bartender, HealBot, Loot Council

Mal: Elvui, Curse [as a repository of her add-ons]

Book: Deadly Boss Mods, Tidy Plates, WeakAuras, Skada, Elvui

Wash: Deadly Boss Mods, Skada, Elvui, Tradeskill Master, Weak Auras, MogIt

Jayne: Skada, Tidy Plates

The players appeared to most frequently use this computational literacy as they shifted from observation and reflection to invention. The team would utilize the information held in the add-ons including damage done by mobs, damage dealt by the team, and player statistics to make decisions on how well a new strategy invention is working. 142

Mechanisms for learning such as reciprocal apprenticeship. Steinkuehler (2008) defines this as an enculturation process into the practices of the game and the shared knowledge of the members of the game community.

Another outcome of the Deffect Effect in this study was how he exemplified

Steinkuhler’s (2008) sixth mode of participation. As an impromptu interlocutor to the team’s dungeon run Deffect provided them with information on how to manage the dungeon successfully. Besides the help he provided with the boss Serpentrix as described under mode of participation #2, he also periodically chimed in with specific information for a successful dungeon run. At one point he advises the team:

1:56:52 Deffect: Oh, after you guys kill the last boss, don’t leave the dungeon. Cause you have to turn the quests in here inside.

1:57:04 Wash: I think only some of us have that quest.

1:57:07 Deffect: Oh, okay. Cause me and my brother left and we’re like fuck. We had to do it again.

While Deffect leveraged his past experience with this dungeon to provide advice and information to the team, the team in turn reciprocated by helping Deffect understand statistical changes to the game. In a lengthy exchange, the team answers Deffect’s questions about the abilities dodge and parry.

1:58:23 Deffect: So there is no dodge or anything feinting anymore?

1:58:26 Jayne: Yeah, there is.

1:58:28 Wash: They put dodge back in the game.

1:58:32 Deffect: I thought they got rid of all that. 143

1:58:34 Jayne: No, both are absolutely in the game. Yup.

1:58:34 Wash: They got rid of both this summer.

1:58:44 Jayne: You just don’t find dodge or parry on, ah as stats

1:58:50 Deffect: Oh, how do you get it then?

1:58:54 Jayne: You get dodge and parry through abilities that give you dodge and parry.

1:58:59 Deffect: Ah, so when you tank spec you have dodge and parry then.

1:59:03 Jayne: Yeah, they show up in your enhancements.

1:59:07 Deffect: Okay, so basically they made it so anyone can tank now and anyone can technically heal?

1:59:14 Book: Right.

1:59:14 Jayne: No, cause if you don’t have (pause) oh (pause) you just mean your gear wise, yeah. I was like no if you’re not like a tank spec, you’re just going to get fucking wrecked.

1:59: 25 Book: Yeah, they homogenized the gear so that you can basically use whatever you have on your DPS just swap specs real quick.

1:59:34 Jayne: Yeah, you swap specs and that switches your weapon automatically.

1:59:38 Deffect: Oh, so that is why we have (guild member) trying to tank and don’t know what they are doing, who have [sic] never done it before.

1:59:46 Book: Pretty much.

1:59:50 [At this point in the discussion, the team pulls the dungeon’s final boss The

Wrath of Azshara and begins the fight] 144

1:59:59 Deffect: Yeah, I do like that but I kinda, they’re making it way too much for like carebears.

2:00:08 Jayne: Ummm

2:00:09 Mal: What’s wrong with carebears?

2:00:10 Wash: I feel like bonus armor was more carebear than dodge and stuff.

2:00:17 Deffect: Yeah.

2:00:18 Jayne: Well, other than that they don’t even give you dodge or parry. They come through abilities. You have to use your abilities in order to get that. If anything all it does is means that it is easier on the people that can do both. To switch back and forth.

2:00:35 Deffect: I guess.

2:00:36 Jayne: You only have to work on both your artifacts in order instead of both your artifacts and maintaining two full sets of gear. Including you know both carrying two full sets of gear or a druid three or four sets of gear.

2:00:52 Deffect: I guess that is true.

The above exchange was perhaps the most prominent example of reciprocal apprenticeship that occurred during the recorded gameplay. It should be noted as well that this lengthy exchanged partially occurred during the final fight in the Eye of Azshara dungeon. The final boss of a dungeon, in this case The Wrath of Azshara, is the most challenging fight in the dungeon typically, yet while Jayne fulfills his role as tank he is able to continue his conversation with Deffect on the how dodge and parry are utilized in the new Legion expansion. 145

Other examples occurred in-situ where players taught one another depending on emergent contexts within the dungeon run. In one such example, Wash questions the lack of a stat on an item he received:

47:03 Wash: Stamina instead of Int [Intelligence] that’s weird.

47:08 Jayne: Yeah, there is no Int on rings or necks [necklaces] anymore.

47:09 Book: Yeah.

47:11 Wash: Really.

47:14 Book: Yeah, they want to homogenize them so you can just swap specs. No questions asked.

47:21 Jayne: You know as opposed to giving all three of them.

47:26 Wash: Well, yeah that would just be ridiculous.

These moments of reciprocal apprenticeship were commonplace but consistently derived from the action of the dungeon run. In-game actions provided the context from which questions from the team arose.

Taken holistically, the findings suggest that distributed cognition, and collaborative problem solving occurred at all stages of the learning cycle. The mode of scientific habits of mind appeared to occur at the reflection and observation stages of the learning cycle. Meanwhile computational literacy appears to occur more at the invention stage of the learning cycle. The final mode of participation, novel literacy practices, seemed to be less a characteristic of any specific stage of the learning cycle than it was a gateway into this type of video game play. Literacy in World of Warcraft appears to exist 146 less as an aspect of learning than it is a prerequisite to learning within the game and

Game of WoW.

Summary and Conclusion

In this chapter, I presented the findings of the study. These findings are based on the analysis of video recordings of gameplay and transcripts of post-gameplay interviews.

The findings were discussed in three sections corresponding to the research questions and the emergent themes around this question.

In research question one I focused on how the participants, the video game they play, the hardware they use, and the larger social community around World of Warcraft interact as a cohesive mechanism. Initial analysis of the data suggests that players utilize hardware configurations to assist them in remembering available actions of their characters. They further use software modifications and add-ons in order to make game- related information accessible in more visible on screen or to adjust the informations visibility depending on when that information is valuable.

For the findings of research question two, I focused on how the players distribute their cognition across the gamespace. The data suggests that players do not focus solely on the task at hand, but instead are active participants in at least three distinct yet overlapping social spaces. These spaces are the game currently in play, in this case two dungeon runs in World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion, the social community this team has on their Vent channel, and their place within the larger community of WoW players, including their guild mates. 147

In research question three I focused on how players move through a cycle of learning when problem-solving in-game and whether in doing so they engage in

Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation. The findings suggest that collaborative problem solving and distributed cognition occur throughout the cycle of learning and exist as necessary mechanics for collaborative problem solving. Meanwhile opportunities for reciprocal apprenticeship are generated from the action stage of the learning cycle.

Scientific habits of mind appears most often at the observation and reflection stages.

Computational thinking is embedded in the gameplay of the participants, but manifests in gameplay as reliance on add-ons as part of the invention of new strategies. The final mode of participation, novel literacy practices, appears to be less a part of the learning cycle than existing as a gateway to this cycle. Without extensive literacy in the game and

Game a player would be unable to keep pace with others in moving through this cycle of learning.

148

Chapter Five: Discussion

Having provided an overview of the research questions, methodology, scope, and main findings of this research project in the previous chapters, in this chapter I will discuss each of the research questions, identify implications, and specify areas for future research.

In this research my aim was to generate a thick descriptive (Geertz, 1973) account of the distributed cognition and problem solving within an online videogame. In doing so the goal has been to better understand the complete context that surrounds much of videogaming today and better understand how players choose to self-organize in these spaces. Since the dawn of the MMO explosion in the early 2000s the participatory culture around games has grown in sophistication and complexity that games and learning research has not fully captured. The paucity of research into the complete set of practices in which video gamers invest themselves stems partially from the constant evolution of videogame play.

Chasing after the latest trends in videogame play is futile and would rapidly render this study obsolete. Aware of this dilemma, I investigated WoW, perhaps the most established and expansive videogame culture. The game World of Warcraft and the Game around WoW contain a depth and breadth that has yet to be eclipsed by another videogame and its surrounding culture. The richness of context around WoW presents games and learning research an opportunity to understand how the varied components of videogame play which I refer to as the gamespace (the players, the game, the Game, and 149 the hardware) interact as a complex system. I sought to capture a thick descriptive account of this complex system.

An intrinsic case study approach was used to generate this thick descriptive account of videogame play in order to establish the boundaries of modern, online videogame behavior. As such, the questions guiding this research were (a) how do players, the game, the Game, and hardware interact as a cohesive unit in problem-solving as a gamespace? (b) How do players distribute cognition across the gamespace? (c) How do players move through an iterative cycle of learning while problem-solving in game and at what stages of the cycle do they engage in Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation?

The context for this study was the interactions between players over the course of two dungeon runs in the latest World of Warcraft expansion Legion. The players worked together as a team of five to clear the dungeons including the defeat of tougher-than- normal computer-controlled characters collectively known as bosses. As the players interacted in-game they also communicated via Ventrilo (called Vent by the participants) which functioned as a separate yet connected social space. Data were collected in the form of video and audio recordings in World of Warcraft, audio recording in Vent, and video and audio recordings collected in each participant's physical, in-room location.

Data were then analyzed and formed the foundations for five follow-up interviews at approximately one hour each. The resultant data created a snapshot of the gameplay behavior of the participants which highlights the “interwoven nature and the fact they are situated within an intricate network of social interaction” (Rogers & Ellis, 1994, p. 120). 150

For the remainder of the chapter, I will discuss each research question in turn and then conclude with a review of directions that might be taken in future research to better understand the complex nature of online videogame play.

Research Question One: Problem Solving

The first question guiding this research was how do players, the game, the Game, and hardware interact as a cohesive unit in problem-solving as a gamespace?

This research was a case study that sought to understand the phenomenon of how the components of the gamespace interact as players work through a problem. In this research I use the term problem to denote an event that creates an impasse due to missing information, or a lack of experience (Blumberg, Rosenthal, Randall, 2008). Blumberg and Sokol (2004) describe the tools needed to overcome these impasses as any external resources, utilizing other more knowledgeable individuals, or the creating of tactics or strategies - all of which appear as aspects of the Game that players leverage when solving in-game problems. However given that this research is an attempt to understand complex events and phenomenon occurring in real-world settings (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) I kept the defining characteristics of the term problem loosely defined so as not dismiss findings that did not fit a predetermined assumption I had regarding what is or in not a problem in game. Perhaps a more accurate portrait of how the term problem is defined in this study is Koster’s (2013) definition of a game as “concentrated chunks ready for our brain to chew on” (p. 36). Understanding what players prefer to chew on and how they chew on it was the goal of the first research question. 151

In order to gain a more encompassing understanding of how the varied components of gameplay interact to solve problems, data collection in this study involved collecting data in-room, in-game, and in-Game. These data were then analyzed and used to develop interview questions that informed further analysis of the video ethnographic data. Analysis of the findings indicates that problem-solving within the gamespace should be broadly defined as it often centered on challenges presented by the Game community rather than the game-as-software.

Research in games and learning has had as a focus the notion of games as “well ordered problems” (Gee, 2009, p.9) that teach content. The role of the game-as-software in this line of thinking is as a delivery mechanism of these problems to solve and in the process teach content. My findings suggest that for players the game-as-software problems were of the least interest and least cognitively demanding of the problems they faced. Instead problems that arose out of the community occupied more of the team’s time. Over the course of the gameplay captured, the problems faced by the team could be organized under four broad themes:

1. Game-related problems: Problems that originated from the social space

surrounding gameplay including guild concerns, social discussions (text

messages, Facebook posts, Vent chat), and conversations occurring in the larger

World of Warcraft community.

2. Player-related problems: Problems either presented directly by a player in the

game (So I’m guessing…?, How do you…?) or as a result of confusion resulting 152

in an internal utterance spoken aloud (That’s weird...., What is this?) which is

then taken up by the remainder of the team.

3. Problems of cognitive dissonance: Problems brought about by confusion among

the team as they worked on a common goal such as the cause of a wipe, or a

misunderstanding of which trash mob to target.

4. game-presented problems: Problems that exist as part of the challenge of the

game, such as an attack mechanic by a boss or mechanics that are new to the

game as part of the latest expansion.

In terms of time spent, the problem categories listed above are ordered sequentially from most time spent to least time spent. Time spent problem solving was mostly dedicated to Game-related problems and game-presented problems received the least amount of time from the team. As the participants tell it, this lack of time spent on solving game-presented problems stems from their extended experience with World of

Warcraft and their ability to guess the mechanics Blizzard may use in the game. In short, these players are experienced veterans who have seen it all before and come to the game prepared.

Interview data with Jayne, Mal, and Wash all revealed that much of the problem solving I expected to see in the findings was not verbalized by the team, especially during boss fights. During boss fights Vent chatter would diminish and be overtaken by the din of mouse and keyboard clicking. As Jayne described it:

Something like that there wasn’t too much communication needed. Mostly, I

mean, we were also just learning the fights, so none of us knew anything that the 153

others didn’t and we’re all just kind of playing off what we expect the others to

do.

Jayne’s comment highlights an underlying theme of the findings; much of the in- game activity was marked by lack of discourse. Chatter continued almost uninterrupted through the game, but as for the game activity the players talked little. In a five-person dungeon there are three main roles: healer, DPS, and tank. A successful dungeon run requires everyone to know their role and have an understanding of the roles of the rest of the team. Coordinating across these roles, and among five players, did not require much communication from the team as much of that required coordination has been internalized by the players over their years spent in WoW.

In her investigation of problem-based learning Barron (2003) observed, “it is not that joint attention needs to be maintained at all times, but rather that partners need to be able to regain it at solution-critical times” (p. 348). The ebb and flow of chatter expressed by the team seemed to support Barrons observations as the team only maintained joint attention during moments of heightened challenged. Other times the team was constantly engaged in a stream of communication that covered a wide swath of content, from WoW lore, to real-world plans and events, to previous exploits of the team. To an outsider this extraneous chatter, not concentrated on the task at hand, could appear to be restlessness with the activity (e.g., Bruckman & DeBronte, 1997), but instead represents the shared history and the shared affinity space for the players.

While Jayne commented on having unspoken expectations of the players, Wash noted the team had played WoW for long enough that nothing much surprised them: 154

We’ve just been playing the game for so long, so we have a general idea of how

to handle most of the mechanics that Blizzard is going to throw at us. It is not

very often where they use mechanics that are not at least similar to something else

they’ve used.

For these players the game-presented problems are the least challenging, yet it is these game-presented problems that form the foundation of the games and learning research.

As Hung and Van Eck (2010) assert, “the majority of our discussion can be summed up as “Games are problems being solved by players; therefore, playing games will help people be better problem solvers” (p. 2). What the field of games and learning lacks is a clear understanding of the process of problem solving in games and how that results in better problem solvers.

What my data indicate is problem solving in games may not be readily apparent through analysis of gameplay data alone. In instances where the team solved game- related problems they did so by relying on the past experiences of one another and Game- based information learned as part of that experience. Yet the players did not explicitly verbalize that extensive experience. Instead they relied on an in-depth understanding of the complex space, in which they play, which Wenger, McDermott and Synder (2002) suggest imbues participants with the ability to quickly react to context-specific problems.

They are able to act as a cohesive unit with little overt communication because of this shared experience.

When the team fought Warlord Prajesh in the Eye of Azshara dungeon, Wash recognized the similarity of this boss to Blackhand, the boss of Blackrock Foundry, in the 155

Warlords of Draenor expansion released in 2014. In order for the team to leverage that information they all needed to have literacy in WoW and its past expansions. Wash did not explain how Warlord Prajesh was similar, he only stated “This guy needs a couple more moves and he’d be Blackhand” yet that was enough for the remainder of the team to make the connection and adapt their approach so as to include the strategies they used in the Blackhand fight two years ago. As Gee (2008) notes communities of practice such as this have distinct ways of interpreting experience that can be leveraged to solve problems in ways that may not be readily apparent to outsiders. Problem solving, it seems, is embedded in the novel literacy practices of the group and short phrases packed with game meaning and Game shared-history carry much of the information the group uses to overcome problems.

Throughout the data much of the game-presented problem solving is manifest as these jargon-ladened sentences that require each player to have knowledge of previous events in the game. More so, it requires the players to have knowledge of previous experience in their local Game. The unspoken assumption of the players is that those with whom they are playing understand what past events are being referred to as they were a participant in those past events. Shared history solves problems.

These game-presented problems were further marginalized by the team’s exposure to the Game. In the lead-up to the Legion expansion the participants had heard from players involved in the beta release, read about Legion on websites such as

Wowhead and MMO Champion, and had years of past experience with YouTube videos where they watched top-tier players run dungeons from which they gleaned tactics and 156 strategies they could apply to their own game. Even though participants had no specific information about the dungeons they would run as part of this research, they still came to the gameplay with an extensive game and Game-taught skill set that rendered game- presented problems easy to overcome.

Silva and Mousavidin (2015) noted in their autoethnographic account of strategic thinking in WoW that early on they relied on experiences external to the game to make decisions, but over time shifted to decision making based on wholly in-game experiences.

The participants of my study have been consistently playing WoW for nearly a decade and can leverage that extensive experience to out-think problems presented by the game.

Further mitigating the challenge provided by game-related problems was the team’s extensive use of add-ons and hardware configurations. The team used add-ons not to make the game easier, but to efficiently process information in the game. One such add-on, Deadly Boss Mods (DBM), uses enlarged text sizes to notify players of critical events, color-coded status bars, and an autoresponder so that if another player sends a chat message it will reply that you are busy. These add-ons and their use by the majority of the team allow them to manage the information they are receiving at any given time.

As Zoe described her use of Healbot:

Everyone is at full health right now, so all the bars are bright green, but I’ve got it

set as their life goes down the bars will turn yellow, then orange, then red as they

are almost at zero. So it is all very visual for me.

Besides add-ons that streamline information needed by the players they automatize the actions they need to perform in game-presented problems. The players all 157 made use of mouse or keyboard bindings to reduce their cognitive load. As Jayne and

Wash both stated, for all of their characters they bind similar spells or abilities to the same key. These binding allow them to reduce the effort they needed to expend on thinking about spells and abilities by turning them into automatized button pressing.

Instead, the problems they preferred to chew on were those that stemmed from their engagement with the Game community. My findings suggest that much of the problem solving processes of the players are dependent on the social channel threaded through the gameplay.

Steinkuehler’s (2004) findings that games are not only designed objects, but social practice as well are supported by my findings. Results of this ethnography indicate that to fully capture the problem solving practices of players we must push the boundaries of what is considered relevant data. Capturing data from the Game must be included in games research to gain a comprehensive understanding of problem solving in games. For these players it was the Vent server that operated as a “locus of coordination” (Shirky,

2010, p. 37) and much of the cognition they devoted to problem solving occurred in the social space of the game which is further described under research question two.

Research Question Two: Distributed Cognition

The second question guiding this research was: how do players distribute cognition across the gamespace?

This question specifically targets an understanding of how players think across the team, how each aspect of the gamespace holds information leveraged by the team and how this information works as a “shared system for encoding, storing, and retrieving 158 information” (Wegner, Erber, & Raymond, 1991, p. 923). Analysis of the data suggests that the players distribute their cognition across the gamespace in such a system by compartmentalizing aspects of their thought processes to components of the gamespace.

Keybindings as a memorization tool. An example of this distributed cognition is how the players use mouse and keyboard bindings to remember the actions they need to perform in game. The players noted in their interviews that they often need to manage upward of twenty-four spells and abilities per character and that they often play five to six characters. Instead of remembering all of the spells and abilities for each character, players bind specific types of spells or abilities to the same button across characters.

Once such example is the ability to give a character a short burst of extra speed - for mages this is called blink, for a rogue this ability is called sprint. The players noted they do not concern themselves with the specifics of these abilities. Instead they relegate any ability that provides a speed boost to the same button regardless of the specifics of that ability. As Jayne described it:

They are all different abilities and they all work a little differently and if I am

playing a character, especially if it is a character I’m not really familiar with

because I haven’t played it in a while or something I can be like ‘oh it is that spot,

that is what it does’. It might work differently, like a mage blinks as opposed to

getting a sprint, but the idea is that is the movement ability, If I need it I know

where to go for it.

For high level players the complex web of spells and abilities is compartmentalized to mouse and keyboard bindings, leaving the player to only 159 automatize the sequence of button presses they must successfully hit in order to perform their role in the team. In terms of distributed cognition, Krish (2006) identifies this as pragmatic actions, actions undertaken to bring something closer to an established goal. In this case the players utilize mouse and keyboard bindings to reduce their response times in game and reduce the need to think about what buttons to press. Players use the hardware to help them remember what they need to do to achieve their gameplay goals.

The players also use software add-ons to help them manage the constant stream of information the game directs at them.

Using add-ons to manage information. For streamlining the information the players must manage during a dungeon run the team made extensive use of add-ons or software modifications. These add-ons served to hold specific information for the team and marginalized this information until it was needed by the players. In one such example

Zoe uses the add-on Healbot. Healbot color codes the health bars of the other players, shifting in color from green to red as the health of the players diminishes. Zoe keeps the health bars in her peripheral vision and uses this color coding to evaluate her need to react. In this case the add-on takes the responsibility of tracking the health of the team leaving Zoe to focus on other duties. Kirsh (2006) labels this type of action as epistemic action, or actions undertaken to make mental computations easier. In the case of Zoe’s use of Healbot, she does not have to devote mental energy to computing the health status of other players. With the Healbot add-on she needs only to recognize and respond to a change in color. 160

Both keyboard bindings and add-ons shed light on how players leverage the hardware and software to reduce the cognitive load they must carry during gameplay.

Their utilization of these keyboard bindings and add-ons demonstrate an embodied cognition that Wilson (2002) describes as using resources outside the mind to assist in creating mental representations or aiding in the manipulation of systems. Interestingly, the players did not use these tools as opportunities to think less during gameplay, but took advantage of them so that they could divert their cognition to the social aspects of the game.

Operating in multiple, simultaneous spaces. Bruckman and De Bronte (1997) were perhaps one of the first research studies in games and learning that glimpsed the distributed cognition that players engage in while playing videogames. Their study on the use of the game MOOSE Crossing in the classroom notes the propensity of the students to move around the room to ask questions and help one another with more complicated portions of the game. While Bruckman and De Bronte note this as a sign of learning, the teacher-participant was concerned about this “restlessness and lack of engagement with the activity” (p. 26).

If I analyzed my participant behavior through the same lens of engagement with the game, I would perhaps reach the same conclusion as the teacher-participant in

Bruckman and De Bronte’s (1997) study. Over the course of the gameplay the participants devoted more of their mental energies to the Game in which they played rather than the game of WoW dungeon raids. 161

Over an approximately two minute timespan in the gameplay recording the team was engaged in three separate yet interwoven spaces all of which required their attention and cognitive load. As the team fought trash mobs in the game, they also engaged in two simultaneous conversations: one occurring on Vent, the other occurring over the text- based chat channel in World of Warcraft. This was an omnipresent theme in the findings, the players would engage in at least two cognitive spaces at any given time. The first space is the game itself which occurred predominantly on screen. Communication tied to this space was often focused on information needed to complete the task at hand.

However much of their mental engagement with this space was reduced to memorized movements that could be categorized as muscle memory.

In his work on distributed cognition, Pea (1993) notes that when people distribute their thinking it is not an issue of reallocation of resources and limited cognitive load.

Instead he argues this distributed cognition is a process for reaching efficiency in thinking and that we take advantage of external resources to hold information so that we can acquire the freedom to invent and innovate. My findings suggest that players allocated game-related cognitive processes to hardware and software so they can devote more cognition to socialization in the Game. It is in the Game where the players chose to invent and innovate.

The second and more prevalent space the participants occupied was this Game. In this space mental energy was devoted to what Steinkuehler (2004) describes as the social practice of the game and often centered on the team’s shared history (e.g. a previous dungeon run, running quests together), the in-room events of a player (e.g. whether a 162 spider had been killed, inquiry on pets), or questions from the Game community (e.g. posts on the guild’s Facebook page, discussion of player stats).

The Vent chatter amongst the team reflected what Lave and Wenger (1991) refer to as talking within and talking about a practice. Often in overlapping communications on the Vent channel, the participants exchanged information on in-game events (talking within) that were needed in the moment. Between these bursts of game-specific information the team engaged in longer extended conversation about their Game community, or larger aspects of the WoW community (talking about).

For the participants of this study, the game appears to serve more as an opportunity to talk about the Game and socialize with friends. My findings support

Steinkuehler’s (2004) findings that in-game information and activity play a subservient role to activities and information that serve to enculturate players and foster socialization.

In the Vent space the players are constantly and actively constructing knowledge in ways similar to what Hernandez-Ramos and De La Paz (2009) reported in their work with problem-based learning in the classroom. In their findings and my own, knowledge is not provided so much as it is actively constructed by all participants. My findings suggest that cognition among the players is distributed and suggests “that no one person was the expert; the real expertise resided in the community mind” (Seely-Brown, 2000, p. 17).

The Vent channel servers as this community mind.

In summation, my findings for research question two reveal that players exist in several cognitive spaces simultaneously when engaged in online gameplay. These spaces are best represented by the game and Game. The game space is where the action of 163 gameplay occurs, but much of the required cognitive effort in this space is relegated to hardware and software. Players allocate pragmatic actions to hardware and epistemic actions to software add-ons.

Much of the players’ attention is devoted to the Game and in this social space discourse is dominated by talking about the Game punctuated by talking within the game to clarify goals, objectives, or misunderstandings occurring as a result of gameplay actions. How these gameplay actions set the foundation for a cycle of learning will be discussed in the final research question.

Research Question Three: Cycles of Learning and Modes of Participation

The third and final research question is how do players move through an iterative cycle of learning while problem-solving in game and at what stages of the cycle do they engage in Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation?

Through research question I sought to understand how players, outside of formalized learning environments, learn within the complex space of videogames and how Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation are operationalized within this learning process. While Steinkuehler proposes these six modes of participation in MMOs there is a gap in the games and learning research in capturing participants actively engaged in these modes of participation. Through this research question I sought to identify when, in a cycle of learning, these modes of participation occurred.

The framework for this study proposed that players move through a continuous cycle of learning (see Figure 13). This cycle considers learning to be a continuous loop of 164 action, reflection, observation, and invention and that specific gameplay actions occur at each of the given stages of the learning cycle (see Figure 14).

Figure 13. The proposed iterative cycle of learning in games. Findings suggest the reflection phase occurs after the invention phase at the game-level.

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Figure 14. The proposed iterative cycle of learning in games and the predicted gameplay actions that occur at each stage of the learning cycle. This cycle represents my initial framework for research question #3.

The findings of this study suggest that players move through this cycle of learning at two interconnected levels. The first occurs at the game-level as the players move through solving game-presented problems and problems of cognitive dissonance. In the team’s battle with Ularogg Cragshaper, and his cup and ball mechanic, this entire cycle is completed in under a minute. In that instance the team was engaged in an action, fighting

Ularogg Cragshaper, when they observed a new mechanic and invented a new strategy, after the strategy inventions by Zoe and Book were attempted the team reflects on the result before engaging in a new action. The findings suggest the cycle of learning as 166 proposed in Figure 1 requires modification as the reflection phase occurred after the invention phase when players are engaged in game-level problem solving (Figure 15).

Figure 15. Modified cycle of learning. This cycle occurs at the game-level during game-presented problems and problems of cognitive dissonance.

Findings on a larger scale suggest that this cycle of learning takes on a new form when players are engaged in Game-related activity (Figure 16). These are activities that occur as players are engaged in Game-related and player-presented problems within the gamespace. Examples of these problem types include players evaluating their long-term performance in World of Warcraft and assisting other players in overcoming obstacles in their in-game activities. Whereas the game-cycle of learning can occur in time spans of a minute or two the Game-cycle of learning can span anywhere from several minutes to 167 weeks. Jayne’s description of his preparation for new characters highlights this Game- cycle of learning.

Figure 16. The cycle of learning in the Game. This cycle occurs at the Game-level when players are engaged in Game-related and player-presented problems.

Jayne described how, when preparing to play a new character, he will reflect on what approach he would like to take with the character and then follow that with interaction with the Game through visiting WoW related websites such as Icy Veins where he then invents a revised playstyle approach to the character by tweaking the character’s stats.

Book also described how after a rather trying week in WoW he had observed his suboptimal performance and reflected on the need to change some of his character stats.

To do so he utilized Game resources such as SimCraft and Icy Veins to tweak his 168 character performance; inventing new performance metrics for his character. After this invention stage in the Game, he re-entered the action phase of the learning cycle where he tested his inventions. As Book summarized it:

I was doing so shoddy in performance that I was really kind of getting fed up with

everything, but I don’t know. There was something this week that I kind of threw

some stats around; changed up some stats and this Tuesday and Wednesday I

knocked it out of the freakin’ ball park compared to what it was previously.

The Game-level cycles of learning expressed by Jayne and Book describe a cycle of learning that moves across all aspects of the gamespace. In-game actions prompt observation on effectiveness and efficiency. This prompts reflection that sends the player out into the Game in search of new approaches and methods. These are then experimented with in a process of invention and incorporated into future gameplay actions. How modes of participation are incorporated into these stages of learning are the next aspect of this research question.

The second stage of this question sought to operationalize Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation in MMOs and identify when they occur within this cycle of learning. In her research work, Steinkuehler proposes modes of participation that occur in

MMO games:

 Complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition

 Collaborative problem solving practices

 Novel literacy practices

 Scientific habits of mind 169

 Forms of computational literacy

 Mechanisms for learning such as reciprocal apprenticeship (pp. 5-6).

The findings of this study captured examples of these modes of participation in situ and shed light on where these modes of participation occur within the learning cycle in WoW.

At the game-cycle of learning, the cycle of learning dealing in immediate problems and challenges inherent in playing the game-as-software, complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition and collaborative problem solving practices occur embedded in all aspects of the learning cycle (see Figure 17).

Figure 17. Occurrences of modes of participation in the game-cycle of learning in WoW.

game-level cycles. When operating at game-level, that is engaging in the tasks at hand as presented by the game-as-software, participants are always utilizing two modes 170 of participation: complex forms of socially and materially distributed cognition and collaborative problem solving. The modes could be considered part of the core infrastructure needed by players to engage in MMOs. Without these modes of participation, massively multiplayer games are not possible.

Reciprocal apprenticeship also appears to occur as a result of the context created by the in-game action. The creation of a collective body of knowledge formed through players sharing and receiving game-related information appeared most often as a byproduct of in-game action. As highlighted in Chapter 4, Deffect joined the Vent channel to socialize with the team and in the process generated several examples of this reciprocal apprenticeship offering advice to the team based on his earlier experience with the same dungeon. His contribution of knowledge to the team’s gameplay was consistently derived from the team’s in-game activity. What the findings of this study suggest is that it is this reciprocal apprenticeship that shifts the team's focus from game- as-software problems to Game-as-community problems.

In short, players will be in the action phase playing the game until that phase is interrupted by a problem. Once a problem is verbalized by the team, reciprocal apprenticeship begins which shifts some of the team’s cognition to the observation phase.

Observation triggers invention and invention warrants reflection to assess the effectiveness of the inventions. Once the problem has been solved by the team, the action phase once again takes the majority of the team’s cognition. What is perhaps challenging to express in text alone is that this cycle occurs amongst a mangle of play (Steinkuehler,

2006). Within this mangle of play, the players collectively engage in this cycle while 171 individuals carry on with other tasks and in-game priorities. Conversely, a player may engage in this cycle, while the team is engaged elsewhere. These cycles, at the game- level, are rapid and messy.

Game-level cycles. When the team shifted focus from in-game activities to the activities of the Game they also move into a more complex version of the cycle of learning - what I refer to as the Game-cycle of learning (see Figure 16). At this level the modes of participation also include computational literacy and scientific habits of mind

(Figure 18). Both of these modes are not prevalent at the game-cycle of learning as the time spans involved appear to be too short. However, at the Game-cycle of learning level, where the cycle can occur over the span of minutes up to weeks, there is more time to leverage these two additional modes of participation.

Figure 18. The Game-cycle of learning with the six modes of participation as they occur in the cycle.

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Based on my findings I also suggest that players are also continually engaged in novel literacy practices to such a degree that this mode of participation serves as a gateway to play. At the game-cycle of learning level, players make such extensive use of

“specialized forms of language for in-game social interaction” (Steinkuehler, 2008, p. 12) within such short time frames anything less than a complete literacy in the jargon will be a hindrance to the team. At the Game-level, literacy in World of Warcraft is assumed as it is a consistent part of discourse. As the transcripts of interview data in chapter 4 reveal these novel literacy practices extended to this research project. The participants knew that

I am a WoW player and they made no attempt to dilute their use of specialized vocabulary. Only when I pressed for explanations of certain terms or concepts did the participants elucidate what terms such as proc, tank, pull, and crit mean.

When engaged in collaborative play within an MMO players move through two separate but interconnected cycles of learning. The first cycle, which I refer to as the game-level cycle of learning, consists of action-observation-invention-reflection. During this cycle action creates a problem for the players, this problem is observed by the players and new strategies are developed to overcome the problem. After these strategies are tested through invention the players reflect on their effectiveness. Over the entirety of this cycle players engage in collaborative problem solving, and distributed cognition.

Reciprocal apprenticeship appears to occur predominantly at the action phase and it serves as a trigger which initiates the rest of the learning cycle. Finally, novel literary practices appear to exist outside of the learning cycle, serving as a gateway into the process. 173

The second cycle of learning, which I refer to as the Game-level cycle of learning, consists of action-observation-reflection-invention. In this cycle as well, it is gameplay actions which create a problem for the players, this problem is observed by the players and reflected on as a process of thinking as a group. The group then generates strategies to overcome the problem in the invention phase before taking action to see if the strategies work. Over the entirety of this cycle players engage in collaborative problem solving, and distributed cognition. Reciprocal apprenticeship appears to occur mostly at the action phase and serves as a trigger which sets the rest of the learning cycle into motion. As players observe a problem and reflect on it they engage in scientific habits of mind, before using computational literacy practices to inform and invent new strategies for overcoming the problem. Finally, as in the game-level cycle of learning, novel literary practices appear to exist outside the learning cycle itself and serve as a prerequisite to engaging in this phenomenon.

Limitations of the Study

A project of this scale carries limitations that must be factored into to any implications and concluding remarks. The limitations of this study to be discussed here are the technological limitations of the hardware and limitations in the current approach to documenting the dynamic spaces of videogame play.

As Feldon and Kafai (2008) assert the “challenge of online data collection is capturing relevant offline events that occur unobserved in user's physical surroundings which influence, complement, or give alternate meaning to their online actions” (p. 577).

Through my research approach I sought to capture a holistic account of these events as 174 well as online events not within the game-as-software, such as the use of web pages,

YouTube tutorials, and interactions with other players not in game. Doing so requires novel approaches to ethnographic research founded in the literature (e.g., Stevens et al.,

2008), but extended to leverage the affordances of new technology. This new, digitally- mediated ethnographic approach was not without limitations.

The first limitation of this study was the tradeoff between the simplicity of

GoPros versus a limited battery life. Use of GoPros afforded a plug-and-play capability and a wide angle lens that enable capturing a large swath of the players’ in-room experience. The trade off to these rich data capture was a short battery life. Recording sessions were limited to two and a half to three hour sessions. Past that timeframe camera batteries would begin to die out. Battery life could be improved perhaps by lowering the resolution of the video being recorded, but with the tradeoff of less fidelity in videos made that an undesirable choice.

A second limitation brought on in the use of GoPro hardware was lower than expected audio quality. Capturing more in-room data required participants place their cameras approximately three to five feet away from the computer. The GoPro microphones could not capture crisp audio data at this range. As a result some in-room audio came across as muddled. Improved audio fidelity would require external microphones that would add a layer of burden on the participants which I felt was undesirable.

The next technological limitation arose in how to collect data from participant computers without compromising their gameplay ability. Traditional screen capture 175 software, such as Camtasia, can place a participant's computer under extra strain and reduce the quality of their gameplay and affect the study as a result. I made the decision to only capture the on-screen data of one participant as he had an established history of recording his own gameplay. A second participant offered to record gameplay, and that offer was accepted as that participant had a high-end graphics card that could record screen data without diminishing the quality of gameplay. Having participants stream their data over the Internet for the researcher to record is one possibility to avoid resource intensive software, but this could influence the speed of their Internet and thereby introduce lag into their game which again could influence gameplay. How to capture video-heavy data from afar will be a challenge for this type of research in the future.

Finally, this technology allowed for an expansive variety of data to be collected with the tradeoff being that this study be kept to one case of five players; the minimum number of players for a dungeon run. The in-room, in-game, and in-Game recordings of five participants delivered a wealth of transmedia data. An in-game instance lasting no more than a few moments still requires cross-checking the event across five other video recordings, other in-game recordings from the other player’s perspective, and against the team’s Vent recordings. With just five participants this created a complex set of overlapping data which proved challenging to fully analyze. Studying a larger community, such as a raiding group in WoW or perhaps the entire guild would have created a data set beyond the time and ability of this researcher alone.

A second broad category of limitations to this study is in how data are presented in current academic formats. Documenting and reporting new media landscapes including 176 games requires academic research and publications to leverage the affordances of more interactive media. Much of the data collected in this study occurred in rapidly changing environments that occurred in three separate spaces. Furthermore it occurred simultaneously among five participants across audio, video, text, and software. Data of this kind would benefit significantly from the inclusion in academic publications of video, audio, and gif formatted media to more accurately describe than words alone the transmedia spaces inhabited by the participants. Presenting this data in linear, text-based formats strips it of much of the richness and complexity that it has.

Validity Issues

To establish the validity of this qualitative research project I have sought to establish as clearly as possible how I reached my conclusions (Richards, 2005). To that end I have maintained a record of all notes related to the project including transcribed audio data from the recorded gameplay sessions, transcriptions from the post-gameplay interviews, as well as all audio and video data gathered from the participants. I have also sought to be clear in my role as both researcher and a player of World of Warcraft and how each can influence my role in the research.

In this research I have also sought credibility through triangulation of the data.

Using the in-game gameplay recording as my main set of data, I checked occurrences within the in-game gameplay data against each of the participants in-room recordings, and then followed these up with post-gameplay interviews that sought to clarify and expand upon events occurring during gameplay. 177

To further establish the credibility of this research I have sought to use, as much as possible, the participants’ own words to demonstrate the research questions and the themes that emerged for each. While lengthy, I decided not to truncate transcripts for clarity, so as to show how players engage in multiple, interconnected conversations at once. My goal in this research has been to investigate “a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (Yin, 1994, p. 13). I have sought to avoid unwarranted assumptions, nor look for specific explanations. My role as both researcher and World of

Warcraft player has benefitted this research by assisting me in examining explanations from each perspective.

Implications

In his 2015 article Van Eck asks ‘do games teach’? The results of my study, though limited in scope and scale, suggest the more appropriate question should be ‘do

Games teach’? Bases on the findings of this study I suggest they do and players derive more opportunities for learning from the social community around the game. To capitalize on these opportunities, the field of games and learning needs a shift in focus from games-as-software research studies toward one that has as its focus capturing empirical data from the Game-as-social-practice.

From the early work of Cordova and Lepper (1996) games and learning research has sought to understand games as text - as an object designed to teach in much the same way we understand books. Squire’s (2004) study on the use of Civilization III in the classroom set a tone for games and learning research on the use of games as a text for 178 learning content. Yet Squire himself warns that learning gains are perhaps not going to be made through the use of the game explicitly, but instead “through listening to students, understanding their experiences, and honoring their identities in constructing curriculum”

(p. 416). A decade on Steinkuehler and Squire (2014) argue that an overly narrow focus on videogames-as-software is perhaps the poorest way to conceptualize the enhancements they can provide to learning.

The findings of my research appear to support Steinkuehler and Squire’s (2014) assertion. Even as an avid gamer myself who understood, from a gamer’s point of view, the power of the social aspect of gaming, I still approached this research expecting the game-as-software to present the challenging problems to the players. I expected to observe players working through boss fights as a problem to be solved. Yet the findings consistently showed game-presented problems were of the least concern to the participants and that they actively engaged in more complex Game-related problems while working on game-presented problems.

The results of this ethnographic case study suggest that videogames can as Gee

(2008) writes “illuminate the nature of human thinking and problem solving as situated and embodied” (p. 253) by providing insight into how gamers think and problem-solve within a gamespace. However to better capture this thinking and problem solving, the field of games and learning needs a more concerted shift from a focus on games as text for content delivery to research that seeks to unpack and understand the social spaces in which games are played. My findings support those of Williams et al., (2006) that for players the social aspect of games provides more of the engagement and motivation for 179 gameplay than the actual game itself. How to more effectively leverage these social aspects will require new approaches across two fronts: teaching and learning with games, and research approaches incorporating Games.

Implications for teaching and learning. How technology can transform the way users interact with their world has long been understood by educational theorists and researchers. The practical application of this knowledge has been more problematic. In regards to the way technology is used in education Papert (1993) surmised “One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer” (p. 5). This perception of technology as a learning-delivery mechanism is an apt summation of the change videogames in education must undergo. If videogames are to be leveraged for their full potential we must shift our perception of them from a designed-object that can deliver content to that of an “object to think with” (Papert, 1993, p. 23) that enables the learner to engage with technology as a platform for problem- solving, collaboration, and communication.

In their meta-analysis of games and learning research, Young et al. (2012) find that the majority of games and learning research investigates learners taught primarily through the game. They argue that more robust learning is derived from socially- constructed play. My findings appear to support the conclusions of Young et al. that this socially constructed play is the foundation for much of the learning that occurs during gameplay. Yet in the games and learning research this socially constructed play is under represented. Vogel et al. (2006) in their meta-analysis of games and learning research found significant cognitive gains among learners when they were given more control over 180 their learning with games. However, they caution that the field lacks enough research into learner agency with games to make these results significant. If we are to address this lack of research into understanding the social aspects of games and learning we need to rethink how we approach using games. This requires a shift from games-as-designed objects that teach content to a conceptualization of games as a platform for learning to occur. Based on the findings of this research this shift in thinking could be guided by the following set of principles:

Learning in games derives from context not content. When using games in more formalized educational settings instructors may wish to teach specific content as they would more traditional forms of text such as books or video. Games as an interactive medium do not work in such linear ways. As students engage in gameplay they will make choices and take action that creates an experience unique to them or their team. As a result learning may not take place along a predictable path. Dewey (1916) stated that

“education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active constructive process”

(p. 38). Dewey’s depiction of education is perhaps one of the best encapsulations of videogames as well. Games cannot guarantee delivery of explicit content, because they are dynamic spaces that morph based on the choices of players. Videogames are not an affair of telling and being told, but an active constructive process.

My findings indicate that learning in-game and in-Game are triggered by spontaneous events. Accommodating a classroom tool where students are active agents requires educators to design lessons that utilize videogames not as an object that teaches, but as an object to think with. Teachers wishing to utilize games in the classroom should 181 consider using them not as content delivery texts, but instead tools students can use to practice skills, such as 21st century skills.

21st Century Skills are inherent in games. What I found the most intriguing in my findings was how much of what we want schools to be are inherent in Game-based activities. Trilling and Fadel’s (2009) 21st century skills were an omnipresent aspect of the gameplay of my participants. Over the course of the gameplay they engaged in:

 Critical thinking and problem solving

 Communication and collaboration

 Information literacy

 Media literacy

 Information and communication technologies

 Initiative and self-direction

 Productivity and accountability

 Leadership and responsibility

In the sense of providing players opportunities to engage in and refine their 21st century skills, games appear to be beating us at our own game. These are the skills we want students to develop and they occur in game without being formalized. As Jenkins et al. (2009) surmise, new media spaces such as videogames exist as social skills that exist within a larger community, not individualized skills expressed by a sole individual. The challenge for educators is how to allow these community-oriented skills to occur naturally in gameplay while leveraging them for educational purposes. Teachers may want to consider leaving gameplay uninterrupted and focusing their educational efforts 182 on debriefing activities that encourage students to reflect on how they used their 21st century skills during gameplay.

Design appropriate social structures. In Steikuehler’s (2004) findings on learning in MMOs she argues for educators to consider social interaction a crucial component of gameplay and to design structures to account for this. My findings support Steinkuehler’s and suggest that in order to fully leverage the affordances of games for learning we need to provide players a platform on which to brainstorm, communicate, and collaborate. This can include hosting a class VoIP in conjunction with server-based games such as WoW or

Minecraft. It could also include creating flexibility for what is considered time on task and be considerate of students leaving the game so that they can search for information in the Game environment via sites such as YouTube, game-related wikis, and Reddit.

Games cannot be measured by time on task and classroom use of games must include an infrastructure for social interaction and collaboration not only with fellow students but with the larger community of practice around the game being played.

Mind the reciprocal apprenticeship. When engaged in gameplay actions the occurrence of reciprocal apprenticeship triggers the cycle of learning that occurs in the

Game. When bringing games into the classroom, be mindful and attentive to student discourse and listen to when students begin to engage in sustained chatter and sentences of rising intonation, which suggest questions are afoot. As students begin processes of reflection, observation, and invention it marks the time instructors can ask leading questions that can help guide and shape student learning. 183

Where instructors will need to strike a balance is, as Brown, Collins, and Duguid

(1989) assert, in permitting the problems students encounter to remain implicit. Allow students to learn amongst the mangle of play (Steinkuehler, 2006) and work through the problem without being pulled from the gamespace into the classroom space. Observe until the learning cycle is complete and then engage in post-gameplay reflective exercises. For this approach to be successfully implemented teachers require a literacy in games, so that they can interpret the actions in the gamespace.

Teachers need games literacy. Gee (2003) suggests that with traditional texts learners may feel locked-out because of the abstract writing in them. We may feel the same about games. Teachers may feel locked out of games as they can appear too complicated. In schools we learn first and do later. In games we do first and learn later.

Adjusting to this new paradigm requires us to explore games as a literacy.

When bringing games into the classroom it can be safe to assume that the students will have a breadth and depth of literacy in games a teacher may be unable to match (e.g.,

Prensky, 2006). The findings of this study indicate that much of the learning and active engagement in problem solving by players may not be recognized by teachers who lack an in-depth literacy in the games they bring into the classroom. In my findings, players engaged in extensive use of shorthand that tapped into their shared literacy practices related to WoW as part of their communication during problem solving processes.

Teachers lacking literacy in the games they use in class may not realize when problem solving is occurring as the language involved can be indecipherable to an outsider. 184

Phrases such as “This guy needs a couple more moves and he’d be Blackhand” are packed with subtext that places the speaker simultaneously in the talking within and talking about (Lave & Wenger, 1991) discourse of a game. To those without literacy in

WoW this may appear a passing comment. To those literate in WoW it serves as a strategy suggestion and a callback to past experiences. This literacy can help instructors understand the content students are engaged in and assist in providing them a classroom context that is amenable to games. This includes new and flexible approaches to hardware and software.

Modifications matters. Players make extensive use of modifications to their gamespaces to tailor their gameplay to suit individual needs and tastes. When coming into a classroom context, students may be required to play a game with restrictions imposed by outside forces: limitations of school hardware, rules in regards to downloading software on school computers, lack of specialized equipment such as a gaming mouse and gaming keyboards. What ends up occurring is activity “implicitly framed by one culture, but explicitly attributed to another” (Brown, Collins, & Duguid,

1989, p. 34). We will play games in the classroom, but those games will be controlled by the rules of the classroom. The challenge in this approach, and perhaps why games have a poor implementation in the classroom (Vogel et al., 2006, Young et al., 2012), is they are not our culture, but our students’ culture. As instructors we must refrain from stepping into the culture of games and requiring the cultural norms change to accommodate the culture of education. 185

Modifications of the game software are an ingrained part of this culture and matter to players as they function as extensions of the players’ cognition. Teachers looking to get the most out of games in the classroom should be mindful of the needs players may have for specialized hardware. This could be implemented in such ways as allowing students to bring their own laptops to class, bringing their own mouse and keyboard to class, or ensuring students have access to the same computer over the course of the class, so that they can customize the game's interface through downloaded add-ons

In summation, bringing games into the classroom will require flexibility on part of the instructor and the classroom. Unlike traditional media, games are more than text.

They are also communities of practice and affinity spaces embedded with cultural norms and practices. Instructors who bring games-as-software to the classroom and leave behind the community will find diminished returns. Instead we must seek to bring these communities into the classroom space and engage with students in games according to the established cultural norms in these games. To do that requires literacy. My findings suggest that we need to play games as much as we research them.

Implications for research. Games and learning research needs to broaden its focus to examine player behavior beyond in-game actions and thought processes verbalized by the player. What constitutes player thinking and behavior must not only include what the player does in-game, but include all aspects of the gamespace. The findings in this study demonstrated that much of the basic mechanics involved in videogame play were shunted off to hardware and software configurations and turned into routine, largely automatized processes. These findings reflect Hutchins (1995) 186 assertion that it is not sufficient to have a lone account of human memory as much of what occurs happens outside the head of the individual. To more holistically capture this data, games and learning research needs to consider methodological approaches that: move beyond the game-as-designed object, and capture the full extent of the Game.

Move beyond the game-as-designed object. The field of games and learning must continue to investigate the Game as possible avenues for improving teaching and learning. To do this the question must move beyond the quest to document motivation and engagement and seek to understand how to sustain them. As Garris, et al. (2002) question, “At what point do games lose their appeal? What factors sustain interest over time?” (p. 459). 15 years on and these questions still remain in play. My findings indicate that it is the social community that sustains gains over time. Participants in this study all stated WoW could no longer surprise them, but what kept them in game are their friends.

My findings support the findings of earlier research on socialization in Games

(e.g., Gee, 2003; Jakobsson, & Taylor 2003; Steinkuehler, & Williams, 2006), but the field requires a more robust empirical set of data to that can be used to extend our understanding of how socialization in the Game influences gameplay. Ducheneaut et al.

(2006) represents perhaps the most substantial data set in regards to player socialization in MMOs. In their investigation of 220,000 WoW players they found that higher level players are sustained by social interaction as opposed to new gameplay features. The longer we play, the less the game matters and the more the Game matters. Capturing large data sets such as this, triangulated against smaller case studies of social gameplay as 187 in my research can move the field forward in its understanding of games as social spaces instead of simply designed objects.

Capture the full extent of the Game. An aspect of this study was to determine the feasibility of capturing Game data. Many of the social aspects of games that are acknowledged in the games and learning research (Williams et al., 2006; Thorne, 2008;

Yee, 2014) have not been fully documented by the games and learning community. Since the boom in MMO and learning research in the mid-to-late 2000s we have seen an exponential growth in the social communities around games. Games and learning research needs more investigation into affinity spaces that exists in such digital spaces as

Twitch, Reddit, and YouTube. These expressions of gaming social practices did not exist when much of the research around games and social spaces was conducted (e.g., Nardi &

Harris, 2006; Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006; Yee, 2006). These social spaces are now ubiquitous and the data exhaust produced by these spaces is easier to capture than ever.

At the time of this writing Reddit, self-billed as the front page of the Internet, is playing a game of Civilization. The Democraciv (2016) game is Civilization, but the

Game is thousands of people around the world voting on the moves made in-game. The project has a Discord VoIP server for communication, government parties, election schedules, and a press corps; all occurring online and available to capture as context-rich data. Meanwhile games and learning research investigates if players learn history through gameplay (Squire, 2004; Schaffer, 2006; Probert, 2015). If educators want to fully leverage the power of games for learning, more research is needed in dynamic new media spaces such as Democraciv and not just the software of Civilization. 188

If we continue to investigate games-as-software the field will not make progress in answering Van Eck’s (2006) call for an understanding of why and under what conditions games are effective. Answering this call requires we investigate games in the environments and communities of practice in which they are effective. WoW guilds and

Democraciv will not come to us, we must go to them. It means getting out of the laboratory and classroom contexts that characterize much of the games research (i.e.,

Young et al., 2012).

Instead we must continue the line of research established by Steinkuehler (2004;

2006; Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006; Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008) that seeks to understanding games not as a tool, but as a space. A social space that encapsulates the participatory cultures (Jenkins et al., 2009) and 21st century skills (Fadel & Trilling,

2009) that we want to bring into the classroom environment. Yet until we know how these communities function we will be unable to replicate them. This replication will require literacy and it will require data.

Advances in computing power and broadband Internet have made capturing Game data possible in ways not present in the mid-to-late 2000s. The power of graphics cards such as NVidia’s new 10XX series allow players to record all of their gameplay to post and share online. Hard drives now measured in terabytes have made storing this data cost effective as well. This allows players, and by extension researchers, the ability to record hours of gameplay at 1080p and above. Advances in broadband have brought sending and receiving files of this size into the realm of feasibility as well. Regardless of geographical 189 location, researchers can now capture rich gameplay data directly from the computers of their participants.

Technology advances in recording devices now make it possible to record participants’ in-room experiences. High fidelity cameras, such as GoPros, are now cost effective enough and small enough to allow them to be sent via mail to participants to gather rich in-room data that occurs during gameplay as documented by Stevens et al.,

(2008).

These technological affordances now provide the opportunity to capture what

Stevens et al., (2008) refer to as the careers players have as gamers. How they spend their time in-game, what resources they utilize while in-game, and who they spend their time with in-game can now be fully captured and investigated. What is needed are researchers who understand the depth and breadth that exists in gaming culture and who have the literacy in games needed to explore these spaces.

Conclusion

This study sought to address a gap in games and learning research by capturing in situ two understudied theoretical underpinnings of games and learning research:

1. The ways gamers choose to organize their gameplay time and space and identify factors of their gameplay experience that are not present in the game-as-software

(Consalvo, 2007).

2. How Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation are expressed when players are actively engaged in gameplay. 190

These two ideas represent a bottleneck in games in learning research in that we have a theoretical understanding of these concepts and research has hypothesized how they occur. Yet what is lacking is empirical evidence that can help the field further shape and refine these theoretical underpinnings to advance our research agenda. As Van Eck

(2006) argues the field needs a more nuanced understanding of why and under what conditions games are effective for learning. To answer Van Eck’s call we need a better understanding of how Consalvo’s (2007) and Steinkuehler’s (2008) concepts play out in the complex social space of games.

Addressing this gap requires new approaches in games and learning methodology that strip away assumptions made in games and learning research: players learn specific content through interaction with the game-as-software, and the prevalence of research that documents gameplay in contexts amenable to the researcher and not the players. This research was an attempt to begin to unpack these ideas.

Analysis of the findings of this study found that players of the Massively

Multiplayer game World of Warcraft engaged in problem solving of four types: Game- related problems, player-presented problems, problems of cognitive dissonance, and game-presented problems. The problem type most commonly attended to by players was the Game-related problems with game-presented problems receiving the least amount of attention. As players engaged in problem solving they made frequent use of the gamespace. They used add-ons to streamline information needed to solve problems, utilized hardware to serve as extension of their own cognitive processes, and accessed the knowledge held by the community in this process of problem solving. 191

During this problem-solving process, the players distributed their cognition across the gamespace in two distinct ways: across the hardware and software, and across multiple, overlapping social spaces. Player used the keyboard and mouse bindings as an extension of cognitive processes with hardware bindings used to hold spell and ability information while the player’s relegated these spells and abilities to automatized muscle memory. Software add-ons were used to create workflow efficiency in handling in-game information. This included the use of add-ons that turned statistical data, such as health, into color-coded representations. This enabled players to tune out this information, but keep it in their peripheral until necessary.

Players further distributed their cognition across social spaces. The two dominant spaces were the game of WoW and the team’s Vent channel. Players would often engage in sustained conversations or problem-solving practices in the Vent channel while engaged in intensive dungeon-related activity in-game. Players further existed in the in- room social space and gameplay would, on occasion, overlap with real-world interactions via people or through technology, such as text messages and Facebook.

Through the final set of findings of this study, I sought to understand how players move through an iterative cycle of learning in game and how Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes of participation are operationalized in this cycle. My findings suggest this iterative cycle of learning occurs at two distinct levels: at the game-level and the Game-level.

At the game-level this cycle occurs in a process of action-observation-invention- reflection. In this game-level cycle of learning four of Steinkuehler’s (2008) six modes are utilized. Cognitive apprenticeship and collaborative problem solving occur 192 throughout while reciprocal apprenticeship occurs at the action phase. Analysis of my findings suggests that novel literacy practices serve less as a mode of participation than as a gateway to this process.

At the Game-level the learning cycle is more robust and features an action phase, an interconnected observation and reflection phase, followed by an invention phase. This cycle of learning is characterized by a constant use of collaborative problem solving and distributed cognition. Reciprocal apprenticeship occurs at the action phase with scientific habits of mind as a component of the observation and reflection phase. Computational literacy is most prevalent at the invention phase while again the novel literary practices serve as a gateway into this process.

This study contributes to the literature of games and learning as it is one of the initial research studies to attempt to capture a holistic account of gameplay practices of multiple gamers simultaneously outside of a classroom or research settings. It also contributes to the literature by moving beyond studying gameplay as a player-software interaction. Instead it attempt to understand games as more than software, but as a social space that provides players opportunities to engage in complex learning opportunities.

This study was a direct response to the research literature that seeks to advance the investigation into the complex social spaces outside of games (e.g. Squire, 2003;

Steinkuehler, 2006; Salen, 2008) and how these spaces operate as third places

(Oldenburg, 1999) that allow for players to engage in complex learning (Steinkuehler, &

Duncan, 2008) and socialization (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). 193

Implications for teaching and learning that can be drawn from my findings suggest instructors need to move beyond the game-as-software perception of games. This game-as-software approach marginalizes the Game aspect which my findings indicate are more instrumental in the learning process of games. A pivot toward a more Game-centric understanding of games in the classroom will require teachers to increase their literacy in the games they choose to implement so as to recognize the “highly specialized forms of language for in-game social interaction and genres of story-telling” (Steinkuehler, 2008, p. 12). This Game-centric position also requires educators to position games as social spaces for learning rather than tools for explicit instruction.

Implications for research that can be drawn from my findings suggest that, similar to teaching and learning, games and learning research must move from research that posits games as designed objects to documenting the social spaces that exist around them.

Since the bulk of research into MMO spaces in the mid-2000s (e.g., Nardi & Harris,

2006; Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006; Yee, 2006) the scale and scope of Games has dramatically changed thanks in part to cheaper hardware, faster Internet, and the rise of gaming as a spectator activity through such sites as Twitch, YouTube Live, and Discord.

Documenting these dynamic Games will require the incorporation of smaller cases studies, such as this research, and large-scale quantitative research that generate accurate pictures of what players do in conjunction with, but outside of the games they play. 194

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