“I hope your mom gets cancer and dies!» An anthropological study of sociality within virtual worlds Constanze Almklov Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the Master’s degree Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen May 2018 Table of contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................. III Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. IV Table of figures ...................................................................................................................... V Glossary ................................................................................................................................ VI Chapter 1: Introduction ..........................................................................................................1 Background ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Project objectives ............................................................................................................................... 2 Problem/questions ......................................................................................................................... 3 Analytical limitations ..................................................................................................................... 4 Methodology...................................................................................................................................... 5 Significance ....................................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 2: The Fieldsite ..........................................................................................................7 Choosing the fieldsite ......................................................................................................................... 7 The rules and fiction of the game ....................................................................................................... 8 Character specific rules ................................................................................................................. 8 Environment specific rules ........................................................................................................... 15 Play specific rules ........................................................................................................................ 20 The people who play Guild Wars 2, and how they play it ................................................................. 23 The people who play Guild Wars 2 ............................................................................................... 24 How players interact with the game ............................................................................................. 27 How players interact with each other ........................................................................................... 30 Chapter 3: Methodology .......................................................................................................33 The plan and how it changed ............................................................................................................ 33 Identifying as a researcher on the Inquisitioners Map .................................................................. 35 Using Antronewb´s Research Guild (ARG) to interview informants .............................................. 40 Anthropological research in virtual worlds ....................................................................................... 43 Online apprenticeship .................................................................................................................. 43 “Going native” in an online context ............................................................................................ 45 Final thoughts on my methodological choices .................................................................................. 47 Chapter 4: Forming relationships within Guild Wars 2 ...........................................................48 I Defining terms ................................................................................................................................. 48 Noob vs newb vs new player......................................................................................................... 48 Gamers ........................................................................................................................................ 49 How a newb becomes a gamer ..................................................................................................... 51 Classification of relationships in Guild Wars 2 ................................................................................. 54 Kinship ........................................................................................................................................ 55 Friendships and partnerships ....................................................................................................... 57 Enemies ....................................................................................................................................... 61 How relationships are formed in Guild Wars 2 ................................................................................. 61 What the game allows for ............................................................................................................. 61 A common enemy ......................................................................................................................... 62 Chapter 5: Rituals in virtual worlds ........................................................................................68 Game-created rituals ........................................................................................................................ 68 Gamer created rituals ....................................................................................................................... 71 Rites of passage ............................................................................................................................... 72 Guild Wars 2 as communitas and social structure ............................................................................. 76 Reciprocity – The curse of cancer .................................................................................................... 77 Chapter 6: The digital human ................................................................................................83 Avatars, characters and the self ........................................................................................................ 83 The avatar ................................................................................................................................... 84 Gender......................................................................................................................................... 86 Play and work .................................................................................................................................. 89 Chapter 7: Conclusions and final thoughts ............................................................................93 How noobs are welcomed in GW2 ................................................................................................... 93 How noobs are welcomed in other online games .......................................................................... 93 Concluding thoughts .................................................................................................................... 94 Appendix ..............................................................................................................................96 Table of litterature ........................................................................................................................... 96 II Abstract Virtual worlds serve as new digital spaces in which humans interact with each other but also with the machines and mechanics on which the virtual worlds are built, creating new frameworks for sociality. By questioning how new players are welcomed in virtual world, this thesis aims to address the more all-encompassing question of whether or not virtual worlds are legitimate places of research, or if the sociality found in them are simply reproductions of real life constructed by game developers. While the study of virtual worlds has been around for quite a while, the specific study of sociality within virtual worlds is still in its early stages, leaving the topic of new gamers within virtual worlds seemingly untouched in previous studies. The findings presented in this thesis will give an overview of how some aspects of being new to a virtual world may be explained with anthropological theories of social structure and relations, the resistance of power, rituals and reciprocity. These topics have been explored within the online game Guild Wars 2 using participant observation, and semi- structured and informal interviews, as well as a research guild specifically created to get past the official account given by the general gamer population. Although a small contribution to the anthropological field of virtual worlds, this thesis suggests