Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture

T. L. Taylor

Feb 2009 · MIT Press

About this ebook

A study of Everquest that provides a snapshot of multiplayer gaming culture, questions the truism that computer games are isolating and alienating, and offers insights into broader issues of work and play, gender identity, technology, and commercial culture.

In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps—as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces.

Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)—including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online—and offline life—and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play—and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space—what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.

Ratings and reviews

Anthropologist, Geek, Researcher, MA student at University of London and Sporadic Gamer Taylor presents an ethnographic study of the game Everquest, how this is played differently by different types of gamers, who see the game in different lights, acquiring new meanings instead of the homogeneous idea of the ‘typical player’ so often used in studies of MMORPGs, MUDs and other game types. The main aims of the research are: • Explore the complex relationships between the online and offline realms, between playing and ‘reality’, and how boundaries that are taken for granted between real/virtual and offline/online often are blurred and intersect in the ‘total’ experiences of gamers. • Explore the different gaming realities that exist, with different types of gamers, different meanings, diverse strategies and interactions with other gamers and types of gamers. Taylor is mainly interested in the influences of social structures on gaming, and how gaming reflects and also contributes to social structures, identity creation and interaction with others. She is also interested in exploring preconceptions about gamers, defying many stereotypes, mostly derived from the media but also from the gaming community itself (e.g. their views on ‘power gamers’). In this context, Taylor has a particular interest in analyzing how women relate to gaming. Her writing style is very ‘transparent’ and reflexive, as she unfolds her personal thoughts and reactions during the research process, which makes it a very appropriate reading for anyone studying research techniques. Taylor also challenges some (male) notions of research as needing detachment from the object of study; she adopts a feminist-inspired approach and argues that er study was only possible thanks to the very opposite of detachment – deep engagement with the game, gamers, and the whole world of game-related materials, websites, guild meetings, fan faires and so on. The research methods used are: • Ethnographic research (participation, participant observation, observation) – the borderline between ‘native’ and ‘researcher’ is deleted as Taylor clearly assumes her identity as a gamer • Semi-structured interviews (producers, designers, some gamers) • Documentary analysis – of game manuals, of supporting websites, comics, etc. Taylor is a gamer herself, which means that part of the data gathered is self-reflexive on her own experiences. It becomes difficult to distinguish whether she is playing ‘for research’ or just playing, then reflecting; in some occasions she did seem to set of to meet gamers, attend guild meetings or fan faires with her research cap on – but again the roles of gamer and researcher overlap. Taylor combines text and audience research. To what was already mentioned about ethnographic research, she adds a historical analysis of the MMORPG genre, describes and interprets in detail the technical-structural characteristics of the website (e.g. porting, buffing; changes in design) and how these influenced game play and social interactions between players (e.g. extinction of porting leading to less social interaction in some areas of the world; cosmopolitanism). The integration of text and audience research – interweaving the two – is remarkable. Besides some of the positive aspects mentioned above – challenging of pre-conceptions and stereotypes and a complex integration of text and audience research, of online and offline realities and experiences – the level of self-reflexivity shown is in my opinion a great strength. The way Taylor reflects on her thoughts and decisions when choosing her first EQ character (avoiding sexualized human, ending with necromancer gnome) and the way she presents the consequences this had for her gaming and research are very useful. In terms of weaknesses, maybe it would have been good if she could support some of her claims – for example that ‘most players’ do this or

About the author

T. L. Taylor is Associate Professor in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She is the author of Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press).