State of MMO game Studies: Identities, Participatory Culture, and Structural Forces

Roger Altizer
For a Pound of Virtual Flesh: Tales of Trade in World of Warcraft

goldfarming

(TAP while playing)

bbc and Ge Jin’s accounts different (normal gamers v. poor laborers, etc.)

Gamer Generation//Revolution documentary

Dan Burk (UCI)
Copyright and Paratext in On-Line Gaming

gaming capital (accumulating expertise, social status, etc.)
drives play but also drives cheating

[Mark]but cheating seems to attempt to bypass in-game (ludic) capital, not necessarily social capital.. actually disengaged with social capital since leveling affords the time to gain social capital (and cultural capital)[/Mark]

Developers and others should think about designs, control methods, etc. that affect what you gain by cheating… how much of total gaming capital is derived from ludic expertise? Is the expertise performative or purely appearance based?

covers a brief history of copyright and derivitive work in other media and then games and different forms of control in games

Mia Consalvo
Translating Vana’ diel: The Hybrid Culture of Japanese and Western Game Players

ffxi and japanese influence of videogames
history of western adoption of japanese art (otaku going back to impressionists)

history and lore presented in game lets those who’ve played previous games display gaming capital

hybrid place that isn’t japanese and not western but allows players to encounter the other

Cassandra Van Buren
World of Warcraft Machinima Makers

foundations: film history, emergent participatory culture but becoming commercialized

reform game space into your own narrative

study is two fold: documenting and looking at machinima as posthuman creative activity (ethnography), wants to capture the different ways its done before they become standardized or commercialized(?)

Dmitri Williams (and Tracey Kennedy and Bob Moore)
Behind the Avatar: The Patterns, Practices and Functions of Role Playing in MMOs

looking at RP in mmoRPgs

mix between quant and qual work
Dmitri did the number crunching and Tracey did the ethnography
RP high groups tend to score higher in having been diagnosed with depression, addiction, etc.

used Nick Yee’s motivations scales (immersion, achievement, social)
RPers more focused on social and immersion and not so much achievement

the people that Tracey interviewed had very specific reasons for RPing… escapism, etc.
about half of them volunteered that they were using it as an outlet for therapeutic outlet

same numbers of RPers on all servers