Digital Games as Designed Experience: Reframing the Concept of Immersion

Transcription

1 Digital Games as Designed Experience: Reframing the Concept of Immersion By Gordon Calleja A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington 2007

2 Contents Acknowledgements...3 Abstract..4 Introduction...5 Chapter 1: The Study of Games...11 Chapter 2: The Virtual.38 Chapter 3: Metaphors of Immersion, Presence and Transparency..82 Chapter 4: A Tale of Two Worlds..100 Chapter 5: The Digital Game Experience Model: Macro-Involvement.132 Chapter 6: The Digital Game Experience Model: Micro-Involvement..175 Chapter 7: Designing Experience: Digital Games and Other Fictions Future Directions References Bibliography 251 2

3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Brian Opie, my thesis supervisor, for his dedicated guidance, wisdom and unending patience. I am also grateful to the English Department at Victoria University of Wellington for its support as well as the university at large for providing me with a Doctoral Scholarship. This award was the reason for moving away from Massey University, where the thesis project initially started. A heartfelt thanks goes to my supervisors at Massey, Joe Grixti and Warwick Tie for their guidance and stimulating conversations. I also thank Thomas Malaby for his interest in my work and valuable feedback. Finally I would like to express my gratitude to Ivan Callus, for his life-long mentoring and unflinching belief in my abilities. Thanks also go to Colin and Chez Legget-Cook for their friendship and support; Pippin Barr for the feedback and the game-discussions; and Gary Elshaw who read the entire manuscript at ridiculously short notice. I would also like to thank my parents and friends in Malta who made me believe I could get this far. Finally, I would like to thank my friend and partner, Anne Hamarsnes for standing by me in all the difficult times and bearing with my ceaseless game-banter. Thank you all. 3

4 Abstract Games are a complex social phenomenon which seem to elude holistic categorisation. Attempts at formulating stable, universal definitions of games seem to always fall short of the mark, leaving important aspects of particular games unaccounted for. Yet these omissions can often be as instructive as the ground covered by attempts at definition, reminding us of the multiple perspectives that are relevant to understanding the role of games in social reality. This thesis will take as its object of study the player experience of graphically represented digital games. It will focus specifically on various forms of engagement with digital games, ranging from general motivations and attractions to a detailed analysis of moment by moment involvement in game-play. An important component of game involvement is the shortening of the subjective distance between player and game environment, often yielding a sensation of inhabiting the space represented on screen. This phenomenon is known by the terms presence and immersion. The latter is the more commonly used term in popular and academic discussions of game engagement, but its widespread use has diminished its analytical value. The term presence is similarly affected, with the main figures in the field of presence theory often using the term with divergent or even conflicting applications. This thesis will therefore examine the application of these two terms and propose an alternative conceptualization of the phenomenon they are being used to describe, which will be represented by the term incorporation and a model of gameplay which I am naming The Digital Game Experience Model. The performance of a game occurs in two, often simultaneous, domains: the player s subjective or noetic dimension, and the visible practice of playing. Rather than viewing digital games as a set of formal rules, the thesis emphasizes their status as powerful forms of aesthetically designed experience that go beyond assumptions of games as bounded domains defined by a specified set of rules. In this conception of games the virtual is viewed as being a constituent part of the real, challenging the commonly held assumption that the two stand in opposition to each other. The centrality of human subjectivity in the game process lies at the very heart of the challenges game theorists face in the process of their analysis, which The Digital Game Experience Model is intended to advance. 4

5 Introduction Games are a complex social phenomenon which seems to elude holistic categorisation. Attempts at formulating stable, universal definitions of games seem to always fall short of the mark, leaving important aspects of particular games unaccounted for. Yet these omissions can often be as instructive as the ground covered by attempts at definition, reminding us of the multiple perspectives that are relevant to understanding the role of games in social reality. One such perspective is the view of games as manifestations of the structures by which the human mind organizes reality. Games reflect aspects of the society and culture that made them while contributing to that society in the process, making their understanding a recursively spiralling process of exploration into collective knowledge and social practices. To further complicate this process of understanding, the performance of a game occurs in two, often simultaneous, domains: the player s subjective or noetic dimension, and the visible practice of playing. Game-play includes actions ranging moving a piece on a game-board, pulling on a joystick, or sprinting, ball in hand, towards a distant white line. Most importantly, a game becomes a game when it is played; until then it is only a set of game-props awaiting human engagement with them. The centrality of human subjectivity in the game process lies at the very heart of the challenges game theorists face in the process of their analysis. These difficulties are not aided by the fact that the term games includes a wide variety of disparate activities. Although Poker, Fencing and Half- Life 2 (Valve Software, 2004b) all fall under the general heading of games, they entail very different forms of engagement. The last of these three represents a relatively new form of game, the digital game. Although digital games have been around for just over three decades, their presence in popular culture has become pervasive. Since the arrival of the first commercially available consoles like the Atari VCS and computers like the Spectrum ZX, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64, digital games have slowly altered the landscape of media entertainment. In my home village in Gzira, Malta, as soon as school is over, the roofs and streets would be covered with swarms of kids playing football. As soon as the Commodore Amiga hit the shops, the streets and roofs emptied. Now, when the school-bell rang the swarms of kids had joysticks strapped to their bags instead of footballs. The football tournaments 5

6 moved indoors, to the houses of the lucky few that owned an Amiga. Digital gaming, particularly to people of my generation and beyond, has become an important aspect of everyday life. This thesis will take as its objects of study, the player experience of graphically represented digital games. It will focus specifically on various forms of engagement with digital games, ranging from their general motivations and attractions to a detailed analysis of moment by moment involvement in game-play. An important component of game involvement is the shortening of the subjective distance between player and game environment, often yielding a sensation of inhabiting the space represented on screen. This phenomenon is known by the terms presence and immersion. The latter is the more commonly used term in popular and academic discussions of game engagement, but its general use has diminished in analytical value. The term presence is similarly affected, with the main figures in the field of presence theory often using the term with divergent or even conflicting applications 1. Part of the work done in this thesis will therefore be to examine the application of these two terms and propose a clearer conceptualization of the phenomenon they are being used to describe. An integral part of this conceptual analysis will be the formulation of a model of game-play which I am naming The Digital Game Experience Model. The thesis opens with an overview of the main approaches and key debates that have been influential in the growing field of Game Studies. Although play and games have been studied academically long before digital games came about, the recent and massive popularity of these media objects in contemporary societies has fostered rapid growth in academic attention. Until recently, academic research into games presented games as exemplifying theories developed in disciplinary contexts which were not specific to games. The social, cultural and economic significance of digital games in today s world has burst gaming, particularly adult gaming, out of the stigmatized closet of sub-cultural nerd-dom into mainstream entertainment media. This has encouraged academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to turn their attention towards digital games as sites for analysis. Since 2001, the field of Game Studies has expanded rapidly through an increasing number of game-focused conferences, peer-reviewed journals and book publications. The variety of academic perspectives that are now brought to bear on the study of games has also 6

7 resulted in contesting theories and accounts that can often be traced to the epistemological biases of parent fields. Chapter 1 signposts these issues while positioning my own thinking in relation to these developments. It also introduces two important threads that will run through the remainder of this work. The first relates to the commonly held view within Game Studies that games are somehow separate from the everyday by a clearly definable boundary often called the magic circle. This chapter critiques the oppositional relationship this concept implies, and related binaries such as play/work and real/virtual. The second thread is the need to acknowledge the specificity of the mediated form of digital games. The instantiation of the game within a virtual environment encourages specific modalities of interaction, identification of which is formative for the conceptual model of digital game involvement outlined in chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 2 takes up both of these threads and develops them into a discussion of the significance of the term virtual in the analysis of digital games. Terms like virtual worlds, virtual environments, virtual communities and virtual reality are often used interchangeably, but an analysis of the distinctiveness of these technological artefacts depends upon a more precise application of these terms. This chapter thus sets out how each of these terms will be used in this thesis and presents a specific definition of virtual environments and virtual worlds that avoids the common practice of using them interchangeably. The second part of the chapter takes up the critique of binaries initiated in chapter 1 with the notion of the magic circle and applies it to another, equally problematic binary; the tendency to conceptualise the virtual in opposition to the real. An alternative view of the virtual proposed by Levy (1998) and Ryan (2001) will be used to formulate a more productive conceptualization of this concept. Levy s perspective will also be applied to digital games as specific manifestations of the virtual to demonstrate how a shift in conceptualisation changes considerably the assumptions on which research is carried out. The rest of chapter 2 will give a brief history of major aspects of the development of virtual worlds. The chapter ends with a consideration of two other important sources that have influenced the development of contemporary MMOGs; tabletop fantasy role-playing games (RPGs) and cyberpunk literature. Chapter 3 gives an account of the main ways in which presence and immersion have been characterized in the literature on virtual environments and digital games. First the field of 7

8 presence theory is discussed and some of the more problematic issues in the conceptualization of presence and immersion are set out. Then the focus shifts to the use of these two terms within Game Studies. Although the term immersion is used widely within Game Studies literature, there seems to be little consensus on what the term precisely means. It is often used in its non-media specific context of deep absorption, but that ignores how the particular characteristics of the medium and text in question influence players engagements with them. This equating of immersion with general absorption overlooks the important fact that the term was applied to digital games and virtual environments to identify a specific type of experiential phenomenon. Seeing immersion as a form of deep involvement fails to differentiate the experience of being absorbed in solving a crossword puzzle from the sense of inhabiting a compelling virtual environment like Cyrodiil in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion s (Bethesda Softworks LLC., 2006). The chapter ends with a consideration of the pervasiveness of metaphors and the way in which they shape our knowledge of and assumptions surrounding a particular concept. My assessment of the literature on presence and immersion led me to conclude that, in addition to research oriented towards conceptual issues and textual analysis (and introspection on my own experience of digital games), access to knowledge about the experience of other players could significantly inform my analysis. Chapter 4 gives an account of the qualitative research carried out in two MMOGs: Planetside (Sony Online Entertainment, 2003) and World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004). This chapter describes the methods used in this research process and addresses a number of issues that are particular to qualitative research in MMOGs. The research process draws on analytical tools developed in the humanities and social sciences through a combination of textual analysis, long, semi-structured interviews with selected participants in the MMOGs and a series of focus group sessions. The chapter also provides a comparative description of Planetside and World of Warcraft that clarifies their principal similarities and differences. It is also intended to give readers who have not participated in any MMOG a clearer understanding of what happens in these virtual worlds while acting as a glossary of the common terms specific to MMOGs. The analysis of data gathered in the qualitative research yielded the skeleton of a conceptual model describing broad categories that could be divided on two temporal levels: 8

9 a general motivation for engaging with games and the moment by moment instance of game-play involvement. Chapter 5 outlines the overall structure of the model and gives a detailed account of its broader temporal phase, which I refer to as macro-involvement. This segment of the model explores issues of motivations and sustained engagement with digital games through the long-term (as opposed to immediate) aspects of the six broad categories of involvement that make up the model. These six categories, which I call frames, following Gary Alan Fine s (1983) appropriation of Goffman s (1974) concept, outline the main clusters of emphasis described by participants during the research process. The concept of the frame is useful because it highlights the fluid movement in and out of these experiential categories as well as their frequent blending. The six frames are once again discussed in chapter 6. This time the focus is on the immediate instance of game involvement. Within this phase of the model I found it useful to distinguish between engagement with ergodic 2 and non-ergodic media. Each of the six frames describes a modality of experience that players may find potentially compelling. The six frames include: affective, spatial, narrative, tactical, performative and shared involvement. These are described as ranging on a continuum from conscious to internalized involvement. The internalization of spatial and other frames of involvement can result in what I will call incorporation. This term replaces presence and immersion with the aim of displacing the binary relationships implied in these metaphors while proposing a clear conception of the experiential phenomenon they are employed to describe. It replaces the uni-directional plunge of player into game-space implied by the term immersion with one of simultaneous assimilation of the digital environment and presence to others within it. Throughout the thesis I argue for analytical models that account for the specificity of digital games. Chapter 7 considers their continuities with other media technologies. As the multitude of academic perspectives that can be brought to bear on digital games would offer different forms of continuities, chapter 7 expands only upon those that relate to the main concerns of the thesis: the reconsideration of binary arrangements such as game/nongame, real/virtual present/absent, and the resulting relationship between user and virtual environment that this shifting of theoretical ground implies. These issues are explored through Jorge Luis Borges short story Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. The thematic content 9

10 and formal structure of this pre-digital (1940) work challenge these binary formulations and foreground the centrality of textuality and social practice in any act of artistic creation, whether its outcome is a short-story, virtual world, movie or theatrical play. The chapter ends with a discussion of the practical applications and the possible future directions for further research into the conceptual model proposed in this thesis. I have opted to use the term digital game rather than computer game or video game to preserve the generality of application which does not privilege any particular hardware format over another. Although the conceptual model developed in this thesis is also applicable to the broader category of graphical virtual environments 3 I have retained the use of the term player instead of user both to emphasize the gaming roots of this work as well as to highlight the internal, subjective dimension that lies at the heart of any textual engagement. 1 Discussed in chapter 3. 2 The concept of ergodicity described by Espen Aarseth (1997) is discussed in Chapter 1. 3 As defined in chapter 2. 10

11 Chapter 1: The Study of Games References to digital games are starting to appear in every aspect of contemporary life. If games were considered the domain of a specific interest group two decades ago, they have have now become the pastime and passion of the masses. Interest in games now ranges across cultures, social groupings and age groups. Game adverts are seen anywhere from bus stops in downtown Wellington to giant billboards portraying the anime avatars of Ragnarok Online (Gravity Corporation, 2002) spread over central Bangkok to regular articles about World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) in the Dagbladet, one of Norway s foremost newspapers. It is no exaggeration to say that digital games have become a pervasive element of everyday life in the contemporary world. Their presence demands attention from across the academic spectrum. Approaches to studying games The first volume of the journal Games and Culture offered a number of academic perspectives on the question Why Game Studies now? It is reassuring to see the diversity of the authors academic backgrounds. Games can be viewed from a variety of perspectives, none of which can ignore the role of the human player to enable the game process to take place. It could be argued that the complexity of games, and the diversity of perspectives that can be brought to bear upon them, is a result of the human presence in the feedback loop between player and game. The indispensability of the human actor to the game process implies all the difficulties and unknowns that studies of mind, cognition and the social bring with them, creating opportunities for studying games and game-play in a wide variety of disciplines: Why do we want to make games and game-play our object of study? Given a field which is interdisciplinary varied and empirically varied in the extreme, there are a great number of different reasons to do research and a great number of types of research to pursue. A more or less complete list reads like an A-Z list of subjects from a major university (Aarseth, 2003). 11

12 The last five years have seen an unprecedented increase in research and publications on games (Bryce & Rutter, 2006). Although this interest is a testament to the perceived significance of studying games, the diversity of approaches has created a number of disagreements about the ways in which games can be studied. These can be traced on two axes of difference: on the one hand, there are significant disagreements in determining what kinds of activities can be classified as games, and what disciplines and methods are appropriate for their study. Common usage applies the term game to a wide range of activities, but research is facilitated by more precise conceptualisations. It is common, for example, to call virtual worlds like Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003) games, where it is clear, even to a casual visitor, that there are few, if any, specific game-objectives. Various games can be created or organised inside it, but is not in itself a game, much the same way that a village piazza is not a game but games are often played on it. With Second Life this distinction is easy to argue, but what happens when we consider EVE Online (CCP Games, 2003) or any other MMOG, or for that matter Half-Life 2 (Valve Software, 2004b)? Are these games in the same way that table-tennis or fencing? Do analytical frameworks and theories established for games apply to digital as well as non-digital games? Answering these questions is not made easier by the variety of disciplinary perspectives, but working towards forming a consensus on such problematic issues constitutes an important step in establishing a stronger platform for research collaboration. Another way of reconciling disciplinary differences has been proposed by Aarseth (2006) in a recent paper titled Mapping the Madness: A Game Analysis Framework. The paper aims to counter the notion that studying games-as-texts is opposing or incompatible with studies focusing on the player. Aarseth offers a map of the sub-fields related to the study of games, whose aim is to identify varying approaches that revolve around the study of games and players: Ontological: The structural study of game components and configurations. Aesthetic: The study of games as art, its history, evolution, and use of artistic elements. Clinical/Sociological: The study of how games affect society and the individual. Critical: The study of games as a representation of an ideology or as part of a broader cultural phenomenon. 12

13 Utilitarian: The study of how games can be useful. Exploratory: The attempt to invent new and better games. Affirmative: To affirm an existing theoretical paradigm (p. 2). Aarseth stresses the importance of studies combining a number of these approaches, while admitting that certain combinations are more compatible than others. This outline is useful in signalling to entrants to the field the possible avenues for research that may be undertaken. It also serves the important function of acknowledging that diverse methodological approaches can be traced on a common map, thus hopefully dispelling a degree of antagonism that tends to develop from such when the same research object is approached from different disciplines. This thesis finds resonance with Aarseth s call for the necessity of a combined approach to games (p. 5) and locates itself at the intersection of the ontological and clinical/sociological sub-fields. A game theory of games? In a famous editorial of the first academic journal on digital games titled Game Studies, Aarseth proclaims 2001 as the first year of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, academic field (Aarseth, 2001). The claim rests on three important events in the history of game research: the first conference dedicated to the study of digital games is held, the first postgraduate programs are offered in universities and the first issue of a peerreviewed journal dedicated to games is published online. In this editorial Aarseth states that Game Studies 4 needs to be established as a discipline related to but independent of other disciplines like Media Studies, English, Sociology and computer science, among others. The proclamation of independence by Game Studies is based on the assertion that theories developed by other disciplines cannot be applied without modification to digital games because the latter have intrinsically different qualities to media texts studied in these disciplines. This point was made by Aarseth in Cybertext:Perspectives on Ergodic Literature where he states that: The cybertext reader is a player, a gambler; the cybertext is a game-world or worldgame; it is possible to explore, get lost, and discover secret paths in these texts, not metaphorically, but through the topological structures of the textual machinery. This is not a difference between games and literature but rather between games and 13

14 narratives. To claim that there is no difference between games and narratives is to ignore essential qualities of both categories (pp. 4-5). Frasca (1999) expands Aarseth s call for exploring the specific qualities of games and applies term ludology to define a discipline that studies game and play activities. In order to sustain this claim for separation from other disciplines Game Studies needs to create a sustainable game definition that indicates clearly what the factors are that constitute this crucial difference, what Juul (2003) has called the heart of gameness. Comprehensive reviews of previous game definitions have been made by Juul, in Half-Real (2005) and Salen and Zimmerman (2003) in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Rather than rehashing their work I will summarize their conclusions. Salen and Zimmerman define games as follows: A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome (p. 80). They isolate six elements: system, players, artificiality, conflict, rules and quantifiable outcomes. According to Salen and Zimmerman, all games are intrinsically systems (p. 50). They define a system as a set of things that affect one another within an environment to form a larger pattern that is different from any of the individual parts (p. 50). Players are a crucial constituent of the game which is experienced by interacting with its system. The third element, the artificial aspect of games, refers to a mode of experience different from everyday life. This is related to the concept of the magic circle coined by Huizinga (1955) in Homo Ludens, the implications of which will be discussed more fully later in this chapter. The fourth element is conflict; all games embody a contest of powers (80). Conflict encompasses both competition and collaboration with other players as well as conflict with a game system (such as the case in solo games). Rules are seen as being essential to games enabling play through defining what players can and cannot do. A quantifiable outcome or goal means that at the end of a game a player has either won, lost or at least received some sort of numerical score. This element distinguishes games from play, which has no quantifiable outcome. Juul creates a model for defining games which he calls the classic game model (Juul, 2005, p. 22). His aim is to create a definition that applies both to non-digital and digital games and in so doing show the relationship between them. 14

15 A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable (p. 36). This definition is built on six constituent elements: Rules, variable and quantifiable outcome, valorisation of outcome, player effort, player attachment to outcome and negotiable consequences. Juul argues that because rules can be computed by a machine or enforced by human participants, they are the common factor linking digital and non-digital games. Games are therefore transmedial. This is a term that Juul uses to drive home the point that games are not restricted to any particular medium or objects. Chess can be played with the classic pieces, marked bottle tops on a board made of sand or through a computer. In his account, the rules constitute the system of relations which is the game, and these rules are independent of the media by which effect is given to the rules. Rules also create the possibility of a variable and quantifiable outcome. This refers to a definitive state of affairs which is objectively final at the end of the game and is valorised by the players involved. Some of the possible outcomes are objectively better than others and therefore harder to obtain, and these valued outcomes are a result of player effort. The rules of the game define which player actions can influence the state of the game and thus its outcome. The player has to therefore invest some amount of effort for the game to actually occur. This effort will tend to result in an attachment to the outcome of the game. Winning is favoured over losing and yields more pleasure. Juul states that this element of the definition is less formal than the others and is dependent on the player s attitude. Finally the consequences of the game are negotiable. Games can therefore be optionally assigned consequences that reach beyond the domain of the game. Juul adds a proviso for this element of his definition by saying that the consequences can be varied per game session. Juul provides a diagram that maps a number of activities in three concentric circles: games, borderline cases and not games. Traffic, hypertext fiction and free-form play are examples of non-game activities. Pen and paper role-playing games (hereafter referred to as RPGs 5 ), games of pure chance and open-ended simulations like Simcity (Maxis Software, 1989) are 15

16 borderline cases because they do not satisfy all six categories of the classic game model. Juul s discussion does not clarify what the difference between the status of borderline games and non-games implies for game analysis. They are both considered activities that fall outside the classic game model. Juul is however explicit about the fact that the latter is no longer an adequate model to understand games because of the development of games like RPGs and the majority of video games: The classic game model is no longer all there is to games. With the appearance of role-playing games, where a game can have rules interpreted by a game master, and with the appearance of video games, the game model is being modified in many ways (p. 52). The usefulness of this model is therefore not in creating a strict taxonomy of what constitutes a game and what does not, but rather, as Juul himself states, it provides a barebones description of the field of games; it explains why computers and games work well together; it explains why games are trans-medial and it points to some recent developments in games (p. 54). He performs the important function of laying the foundation for a formal perspective on traditional games while highlighting how digital media are changing this conception. By admitting that this model has its limitations in the context of contemporary developments in digital games Juul implies that we need to ask how video games deviate from this model; what aspects of games like Half-Life 2, (Valve Software, 2004b) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks LLC., 2006)or World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) are omitted when the classic games model is applied to their analysis? Ludology and its discontents A number of theorists working with games have objected to Game Studies and its aim of creating a game theory of games. Opposition to Game Studies can be traced back to its declared inception in 2001 (Aarseth, 2001) in the form of the narratology versus ludology debate. These two positions have been discussed across a number of game conferences and papers as well as being a central focus of First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (Wardrip-Fruin & Harrigan, 2003), which includes a good primer to the debate. The main thread of the discussion related to the centrality of narrative in game analysis. 16

17 The ludologists held that narrative is an important aspect of games but not the dominant element and thus a direct application of narrative theory to the analysis of games would not yield a sufficiently well rounded account. The narratologists, for their part, claimed that digital games are part of a long tradition of textual representation designed to tell stories that can be studied using narrative theory. A related disagreement between the two camps relates to the ludologists claim for a creation of a separate field of Game Studies which the narratolgists feel is not a necessary institutional move. It is worth noting that the ludologists have been both the strongest voice in the discussion as well as the more identifiable group. It has also been recently claimed by Murray that the whole discussion was in fact a form of academic monologue created and fuelled by the ludologists: The ludology v narratology argument cannot be resolved because one group of people is defining both sides of it. The ludologists are debating a phantom of their own creation (Murray, 2005). Despite Murray s claims the argument has abated considerably in recent years with both sides admitting that there were considerable misunderstandings which interfered with positioning the discussion to more neutral ground. At the 2003 Level Up Conference, Frasca delivered a paper with the aim of clearing some of the confusion that arose around the discussion. In it he claims that the ludologists, referring specifically to himself, Juul, Aarseth and Eskelinen, do not reject narrative and goes on to give examples of how each of them has highlighted the importance of considering narrative theory when considering games. He also feels, like Tosca (2003) before him, that accusations of academic separatism levelled against ludologists are unfair, especially when one takes into consideration the multiple perspectives published in Computer Game Studies, the journal which is most commonly associated with the ludologists. Frasca claims that the term narratologist, as it has been used in Game Studies, varies from its wider application outside it: The de facto definition of a narratologist in this so called debate seems to be a scholar that either claims that games are closely connected to narrative and/or that they should be analysed at least in part- through narratology. However, the widely accepted definition of narratologist in the Humanities is- a scholar who studies 17

18 narrativology, a set of theories of narrative that are independent of the medium of representation (Frasca, 2003). He therefore feels that it would be helpful to keep the term narratologist to its established use and follow Mateas (2002) suggestion to use the term narrativist to refer to a scholar who uses narrative and literary theory as a foundation upon which to build a theory of interactive media (p. 34). Frasca also notes how, in the ludology/narratology debate, the ludologists are identified yet the narrativists are not. The debate tends to revolve around the ludologists, with counterarguments made to their statements rather than vice versa. One reason for this is that the label of narratology has tended to represent the varied groups that disagree with the often clearly stated views of the ludologists, rather than define a specific position itself. The question of narrative, once one digs beneath the surface claims made in the tired debate, as it has been often called (Steinkeuhler, 2006; Tosca, 2003), detracts attention from the more considerable epistemological and methodological conflicts between the ludologists and various other clusters of interest. This opinion has been articulated by Burke (2004) who situates the debate as within the context of a general tension in academia between ontological views that privilege the textual and those that privilege practice: What the debate boils down to in many cases is an assertion by some scholars that there is a (social or otherwise) reality which has an ontological status that cannot be reductively encompassed as text or representation. Those who argue this might concede that we might benefit at times from understanding practice or experience or society as texts, but that to make this out to be more than a provisional heuristic or metaphor, to begin to believe that text or representation is ontology, that it is turtles all the way down, is a big mistake. Burke explains that the ludologists have stated that the representational and narrative aspects of games are important while emphasising concrete practice of their consumption: the experience of play. The other aspect to the debate is a methodological one, according to Burke. He sympathizes with the concerns expressed by Aarseth, Juul, Eskelinen and Frasca with regards to the emphasis placed by a number of game scholars on representational elements of games at the expense of a serious consideration of game rules and mechanics: 18

19 In the context of games criticism, this tendency might lead to a narratologist placing enormous interpretative weight on the fact that most first-person shooters are structured by conflicts between the player s avatar and small groups of three to six enemies, seeing this as a narrative choice that has authorial intent behind it, that can be related to various similar kinds of narratives in other media The problem is that the narratological kinship between Die Hard and first-person-shooters is a much more complicated matter in its actual historical evolution. If anything, when first-person-shooters first appeared with narratological structure that resembled the narrative of action films, to some extent that content was a superficial add-on rather than a deep structure of game-play, a kind of narratological skin If some academics interested in games have protested about narratology, this style of writing is often what they re really talking about, rather than criticising a very legitimate and important kind of games criticism which focuses on the narrative structure of a game, or on the larger ways the narrative functions in games and between games, or legitimate and necessary concerns with the meaning and content of games. Burke further states that this mis-application of theory is related to a lack of engagement with the object of study, in this case games. Like Aarseth before him (Aarseth, 2003), he criticises academics who write about games without having played and analysed them first. This fresh perspective on the discussion teases out the focal points without getting caught up in overly personal and somewhat petty skirmishes. 6 If current discussion has moved on from the ludology/narratology debate, the underlying tensions that Burke outlines have not abated. The view of Game Studies as a separate discipline, or even that games require specific analytical theories that take into account their game structure, or gameness, have been ardently refuted by media studies theorists with an interest in games. In a review of Juul s book in Convergence, Wilson (2006) succinctly summarises another dimension of the debate: Designers, gamers and writers have gotten along without the crystalline purity of an idea of gameness or a neo-structural account of the relation between rules and fiction; perhaps the job of the academic aesthetician is to generate informed, sensitive evaluations of particular games on their own terms rather than abstract 19

20 prescriptions. Apart from delaying the advent of an academic criticism that might be useful to those designing games, or learning how to, one is left wondering what precisely is at stake in this late bloom of ludology (Wilson, 2006). Wilson summarises the tension on the two axes of difference I referred to earlier: diversity among the games being discussed and disciplinary methodologies used to study them. If the breadth of variety in objects that are called games is unquestionable, attempts at defining common characteristics by Juul, Salen, Zimmerman are an important step in the development of game theory. I believe that such work is crucial for creating a theoretical framework for the study of games. What is important to keep in mind, both by the creators of such frameworks and their critics, is that theories are likely to remain provisional. The processes of identifying characteristics common to all games, and of building theoretical frameworks should be mutually supportive. A critical issue however is whether digital and non-digital games can be fully accommodated within the one framework. The specific characteristics of digital games If all games share a set of common characteristics, (one of the founding concepts of Game Studies as a separate field) then theories created for the analysis of non-digital game such as boardgames, cardgames and sports, should be applicable to digital games such as console, computer and mobile games. But there is as much disagreement between those who support this position and those who argue that digital games are distinctive as there has been among narratologists and ludologists. Bryce and Rutter (2006), for example, direct harsh criticism at Game Studies theorists seeking to form a separate discipline on the basis that the qualities described as unique are not in fact specific to games at all: Wolf stresses the aesthetic content of digital games to suggest that research into digital games adds new concepts to existing ideas in moving image theory, such as those concerning the game s interface, player action, interactivity, navigation, and algorithmic structures (2001:3). However, this emphasis on discontinuity prevents any significant comparison with other new technologies. Digital games (or rather their design and play) may well draw on the issues Wolf highlights but are they really unique in doing so? Do many of these issues have equal relevance to other 20

21 forms of multimedia design, head-up display in fighter planes (or racing driver s helmets) and programming structures in general? (p. 7). Just to mention one of the many points that can be deployed against this argument, a headup display is an interface designed to aid processing of information in the context of a very immediate material environment with terminal consequences, while digital games are virtual environments that include but are not reducible to, the interface. Making a case for an equivalence between fighter plane HUDs confuses two categorically different objects: the game s interface is only one component of the media object in question, while the HUD fully constitutes the object studied. Bryce and Rutter also critique Aarseth, as the most famous proponent (p. 10) of Game Studies on the grounds that he considers digital games to be intrinsically different (p. 8) from other games. This is a rather odd claim to make about a discipline that is founded on the view that the medium in which a game is played is not a distinguishing factor, what Juul has called the transmedial nature of games (Juul, 2005, p. 48). In their fervour to attack Game Studies, Bryce and Rutter seem to have overlooked the fact that it is exactly because theorists like Aarseth, Juul, Frasca and Eskelinen (among others) argue for a continuity between digital and non-digital games that they have been most heavily criticised. Bogost (2006) in his book on comparative video criticism Unit Operations, makes clear from the outset that he does not feel it is appropriate to create a methodology for game analysis without separating digital from non-digital games: When I speak of videogames, I refer to all the varieties of digital artefacts created and played on arcade machines, personal computers, and home consoles. Although videogames follow in the long tradition of parlour games, table games, pub games, and the many varieties of board games evolving from classic games like chess and Go, their necessary relation ends at this bit of common history (p. xiii). This work argues that digital games require specific theoretical models that account for their digitally mediated nature. Bryce and Rutter (2006) argue that this mediation can take forms other than digital: 21

22 As a games-related example, think of a simple shooting gallery game, such as one of the numerous Flash and shareware games that can be found on the Internet. As a game, this could be compared and contrasted with a game in which rocks are thrown at cans staked along the top of the fence. It may be clear that the digital game is a technological simulation of the low technology version of the game. In the digital game, technology replaces the physical action of throwing. However, by replacing the rocks with the shooting of an air rifle, we can mediate the throwing action with technology without going digital (p. 8). Equating shooting of an air rifle with moving cross-hairs on a screen and pressing mouse buttons to shoot targets made entirely of flickering signifiers (Hayles, 1999, p. 30) ignores the crucial fact that one is an activity in the material world, while the other is a simulation of such an activity engaged through a representational medium. The shooter of an air-rifle and the mouse clicker are fully aware of the different contexts of their actions making the two activities of a completely different experiential order. This is a perfect example of the critique that Burke levels against over-simplified skin level equations above. Applying the term mediation to digital game-play or rifle shooting ignores the crucial differences between a mediated activity in a wholly designed, representational space and a mediated activity in the material domain. Finding a middle-ground Crogan (2004) similarly advocates an approach that treats digital games as distinctively different to non-digital games. Unlike a number of other theorists that are critical of the ludological approach he acknowledges the importance of their efforts in fuelling the development and discussion in Game Studies. He argues that the problem with the ludological perspective is the exclusion of theories derived from textual (in the broader, cultural and media studies sense of the term) studies which inevitably informs the perspectives of the ludologists. He proposes a middle ground method that brings together theories that treat game aspects of digital games in conjunction with other work done in related fields: I nevertheless believe that the ludological insistence on the game as game points to something very significant about the specificity of games in comparison to 22

23 narrative-based media works. Hence, in the remainder of this paper, I would like to take a slightly different position in the ludology debate- that is, not one in simple opposition to the ludological stance. Rather, I propose to pursue a line of inquiry that departs from an acceptance in broad terms of the ludological approach, namely that narrative is insignificant to understanding what is of most concern for analysing a computer game as a game, that is, as a work that is played As with the analysis of other contemporary forms of entertainment, historical and contextual factors, including other media forms are relevant to this interrogation. One of the tasks would be precisely to understand the adoption by many (but not all) kinds of computer games of traditional media elements such as narrative, theme, character, and the representation of fictional worlds in a way that makes them necessary but secondary to the essential elements of game design and play. The texture and cultural inputs employed in digital games are worthwhile objects of consideration for this task, and this is so in spite of or even because of the fact that they play a different, less central role in games than in other media forms such as films, television programs and literature. The way they thematise their altered role in computer games can tell us important things about the ludological nature of computer games (p. 14). Although Crogan states that in the ludological approach narrative is insignificant in studying games, it is worth noting that when Frasca proposed the term ludology to be applied in the context of digital games (not games in general), he intended it to be used in conjunction with other theories, not as a replacement of them: Our main goal was to show how basic concepts of ludology could be used along with narratology to better understand videogames (Frasca, 1999). As was discussed above Frasca has also rejected the notion that the ludological perspective excludes narrative from the study of games. The theoretical views that Crogan proposes are closer to those of ludology than he admits. In fact, Juul s work has treated narrative structures in games, even in a book like Half-Real which is often cited as a bulwark of reductionist ludology. As Juul asserts in the opening pages of Half- Real the title refers to digital games as a hybrid of the game structures embodied in the rules and the fictional elements associated with textual elements: 23

24 In the title, Half-Real refers to the fact that video games are two different things at the same time: video games are real in that they consist of real rules with which players actually interact, and in that winning or losing a game is a real event. However, when winning a game by slaying a dragon, the dragon is not a real dragon but a fictional one. To play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as well as a fictional world (Juul, 2005). In formulating the study of video games in such terms, Juul, like Crogan is attempting to bridge the divide between the textual/representational and the formal or essentialist notion of gameness. This move is also related to exploring the divergence between digital games and the classic game model, discussed earlier. When he states that digital games problematize the classic game model, he is foregrounding the need to weave the textual and representational with the rule-based structures. Juul s recognition that the classic game model cannot account for digital games is a crucial assertion of the nature of digital games as more complex media artefacts that can be partly described, but not wholly subsumed under a game definition, precisely because they tend to enable a wider potential for action and expression than is possible in more traditional games which provide the basis for the classical game model. Again, I will be clear about my stance: theoretical models like Juul s are essential to furthering our understanding of games, even if they do not account wholly for the object under scrutiny. If Juul admits that the classic game model is limited in its application in the context of recent game developments, Half-Real acknowledges, but does not resolve, a central problem of the model: the separability of the game from the everyday world. The next step in the process of creating a framework for game analysis cannot be accomplished by thinking in terms of dualisms: game/non-game, work/play, virtual/real. Such binary opposites create clear-cut boundaries which deter a richer understanding of the object of enquiry (Malaby, 2007; Taylor, 2006). These terms will be the principal focus of the rest of this chapter, but the need to move beyond a dualistic conceptualisation will be one of the prevalent threads of this work. 24

25 Thinking outside the circle Huizinga s work Homo Ludens has been a great influence on contemporary Game Studies. One of the key defining concepts of play in Huizinga s work, and one which has been adapted by contemporary Game Studies literature (Juul, 2005; Salen & Zimmerman, 2003), is the notion of the magic circle. Huizinga s (1955) original use of the term is related to the social and cultural pervasiveness of play: All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course The arena, the cardtable, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e., forbidden spots, isolated hedged round, hallowed within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart (p. 10). For Huizinga the term refers not solely to games but to a number of social contexts where social rules distinguish one particular type of social space from another. An important aim of Huizinga s work was to propose that play is not an activity that is limited to games but a salient aspect of all facets of human culture. Thus the magic circle according to Huizinga applies to play situations rather than to games specifically. The magic circle has been used in two related ways: as a separation of play from everyday life and a more formal separation of game-space from non-game-space. It has thus been applied to two different perspectives: the experiential and the formal. A number of theorists in Game Studies have adopted the concept and applied it without considering the wider discussion in which it was developed: Although the magic circle is merely one of the examples in Huizinga s list of play grounds, the term is used here as short-hand for the idea of a special place in time and space created by a game. The fact that the magic circle is just that-a circle-is an important feature of this concept. As a closed circle, the space it circumscribes is enclosed and separate from the real world Within the magic circle, special meanings accrue and cluster around objects and behaviours. In effect, a new reality 25

26 is created, defined by the rules of the game and inhabited by its players (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003, pp ) Juul also adopts the use of the magic circle, but differentiates between its status in the context of what he calls physical games like football or tennis and digital games. He applies the magic circle in a more specific formal capacity in terms of game-space. According to Juul, physical games and board games take place in a space which is a subset of the space of the world: The space in which the game takes place is a subset of the larger world, and a magic circle delineates the bounds of the game (Juul, 2005, p. 164). Digital games, however, are viewed as being circumscribed by the hardware devices that enable their representation: But in video games, the magic circle is quite well defined since a video game only takes place on the screen and using the input devices (mouse, keyboard, controllers) rather than in the rest of the world; hence there is no ball that can be out of bounds (pp ). Juul represents these two manifestations of the magic circles by the following diagrams: Real World Space Fictional World Game-space Real World Game-space Magic Circle Figure 1 : Juul's conception of the magic circle (pp ) Magic Circle The application of the magic circle to the formal consideration of what Juul calls physical games usefully outlines the boundary inside which the rules of the game apply. This boundary can be made up of spatial and/or social perimeters and is often also temporally defined. The game can be limited to a specific area such as a tennis court or fencing piste 26

27 or woven into the everyday world such as the case in Live Action Role-Playing Games (LARPs), treasure hunts and other forms of pervasive gaming. What creates the magic circle is therefore not necessarily the physical bounds but the agreed upon conventions of play defined by the rules. But in the case of digital games, where is the magic circle? Even from this formalist perspective, the concept becomes redundant when the game-space is equivalent to the entirety of the virtual space in which mediated action can take place. The separation Juul creates between the game-space and the fictional world is not particularly useful in digital game analysis, since there is in fact no traversable space outside the gamespace. The magic circle is useful in marking out an area where game rules apply. The utility of the magic circle as a spatial marker is its ability to differentiate domains of action where game rules apply from zones in which they do not. Since this is not relevant for digital games, the formal application of the magic circle in the context of their analysis is therefore redundant. The concept of the magic circle has also been applied to the experiential dimension of game-play. Within Game Studies, it is often taken as a given that game-play involves entering what Bernard Suits has called the lusory attitude (Suits, 1978). There are distinct problems with viewing the game-space as somehow separable from the everyday, especially when viewed from an experiential perspective. Any attempt to create a clean demarcation between the game-experience and the experience of the world (supposedly) external to it will be severely challenged to explain how the players personal and social histories can be excluded from the game activity. It is hardly possible for the game-space to block out the complexity of social and personal relation. The lived experience of the players invariably informs, to different degrees depending on circumstance, the experience of the game and vice versa. The clear demarcation of game-space from non-game-space becomes even more problematic when contemporary developments in digital games, like Massively Multiplayer Online Games (hereafter referred to as MMOGs), are considered. Activities like planning and coordinating 40 man raids in World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004), which include several hours of tedious farming 7 of items that will be needed to ensure the success of the raid, are often viewed as boring chores rather than pleasurable play. Nick Yee has collected a wealth of quantitative data on MMOG players and in a recent paper 27

28 published in Games and Culture he observes how MMOG playing can often feel like a second job: The average MMORPG 8 player spends 22 hours a week playing the game. And these are not only teenagers playing. The average MMORPG gamer is in fact 26 years old. About half of these players have a full time job. Every day, many of them go to work and perform an assortment of clerical tasks, logistical planning and management in their offices, then they come home and do those very same things in MMORPGs. Many players in fact characterize their game-play as a second job: It became a chore to play. I became defacto leader of a guild and it was too much. I wanted to get away from real life and politics and social etiquette followed me in (Yee, 2006b, p. 69). Further examples of the limitations of the magic circle come in a host of other forms: companies employing people to farm in-world gold and sell it on e-bay or offer character levelling services, social and cultural issues that crop up whenever you have masses of people interact in persistent environments, virtual worlds which require real money expenditure for the acquisition of virtual goods, such as Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003) or Project Entropia (MindArk, 2003) and more. Dibbell (2006) has written a compelling account of his forays in trade of virtual assets and gold. In order to investigate the phenomenon often referred to as real money trade or the exchange of virtual world items for widely accepted currency, Dibbell embarked upon a year long stint buying and selling property, goods and gold in the popular Ultima Online (Origin Systems, 1997) MMOG. Dibbell s Play Money is a self-reflexive meditation on the wide spectrum of experiences that MMOGs enable and the profound impact these experiences can have on a person s life. Dibbell describes how his engagement with Ultima Online transformed from a form of entertainment to a full time job. He uses his experiences to foreground the inadequacy of the magic circle and the application of the work/play binary to MMOGs. Malaby (2007) affirms these observations in his paper Beyond Play: A New Approach to Games, where he argues that games studies needs to move beyond the a priori association of games with concepts like fun and play. Malaby draws on a series of anthropological studies of play in various cultures to support his view that the separability of games from 28

29 everyday life and the related separation of play from work are not empirically tenable concepts. In Malaby s own ethnographic work with gamblers in Greece, it was clear that players of various games did not view games as separable from everyday life on the grounds of their being games. Here we have an example of how an aspect of Juul, Salen and Zimmerman s models does not hold up to practical application. The idea that games must have negotiable consequences is severely problematized when consequences are not related only to material gains but also to social issues like reputation and honour. In Malaby s ethnographic work, it was clear that even in non-gambling contexts, issues of cultural standing and social network are in fact highly consequential for the players involved. This goes counter to Roger Caillois (1962) view of games as a activities of pure waste (p. 5) where the pure space (p. 6) of the game should not be encroached upon by the outside world. All of the issues discussed above frustrate attempts to set firm boundaries between game and non-game, work and play. As useful as a neat separation between game and non-game might be from an analytical perspective, the above arguments and examples, derived both from theoretical and ethnographic work, demonstrate the severe shortcomings of such a concept when applied to the study of games, particularly in contemporary developments of multiplayer digital games. Writing about the magic circle (which he calls the membrane in the following quotation) in the context of MMOGs, Castronova (2005) similarly asserts that the clear demarcation between game and non-game, virtual and real, online and offline life is losing its utility: In each area, one can see that institutions outside the membrane have begun to formally validate institutions inside the membrane. In each case, it will be seen that the process by which this validation is occurring is driven by an interesting new behaviour pattern on the part of synthetic world users: they have begun to see no line whatsoever between their online activities and their offline activities. With all of this going on, where exactly is the line between game and life? Our culture has moved beyond the point where such distinctions are helpful (p. 148). 29

30 Although Castronova finds the magic circle problematic and tries to work around it by using the concept of the membrane, the rest of Synthetic Worlds is replete with references to a separability between virtual worlds (or synthetic worlds, in Castronova s terms) and the Earth. Castronova is unable to break out of the dualist conceptualisation of separability he earlier attempts to sidestep. He problematically sets virtual worlds apart from the Earth, the use of the latter term itself speaking volumes about the firm entrenchment in dualistic thinking of here/there, Earth/synthetic worlds. Furthermore, the Earth is associated with the destruction of otherwise beautiful fantasies that can be sustained in virtual worlds: When Earth s culture dominates, the game will be over, the fantasy will be punctured and the illusion will be ended for good Living there will no longer be any different from living here, and a great opportunity to play the game of human life under different, fantastical rules will have been lost (p. 196). The magic circle concept is typically applied to an area where game rules apply, therefore, favouring its use within a formal perspective as opposed to an experiential one. The question that follows is whether it is possible to consider one without the other. Can we consider game rules in isolation from social conventions in an MMOG, for example? One clearly informs the other in such a way that the game experience is strongly influenced by the rules and mechanics written into the designed environment. Although discussing game rules separate from the game experience is profitable for one level of analysis, we need to be careful not to let assumptions made in such a context spill over to the consideration of both aspects of game analysis. Salen and Zimmerman s (2003) implicit conceptual model suggests a dichotomous separation between game and non-game that is not wholly representative of contemporary gaming realities. Taylor (2006), in her work on MMOGs titled Play Between Worlds has emphasized the importance of re-thinking the concept of the magic circle in game analysis: While the notion of a magic circle can be a powerful tool for understanding some aspects of gaming, the language can hide (and even mystify) the much messier relationship that exists between spheres-especially in the realm of MMOGs The idea that somehow-be it to preserve the magic circle and free play, to tidy up 30

31 tricky property rights questions, or to ease an anxiety born of the space s indeterminacy-we can shore up the line between the virtual and real world or between game and non-game seems to pop up more frequently in conversation (and sometimes scholarship). It often sounds as if for play to have any authenticity, meaning, freedom, or pleasure, it must be cordoned off from real life. In this regard, MMOG (and more generally, game) studies has much to learn from past scholarship. Thinking of either game or nongame-space as contained misses the flexibility of both (p. 152). One approach to overcoming the distinctions that Taylor states are problematic has been proposed by Malaby (2007) who suggests that we view games from a processual perspective. One of the first thing we must recognize is that games are processual. Each game is an ongoing process. As it is played it always contains the potential for generating new practices and new meanings, possibly refiguring the game itself (p. 8). The term processual refers to the potential of change in every engagement and favours a dynamic and recursive view of games. This means that, in contrast to a taxonomic approach, a processual one allows for the identification of persistent features of games without the need to separate them qualitatively from other domains of experience. Malaby stresses the importance of replacing rules as a starting point for game analysis. He points out the different nature of game rules from social or bureaucratic rules. The latter are intended to reduce unpredictability across cases (p. 8),while game rules are intended to do the opposite: they are about contriving and calibrating multiple contingencies to produce a mix of predictable and unpredictable outcomes (which are then interpreted) (p. 9). Malaby formulates games as processes that create carefully designed unpredictable circumstances that have meaningful, culturally shared, yet open-ended interpretations. Therefore both the game practice and the meaning it generates are subject to change. Malaby goes on to define games in terms of four types of contrived contingency : stochastic contingency, social contingency, performative contingency, semiotic contingency. Stochastic contingency refers to the random elements in games. This ranges from dice rolling to weather at a football game or lag in online gaming. Thus stochastic 31

32 contingency can be designed into a game, such as the rolling of dice in boardgames, or be extraneous to the designed intent of the game (such as the weather in an open air game). Social contingency refers to the unpredictability of the choices and decisions made by other players, whether in collaboration or opposition. Making informed deductions about the actions of other players is a key element in most games. Performative contingency refers to the execution of actions by game participants, and is thus related to the ability to carry out intended actions. This can cover anything from the athletic prowess of a runner to the technical skill of a fencer, the gaming ability of a Counter-Strike Source (Valve Software, 2004a) player, or the simple act of counting the right number of spaces in a game of Monopoly (Darrow, 1935). Finally, semiotic contingency refers to the unpredictability of meaning that is involved in interpreting the game s outcomes. As Taylor (2006) and Malaby (2007) have noted, recent developments in networked gaming, particularly in the case of MMOGs, are raising new issues with a number of assumptions in Game Studies. The advantage of Malaby s model is that it is applicable to a wide variety of games and virtual worlds without reducing them to a prescribed formula. The greatest asset of Malaby s model is that it is not built on dualistic and formulaic assumptions making it a flexible and adaptive starting point for other work to build on. The nature of the game In the course of his paper, Malaby makes a point that embodies one of the more problematic issues in formulating game theories: The essential point, then, is that games are grounded in (and constituted by) human practice, and are therefore always in the process of becoming (p. 7) Games can be approached from a variety of perspectives, but one element that is vital to any theoretical framework that seeks to give a full account of their nature is the role of human agents in configuring the particular instantiation of the game: Since a game is a process rather than an object, there can be no game without players playing (Aarseth, 2003, p. 2). In Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Aarseth (1997) adopts the term ergodic to signify the effort required by the reader, who Aarseth calls the 32

33 operator, to actively configure the cybertext into being. He stresses the need to separate the active reader from the operator in the cybertextual context: The concept of cybertext focuses on the mechanical organization of the text, by positing the intricacies of the medium as an integral part of the literary exchange. However, it also centres attention on the consumer, or user, of the text, as a more integrated figure than even reader-response theorists would claim. The performance of their reader takes place all in his head, while the user of cybertext also performs in an extranoematic sense This phenomenon I call ergodic, using a term appropriated from physics that derives from the Greek words ergon and hodos, meaning work and path. In ergodic literature, non-trivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text (p. 1). The non-trivial effort required from the user is an important cornerstone of a theoretical model of digital games. Aarseth also places importance on the role of code as a component of the signs perceived by the user, as well as the specificity of the material medium. This gives three factors whose interplay yields the cybertext: human operator, (verbal) sign and medium. These form a matrix where each of the vertices effects and is effected by the other two. Although Aarseth included (text-based) computer games in the category of cybertexts, the aim of the work was not to define digital games specifically, but to demonstrate that the cybertextual perspective could be applied to them. The triadic matrix that Aarseth posits more generally for cybertexts is a useful starting point for a basic framework charting the relationship between the salient elements that make up the digital game process. Such a specific application could also benefit from an expansion and clarification of terms more appropriate to the digital gaming situation. To keep with the terminology prevalent in the field, I will use the term player to refer to the human operator. As has been discussed above and will become clearer from later chapters, the use of the term should not be limited to the characteristics commonly attributed to play. The player end of the matrix also includes the social and cultural contexts that have an important formative role in the individual s disposition prior and during engagement with the digital game. 33

34 The specificity of the material instantiation of the game (i.e. the medium) needs to be taken into consideration. Even if the same game is being discussed, its incarnation on the Playstation 2 and a PC will influence its form and experience to varying degrees. Playing a real time strategy game using a Playstation 2 controller makes for a very different game than playing the same title on a PC using a mouse, for example. Different types of hardware also allow for different social contexts in which the games are played, for example Nintendo DS systems are handheld devices small enough to fit into a jacket pocket and easily connected via infra-red ports, permitting a wider variety of contexts and thus different experiences, than, for example, a home PC enables. The third element of the framework, the sign, will here refer to the more general sense of a signifying entity whether this is alphanumeric text, imagery or sound, as opposed to Aarseth s (necessary) qualification of the sign as a strictly verbal one. The role of the sign therefore refers to the interpretable, surface representational elements that players read in order to be able to interact with the virtual environment. But as Aarseth outlines clearly, the role of the surface sign (p. 40) has strong relations to the function of the internal code that generates it. The examples that Aarseth uses in Cybertext might express this idea more clearly. There are a number of texts that are actualised as the result of more than one level of textuality: the play is a performance of the play s script; a literary text read out loud is an audible derivative of the printed book. Aarseth differentiates the processual production of cybernetic signs from these examples by referring to the relationship between code and its interpretative surface as nontrivial : they are both intrinsic to each other as opposed to the above examples whose relationship he calls trivial, meaning that one level of manifestation is a derivative of the other (theatrical performance of a play script etc). The nontrivial relationship between the code and the interpretable sign makes the cybernetic sign of a different order than conventional signs. When this is applied to digital games, the programming code performs two structural functions: upholding the rules of the game (in the conventional, non-digital sense of the term) and implementing the mechanics of the virtual environment. The game rules and the environment s mechanics shape each other s design depending on the scope of the game or virtual environment being created. The former cannot be implemented without the latter while the latter is at times defined by the former. I thus propose to foreground the coded structures made up of game rules and 34

35 environment mechanics as a fourth category in the matrix. The resulting framework can be expressed in the following diagram: Figure 2: The Digital Game Matrix The diagram represents the four constituent elements of digital games. The diagram is also applicable to the more general category of virtual environments by removing game rules from the coded structure element. It might be useful to foreground an approach which views digital games as being games in virtual environments (Aarseth, 2003, p. 3). This conceptualisation accounts for the fact that the artefacts we call digital games, video games or computer games 9 are virtual environments whose design is informed, to varying degrees, by a set of game elements. In some cases, these game elements are so closely aligned with the affordances for action in the environment that the two can be seen as being one and the same while in other cases the game elements account only for a segment of the activities possible within them. Let us consider a game like Half-Life 2. (Valve Software, 2004b) Although it includes a number of game elements (as defined by Juul, Salen and Zimmerman, for example), players are free to ignore these and decide to wander around the environment taking appealing screenshots, making movies or seeing what happens when they throw soda cans at police officers. The environment that Half-Life 2 makes available for players to interact with is not delimited by its game objectives. Counter- Strike (Valve Software, 1998a), the popular mod 10 that sprung out of Half-Life (Valve Software, 1998b), 35

36 is similarly a virtual environment with a game implemented in it. Here, however, the game aspects are more clearly defined: there are specified limits to when rounds start and end, specific goals to be attained by the two teams, points scoring criteria, and so on. The virtual environments in which action in such online multiplayer first-person shooters (FPSs) takes place are called maps and are designed with these game-rules in mind. Despite these restrictions, players can still decide to ignore the game rules and, for example, holster their weapons, meet in a central location and have a chat. This is not what the environment was built for, but of course there is nothing stopping players from utilising it in this way aside from the round s time limits (if these are enabled from the server administrators). More importantly, players may also decide to replace the specified game with games of their own devising. One example which I have witnessed a few times on Maltese Counter-Strike servers is a variant of football, where players shoot a specific can into a defined goal area 11. Players used the same maps and code for Counter-Strike and made their own rules, thereby transforming the game without changing the environment. In a sense, therefore, Counter-Strike is two things at the same time: a game with a specific set of rules and a virtual environment in which those rules may be carried out, or not. Another case of players making use of the virtual environments provided to create their own games can be observed on some Battlefield 2142 (Digital Illusions CE., 2006) servers. The game is a typical online multiplayer FPS where two teams attempt to capture objectives and hold them for as long as possible to win each round of the game. Unlike Counter-Strike, the Battlefield (Digital Illusions CE., 2002) series lets players drive land, air and sea vehicles. The latest in the Battlefield series includes buggies that have a special speed boost ability, making them incredibly fast and consequently hard to control, not to mention susceptible to crashing and blowing up or rolling over. Although the previous titles in the Battlefield series included similar vehicles, they were not made to drive as fast, have as realistic physics or be, in simple terms, so much fun to drive. This led players to ignore the entire scope of the game and hold races in maps which presented particularly challenging courses. By expanding our view of the artefacts we call digital games to virtual environments that have the potential of generating forms of designed experience, we displace the emphasis of the discussion from problematic binary pairings such as work/play, game/non-game, real/virtual. This does not mean that concepts such as games, rules, play or fiction are not important to discussion, but that the assumptions built into the above pairings are restricting 36

37 the robustness of current theoretical frameworks. The limitations of previous approaches that focus on these binaries are becoming particularly evident with the advent of online multiplayer gaming, especially where MMOGs are concerned. MMOGs challenge established game definitions, severely blur the boundary between work and play (Dibbell, 2006; Taylor, 2006), and above all, highlight their status as important domains of social and cultural practice, (Malaby, 2007). The next chapter will therefore investigate in more detail the general characteristics of virtual environments and virtual worlds, of which digital games and MMOGs, respectively, are important constituents. 4 As there is some disagreement to whether Game Studies should be viewed as an academic field separate related to but separate from established disciplines, I will use Game Studies synonymously with Ludology to refer to this proposed new discipline, and study of games, or Game Studies with no capitals to refer to the general study of games in whatever field this might be located. 5 For ease of reference I will use the term RPGs to refer to pen and paper RPGs and digital RPGs to refer to their computer and console cousins. 6 For an example of how unproductive and personal this discussion can become see the debate between Marku Eskelinen and Julian Kucklich featured as part of the online version of First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game (Wardrip-Fruin & Harrigan, 2003) 7 Farming refers to the activity of mechanical harvesting resources or repeatedly killing mobs that are known to drop items, materials or gold as a goal in itself. 8 MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. This term is sometimes used interchangeably with MMOG or Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The former is a subset of the latter which includes other MMO genres such as MMOFPS or Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter and MMORTS, Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy. I will be using the term MMOG to refer to all these genres of online games. 9 I am using the term digital game as a blanket term covering games played on computers, consoles, hand held and other devices. 10 Mod is short for modification, referring to alterations made to published digital games by the general public. These can be entirely new games in themselves or more minor changes made to existing or new items, weapons, characters, enemies, models, modes, textures, levels, storylines and game modes. 11 The interesting thing here is that shooting other players is considered a foul and players are penalised by being sent off the field. The usual aim of hitting other players avatars becomes an undesirable action, inverting the normal rules of the game. 37

38 Chapter 2: The Virtual The previous chapter conceptualised digital games as particular types of virtual environments and MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) as forms of virtual worlds. These terms virtual environment and virtual world are often used interchangeably. More problematically they also tend to be confused with categorically different phenomena such as virtual reality and virtual communities. The vague application of these terms tends to conflate diverse technologies and their associated practices. Although this is unavoidable in popular discourse, it creates serious problems in academic contexts where clarity of terminological meaning is necessary. This becomes even more important when it comes to objects of inquiry that are of interest to a wide range of disciplines. For the sake of clarity I will therefore outline how I will be using each of these terms in this thesis. Virtual reality and virtual community can be seen as categorically different from virtual environments and virtual worlds, while the distinction between the last two is one of emphasis. Virtual Reality Since Lanier coined the term virtual reality in 1986, it has been applied to such a wide range of objects and experiences as to have lost any technical and academic specificity. The media applied it to marketing any number of diverse goods, most of which bear no relation to the actual technology. Academia has adopted the concept to signify everything from alternate universes (Thompson, 2003) or hallucinogenic drug induced experiences (Rushkoff, 1994), to a techno-mediated reinvention of the everyday (Rheingold, 1992) or, in its narrower sense, a specific type of communication system (Sherman & Craig, 2003). Heim emphasises the need to retain the technical specificity of the term: When we talk about virtual reality, we have to keep in mind that it is indeed a technology, not simply a nebulous idea. It s not synonymous with illusion or mirage or hallucination. Virtual reality is not a state of consciousness or a simulated drug trip (Heim, 1998, p. 4). 38

39 A review of the academic literature that uses the concept of virtual reality yields three major approaches for its use. At times the three are used interchangeably by the same author making it impossible to attribute each approach to specific domains of practice or analysis. These three approaches constitute a spectrum with a conception of virtual reality independent of computing technology on one end to a conception of virtual reality as a type of computing hardware, on the other. Virtual reality in its broadest application has been used to refer to domains of experience which are perceived as being other to the experience of everyday life. This has included phenomena such as dreams and altered states of perception, often in conjunction with the use of psychedelic substances or shamanic practices (Ascott, 2000; Davis, 1998; Rushkoff, 1994). Another use of the concept of virtual reality that excludes its specific technological incarnation is often found in philosophical analyses of post-modernity. Here virtual reality becomes a vague trope standing in for what Baudrillard (1983), has called the order of simulation. The problem with this use of the term is the bland ubiquity with which it can be applied. It seems to operate as a techno-savvy replacement for cultural, artistic and philosophical concerns engendered by the media at large. Botz-Bornstein (2004), for example, applies virtual reality to anything from dream-like states of mind to the transformation of the self through lifestyle and clothing choices: Eternity can be simultaneously attained through cloning and the consistent integration of "virtual reality" into one's life. Both cloning and virtual reality serve to stop time in order to transform it into something aesthetic. This is not simply an aesthetization or a stylization but, in a way more efficient than it has been possible for preceding generations, it represents the creation of a "life style" as something absolute. The texts and images demonstrate the proximity of the idea of cloning and the realm of dream as well as of the virtual: how dreamlike must be a world peopled with clones, and how consistently is virtual reality working towards the "realization" of this aim (Botz-Bornstein, 2004). The above quotation was taken from an essay about Diesel jeans titled Save Yourself where Botz-Bornstein relates the expressionless, wax-like features to the contemporary 39

40 ideals of beauty, health and youth with a process of bio-engineering and computer technology he calls the clony-virtual dreamsphere. His meandering application of the term virtual reality displays a lack of consistency within his own writing as well as a lack of specificity with regards to the technology being discussed. For the scope of this work, such a broad conceptualisation of virtual reality is too vague to have any discursive traction and will thus be avoided. A second use of the term virtual reality tends to focus on the radical expansion of mediated experiences possible through these technologies, promising a near-future where virtual reality technologies will allow users to create, share and interact with multi-sensorial representations derived seamlessly from their imagination: Virtual Reality will use your body s movements to control whatever body you choose to have in Virtual Reality, which might be human or be something different. You might very well be a mountain range of a galaxy or a pebble on the floor. Or a piano I ve considered being a piano You could become a comet in the sky one moment and then gradually unfold into a spider that s bigger than the planet that looks down at all your friends from high above (Lanier quoted in Biocca et al., 1995, pp. 4-5) The second approach to virtual reality often confuses the potential of the technology with the experiences it is able to engineer in actuality. The important distinction in this second view is that the actual technology to which the term refers is included in the consideration. Proponents of this view tend to see virtual reality as an experience rather than a technology. Biocca et al. state this succinctly in the phrase: Virtual reality is not a technology; it is a destination (Biocca et al., 1995, p. 4). Steur places stronger emphasis on the experiential when he states: It is possible to define virtual reality without reference to particular hardware. The key to defining virtual reality in terms of human experience rather than technological hardware is the concept of presence. Presence can be thought of as the experience of one s physical environment; it refers not to one s surroundings as they exist in the physical world, but to the perception of these surroundings as 40

41 mediated by both automatic and controlled mental processes. Presence is defined as the sense of being in an environment (Steuer, 1992, p. 75). There are several problematic assumptions in this view of experience, but as the experiential phenomenon that Steuer is referring to is the central concern of this work, these assumptions will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 3. For the scope of our discussion here, using virtual reality as the stand-in for a form of mediated experience such as presence, or its cousin term immersion, has the dual problem of confusing these already illdefined experiential terms as well as negating the technological dimensions that define virtual reality in its stricter sense. In this work I will therefore restrict my use of the term virtual reality to its third and more specific application following Sherman and Craig s definition: Virtual reality is a medium composed of interactive computer simulations that sense the participants position and actions and replace or augment the feedback to one or more sense, giving the feeling of being mentally immersed or present in the simulation (Sherman & Craig, 2003, p. 13). This definition of virtual reality is specific enough to allow us to differentiate between different kinds of computer representations and the experiences they afford. Using Sherman and Craig s definition, we can readily differentiate between playing a game on a standard home PC or console to playing a game on a virtual reality system and discuss the differences and overlaps in experience between the two using a specific register. Virtual communities Virtual communities are constituted by a number of individuals that share a particular interest (whether this is related to a specific activity or a social end in itself) that communicate regularly through computer networking technologies like online chat rooms, newsgroups, message boards, networked games or graphical virtual worlds. These groups vary hugely in size, social intimacy and frequency of participation but all provide a sense of social togetherness for remotely located individuals. 41

42 The distinction from virtual environments is therefore a categorical one. Virtual communities can meet in virtual environments or virtual worlds but the spatial metaphor that is a distinguishing characteristic of these is not an essential aspect of community. The emphasis here is on the connection between individuals, while the terms environment and world foreground spatiality as well as sociality. A group of people that play together regularly in the World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) MMOG is called a guild. Guilds are examples of virtual communities, while Azeroth is the virtual world in which World of Warcraft is set. Virtual environments and virtual worlds This section will give a definition of virtual environments and their relationship to digital games. As discussed in the previous chapter, virtual environments can be expressed as a matrix constituted of the user, medium, representational sign and coded mechanics. The digital games discussed in this thesis add game rules as a constituent element of this matrix, following Aarseth s view of digital games as games in virtual environments (Aarseth, 2003). Out of the terms discussed above, virtual worlds and environments are the two which are most often used interchangeably within popular and academic discussions of computer generated spaces. Klastrup (2004) notes the difficulties facing the researcher of virtual worlds when the terminology used is unclear. She rightfully argues that if we want to discuss specific environments with specific properties, it is important not to foster misjudgement by choosing wrong terminology (p. 20). Although the terms are used widely in discussions of computer mediated technology, it is surprising to find that the kind of conscious terminological reflection that Klastrup employs is typically lacking. The diversity of application of these terms makes an effort at cataloguing their use in various academic literatures over the years a largely redundant enterprise. This terminological confusion is related to the metaphorical nature of terms like environment and world imported into computing contexts. If the commonalities of these terms outside of computing contexts are central to considering these two terms, it is 42

43 just as important to acknowledge that the reason for the importation into such a context is to increase referential specificity. This means that we also need to highlight how the virtual prefix alters each term in technical application. Klastrup emphasises the problem with virtual environment s broad application by discussing Susan Warshauer s (1998) categorisation of Multi-User Environments. Warshauer s creates a typology of internet-enabled communication technologies consisting of: IRC, MUDs, computer games, web chat programs, people browsers, audio-video conferencing programs and worlds. Klastrup argues that applying the term virtual environment to these diverse forms of mediated communication makes the term too general to be useful. But Warshauer does not use the term virtual environment or virtual world in her paper, as her focus is on social networking rather than the spatial nature of some applications she discusses. Using this typology to claim that the concept of virtual environments is too broad to be useful, and that it sidelines issues of spatiality is therefore somewhat misleading. I would argue that both virtual environment and virtual world have terminological value especially when their specific characteristics are defined enabling us to distinguish one from the other and deploy them with precision. The salient characteristic which links the concepts of virtual environment and virtual world is the dialectical relationship between space and agency. Murray (Murray, 1998) argues that the experience of agency is a key attractor of digital games. Giddens defines agency in the following terms: Agency refers not to the intentions people have in doing things but to their capability of doing those things in the first place. Agency concerns events of which an individual is the perpetrator, in the sense that the individual could, at any phase in a given sequence of conduct, have acted differently. Whatever happened could not have happened if that individual had not intervened (Giddens, 1984, p. 9). Users conceive of certain computer screen images as representing a virtual environment or world as such because they can interact meaningfully in the perceptual space delineated by the computer as they would in ordinary experience. They can walk through the door in the west wall or the passage in the east. They can do a hand brake turn to lose the car tailing 43

44 them or speed ahead along the highway. The responsibility for action is placed on the player, within the constraints placed upon the game environment by the designers. The spatiality of a domain encourages the exertion of agency within it and the ability to exercise agency in that domain validates its spatiality. This conceptualisation yields the following definition: virtual environments are computer generated domains which create a perception of traversable space and permit modification through the exertion of agency. This definition avoids vagueness of application while giving a precise and positive account of virtual environments, rather than sidelining them as an unimportant category. It allows us to separate chat rooms, web pages, blogs and webcam applications from virtual environments like driving simulators, virtual reality applications and the majority of digital games. I am here saying the majority of digital games, because not all digital games share these characteristics. This thesis and the Digital Game Experience Model described in chapters 5 and 6 takes as its object of study those digital games that share the characteristics of virtual environments. Digitized versions of card games like Hearts or Poker, or digitized puzzle games like crosswords, Sudoku and the like are not forms of virtual environments. When I use the term digital games, I will therefore be referring to digital games in virtual environments as I am defining them here. Now that we have established what the term virtual environment will signify in this work, it is time to shift our focus to virtual worlds. The distinction between the two is more one of emphasis than kind. Virtual worlds are conglomerations of virtual environments that are marked by their persistent temporality, support of large groups of concurrent users and a large enough spatial area as to make it impossible to visualise them in their totality. Bartle (2004), co-creator of the first text-based virtual world MUD (Bartle & Trubshaw, 1978) outlines the following as distinguishing characteristics of virtual worlds: The world has underlying, automated rules that enable players to effect changes to it (although not to the rules that grant them this ability). This is the world s physics. Players represent individuals in the world. They may wield partial or total influence over an army; crew or party; but there is only one game entity that 44

45 represents them in the world and with which they strongly identify. This is their character. All interaction with the world and other players is channelled through characters. Interaction with the world takes place in real time. When you do something in the world, you can expect feedback almost immediately. The world is shared. The world is (at least to some degree) persistent (p. 8). Klastrup (2004) arrives at a multi-part definition of virtual worlds that encompasses the majority of these points: A virtual world is a persistent online representation which contains the possibility of synchronous communication between users and between user and world within the framework of a space designed as a navigable universe. Virtual worlds are worlds, you can move in, through persistent representation(s) of the user, in contrast to the imagined worlds of non-digital fictions, which are worlds presented as inhabited, but not actually inhabitable. Virtual worlds are different from other forms of virtual environments in that they cannot be imagined in their spatial totality (p. 27). Klastrup places particular emphasis on the last point which is not included in Bartle s characteristics. She states that a key element of worlds is their complexity and size cannot be fathomed at first glance but need to be explored at length. This element attains significant importance when coupled with persistence and mass habitation. Unlike the online multiplayer game map (such as those featured in FPSs like Counter-Strike Source (Valve Software, 2004a) or RTSs like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (Entertainment., 2004) which re-sets after every round, the virtual world remains active for an extended period of time. This extended period can be anything from a few years or a few decades, depending on the commercial success or user-following the virtual world has. Persistence yields a continuity of existence which makes them independent of their inhabitants and to some degree, their creators. 45

46 Another defining element of virtual worlds outlined by both Klastrup and Bartle is the presence of other users in the world. This creates a sense that there is a persistent society which one can participate in to various degrees. Even if the user does not interact directly with others (although most users would) the presence of others creates a social context within which the user s actions are interpreted. This can also be true of virtual environments, but is not one of their defining characteristics. A number of characteristics that Bartle and Klastrup outline, however, are also shared by what I have defined here as virtual environments. Elements like physics, the possibility to traverse and otherwise inhabit the space or the representation of individuals through avatars are not necessarily defining features of virtual worlds but can be commonly found in what I am here calling virtual environments. Building on the definition of virtual environments I will thus define virtual worlds as: virtual worlds are composites of persistent, multi-user virtual environments extending over a vast geographical expanse. Just as digital games are a subspecies of virtual environments, MMOGs are a subspecies of virtual worlds. MMOGs are generally discussed on the same terms as digital games (Juul, 2005; Salen & Zimmerman, 2003). Although they certainly include a gaming aspect, their status as virtual worlds implies a persistent social setting with all the complexities this brings with it. As a number of theorists have shown (Dibbell, 2006; Malaby, 2007; Taylor, 2006), MMOGs encompass a range of activities that go beyond traditional notions of play, particularly when this is informed by the problematic separation of game and non-game discussed in chapter 1. Problems with the virtual Technological innovation has had a tendency to excite the popular imagination, whether this results in public executions, ecclesiastical excommunication or a quasi-fanatic dedication to heralding the age of a digital New Jerusalem (Wertheim, 2000). Every age of wonder has its champion speakers and championed tropes. In the contemporary digital age, 46

47 one of the most prominent instances of the latter comes in the form of a prefix: the virtual. One does not have to look very far to come face to face with the term: open a newspaper or magazine and you are bound to find catchy terms like virtual tourism, virtual classrooms, virtual dating or, for the more hedonistically inclined, virtual sex. Thanks to the joint efforts of techno-fetishist theorists of the late eighties and the ever-hungry mass media, the presence of the virtual within the popular imagination has become largely unrelated to its technical and philosophical roots, gravitating instead towards the novel and liberating powers of new technologies. This has resulted in a close connection being established between the virtual and the unreal and the virtual as vehicle to the unknown. If the meaning of the term virtual is not precisely defined, the meaning of the term real is often taken for granted, referring typically to the routine and mundane. In academic discussions of virtual environments and digital games this opposition of the real to the virtual is also surprisingly taken for granted. Although the virtual is used in every conceivable discipline to some degree or other, the implications of this binary relationship are rarely questioned. This creates a limited conception of virtuality which impedes progress in fields in which the term carries theoretical weight. In our present discussion, for example, conceiving of virtual worlds as somehow fake or separate from our everyday lives ignores the most important implications they carry for contemporary society. In his recent book, Castronova takes issue with the term virtual worlds and argues for a replacement of virtual with synthetic. He outlines how the rise and fall of the hype around virtual reality created a negative association with the term virtual: Finally, while being conservative in writing is one decision imposed by the nearness of this book to early VR writing, another is the importance of avoiding words like virtual. That word points a misleading finger from the game worlds back to the earlier VR paradigm. As I have said, no such connection is warranted. And therefore where I use virtual in this book, I just mean rendered by a computer : a virtual world is a world rendered by computer (Castronova, 2005, p. 294). The solution to the misrepresentation of the virtual in such discussions is not to remove the term from use or relegate its signification to its least interesting use. Castronova argues that 47

48 we should move away from the virtual/real binary by replacing virtual with synthetic. Synthetic is useful in highlighting the designed nature of virtual worlds, but in so doing creates another binary; between the man-made, crafted synthetic world and a largely unmodified reality that has been in existence for a while which he refers to as the Earth (p. 294). The problem with binary oppositions is that they create either/or relationships which ignore the richer middle ground. As Haraway (1991) has argued, contemporary culture is best expressed in terms of hybridity; of dialectic relationships between poles of difference, rather than reductionist dualisms. Castronova (2005) does not manage to escape the binaries he identifies as problematic. Synthetic Worlds is steeped in such relations, in many instances characterising interaction with virtual worlds as a form of encroaching migration from the Earth onto a domain which is distinct from it. Castronova is at pains to preserve the fantasy of synthetic worlds from the tainting reach of Earth s governments and Earth s culture (p. 198). The concept of the magic circle is once again invoked to signal these divisions, even if it is here called a membrane : The synthetic world is an organism surrounded by a barrier. Within the barrier, life proceeds according to all kinds of fantasy rules involving space flight, fireballs, invisibility and so on. Outside the barrirer, life proceeds according to the ordinary rules. The membrane is the magic circle within which rules are different (Huizinga 1938/1950). The membrane can be considered a shield of sorts, protecting the fantasy world from the outside world. The inner world needs defining and protecting because it is necessary that everyone who goes there adhere to the different set of rules (p. 198). There are considerable contradictions between this drive to protect synthetic worlds from the Earth and the analysis which first drew attention to Castronova s ideas. His paper titled Virtual Worlds: A First Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Front sought to establish that the money generated through online auctions of virtual world gold pieces, items and property (which has come to be known as real money trade or RMT) was on par with that of third world country economies thus creating an overlap rather than a seperation between the real and the virtual (Castronova, 2001). 48

49 Synthetic tells us nothing much about the underlying nature of these worlds aside from their status as designed objects, which is in itself not a particularly useful distinction from the Earth or the real. What is reality/earth if not a collection of designed structures: cities, media, social conventions and value systems? Our experience of reality, or the Earth is largely a process of interaction with designed material spaces and systems of signification, making a strong distinction between synthetic worlds and Earth rather redundant. The real can hardly be separated from the synthetic since the latter has been an intrinsic part of the former since the earliest stages of humanity. The notion of virtual opposed to the real is a relatively recent idea. In a recent history of the virtual Marie-Laurie Ryan (2001) locates the origins of what she calls the virtual as fake in 18 th and 19 th century discussions of physics and optics. The connotations of illusion and inauthenticity associated with the mirror image carried over to the virtual. This idea persists until today, not only in the popular view of the virtual, but even in various aspects of academia including philosophy. Ryan conceptualizes perspectives on the virtual on a continuum ranging from what she calls the virtual as fake and the virtual as potential that finds expression in the work of Levy and Deleuze. Levy approaches the virtual from the perspective of scholastic philosophy. The virtual here is not viewed in opposition to the real but rather as that which has potential to come into existence. The virtual is compared not with the real, but the actual (Lévy, 1998). Levy incorporates Deleuze s (2004) distinction between the virtual and the possible. For Levy, the possible is a copy of the real that is already fully determined. It is a phantom of the real (Lévy, 1998, p. 23), which comes into being without alteration. The possible is static. The virtual, on the other hand, is dynamic. It is not determined until it is actualised: the virtual is a kind of problematic complex, the knot of tendencies or forces that accompanies a situation, event, object, or entity, and which invokes a process of resolution: actualisation. This problematic complex belongs to the entity in question and even constitutes one of its primary dimensions (Lévy, 1998, p. 24) 49

50 The flow between virtual, actual and back is expressed in the processes of virtualization and actualization. Actualization is a solution to a given problem that was not previously contained in its formulation (p. 25). Unlike realisation where the components of the real exist in the possible, actualisation implies a process of creation that generates new qualities, a true becoming that feeds the virtual in turn (p. 25). The actual interacts with the virtual, while the real resembles the possible. Levy emphasizes transformation particularly in terms of a displacement of the centre of ontological gravity of the object considered (p. 26). Levy relates this displacement to the notion of deterritorilisation prominent in Michael Serres (1994) book Atlas. Serres focuses on the virtual as something which is not-there. This is not to be read as a form of inexistence, but rather as a form of existence, true to the etymological roots of the word: the conjunction of the Latin sistere meaning to cause to stand or place (p. 29) and ex outside. Levy points to a view of existence contrasting with Heidegger s philosophy of being-there : existence as a movement between places rather than being in a place. Virtualisation can therefore be understood as a form of existence related to a transformation of time and space. The virtuality of a virtual community radically shortens the geographical distance between participants and the speed of communication. The community is not pinned to a physical location but can be accessed from any terminal that provides a suitable gateway. The actual, represented by the material context of the participants, is transformed into a contingent variable, subservient to the new core of gravity: the participants shared interests and passions. Virtuality in context The virtual in virtual worlds is most significantly characterised by the vast landscape of potential configurations of text and its actualisation. This potential emerges from the persistent interaction of a few million human subjectivities with each other and the textual world written for their habitation, which is in turn constantly being re-inscribed, to varying degrees depending on the world s design, by the readings and practices of its inhabitants. This constant process of actualizing real human relations - love, hate, frustration, competition and collaboration - is accelerated by what Bolter and Grusin (1999) have called the hypermediacy of networked access. 50

51 The computer does not constitute the virtual in itself. It is a necessary tool for enabling the manifestation of the actual-virtual dialectic. The applications that run the digital games, MMOGs, hypertexts and other digital artefacts are fully realised in their coded structure. The clusters of programmed code interact in a predetermined way until the point of contact with the interpreting human subjectivity. It is at this juncture that the virtual comes into force: Potential, not virtual, for the digital engram and the software used to read the text predetermine a set of possibles, which, though immense, are numerically finite and logically bound. However, it is not quantity that distinguishes the possible from the virtual. The essential distinction is to be found elsewhere. If we consider the mechanical substrate alone (hardware and software), computer technology provides only a combination of possibles, albeit infinite, and never a problematic domain. Digital storage is a potentialization, display a realization The virtual begins to flourish with the appearance of human subjectivity in the loop, once the indeterminateness of meaning and the propensity of the text to signify come into play, a tension that actualization or interpretation, will resolve during the act of reading (Lévy, 1998, pp ). Referring back to the matrix of digital games I outlined in chapter 1, it is the interaction of the player with the complex problematic presented by the game rules, environmental mechanics, representational signs and the hardware interface that engenders a movement from virtualization to actualization and back again. Virtual environments, as defined above, are unique sites of mediated instantiation of this recursive process of actualization and virtualization. The process moves from the creation of a problem, and thus virtualization, in the design of the text to be traversed, to the creation of a solution: the actualizing of the text through interpretation of the surface signs. The possibility for exerting agency within the environment beckons the question what shall I do next?, creating another problematic; a re-virtualization that requires the solution of practice. The player actualizes thought into action, in itself a creation of a further problematic: the inscription of one s actions onto the environment, affecting the clusters of coded data as well as other users in the environment. The complexity of this recursive process is 51

52 multiplied by the presence of others and emphasized by the immediacy enabled by networked computing. Digital games are designed to enable the actualization of desired experience. Stating that this is their principal attractor would ignore the heterogeneity of players and games, but I would be confident in claiming that it is, at least a key factor that makes them such compelling media. This view of the virtual gives a constructive account of the essential features of virtual environments and worlds. It tackles the problematic formulation of the virtual/real in a constructive manner rather than simply dismissing its use. Castronova s replacement of virtual with synthetic in the context of virtual words, for example, ignores the richness that Levy s philosophy sets in motion when it is applied to our objects of study. Now that we have discussed the implications of the virtual I will give a brief history of virtual worlds highlighting important landmarks in their development. Due to the scope of this work, this history is not meant to be exhaustive, but aims to establish a context for the discussion of the two MMOGs wherein the qualitative research was conducted. These two are described in more detail at the end of the history in order to familiarize readers with their specific qualities as well as giving an introduction of what MMOGs are to those who have not played them. A brief history of virtual worlds Since virtual worlds are complex phenomena which encompass a multitude of activities within their domains, the history can be told from a number of perspectives (Taylor, 2006). These perspectives can emphasize the role of virtual worlds in a variety of histories: games (digital or otherwise), communication technologies, online communities, non-linear literature, collaborative story telling and/or performance; not to mention a deeper history of creation and interaction with other-worlds that has persisted since the earliest days of homo-sapiens (Calleja, 2006; Lewis-Williams, 2002; Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1989). These perspectives form important threads in such a contextualization, but because a full genealogy of virtual worlds would require a thesis to itself, I will limit myself to signalling landmarks in the development of virtual worlds. The account will be divided in two sections: sandbox virtual worlds that place the emphasis on socializing and creation of in- 52

53 world locations and objects and Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) whose design is informed by a predominant game structure. The histories of these two broad types of virtual worlds are intertwined and they are being treated in separate sections here for structural clarity. The chapter ends with a discussion of the literary and filmic works that have fed into the history of development of virtual worlds. Early stages in virtual worlds: MUDs The computing genesis of virtual worlds can be traced back to Essex University, Trubshaw, inspired by contemporary text adventures like Zork (Infocom, 1980) and ADVENT (Crowther, 1976) created various iterations of MUD, a text-based virtual world shared over the university network. The acronym MUD stands for Multi User Dungeons. Dungeon here refers not to the Dungeons and Dragons pen and paper game, but the Fortran port version of Zork called DUNGEN. The acronym was adopted following Trubshaw s interest in creating a multi-user version of DUNGEN (Bartle, 2004). The first incarnation of MUD (Bartle & Trubshaw, 1978) was a basic program intended to test the pragmatic principles that dictated the virtual world s running. The second version was closer to what is currently known as a text-based virtual world. In 1980 the first external players were allowed onto the Essex University servers to test Trubshaw s MUD. The initial iterations of MUD could host up to 36 simultaneous players. Figure 3 : ZORK MUDs are text-based virtual worlds that represent the designed space through textual descriptions of various locations in the world. The world as a whole is made up of a number 53

54 of these connected locations, sometimes called rooms that players move through and interact by way of specific word commands. As Bartle (2004) states, the flexibility and evocative power of language means that the virtual worlds representational potential is limited to the imagination and communicative ability of the designers and players, unlike later graphical worlds which are constrained by considerable budgets and the graphics technology available at the time. The players themselves are represented by text descriptions of their characters and signal their location to others through the presence of their names in the particular location. This means that unlike graphical worlds players are not anchored to a specific spot in a location. Walking into a tavern in World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) one comes across Muun sitting on a table at a balcony next to Ananke and Nil. In a text-based virtual world, Muun, Ananke and Nil would be names on a list of people in the tavern. To signal their proximity they would need to actively describe their specific location and action, but this would only be supported by a collectively imagined representation of the room s inhabitants, not the game program. Figure 4 : Nil, Ananke and Muun at a World of Warcraft tavern Graphical virtual worlds also give more information about the point of view and intentions of the player than text-based virtual worlds through the position and represented actions of heir avatar. The degree of inference is dependent on the way the world is coded. The more 54

55 restricted the point of view (for example, players are only allowed to control their avatars from a first person perspective), the tighter the alignment between player and avatar point of view and actions. If the world allows me to run in one direction, but zoom out and look all around me without indicating this change of point of view in the avatar (for example, by turning its head when looking sideways or behind), other players cannot be sure about where I, as a player, am actually seeing on my screen. For example, in World of Warcraft, it is possible to disassociate the camera from the direction the avatar is facing, zoom out and look around quite liberally. Planetside (Sony Online Entertainment, 2003), on the other hand does not allow this freedom of camera movement and although it allows switches to third person perspective, the fast paced nature of the game along with its reliance on being in first person view to interact usefully with the world and others means that the direction in which the avatar is facing is a clear indicator of player perspective. For example, if an avatar from an opposing faction in Planetside is facing north the controlling player will not see me if I ran behind him. No such considerations exist in text-based virtual worlds as the perspective of the player is always that of the fly on the wall, observing all that goes on in a location without differentiating between specific coordinates within it. Distance is thus only measured in terms of hops between locations. Distance inside the location can only be enacted through narration of an event and is not supported by the virtual world application per se. In graphical worlds, space is visibly traversable. If Muun and Nil are trying to get to the mailbox first, for example, they are aware of each other s location vis a vis the mailbox. Even though these are only a few elements that differentiate the experience of text-based virtual worlds from graphical ones it is immediately evident that the method of representation and interaction with the world creates a very distinct type of player-experience requiring different analytical frameworks to be employed in each case. Two broad poles of virtual world development can be identified at this stage. On one side we have virtual worlds created with a game-goal structure guiding the design process. At the other end of the spectrum are sandbox virtual worlds which have no set goals or structures of formal progression. These have also been called social virtual worlds (Klastrup, 2004), but I am here using the term sandbox to avoid implying that sociality is particular to these worlds and not gaming ones, which is not the case. The two are by no means neat and distinct categories but two poles on a spectrum of design features. The 55

56 histories of both types of virtual world are deeply entwined, but for the sake of clarity I will explore the sandbox virtual world thread first, then go down the game-worlds path. Sandbox virtual worlds 1985 saw the release of the first online graphical world by Lucasfilm Games called Habitat (Lucasfilm Games, 1984). Habitat represented a series of connected locations using 2D graphics. Players 12 controlled a single avatar drawn in cartoon style graphics through the use of a joystick. Communication between players appeared as bubbles above the avatars heads and was effected through keyboard input. The initial incarnation of Habitat was coded for the Commodore 64 platform. Figure 5: Habitat The world was made up of a large number of linked locations called "regions". In its initial phases Habitat contained around 20,000 of these regions, which grew in number as the world evolved. Players made money through logging in and various other possible transactions, including trading and the popular treasure hunts. These funds could be used to buy various objects ranging from appearance altering items to functional tools like torches, weapons and also items used to decorate players homes. These objects could be transferred, dropped, stored and carried in various containers. As the designers Farmer and Morningstar state in an important paper written in 1991 called The lessons of Lucasfilm s Habitat some of Habitat s most notable features were its ability to host thousands of simultaneous users and its open ended design. Unlike MUDs and computer games in 56

57 general, it did not have any set goals or formal progression structure, as is popular in the majority of contemporary MMOGs. Nevertheless, as Taylor (2006) notes, a number of Habitat s novel characteristics coupled with its graphical representation make it an important precursor for contemporary sandbox virtual worlds and the more game oriented MMOGs: It was one of the first online graphical spaces in which average computer users could fashion for themselves avatars and undertake living in a virtual world. While games did exist in the space, its sense of emergent worldness was foregrounded These worlds operate as an environment in which users can play games, role-play, visit with friends, decorate personal homes known as turfs, and participate in a social world. With an economy, housing system, lively social life, and emergent player culture it is an artifact that anticipates the mass virtual worlds of games like Everquest (p. 25). Although there were basic graphical virtual worlds released before and contemporaneous with Habitat, they did not have the same level of graphical representational power nor were they as widely accessed as Habitat. More importantly, however, Habitat was the first popular virtual world to adopt an open ended design philosophy. This makes it a crucial milestone in virtual world development not only as the first major graphical online virtual world but more importantly as the first online sandbox virtual world: For the designer of an ordinary game or simulation, human diversity is not a major problem, since he or she gets to establish the goals and motivations on the participants' behalf, and to specify the activities available to them in order to channel events in the preferred direction. Habitat, however, was deliberately open ended and pluralistic. The idea behind our world was precisely that it did not come with a fixed set of objectives for its inhabitants, but rather provided a broad palette of possible activities from which the players could choose, driven by their own internal inclinations. It was our intention to provide a variety of possible experiences, ranging from events with established rules and goals (a treasure hunt, for example) to activities propelled by the players' personal motivations (starting a 57

58 business, running the newspaper) to completely free-form, purely existential activities (hanging out with friends and conversing) (Farmer & Morningstar, 1991). If Habitat lay the foundations for the graphical MMOGs to come it was more immediately related to another milestone of virtual world development. Aspnes created the popular TinyMUD (Aspnes, 1989), a text-based sandbox virtual world, at Carnegie Mellon University in TinyMUD is even more extreme in its removal of combat and structured game-like elements than Habitat. TinyMUD allowed users not only to socialize but added the important feature that is a defining aspect of contemporary sandbox virtual worlds; it allowed the individual user to contribute to the process of world creation by building locations and objects using a scripting language (TinyMUD was a text-based virtual world). TinyMUD shut down after just one year, but its innovative potential and popularity inspired a long line of text-based sandbox virtual worlds. One of the most significant among these was MOO (MUD, object-oriented). It was written by Stephen White and released in MOOs extended the ideas developed in TinyMUD, and quickly became very popular as sandbox virtual worlds as well as attracting the attention of academia and educators. Curtis followed White s development and created possibly the most popular text-based sandbox virtual world to date: Lambda MOO. Lambda MOO rose to infamy with an article written by Dibbell for the Village Voice in 1993 called A Rape in Cyberspace (Dibbell, 1998). Dibbell s article signaled to the general public the seriousness of virtual worlds, at least for their inhabitants. Virtual worlds, particularly social ones, had already become a sociocultural force requiring close analysis and scrutiny. The legacy initiated by virtual worlds like Habitat, TinyMUD, MOOs and MUSHes paved the way for 3D sandbox virtual worlds that are popular today. Ron Britvich created the first 2.5D virtual world called Webworld. Britvich soon moved on to Knowledge Adventure Worlds (later to become Worlds Inc.) where he worked with a number of other designers on Alphaworld. Alphaworld was renamed Active Worlds (Active Worlds, 1995), after the name of its incorporated 3D web browser, and launched in Active Worlds quickly became the foremost 3D sandbox virtual world attracting thousands of users and growing exponentially in size. The maps below give a snapshot of the development of user 58

59 created structures over 5 years. To get a sense of the overall size of Active Worlds consider that it takes an avatar 2 (real-time) hours to walk across the area displayed by the maps and this is only 0.3% of the total Active Worlds area (Active Worlds, 2006). Figure 6 : Maps of Active Worlds from 1996 to 2001 Active Worlds gives users the ability not only to create structures and objects but also to develop and host a whole world for other users to explore incorporated within its wider framework. It is also interesting to note that the Active Worlds universe is accessed through the Active Worlds browser, which was intended to be the 3D equivalent of a 2D browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Netscape. It includes web browsing, voice chat and 59

60 instant messaging capabilities. Although new versions (currently version 4) are still being developed for the Active Worlds universe, its number of users has plummeted over the past years, with users migrating to new sandbox virtual worlds like There (Makena Technologies, 2003) and Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003). The latter is currently the fastest growing and most popular sandbox virtual world on the net, claiming over 320,000 users at the time of writing. Figure 7 : Aloft Hotel bedroom in Second Life Second Life allows users to create detailed objects, structures and land through a fairly straightforward interface. The created objects can be bought and sold for the in-world currency, the Linden Dollar. The Linden Dollar has a floating exchange rate with the US Dollar enabling direct transfer between currencies through the use of a credit card. Users can market and sell their creations, which range from plots of land to avatar clothing and accessories to in-world games. This makes Second Life (and similar worlds) ideal test-beds for creative ideas. One user, for example, created an in-world game called Tringo which sold widely enough in-world to attract the attention of Donnerwood Media who offered Kier a five figure deal for Tringo s license. Tringo is now set to appear on a variety of platforms including Nintendo s Game Boy Advanced. Another user known by the alias of Anshe Chung has a strong enough in-world business to require a staff of 20 globally distributed users to sustain it. Chung graced the cover of the May 2006 edition of Business Weekly. The net worth of her real estate business is estimated at around 250,000 USD. Various institutions and businesses have invested in Second Life through the renting of 60

61 islands : areas of in-world land, such as those sold by Chung that can be developed into anything from shopping malls (for both in-world and physical world items), entertainment centres or educational sites. Figure 8 : Second Life's Anshe Chung As Second Life s popularity reaches ever more users and mainstream media, more institutions are setting up virtual shop inside it. In 2006, BBC bought an in-world island and used it to send live broadcasts from its annual music festival, BBC Big Weekend. Infinite Mind Media have also staged a number of in-world events including interviews with science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Rheingold and a live performance by renown music artist Suzanne Vega. On the educational front, a number of universities including Harvard have begun holding classes in Second Life. The latter is running a law course called CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion, where students meet inside the Harvard Extension School within Second Life. The course deals with making persuasive arguments in virtual spaces such as web sites, wikis, and virtual worlds. Unlike MMOGs which tend to require a monthly fee to access, making it easier to measure active users, Second Life can be accessed for free. Linden Lab claims 320,000 residents, referring to the number of accounts created, not the number of unique active users, making it impossible to differentiate between people actually inhabiting Second Life on a regular basis and those that have created an account to try the place out and never returned. When 61

62 compared to some MMOGs, even this impressive number pales somewhat (World of Warcraft claims 8 million paying users at the time of writing 13 ), but when one compares the figure to other social virtual worlds, both past and present, Second Life s population represents a considerable advance in popularity. Figure 9 : BBC in Second Life More importantly than what Second Life represents today is what Second Life means for the future of virtual worlds. As will be discussed in later chapters, virtual worlds like Second Life are making it clear that such online places are increasingly becoming an integral part of the everyday, not a domain of practice separate from it. Let us now back-track to the era of the MUD and trace the evolution of game oriented virtual worlds from their text-based origins to the present day MMOGs. Massively Multiplayer Online Games How massive is a massively multiplayer online game? Like many others in the industry, the term was coined in conjunction with marketing discussions. In this particular case, the company that can be credited with first using massively multiplayer is 3DO in the 1996 pre-launch stages of Meridian 59 (3D0 Studios, 1996), which is widely considered to be the first MMOG to hit the Internet. Meridian 59 was an impressive effort by a group of programmers and artists distributed all over the US. Although not the roaring success that the later Ultima Online (Origin Systems, 1997) was to become, Meridian 59 established a 62

63 number of design conventions, particularly in terms of the user interface, which can be seen in later giants like Everquest (Sony Online Entertainment, 1999). Figure 10 : Meridian 59 Meridian 59 used DOOM-like 2.5D graphics that were not to become a regular staple of MMOGs until Everquest came along in Although the designers of Meridian 59 were successful in achieving their goal of creating a three dimensional, first person perspective, graphical MUD, a number of issues related to timing and publisher constraints crippled what could otherwise have been a hugely successful MMOG (Bartle, 2004). 14 A major source of concern for 3DO was the looming release of Origin System s Ultima Online. The effort placed into releasing Meridian before Ultima Online meant the game was not as polished as it could have been and since the internet was still in its early stages, it had not reached a critical mass of users that was available when Ultima Online was released a year later. In the same year that 3DO released Meridian 59 in the US, Nexxon came out with its own MMOG in Korea. Designed by Jake Song, The Kingdom of the Winds (Nexxon Inc., 1996) was the precursor to the hugely popular Lineage (NC Soft, 1998), that was to follow in The Kingdom of the Winds attracted over a million users and Lineage (NC Soft, 1998) soon topped this number and hit 3.2 million paying subscribers at its peak in 2004 (Woodcock, 2006). Korea was the perfect breeding ground for MMOGs for a number of 63

64 reasons. After World War 2, the Korean government banned all Japanese imports, meaning that the console phenomenon did not take hold in Korean culture, leaving the PC platform to account for the majority of digital gaming. Half the population of Korea lives in Seoul. The high-density urban population made wiring up the country with broadband far easier than other places. On top of this, the popularity of PC Baangs (Korean versions of net cafes) with the local youth meant that networked gaming was seen as a group social activity from its early stages, in contrast to western countries where, to this day, gaming (particularly online gaming) is regarded as an activity for the socially inadequate among many segments of society. Figure 11 : Ultima Online Because of these different market situations and models, it is hard to compare the success of Korean games with US and European ones based on paying subscribers. In the west, the first hugely successful MMOG to hit the market was Ultima Online (Origin Systems, 1997), released in 1997 by Origin Systems Inc. It set a new standard for the term Massively Multiplayer when it hit 100,000 users in one year. The lead designer, Richard Garriott, had garnered great respect from players and designers alike through his Ultima single player adventure game series. Unlike Meridian 59, it did not offer its players the possibility of viewing the world in first person but used an isometric perspective. Ultima Online presented its inhabitants with a depth of world design that had not yet been seen in virtual worlds. It followed a relatively open ended approach that accommodated a wide variety of playing styles as well as giving the player community a strong hand in selforganisation and governance: 64

65 Ultima Online has become notable in the history of MMOGs not only for the ways it revolutionized multi-player gaming, but for being a frontrunner on issues still under heavy debate. It was one of the first games to confront mass player protest, not to mention the sale of virtual items for real world currency (Taylor, 2006, p. 26). In many ways, the open-ended nature of Ultima Online also meant that aggressive aspects like player-killing (PKing) could become a nuisance, particularly for starting players. It also meant that the community had to work ways of dealing with such issues, giving a stronger sense of consequence to actions than is available in most contemporary MMOGs. Nevertheless, the newbie (new player) experience in Ultima Online was tough enough to scare off droves of first timers. By 1999 the newbie and PK issues escalated enough to drive a number of players to look for another appealing MMOG. Everquest launched at a perfect time to welcome these disgruntled players. In three months its player base surpassed that of Ultima Online. It set a new benchmark for MMOG success when it reached 550,000 users in 2004 (Woodcock, 2006). Everquest (Sony Online Entertainment, 1999) designers decided to go down a different path from Ultima Online s player versus player (PvP) model. The Everquest design team aimed for a collaborative game-play experience and thus designed Everquest in such a way as to require players to adventure in small groups from the early stages in the MMOG. This fostered a stronger sense of collaborative community than other MMOGs out at the time and it also motivated players to interest their offline friends to enter the virtual world and play collaboratively with them. Everquest was also strictly level-based; following more closely the design structure of MUDs and earlier Dungeons and Dragons table top RPGs than Ultima Online did. Everquest used a 3D, first person perspective like Meridian 59, with the important difference of a camera that could be detached from the avatar s point of view and rotated round the avatar at various distances. Its graphical quality and the area represented on the screen were considerably superior to Meridian

66 Figure 12 : Everquest Everquest, even more than Ultima Online before it, attracted the attention of companies within the digital gaming industry and the media at large. This meant that in the next few years a large number of Everquest clones were in development. Like Ultima Online before it, Evequest expanded the overall client base for MMOGs. This heralded an age of expansion in MMOG development. A number of important MMOGs were released in the following years, a good number of them following the Everquest model to an almost repetitive degree, others contributed important features that would became staple elements of MMOGs to come. Let us take a brief look at some of the bigger MMOGs from 2000 till the present. Dark Age of Camelot 15 (Mythic Entertainment, 2001), launched in October 2001, is generally considered as the first major competitor to Everquest. DAoC is set in a world inspired by Arthurian legends rendered in graphics that surpassed those provided by Everquest at the time. It included a number of features which Everquest did not provide or was seriously lacking in. One of these was the ability for players to have and decorate their own houses. DAoC focused intensely on the player versus player (PvP) aspects, creating a system of mass fantasy battles with specific buildings designated as tactical objectives intended to be held by player controlled factions. Unlike Ultima Online, however, the PvP 66

67 combat was not crippling for new characters as it was limited to a specific area of the world instead of throughout the world. Figure 13: Dark Age of Camelot 2001 also saw the launch of Anarchy Online, that can claim to be both the first sciencefiction themed MMOG, as well as the first MMOG to be produced by a European publisher. Anarchy Online s initial months were plagued by serious technical glitches and bugs. By the November launch of its first expansion, Notum Wars (Funcom, 2001), Funcom had resolved the majority of technical issues and Anarchy Online s future looked far brighter One important design innovation that Funcom contributed, and was to become a staple of most MMOGs, was the concept of instanced areas. One problem with Everquest was overcrowding in locations which contained creatures that were central to the completion of important quests or that were known to yield powerful items. Players tended to have to line up and wait for the re-spawning (return of a creature to life after it has been killed by other players) of the creature. Sometimes these camping groups, as they are known, needed to wait for long hours to attack the prized victim, often resulting in arguments between camping groups and general annoyance. Anarchy Online s solution to the camping problem was to create instanced mission areas. Instanced areas, or instances as they are generally called, are zones within the world that are created for each player or group of players that enter a mission area (generally called dungeons, even if they are not, in themselves dungeon settings). This means that players in instanced areas will never bump 67

68 into other players since multiple instances of the same area are being created for anyone that enters the instance door/portal. This major innovation was to become not only a staple elment of MMOGs to follow, but also spawned later MMOGs where the entire world outside of particular (usually urban) hubs is instanced, as is the case of recently released MMOGs such as Guild Wars (NC Soft, 2006) and Dungeons and Dragons Online (Turbine Inc., 2006). Figure 14 : Anarchy Online Anarchy Online was also to create an industry first by switching from a pay per month subscription model to a free subscription model by looking towards sponsors for revenue. This was announced in 2005 and worried a number of industry experts that feared in-world adverts would become the norm with other MMOGs, which has not been the case (at least at the time of writing). Another important industry first appeared in 2001 in the shape of World War II Online (Corner Rat Software & Playnet Inc., 2001), the first Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter (MMOFPS) as well as the first MMOG with a historical theme. WWII Online can also be considered to be the first commercial online virtual battlefield, simulating an area of 120,000km by 230,000km of continuous (not loading in separate zones) terrain modelled on satellite photos of Europe. 68

69 Figure 15 : World War II Online map World War II Online caters for a niche market of military history enthusiasts, privileging realistic and strategic combat simulation over fast-paced, crowd-pleasing fun and attractive graphics. Over the years its graphics engine has improved considerably but it has always lagged behind the quality of contemporary graphics. Like Anarchy Online it suffered from a shaky start fraught with technical issues, heralded by the closing down of the data centre used by its developers, Cornered rat Software reduced its server capacity from 10,000 to 1,200 players. Two other MMOFPSs followed soon after, Neocron (Reakktor, 2002), a cyberpunk-themed MMOG released in 2002 and Planetside (Sony Online Entertainment, 2003) in Neocron suffered from a number of bugs and design issues that left it limited to a small number of ardent fans. Planetside focused more directly on mass combat without the inclusion of the traditional quests/missions or AI creatures and characters. In fact, Planetside is a giant battlefield distributed over a number of continents on which players, divided into three factions, fight a never ending war for supremacy. At its peak in 2004 Planetside claimed up to 60,000 players, which dropped sharply in mid 2005 to 20,000 players. Some attribute this drop to the introduction of massive combat robots called Battle Frame Robotics. In the opinion of many veteran players, these powerful vehicles were too overpowered, changing the dynamics of the game radically. As Planetside is one of the two MMOGs focused upon in this work I will give a more thorough description in chapter 4. 69

70 Following Anarchy Online, the next big sci-fi themed MMOG to follow was Star Wars Galaxies (Entertainment, 2003). Its rich mythos and background, accumulated over a 25- year period meant it had both a huge fan base at launch as well as high expectations which were fuelled further by its pre-release hype. Star Wars Galaxies allowed players to choose among a wide variety of game-play styles. Players could progress through game goals by spending their entire time playing musical instruments in cantinas, crafting armour or bounty-hunting. Other games tend to feature crafting professions as an add-on to a combat role of some sort, making it impossible to progress without a good dose of combat and quest/mission participation. Star Wars Galaxies also allowed players to build their own housing and towns. Although a great idea, a number of factors including players leaving Star Wars Galaxies, led to whole areas of uninhabited ghost towns. Figure 16 : Star Wars Galaxies The combat system underwent a number of changes and culminated with the now infamous combat upgrade, a completely redesigned combat system that proved to be highly unpopular with a number of players. Another unpopular change was the decision to change the coveted Jedi class. Initially players had to master a number of professions in order to become Jedi, requiring a number of months dedicated mostly to tediously repetitive tasks. Sony Online Entertainment later decided to make the Jedi a class open to new players, in many ways undermining the arduous efforts of players that had invested in the profession. Although Star Wars Galaxies reached the 300,000 subscriber mark in only three months 70

71 (Woodcock, 2006) and was expected to be the first non-asian MMOG to hit the one million mark, it never went above 300,000 users. This was due both to the radical shifts in game-play and character development mentioned above and to a long line of bugs, ridiculously long travel times (initially there were no vehicles or mounts to make the long journeys quicker), unbalanced classes and a problematic combat system. The first science fiction, space-opera themed MMOG was EVE Online (CCP Games, 2003), developed by the Icelandic company CCP. EVE Online experienced a slow but steady increase in subscriptions and popularity. Starting off with a lowly subscription base of 15,000 players in 2003 EVE rose with relentless monthly increments up to 125,000 subscriptions at the time of writing (2006). EVE is also the first MMOG to focus on space combat and trading. The EVE universe exists on a single server, unlike the majority of MMOGs whose worlds exist on multiple cloned incarnations called shards or realms. Many players have complained that EVE s learning curve is somewhat steep. The EVE universe is constructed with the safer zones controlled and protected by AI corporations in the centre and an outer ring of lawless galaxies at the perimeter of the universe. Player versus player combat is allowed anywhere but the protection new players receive in the starting areas means they are generally safe from marauding player pirates. EVE s economy is completely player run and it takes a good few months into the game to start appreciating the complexity of its economy and trading system. Since it allows players and player factions to plot against each other at will, this MMOG has a strong political streak to it, with multiple player-run corporations banding together to form giant alliances which result in massive battles with at times thousands of players on each side. This kind of emergent game-play is very rich but requires a considerable amount of coordination and effort on the part of the players to make it work. 71

72 Figure 17 : EVE Online EVE Online is a good example of an MMOG designed with an open-ended game-play approach. This throws new players in at the deep end, sensing that beyond the central safe zones there are complex political manoeuvres being undertaken by masses of people around the globe. On the opposite end of contemporary MMOG design styles are worlds that are geared to guide the player more closely and signpost a clear path of progression. It is not that the latter worlds restrict players choices in absolute terms, but their design is intended to keep the potential of varied, emergent activity to a minimum. In 2004 Blizzard released an MMOG that would bring the genre to the popular consciousness of both western and eastern countries: World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004). World of Warcraft s subscription figures shot through the roof in a matter of months. In just one year it claimed 5 million paying subscribers, making it the first MMOG to be as successful in the US as it is in Europe or in Asia. Soon, feature articles, travel diaries, photography contests and the like started appearing in publications that would generally barely mention games, let alone MMOGs. Today the name World of Warcraft is synonymous with MMOGs and for the uninitiated World of Warcraft is the virtual world. World of Warcraft s success cannot be attributed to ground breaking innovations in terms of design, but a careful blend of successful elements of previous MMOGs. Its graphic style follows on from the hugely successful Warcraft Real Time Strategy game series that preceded it: a colourful, cartoonish, fantasy world having more aesthetic resonance with sword and sorcery comics and graphic novels then the Tolkienesque style dominant in most other MMOGs. 72

73 Figure 18 : World of Warcraft World of Warcraft s launch went smoothly, Blizzard keeping up their reputation of delivering highly polished bug-free products. Another element which drew a lot of new players to the MMOG is the ease by which new players are initiated into the game and guided through the initial areas out into the open world. To this day, the number of subscribers are steadily increasing. It would not be too bold to state that World of Warcraft greatly expanded the MMOG market and through its popularity crystallized a view of what MMOGs are and how they function both in terms of game-play and as a media object known to the general public. World of Warcraft will be described in more detail in chapter 4, as it is one of the two MMOGs used in the qualitative research part of this work. The number of MMOGs in development seems to be increasing exponentially. Currently there are approximately 94 MMOGs in development and 120 released MMOGs (mmorpg.com). EVE Online s developers, CCP have recently merged with White Wolf Games, producers of the highly popular Vampire: The Masquerade (Rein-Hagen, 1991) and Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Rein-Hagen, 1992) (among other titles) table-top RPG series, and will be working on an MMO set in their famous World of Darkness setting. Mythic have teamed up with Games Workshop, developers of the Warhammer line of table-top wargames to bring the world-renown Warhammer universe to the MMO scene in their upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (Mythic Entertainment, forthcoming). Cyan are having a second go at bringing the Myst (Cyan Inc., 1994) universe 73

74 back to the MMO scene with Uru Live (Cyan Worlds, forthcoming). Anarchy Online developers Funcom are working on Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (Funcom, forthcoming) that promises to be one of the more innovative MMOGs to launch in the coming years and set in Robert E. Howard s Conan world Hyboria. There is of course no shortage of intellectual property imported from the movie and literary world. The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (Turbine Inc., forthcoming) is one of the more highly expected releases of Star Trek Online (Perpetual Entertainment, forthcoming) and Stargate Worlds (Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, forthcoming) are also scheduled for a late 2007 release. There are doubts whether any of the upcoming releases can top World of Warcraft s still growing 7 million subscriber mark, but there is also a general sense of innovative expectation tied to the next generation of MMOG releases. One thing that is clear with the range of upcoming MMOGs is that they are proceeding down the road of mainstream entertainment and slowly moving out of the fantasy combat oriented worlds to a multitude of genres, eras and intellectual property cross-overs. An alternate history The above history reveals the more apparent industrial dimension of virtual world development. There is also another thread, weaving its way in and out of it. This alternate history has had a considerable, if somewhat indirect, impact on the visions of virtual world designers since their inception. It is insufficient to give a history of virtual worlds without acknowledging the sources outside the fields of computing technology that influenced their development. Setting aside their technical lineage, the conceptual parentage of virtual worlds can be attributed to pen and paper role-playing games (RPGs) and cyberpunk literature. RPGs fostered the growth of shared imagined worlds and their mathematical mechanics while the cyberpunk literature extrapolated these into the vision of a technologically generated consensual hallucination (Gibson, 1993). Role-Playing Games The richness of RPGs can be summed up in their ability to combine the performative and narrative creativity of collaborative story telling with the stochastic excitement and simulationary guidelines of the game system. The complexity of these systems mechanics varies greatly. Some aim for a credible simulation of various dimensions of activity 74

75 including feats of agility, concentration and combat as well as social dynamics, ballistics and ecology. In many ways RPG game systems can simulate, or be tailored to simulate pretty much any form of social, physical or environmental mechanics. There is always a sensitivity of balance between credible game system simulation and fluid story-telling. The responsibility of this balance lies in the hands of the game master, who is in charge of creating and animating the game world and its inhabitants. Although the game master is free to amend the rules of the game on the fly to suit the aims of the ongoing events, the chosen game system is highly influential in moulding the course of the RPG sessions. Players need to feel that there is a common framework that sustains their actions in a formal manner. The game world including the player-characters is a conjunction of descriptive narrative and a set of properties expressed in numeric characteristics. In the Runequest (Henderson et al., 1978) system for example, the base attributes of a human character go from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 18. An intelligence attribute of 9 represents an average human s IQ while that of 18 represents geniality. These numbers are reflected in the abilities of the character and in the performance of the player. A player whose character has an intelligence score below average cannot perform complex cognitive tasks and should also perform his character with the associated limitations that this number implies. The game mechanics shape the story told at every turn. They inform players expectations of how the world will react to their characters actions. If a character falls off a 5 meter wall, the game master needs to explain what happens to the character and this narrative description is related to however much damage was incurred in the fall. This amount is stipulated by the game system, often in terms of a die-roll whose function is to open up narrative interpretation through stochastic intervention. Now if one character falls off a 5 meter wall and incurs 2 dice worth of damage points, for example, it is essential to the consistency and credibility of the game world that the next time he falls off a 5 meter wall he similarly incurs 2 dice worth of damage. This means that there needs to be a consistency of application of the game mechanics even if these are not described in the rules. The person that does most of calculation and book-keeping is the game master. But aside from having these onerous tasks they are also held responsible for the general flow of the game session and the consistency of application of the game rules. The ideal RPG situation 75

76 for the game master would thus be to automate these tasks to focus on the more creative and exciting aspects of the game. This call for automation was met by the advent of the computer. Trubshaw and Bartle s MUD was a direct importation of the RPG session to the world of networked computing. The rules of MUD were in fact based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons (Arneson & Gygax, 1974) RPG system. This has had significant repercussions in the way gaming virtual worlds have developed. Core game design elements such as character classes, levels and global hit points are often taken for granted as pertaining to the genre, but these are only one of a multitude of possible RPG systems in the pen and paper world, few of which have found expression in the digital game world. One wonders what MMOGs would look like today had Runequest been the prototype upon which game designers based their creations. If game mechanics have a formative role in RPGs they are infinitely more influential in computer generated worlds, as there is no game master with whom one can negotiate meanings and interpretations of the system. Another legacy that RPGs passed on to virtual world designers is the penchant for the creation of fictional worlds made with the noetic habitation of others in mind. Many RPG game masters go to great lengths to create fantasy worlds whose complexity and attention to detail would rival even Middle-Earth. If the process of world creation in RPG worlds shares a long-standing history with the creation of literary fictional worlds, it also has additional features that give it more ontological weight. Fictional worlds in literary works have the privilege of guiding the reader through the environments they describe. They present a compelling landscape from the perspective of a train ride. Distant lands might be alluded to but are not traversed unless the author decides this. Readers can, of course, add to a given literary world through their own creative exploits, but these additions are theirs and theirs alone. In the case of RPGs the game master may decide to limit where players can traverse, but this would not be a long lasting or particularly satisfying world. In most cases game masters need to create a world that players are going to interact with in ways they please. The world thus evolves session by session. It reacts to the players actions just as players react to it. The creative richness and resulting complexity of such a process of creation should not be underestimated. In this sense, virtual worlds share more traits with RPG worlds than literary worlds as the former are intended for real-time habitation and not 76

77 wholly subservient to authorial intent. Virtual worlds often aspire to the evolutionary power and flexibility possible in RPG worlds, but these qualities are more easily sustained through shared imagination and verbal text than a 3D graphical persistent world supporting millions of players. It is at this point that the second parent makes an intervention. One of the most enjoyable elements of RPGs is their ability to engross players through shared imagination (Fine, 1983). Participation in the game world requires players to sustain a relatively common mental image of the scenes and characters described. This becomes more powerful in the case of long-running campaigns. 16 The strength of such mental imagery can only be apprehended through experience, not description. Some RPG groups use miniature characters, objects, furniture and terrain along with templates and markings on the game board to act as mental props (Walton, 1990) assisting the imagination to generate and sustain the scene described and the characters in it. This is particularly useful in game systems that aim at simulating moment-to-moment interactions through game mechanics, making it necessary to anchor characters and objects to specific locations in the game environment. Cyberpunk The cognitive efforts of RPG players tend to be directed towards strengthening the experience of an imagined world whose presence is intensified through its shared, real-time nature. This desire for sharing imagined worlds through an inscribed representation finds considerable resonance with the holy grail of virtual reality technology as portrayed in cyberpunk fiction by writers like Vernon Vinge, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Pat Cadigan and others. Here the digitally mediated environments stimulate the senses with such compelling richness that they can be mistaken for the non-mediated (real) world. Cyberpunk fiction stands apart from other genres of sci-fi through its chronological proximity to the reader combined with a focus on the social, cultural and environmental repercussions of digital technologies. A trademark of the genre is its ability to extrapolate contemporary concerns about the latter and transform them into a quasi-tangible tomorrow where the boundaries between skin and machine, mind and interface have become largely obsolete. 77

78 The term cyberpunk was first used by Bruce Bethke in a story by the same name written in 1980 and published in A year later, Gardner Dozois utilized the term to describe the works of Sterling, Cadigan and Gibson who had recently published the highly popular Neuromancer. The most powerful image painted by Gibson in his award-winning novel describes the habitable, digital world of cyberspace: Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. (Gibson, 1993, p. 55). Neuromancer not only popularized the concept of cyberspace, but also played a formative role in establishing a vision for the future development of digital communication technologies. When William Gibson s vision was published, it struck sparks in the real world. Scientists and hackers had found a future they couldn t wait to build, live in and, most importantly, sell. Katherine Hayles (1999) notes how Gibson s impact on technology developers was not only due to the compelling nature of the images and concepts he created but the time in which they materialized: The Neuromancer trilogy gave a local habitation and a name to the disparate spaces of computer simulations, networks, and hypertext windows that, before Gibson s intervention, had been discussed as separate phenomena. Gibson s novels acted like seed crystals thrown into a supersaturated solution; the time was ripe for the technology known as cyberspace to precipitate into public consciousness (p. 36). It is no coincidence that the term virtual reality and its accompanying hyperbole came into use soon after Neuromancer s publication. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the wide-eyed promises of unbounded creative freedom and expression that the early virtual reality enthusiasts preached did not make it far into actualization. If Gibson s vision of a sensorially immersive version of the contemporary Internet is far beyond our grasp, the first instance of it in a literary work offers a vision which is more applicable to the current state of affairs. Although he didn t use the term cyberspace, Vernon Vinge published his novella True Names in 1981 and thus preceded Gibson in his positing of a techno-mediated world 78

79 which he called, rather appropriately, Other World. Vinge envisioned a future where the world would be connected by a globe-spanning data-network that people could interact with through a data-set. In this respect his projection was accurate. This level of networking experience is very similar to the Internet. On top of this Vinge set a superior data network whose use was mostly illegal and operated on the level of imagination, navigated through the use of high resolution EEGs as input/output devices (Vinge & Frenkel, 2001, p. 271). The Other World appeared much like a fantasy world version of Gibson s consensual hallucination enabling a magical world representation of data space. The direct link to the user s imaginary faculty accelerated data transfer and processing giving users (known as warlocks) a significant edge over those using the conventional network: The Limey and Erythrina argued that sprites, reincarnation, spells, and castles were the natural tools here, more natural than the atomistic twentieth century notions of data-structures, programs, files, and communications protocols. It was, they argued just more convenient for the mind to use the global ideas of magic as the tokens to manipulate this new environment. They had a point; in fact, it was likely that the governments of the world hadn t caught up to the skills of the better warlocks simply because they refused to indulge in the foolish imaginings of fantasy (p. 270). There is no doubt that Vinge was influenced by developments in networked RPGs like Avatar and MUD. The evocative fantasy imagery present in Vinge s Other World resonates with the sumptuous worlds of contemporary MMOGs. But even this representational closeness is trumped by the proximity of Stephenson s Metaverse to contemporary sandbox worlds like Second Life. Stephenson s Metaverse is the closest a representation of cyberspace has come to actuality. In contrast to Gibson, Stephenson emphasizes the social and commercial dimensions of cyberspace. First dates in the metaverse are plagued with concerns about avatar design. Off-the-shelf models advertise the newb status of its owner. Bars are crowded, with the more exclusive locales excluding prospective clients not on the invited list. Property values fluctuate depending on neighbourhood and market forces. It is the perfect site for advertisers to reach the wealthier segments of the world s population: 79

80 That s why the damn place is so overdeveloped. Put in a sign or a building on the Street and the hundred million richest, hippest, best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives (Stephenson, 1993, p. 25). The metaverse has a sense of tangibility about it borne by its visibly dense population and similarity to urban landscapes in the ordinary world. Gibson s cyberspace focuses on the personal intensification of digital space experience. The metaverse is first and foremost a social place. Stephenson foregrounds the everyday extended into the virtual, rather than the representational segregation between the virtual and the real featured in Gibson. If Gibson was the champion of the virtual reality movement, Stephenson s metaverse has been adopted as the poster child for the contemporary vision of tomorrow s cyberspace. A project titled The Metaverse Roadmap (Acceleration Studies Foundation, 2007) aims to accelerate the development towards Stephenson s portrait of a virtual world by bringing together representatives from leading technology companies and fostering a collaborative, if distributed, working environment. Here the notion of the metaverse has moved from the metaphoric to the metonymic, displacing the fictional with the attainable: The metaverse is the next incarnation of the internet and the opening of a new informational dimension to physical space. It is a permanent new space that incorporates all previous informational dimensions (text, etc.) of physical space and goes increasingly beyond it, an immense reservoir of information that is constantly being updated, a platform for easy and intimate contact with others, a place whose future is very bright and hard to predict in its specifics, but less so in its general trends. The ease of mobility between concepts in literary fiction and culture-shaping communication technologies is perhaps one of the most telling aspects of virtuality in our time. We have attained an unprecedented level of confidence in actualizing the most challenging technological problematics to such a degree that we sometimes forget that the goals we aim towards were borne out of a literary writers mind. It is surely not the first time in our history that artists have started such a process of creation, but expectations of immediate actualizations have scarcely been this high. The metaverse roadmap project 80

81 asks whens and hows, but rarely whys. Why do we have such a drive to fix the imaginary upon the material; to give it a shared and perceivable tangibility we can inhabit at the click of a few buttons? The rest of this work aims to take a few steps towards answering this question by investigating the nature of involvement in digital games and the associated metaphors of presence and immersion. 12 Habitat s designers, Farmer and Morningstar, use the term player instead of user to signal the fact that it was created as an artifact of the entertainment industry (Farmer & Morningstar, 1991) 13 See World of Warcraft s website at 14 See Bartle, Dark Age of Camelot is also known as DAoC. 16 Campaigns are series of linked adventures (also called scenarios) that are held in the same world either sporadically or on a regular basis. 81

82 Chapter 3: Metaphors of Immersion, Presence and Transparency A staple image of cyberpunk movies is the prone, headset-clad body connected to a virtual reality machine via cables connected to implanted neural jacks. The figure could well be dead if it wasn t for the occasional twitch and spasm betraying the possibility that it is, in fact, dreaming. But this is not your average vivid dream. It s lucid dreaming on demand; a pay-per-act performance inside a digital world so compelling it makes separation from the non-mediated challenging. Virtual reality technology carried with it the promise of making similar experiences an accessible part of everyday life, the culmination of a long history in the creation of representational spaces that attempted to give viewers the sensation that they were actually inside them. According to Grau (2003, p. 54) this tendency to create hermetically closed-off image spaces of illusion has a rich history that can be traced back to Roman villa images in 60 B.C. This notion of creating an all encompassing media experience was also a concern of Bazin, whose 1946 influential essay The Myth of Total Cinema argues that the ultimate goal for cinema and all techniques of mechanical reproduction was the creation of a total and complete representation of reality a perfect illusion of the outside world in sound, colour and relief (Bazin, 1967, pp ). But virtual reality offered the opportunity not only to be visually surrounded by the representational space, but to move and act within it; an experiential phenomenon referred to as (tele)presence 17 (Minsky, 1980) or immersion (Murray, 1998). The technology to immerse people in computer generated worlds was proposed as early as 1965 by Ivan Sutherland, who created a working prototype of what he called The Ultimate Display, a bulky version of today s head-mounted virtual reality display (Sutherland, 1965, 1968). Sutherland s creation gave a new meaning to the notion of being there that surpassed even the most compelling representational media that were created for that specific purpose such as the 1950s wave of 3-D Cinema. Advertisements for movies like Bwana Devil (Oboler, 1952) celebrated the perceptual transportation of the new cinema technology: You have never witnessed anything in the world like this before! The flat screen is gone! You- not a camera- but you are there! (Ijsselsteijn, 2004, p. 20). The active role of the 82

83 audience is replaced by a qualitatively different mode of interaction at play in virtual environments, which Aarseth calls ergodicity, 18 that is a key factor in establishing a sense of being-there. This chapter explores the ways in which the terms presence and immersion have been used in discussions of virtual environments. 19 There is a significant slippage in the use of these two terms that has hampered progress in their conceptualisation (Slater, 2003; Waterworth & Waterworth, 2003) and undermined their utility (Ermi & Mayra, 2005). I will therefore consider how they have been used in the literature on virtual environments in order to lay a foundation for my own model which is presented in subsequent chapters. I will also argue for the importance of considering the experiential phenomenon that these terms refer to in the context of digital games (Ermi & Mayra, 2005; King & Krzywinska, 2006; Tamborini & Skalski, 2006). Inherent in this discussion is a need to keep in mind how the distinctive qualities of virtual environments are constitutive of the specific nature of the experiences they enable. This will counter a common move in contemporary Game Studies that equates immersion with its more general sense of absorption or engagement. Immersion is particularly problematic as it has been applied to experiences characteristic of non-ergodic media such as painting (Grau, 2003), literature (Nell, 1988) and cinema (Bazin, 1967) that are qualitatively different from experiences characteristic of virtual environments and, thus, digital games. The chapter will finally question the uni-directional nature of the immersion metaphor and the binary relationship between participant and environment that it implies. Presence? The potential to act within representational or remotely located spaces created a terminological gap that was addressed by Marvin Minsky in his 1980 paper titled Telepresence. Minsky coined the term telepresence to refer to the feeling of inhabiting a distant location while remotely (tele)operating robotic machinery inside it. Minsky was concerned about the considerable challenges facing the design of teleoperating technology to enhance this feeling of presence: The biggest challenge to developing telepresence is achieving that sense of being there. Can telepresence be a true substitute for the real thing? Will we be able to 83

84 couple our artificial devices naturally and comfortably to work together with the sensory mechanisms of human organisms? (Minsky, 1980, p. 48) The issues that Minsky raised became important not only in the field of telerobotics but more generally in virtual reality technology. The above concerns became fundamental not only in issues regarding interface design, but more importantly in the design of the virtual environment itself. Fostering an ever stronger sense of telepresence has long been a high priority for virtual reality environment builders. For this reason, a community of researchers formed a field dedicated to the study of the phenomenon, known as Presence Theory. The group sought to determine the best ways of defining and measuring presence in order to inform the design of virtual reality environments and interfacing hardware. The history of presence research is however replete with definitional conflicts. Aside from the general consensus that presence entails the sensation of being inside the virtual environment, there have been considerable disagreements over the definitions of main terms in the field. The first terminological disagreement related to Minsky s term telepresence. In the first edition of Presence, Sheridan (1992) reserved telepresence for cases of teleoperation while Held and Durlach (1992) used the term to refer to experiences in virtual environments and teleoperation. Later, articles in presence theory dropped telepresence altogether, preferring to use presence to refer to experiences in both virtual and actual environments, thus favouring the position held by Held and Durlach. The distinction between the two positions points not only to a terminological difference but more crucially to an ontological (and thus methodological) one. The dominance of Held and Durlach s view in contemporary presence theory has resulted in its being assumed that the ontological status of the virtual environment and the non-representational one are the same. Ijsselsteijn and Riva, for example, do not distinguish between a sense of presence in these two types of domains, arguing that: Importantly, multisensory stimulation arises from both the physical environment as well as the mediated environment. There is no intrinsic difference in stimuli arising from the medium or from the real world the fact that we can feel present in either one of the other depends on what becomes the dominant perception at any one time (Ijsselsteijn & Riva, 2003, p. 6). 84

85 By removing the distinction between stimuli arising in virtual and physical environments, Ijsselsteijn and Riva ignore the fundamental notion of virtual environment as a designed media artefact. This conceptualization sidelines the specificities of interpretation and practice operative in each domain. Starting from an assumption that the two environments are intrinsically the same with regards to participants mode of being also ignores the fundamentally different forms of practice possible in each. Virtual environments are designed with particular ends in mind. Even if they are aimed at more sandbox-style, openended behaviour, such as the virtual world Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003), the various forms of contingency they enable are radically more contrived than those found in the nonmediated world. This is not to say that virtual environments do not have the potential for entertaining a variety of complex forms of contingencies and consequences, as Malaby (2007) has noted, 20 but that their designed nature creates a far more contrived form of contingency and decreased severity of consequence than that possible in non-mediated domains. The issues raised by the above position are related to the diverse ways the terms presence and immersion are employed in the field. They are sometimes used interchangeably while at other times given more specific and complementary meaning (Ijsselsteijn, 2004). It is also not uncommon to find conflicting or contradictory applications by different theorists. For example, Slater and Wilbur define immersion as: A description of a technology, that describes the extent to which the computer displays are capable of delivering an inclusive, extensive, surrounding and vivid illusion of reality to the sense of a human participant (Slater & Wilbur, 1997, p. 606). They contrast immersion to presence, which is defined as: a state of consciousness, the (psychological) sense of being in the virtual environment (p. 607). Six years later, Slater refines the latter distinction, describing immersion as simply what the technology delivers from an objective point of view and presence as a human reaction to immersion (Slater, 2003). In this view, immersion relates to the affective properties of the hardware while 85

86 presence is the psychological response to this technology. Witmer and Singer, on the other hand view immersion as: A psychological state characterized by perceiving oneself to be enveloped by, included in, and interacting with an environment that provides a continuous stream of stimuli and experiences (Witmer & Singer, 1998, p. 227). Witmer and Singer point out that even though immersion is enabled by technology, it is ultimately a personal experience of the user and cannot be reduced to the characteristics of the technology that enable it. Curiously, Witmer and Singer use immersion in the same way that Slater and Wilbur use the term presence. The diverse application of these key terms and the confusion this creates have become a source of concern within the discipline (Slater, 2003; Waterworth & Waterworth, 2003) It is significant that although both approaches use immersion and presence in conflicting ways, in both cases, the evocative power of the hardware is elevated above the textual, designed qualities of the environment, not to mention the participants interpretation of it and their performed practice within it. In his 2003 article, Slater forwards a solution to the definitional conflicts in the field by arguing that presence is all to do with form and absolutely nothing to do with content. He gives an example of listening to a piece of orchestral music on a quadraphonic sound system. The high fidelity of the sound system makes the listener feel as though they were listening to the actual orchestra live, but the listener quickly loses interest in the music. The latter point, according to Slater, has nothing to do with the issue of presence: Suppose you shut your eyes and try out someone s quadraphonic sound system which is playing some music. Wow! you say that s just like being in the theatre where the orchestra is playing. That statement is a sign of presence. You then go on to say But the music is really uninteresting and after a few moments my mind started to drift and I lost interest. That second statement is nothing to do with presence. You would not conclude, because the music is uninteresting that you did not have the illusion of being in the theatre listening to the orchestra. The first statement is about form. The second statement is about content. Presence is about 86

87 form, the extent to which the unification of simulated sensory data and perceptual processing produces a coherent place that you are in and in which there may be the potential for you to act. The second statement is about content. A VE system can be highly presence inducing, and yet have a really uninteresting, uninvolving, content (just like many aspects of real life!) (Slater, 2003). The assumption here is that the fidelity of representation achieved technolgocially creates such an undeniable pull on the users consciousness that they cannot help but feel present. This points to a conception of media technologies that ignores not only the key role that agency plays in creating presence but also the interpretative role of the participant. Emphasizing the textuality of content foregrounds the importance of interpretation. Interpretation does not need to be a conscious action. In fact, most of our interactions with our environment are possible because we have an internalized knowledge of how its various elements work. When we are faced with experiences we cannot readily interpret, our mode of being becomes more critically removed (Heidegger, 1993). Our prior experience, expectations and knowledge form a crucial part of this interpretative relation. I am fascinated by a genre of electronic music called EBM (Electro Body Music). Listening to an EBM concert over a high fidelity surround sound system is going to facilitate my visualizing the concert surroundings and enhance the intensity and pleasure of my listening experience. Other people who are not acquainted with the genre and its clanging industrial sounds might find it rather distasteful. This lack of initial interest in and liking for the music is not going to make them feel that they are anywhere but an annoying and noisy environment. Contrary to Slater, I would argue that presence has all to do with content in conjunction with the participant s interpretative apparatus and lived experience. A prerequisite for presence is attention. Without the internalized or conscious direction of attention to the experience of presence is not possible. High fidelity systems are an important part of enhancing the intensity of the experience but cannot, in themselves create a sense of presence or immersion (depending on which definition one chooses to adopt). Another problem with Slater s example is that it discusses a medium that does not allow for the active, ergodic interaction with an environment. A number of theorists have claimed that non-ergodic media like books and movies can enable a sense of presence (Gysbers et al., 2004; Schubert & Crusius, 2002), in the same way that virtual environments do. There 87

88 is a distinction that needs to be made between holding mental images of a scene in mind while imagining being present within that scene, and occupying a location within a computer generated environment that anchors users with regards to other agents and enables them to interact with the environment from that specific location. As will be discussed later (chapters 5, 6 and 7) in the explication of my involvement model, the phenomenon this situation creates is what presence and immersion were mobilized to address in the context of virtual environments. The perception or mental imagery of spatiality and one s projected (imagined) location within that space does not generate a sense of presence or immersion on its own (Herrera et al., 2006; Waterworth & Waterworth, 2003). When we identify with a character in a movie or book, or imagine we are in the same room as the protagonist, we have no way of altering the course of events; no way of exerting agency. Likewise, the environments and characters represented in these media have no way of reacting to our presence, no matter how strongly we identify with them. However generally useful concepts and examples drawn from literary theory or media studies might be, the distinctive qualities of virtual environments need to be kept in the foreground in order that the distinctive kinds of experience they made possible can be more adequately understood. Immersion: a trope misunderstood Outside of presence theory, immersion finds its most frequent application in the context of digital games. Here it is applied in a number of contexts including: general absorption or engagement, realism, addiction, identification with game characters or more specifically referring to the sense of presence as discussed above. This looseness of application is perhaps understandable when it comes to industrial or popular uses of the term, but it is also common within academic digital Game Studies. Following Ermi and Mayra (2005) and Tamborini and Skalski (2006), I will here argue that the phenomenon which immersion and presence have been employed to refer to, is increasingly important in shaping the experience of digital games, but requires more precision in the use of the key terms. The following section will therefore consider the ways in which immersion is being used analytically in the study of digital games. As the representational power of graphics and sound expanded, game companies adopted immersive as a promotional adjective to market their games. This strategy was initially 88

89 employed almost exclusively to promote photorealistic graphics and, although this is still often the case, it is nowadays also used to market the more prominent or innovative features of the relevant game, like size and scope of the game world, computer controlled characters artificial intelligence, engaging storyline, weather effects, dramatic sound effects, open-endedness, or the realism of its physics engine: Conan takes graphics in MMOs to a new level! With the latest and greatest in technology and an amazing art direction the graphics in Conan immerses you into a world as never before seen in any online fantasy universe (Funcom, 2006). The developers of Call of Juarez have gone to great lengths to make sure that the graphics of the game are faithful to a true Western movie. They have created incredible weather effects, immense sunsets and highly realistic wild prairies, which enhance the player s total immersion (Techland, 2006). Taking place in a massive, free-roaming city featuring five distinct interconnected neighborhoods, Need for Speed Underground 2 delivers an immersive game world where the streets are your menus (Electronic Arts, 2006). Whether on land or sea, each nation s units will be unique, as will buildings and other culturally specific elements in the game. Depending on the faction you choose, you will have a different, highly immersive game-play experience, which in many respects gives the player several games in one (Heaven Games, 2006). Half-Life sends a shock through the game industry with its combination of pounding action and continuous, immersive storytelling (Valve Software, 2006). The common thread running through these conceptions of immersion is their ability to generate captivating experiences often with a close relation to the mimetic qualities they share with the chosen genre. At every game industry related conference I have attended, the immersive capabilities of a game are directly related to photorealistic graphics and powerful physics engines. For many designers, the holy grail of immersive design is the concept of Star Trek s Holodeck. This idea has been criticized by game designers and 89

90 theorists Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman in their book Rules of Play. They argue that too many designers share this mimetic imperative in game design, using Francois Dominic Laramee s statement as a representative example: All forms of entertainment strive to create suspension of disbelief, a state in which the player s mind forgets that it is being subjected to entertainment and instead accepts what it perceives as reality (Laramee quoted in Salen & Zimmerman, 2003, p. 450). Salen and Zimmerman strongly oppose this view, which they call the immersive fallacy : The immersive fallacy is the idea that the pleasure of a media experience lies in its ability to sensually transport the participant into an illusory, simulated reality. According to the immersive fallacy, this reality is so complete that ideally the frame falls away so that the player truly believes that he or she is part of an imaginary world (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003, pp ). For Salen and Zimmerman the drive towards what they call total immersion is not the most important aspect of game enjoyment and engagement. They support their argument by citing Elena Gorfinkel s views on immersion: The confusion in this conversation has emerged because representational strategies are conflated with the effect of immersion. Immersion itself is not tied to a replication or mimesis of reality. For example, one can get immersed in Tetris. Therefore, immersion into game-play seems at least as important as immersion in a game s representational space (Gorfinkel quoted in Salen & Zimmerman, 2003, p. 452) For Salen and Zimmerman, Tetris is a telling example of games in which immersion is not tied to a sensory replication of reality (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003, p. 452). They rightly highlight the problems associated with relating immersion to representational mimesis and the importance of not basing design principles solely on a reproduction of more realistic representation in digital form. If designers remain caught up in a desire for the technology of the Holodeck (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003, p. 454) the possibility for the maturity of the medium will be severely challenged. 90

91 But this point is made at the cost of specificity of meaning that immersion was employed to signify within the context of virtual environments and hence, digital games. When Gorfinkel states that one can get immersed in Tetris (Pajitnov, 1985), she is referring to the more general pre-virtual environment sense of the word as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: Absorption in some condition, action, interest, etc (Soanes & Stevenson, 2003). In Gorfinkel, Salen and Zimmerman s conception, one can be just as immersed in solving a crossword puzzle as in Half-Life 2 (Valve Software, 2004b). Figure 19 : Tetris and Half-Life 2 The problem here is that this use of the term ignores a history of application in the context of virtual environments, of which digital games are a subset, 21 as discussed within presence theory. By emphasizing immersion in a game like Tetris which does not possess a habitable spatial metaphor, Gorfinkel, Salen and Zimmerman sideline the importance of spatiality as a defining feature of immersion. Ryan (2001) has argued that the representation of space, whether this is internally generated or graphically presented, is one of the key features of the subjective experience of immersion: For a text to be immersive then it must create a space to which the reader, spectator, or player can relate and it must populate this space with individuated objects For immersion to take place, the text must offer an expanse to be immersed within, and this expanse, in a blatantly mixed metaphor, is not an ocean but a textual world (Ryan, 2001, p. 90). 91

92 The importance of spatiality as a metaphor for habitation of virtual environments will be discussed in greater length in chapters 5 and 6. It is here sufficient to acknowledge that understanding immersion as synonymous with absorption or engagement in their general sense, as Gorfinkel, Salen and Zimmerman (among others, as we shall see later on in this chapter) affirm, ignores important aspects of the experiential phenomenon the term immersion refers to. This more general use of the term also fails to acknowledge the fact that games located within virtual environments 22 enable qualitatively different forms of engagement from other media, thus reducing, rather than developing, the critical vocabulary available to Game Studies. Displacing a term due to conceptual problems associated with it can be highly productive if another one that accounts more fully for the phenomenon in question is proposed. Simply dismantling the already established technical dimension of the term, however, serves to add to the confusion Gorfinkel aims to dispel. This lack of differentiation between the specific use of immersion in virtual environments and more general terms like absorption and engagement is becoming more common in Game Studies literature. Dovey and Kennedy (2006), for example, use immersion and engagement interchangeably to refer to the absorbing qualities of digital games: This quality of immersion or engagement within the game world may account for the ways in which a sense of time or physical discomfort may recede as the player s skill develops. This is a critical aspect of the unique time economy that characterizes computer game-play. It is entirely commonplace that game-play experience seems to lie outside of day to day clock time we sit down to play and discover that hours have passed in what seemed like minutes (p. 8). The absorbing qualities mentioned by Dovey and Kennedy are neither specific nor guaranteed by digital games. Equating immersion to a loss of sense of time makes the term as readily applicable to gardening or painting miniature figurines as it does of digital gameplay. This is not to say that experiences of immersion, in the narrower sense of the term, are not conducive to this absorbed frame of mind, but this in itself does not fully describe immersion as applied to digital games. 92

93 This lack of specificity in terminology is also present when theorists import terms and concepts from other fields, such as literary or film theory, without considering the specific qualities of digital games. Julian Kucklich (2006) simplifies the complexity and specificity of the term when he states that immersion is merely a technical term for what Samuel Taylor Coleridge has called the willing suspension of disbelief, which is a pleasure provided by literary texts as well (p. 108). Although this quotation is taken from an edited book (Bryce & Rutter, 2006) that aims to facilitate the analysis of digital games, Kucklich does not offer an explanation of how Coleridge s popular phrase is applicable to the analysis of digital games, collapsing the complex experiences they enable into those of an altogether different medium. Douglas and Hargadon (2001) offer another account of immersion by introducing a further term, engagement. They combine work drawn from psychology of reading with the concept of schemas in cognitive psychology and adapt Victor Nell s (1988) conception of immersion as a form of deeply involving reading activity. For Douglas and Hargadon immersion becomes a form of non-critical absorption in a literary text built around a single schema: When immersed in a text, readers perceptions, reactions and interactions all take place within the text s frame, which itself usually suggests a single schema and a few definite scripts for highly directed interaction (Douglas & Hargadon, 2001, p. 152) They contrast this with a state of engagement, which is a more distanced and critical mode of experience required by more complex texts. Engagement calls upon a more conscious interpretative effort that results in a discontinuous interaction with the text: Conversely, in what we might term the engaged affective experience, contradictory schemas or elements that defy conventional schemas tend to disrupt readers immersion in a text, obliging them to assume an extra-textual perspective on the text itself, as well as on the schemas that have shaped it and the scripts operating within it (p. 152). 93

94 The merit of this conceptualization lies in their acknowledgement of a continuum moving from conscious attention to unconscious involvement. 23 But as with the cases above, Douglas and Hargadon (2001) are interested in the more general meaning of absorption rather than the specific phenomenon of immersion and presence in virtual environments. Their view of immersion does not distinguish between literary texts, hypertexts and digital games: Ironically the reader paging through Balzac, Dickens or for that matter, Judith Krantz, has entered into the same immersive state, enjoying the same high continuous cognitive load as the runty kid firing fixedly away at Space Invaders (p. 157). My position, by contrast, is that it is necessary to distinguish between the kinds of experience of various media texts in which immersion and absorption refer. The more general use of immersion relates to two connected interpretative domains. One relates to how the metaphor of immersion as deep absorption becomes conflated with a metaphor of immersion as traversable space habitation. When the spatial and temporal dimensions required by the second metaphor are sidelined the two metaphors collapse into each other. At this point there is a shift, not only in discursive terms, but more importantly, in the experiential gestalts in question. Lakoff and Johnson (2003) emphasize the close relationship between metaphor and experience, stating that the latter cannot be separated form the former. They use the concept of experiential gestalts to express this relationship between language and experience defining experiential gestalts as: ways of organizing experience into structured wholes (p. 81). The dominant experiential gestalt implied by immersion in the context of 3D virtual environments relates to our sense of being and acting in the world. When the spatial and temporal qualities of the game or virtual environment create a distinct continuity with the phenomenal mode of being in the everyday world, a particular form of mediated experience occurs. This experience is significantly different from a generic deep involvement in a representation that does not posses such spatial and temporal qualities. This means that although the immersion as deep absorption metaphor is applicable to Tetris, novels, movies, crossword puzzles, Counter-Strike (Valve Software, 1998) or pretty much anything that captures one s attention, the second metaphor, is only relevant to the last of these examples. This second 94

95 application of immersion will be developed through the notion of incorporation discussed in chapter 6. Presence and transparency Carr (2006) moves towards a break from this tendency to conflate metaphors by acknowledging the various conceptions of immersion and steering towards the notion of immersion as used within presence theory. In her analysis of Baldur s Gate (Bioware, 1998), Carr draws upon McMahan s (2003) use of Lombard and Ditton s (1997) conception of immersion as a form of presence. Lombard and Ditton identified six characterizations of presence: presence as social richness ; presence as realism ; presence as transportation ; presence as immersion ; presence as social actor within a medium and presence as medium as social actor. Out of these six conceptualizations they draw a common thread, which they use to posit a definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation. They further subdivide the category of presence as immersion in two: perceptual and psychological immersion. Perceptual immersion is similar to Slater and Wilbur s (1997) view of immersion as the hardware s effect on the user s senses. Psychological immersion is equivalent to the metaphor of immersion as intense absorption. Pyschological immersion bears close resemblance to the ways in which Douglas and Hargadon (2001), Gorfinkel (2004) and Salen and Zimmerman (2003) have used the term. Carr s application of presence theory is limited to an observation that in the case of Baldur s Gate, psychological immersion appears the more pertinent form, even though the game s audio and visual detailing simultaneously inspire degrees of sensory or perceptual immersion (Carr, 2006, p. 54). She then moves on to apply Douglas and Hargadon s model of engagement and immersion discussed earlier, to Baldur s Gate. She acknowledges the importance of the complementary relationship shared by the states of engagement and immersion and describes situations within the game when one state is dominant over the other. The resultant analysis importantly highlights the dimensions of involvement that require conscious attention versus those that become internalized by players. Unfortunately, Carr s analysis does not describe involvement beyond this separation between conscious and unconscious involvement, stopping at a listing of Baldur s Gate features that fall under one category or the other. 95

96 McMahan s (2003) Immersion, Engagement and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Video Games also uses Lombard and Ditton s conception of presence and immersion and applies it to an analysis of Myst III: Exile. In similar ways to Carr, McMahan s analysis halts at a descriptive listing of game features categorized under Lombard and Ditton s (1997) six categories of immersion. Players cannot see their own reflection in glass or water, or even see their own feet when they look down, but they can take rides in elevators and zeppelins and other related contraptions, can turn the pages of books, peer closely at objects, and pick up certain items as well as manipulate mechanical contraptions. As a result of these measures, the game has an extremely high degree of social realism, as the majority of the elements in this fantastical world conform quite closely to how things would be in our world (McMahan, 2003, p. 81). Claims like these can be applied to most other digital games in similar genres. Mechanical contraptions can be manipulated, vehicles operated for the sake of transportation and book pages turned. Lombard and Ditton s definition of presence points to an important dimension of the phenomenon that Bolter and Grusin have called the logic of transparent immediacy (Bolter & Grusin, 1999). The transparency alluded to here is obviously that of the interface. Transparency seeks to erase the interface and offer the viewer or user as direct an experience of the represented space as possible. Techniques of transparency combine content and form to deliver the perceptual illusion of non-mediation (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). But as has been argued in various areas of aesthetic inquiry, transparency is not unique to virtual environments. As mentioned earlier, Grau (2003), identifies a history of immersion in painted spaces of illusion dating back to 60 B.C. Roman villas: Immersion arises when the artwork and technical apparatus, the message and medium of perception, converge into an inseparable whole. At this point of calculated "totalisation", the artwork which is perceived as autonomous aesthetic object, can disappear as such for a limited period of time. This is the point where being conscious of the illusion turns into unconsciousness of it. As a general rule, 96

97 one can say that the principle of immersion is used to withdraw the apparatus of the medium of illusion from the perception of the observers to maximize the intensity of the message being transported. The medium becomes invisible (p. 349). As Bolter and Grusin (1999) state, this logic of transparency is a salient characteristic of immersion in virtual environments. Although the transparency of the medium and text discussed by Bolter and Grusin, Grau (2003)and Lombard and Ditton (1997), among others, is an essential quality of immersion, it is not by itself sufficient to describe the multiple dimensions of the experiential phenomenon. Rethinking metaphors We shall do better to think of a meaning as a plant that has grown not a can that has been filled or a lump of clay that has been moulded (Richards, 1936, p. 12). Meaning results from and lies in the interaction which takes place between language and lived experience, each of which modifies the other in a process which is crucially metaphoric. Metaphor is not simply a deviation from a literal reality; it is created by and in turn creates our sense of reality (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003; Richards, 1936). This process of mutual validation is particularly relevant in the case of more abstract experiences, where figurative expressions facilitate the structuring necessary for the relevant experiences to be internalized. Our interaction with virtual environments produces new forms of experiences that inevitably re-appropriate existing signifiers to enable us to comprehend and organize them within our lived experience. The metaphors of immersion and presence have been enlisted to do exactly that work, but as we have seen above, their value has been compromised by ontological clashes and a complex terminological history. These terms share a problematic underlying logic that assumes a divide between participant and virtual environment, or worse still between participant and hardware. They are laden with assumptions that imply a clear boundary between subject and external objective world which maps onto the problematic distinction of virtual and real discussed in chapter 2. These assumptions are pronounced in the metaphor of the submergence of the participant into the virtual environment, a subjective cogito poured into a containing vessel: 97

98 The experience of being transported to an elaborately simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content. Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or swimming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality, as different as water is from air that takes over all our attention our whole perceptual apparatus (Murray, 1998, p. 98). Presence has similar connotations, but its application is focused more by what I will argue is one of the two simultaneously occurring, defining aspects of the phenomenon: the anchoring of participants to a specific location within the virtual environment that objects and entities within it react to. Up to this point the metaphor works. But it also typically refers to the placing of the participant s subjectivity inside the environment in the same way as immersion does. Both metaphors imply a uni-directional process that disguises the most potent elements of the phenomenon in the context of virtual environments. As will be demonstrated by subsequent chapters, this potency of experience lies in the increasing ease and immediacy with which we can transfer multiple dimensions of our lived experience to contemporary virtual environments, particularly digital games and virtual worlds. As the complexity and sophistication of these digital media increase, the metaphor of everyday life becomes more easily adaptable to experiences within them. By everyday life I am here referring to the composite nature of contemporary being in its social and media-saturated cultural dimensions. The appeal of otherness that these environments promise in fact becomes organized by the same structuring principles of the everyday social world. Herein lies the power of the composite phenomenon that presence and immersion allude to: a process of internalization and experiential structuring that is compelling precisely because it draws on our fundamental social learning. Lakoff and Johnson (2003) emphasize this dynamic of transferance between experiential gestalts as the core of their experientialist ontology: The nature of our bodies and our physical and cultural environment imposes a structure on our experience, in terms of natural dimensions of the sort we have discussed. Recurrent experience leads to the formation of categories, which are 98

99 experiential gestalts with those natural dimensions. Such gestalts define coherence in our experience. We understand our experience directly when we see it as being structured coherently in terms of gestalts that have emerged directly from interaction with and in our environment. We understand experience metaphorically when we use a gestalt from one domain of experience to structure experience in another domain (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003, p. 226). Because of the accumulated definitional and disciplinary issues associated with the use of presence and immersion I have concluded that a new term is necessary to permit effective inquiry into the distinctive qualities of digital games, virtual environments and virtual worlds. In what follows, I will outline a conceptual model that replaces the metaphor of immersion with one of incorporation. This metaphor signifies an internalization of the digital environment that makes it present to the participant s consciousness as a domain for exerting agency while simultaneously being present to others within it through the figure of the avatar. 99

100 Chapter 4: A Tale of Two Worlds The review of the literature on presence and immersion undertaken in the previous chapter, and the opening chapters consideration of themes and concepts in the Game Studies literature, demonstrate that there is a scarcity of comprehensive conceptual frameworks that can be employed to understand the multiple facets of player involvement and immersion in digital games and virtual worlds. Having reached this conclusion in my initial research, I thus felt it necessary to focus on the constituents of a comprehensive model of involvement in digital games. In addition to the kinds of knowledge which can be generated by textual analysis, I considered that access to players reports on their game experience could provide an additional dimension of knowledge pertinent to a fuller analysis of the forms of designed experience enabled by digital games. It was important not only to relate the theoretical works on the subject to observations drawn from my own conclusions of long standing experience in games, but to observe the views of other players through personal participation and, more specifically, by way of a series of focus groups and in-depth interviews with them. This chapter gives an account of my research process within the ever-changing virtual worlds that are the main site of inquiry. This adventure spanned a period of three years and took many forms: from long hours of personal participation and analysis of various MMOGs and online FPSs (including a spell of competitive play), to online, real-time discussions with virtual world academics, scouring of a wide variety of game forums, player blogs, viewing of hundreds of playermade machinima, 24 Beta testing upcoming MMOGs, discussing issues with the writers and editors of a leading MMOG news site ( as well as interviewing MMOG designers and attendance at a number of game-related international conferences. An important goal of this chapter is thus to document a researcher s journey in the vast realms of virtual worlds and hopefully signpost issues that were encountered along the way that will aid future virtual world researchers. At the time of writing documents describing research methods and issues in MMOGs are few and far between. The recently completed PhDs by Constance Steinkuehler (2005) and Lisbeth Klastrup (2004) as well as Taylor s (2006) ethnography of Everquest (Sony Online Entertainment, 1999) in Play Between 100

101 Worlds, signal a number of important issues confronting the prospective MMOG researcher. These works were indispensable for me to form my own research strategy. In laying out the issues I came across, the methods I adopted to tackle them, and perspectives they yielded, this thesis aims to contribute to the growing body of literature on MMOG research. Virtual worlds are particular forms of persistent, spatial, online social domains that entail a wide scope for performative agency to be enacted. Researchers of MMOGs need to consider the implications of the ways they represent themselves, both in terms of their inworld (avatar) appearance and name, but also their performed actions in similar ways to other forms of ethnographic research carried out in the non-mediated world. Researchers also need to consider the ways in which the game architecture of these virtual worlds influences the research design and the conduct of the research. Game elements like character levels, factions, items and clothing/armour can have significant implications for access to particular participant communities, the way in which these communities perceive the researcher embodied through their avatar and other affordances and limitations specific to MMOGs. Although these issues may seem trivial to researchers outside the MMO field, the implications of avatar presentation and performed actions, are crucial in shaping the research process. The following sections will describe the research process specifically adopted for this thesis and highlight the latter issues in the context of qualitative MMOG research. World travels Unlike standalone or multiplayer games, MMOGs tend to have a steep learning curve and require a considerable length of time to get even the most basic impressions of how they operate. Since MMOGs thrive because of the persistent social structures that flourish within them, maintaining social contacts and interactions requires regular participation and upkeep. The majority of MMOGs are level-based as well as requiring group-play in order to progress enough in the world to start getting a sense of what it is about. Although one can, with some difficulty, join groups of strangers, or pick-up groups, these tend to be hard to keep together or ineffective in their operation as one cannot be guaranteed of the continued cooperation of individual group members. For this reason it is essential to have a group of players to play with regularly. This means keeping similar login times and 101

102 frequencies. All of the above, among other reasons, mean that it is difficult to participate actively in more than one MMOG at a time. Being fully involved in two MMOGs at the same time required a great investment of time that, combined with the PhD, I could not afford to dedicate. I also noticed that when I tried to engage with two MMOGs simultaneously I felt a sense of social disassociation from one when the other became more socially demanding. I thus opted for a short engagement with a wide variety of MMOGs 25 and a dedicated focus on two. In view of this I took on the role of feature writer at one of the most frequented websites on the net covering MMOGs: 26 This gave me the unique opportunity to enter into dialogue with companies creating MMOGs. Previous to my writing post at I had tried to contact several companies for over 6 months without receiving a single response. This move thus yielded much needed access into the design and production process and enabled me to hold designer interviews and participate in the pre-launch beta testing. The interviews started after an eighteen month long engagement with various MMOGs and a lengthy stay in Planetside (Sony Online Entertainment, 2003) and World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004). During this period I accessed, on a weekly basis, a range of online forums discussing current and upcoming MMOGs and was also active in a community of virtual world academics and designers at which led to membership in a World of Warcraft guild formed by a number of Terranovans. This was a rich source of research inspiration and discussion of MMOG issues within the world itself. It opened up the possibility of having daily real-time discussion with a number of leading theorists in the field while inhabiting the space discussed. For a researcher geographically cut off from the North American and European hubs of Game Studies and virtual world conferences, it was an incredibly important opportunity. New Zealand, at the time of writing, had a mere handful of game researchers, at least that I managed to locate, and no structured online networking possibilities for researchers in this growing field. My extensive, if shallow, participation in a variety of MMOGs as well as my interaction with MMOG developers through gave me a good sense of the direction the industry is moving and the different design approaches to MMOGs. This 102

103 enabled me to make an informed decision as to which two I would focus on in more depth. I settled on World of Warcraft and Planetside for a variety of reasons, discussed below. Initially I had intended to interview FPS and MMOG players, but when I started planning the interview schedule, it became obvious that it would be hard to make a comparison between the two due to the crucial difference of persistence. When I started participating in Planetside and talking to other players, I quickly realised that they all had experience in FPSs and thus a persistent massively multiplayer version of these would be a rich site for inquiry, yielding comparisons with another MMO on a more equal footing. Aside from a few MMOs in development, Planetside is one of a mere (when compared to MMORPGs) handful of MMOFPS that are true to the design dictum of personal skill over time and money invested in accumulating gear and building powerful characters. In Planetside, a newly made character can make a significant contribution to any situation if the skill of the player allows it. This created a stark contrast with the structure of the majority of MMOs where character level difference and gear makes low level characters effectively useless. Planetside s difference from other MMOs is pertinent from a variety of perspectives and will be treated in more detail in the World of Warcraft and Planetside description and discussion below. World of Warcraft was an easier candidate. In many ways the choice was made for me as the number of paying subscribers escalated by the month. It is hard to ignore a world that has massive appeal across cultures. As discussed in chapter 2, no other MMOG to date has made such an impact in North America, Europe, Australasia and Asia simultaneously. At the time of writing World of Warcraft claims over 7.5 million paying subscribers. 27 Its arrival was responsible for a considerable expansion of the MMOG market as well as generally bringing MMOGs to the attention of the general public, having the unavoidable yet unfortunate result of the genre becoming synonymous with the name World of Warcraft. The sheer popularity of World of Warcraft demanded attention. Research perspective Steinar Kvale (1996) describes two contrasted interviewing approaches through the contrasting metaphor of interviewer as miner and as traveller. The miner metaphor represents knowledge as valuable material to be unearthed by the researcher and processed 103

104 through pre-defined, established methods. The precious facts and meanings (p. 3) are distilled through transcription and presented as objective truths after being moulded into definitive form (p. 3). The value of the outcome is measured against an objective, real world. The traveller metaphor, on the other hand, represents the interviewer as a wanderer through a landscape who enters into conversation with the inhabitants encountered. The traveller explores the country and may also: Seek specific sites or topics by following a method, with the original Greek meaning of a route that leads to the goal. The interviewer wanders along with the local inhabitants, asks questions that lead the subjects to tell their own stories of their lived world, and converses with them in the original Latin meaning of conversation as wandering together with (p. 4). I found this metaphor useful in thinking about the spectrum of research approaches ranging from the post-positivist (miner) to the post-modern (traveller) because it allowed me to view my own work as aligned closely with the traveller pole while avoiding a rigid labelling of methodology and the strictures that implies. Each piece of research is unique in scope and thus unique in the methodological tools employed to investigate it (Brewer & Hunter, 1989; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Fetterman, 1998). I found this flexible approach particularly useful in the context of a relatively new research domain. Although I relied primarily on interviews and focus groups, as I progressed in the research process I became more aware of what fully ethnographic research would require in these spaces. The specific qualities of MMOGs provided an interesting new social and communicational environment for research that afforded novel ways of recruiting and interacting with participant communities. Taking their specific qualities into account during the research process contributed to a process of applying established qualitative research methodologies in ways appropriate to the distinctive characteristics of MMOGs. The intensely subjective, complex and rapidly changing nature of my object of inquiry is suited to this research perspective. My aim was to arrive at a conceptual model that was broad enough not to be reductive and narrow enough to be pragmatically applicable. The research process thus occurred in multiple phases utilizing a variety of qualitative tools as the need arose. The breadth of these tools narrowed as the process progressed, ultimately 104

105 focusing on a series of in-depth, semi-structured, long interviews with 25 participants originating from two different virtual worlds. In the course of the interviews, I was led down winding alley-ways that branched off into a maze of narrative experiences whose descriptive richness I could not have even guessed, let alone planned for. The flexibility of the qualitative approach proved to be a powerful tool in delving deep into the players experience. In most interviews I needed to approach questions from multiple angles using metaphors adopted by the participants themselves to describe experiences which they found difficult to put into words. This is partly because the vocabulary needed to express such situations was either lacking or too vague to convey the liminal (Shields, 2003; Turner, 1974) nature of experiences described. A qualitative perspective was thus ideal both due to the experiential nature of the object of inquiry as well as the layers of inquiry that were key to building the model. Interview design During the formation of the interview schedule it became apparent that the interviews would need to be open to a variety of perspectives on player involvement and thus I decided to opt for two long interviews per participant set about a week apart from each other. The focus of the interviews was the experience typically represented by immersion, and one of my aims during the interviews was to elicit from participants their accounts of this experience and the terms they used to represent it. A number of conversations led to discussion of the phenomenon although it was not always called immersion. Some participants used longer descriptions to signify it and others made up their own terms to denote the experience. The interview schedule was created on the basis of issues that were highlighted by the literature review on immersion and presence outlined in the previous chapter and my own participation in MMOGs and digital games. This provided a number of broad threads of inquiry that I later presented to the focus groups. The aim of the focus groups was to have initial exploratory discussions with as little input from my side as possible that would help shape the later interviews (Morgan, 1997). The structure of the focus groups was kept 105

106 open, with sporadic interventions from my part to explore productive paths of discussion raised by the participants. The material gathered from the focus groups was similar to the formation of the initial interview schedule. The interviews themselves were based on the interview schedule but, where it was appropriate, I omitted or added lines of inquiry and probed issues raised by the participants. At times, these probes took a considerable length of time and provided valuable insights into participants thinking about their game-experiences. This happened most often when participants discussed something I was going to enquire about prior to my broaching the subject. The participants input also helped shape the interview schedules as the sessions progressed; there is a marked evolution in their structure that can be traced chronologically. The interviews were coded using QSR N6 and analysed for broad topics in three distinct phases: between the first and second World of Warcraft interviews, between the World of Warcraft interviews and the Planetside interviews and the final, more thorough analysis after all the interviewing was done. The model was sketched after the first phase of coding and analysis. This resulted in an updating of the interview schedules for the next round of interviews. The same process occurred in the second phase of analysis. The final coding and analysis was obviously the longest and most thorough, yielding a number of clusters of emphasis that lead to the broad categories of the macro and micro-involvement parts of the model. The methods of recruitment used in each of the virtual worlds were not aimed at gathering any form of representative sample. In World of Warcraft I recruited participants from two types of servers; Player versus Environment (PvE) and Player versus Player (PvP). Since the total paying subscribers for some MMOGs are far too large to be supported on a single server, the MMOG exists on a number of parallel servers, sometimes called shards. The number of these servers can vary greatly. World of Warcraft is hosted on thousands of servers divided by region: North America, Europe and Asia. Planetside, on the other hand is situated on three servers, US West Coast, US East Coast and Europe. These servers may also operate with different game-mechanics. In World of Warcraft there are three types of servers, called realms that one can inhabit. On PvP servers characters 106

107 from one faction (Alliance or Horde) can attack any members of the opposing faction, wherever they find them. On PvE servers characters from one faction can attack those of the opposing faction only in specific situations; that is, during Battleground 28 mini-games or when the opponent is flagged. Characters become flagged when they join a battle between other flagged characters or attack an NPC of the opposing faction. The flagged status remains for a short duration and is then turned off automatically. The third type of server is the (RP) role-playing server. There are RP versions of both PvP and PvE servers. The main difference between RP and non-rp servers is that RP players are expected to talk and act more in-character than in other realms. It was important to recruit participants from PvP and PvE servers because their relative game mechanics appeal to different players, with PvP tending to attract more competitive players than PvE. I created two characters, one for each type of server, and proceeded to inhabit them for about six months each before I started the interviews. Both characters were called Muun, with the PvE one being of the Night Elf race on the Alliance side and the PvP character being a Troll on the Horde side. I anticipated what was later confirmed in the interviews, that different players would be attracted to the aesthetics of available characters and areas/cities frequented by the respective races, and thus it was useful to hold interviews with players from both factions in both types of server. Both characters were about the level 40 mark when I started interviews. The relevance of levels to the interview process will be discussed below. In Planetside I used one character on one server (there is no distinction between types of servers as in World of Warcraft), this time called MuunGrinn (the name needed to be longer than 5 letters so the usual Muun would not do, unfortunately). The three factions on Planetside differ only in the uniform colours and types of weapons and vehicles used. This minor difference was not one to require recruitment from different factions as most players rotated between factions anyway, and the main difference of weapons and vehicles could be overcome by robbing opposing faction s bodies of their backpacks and hacking unattended vehicles. 107

108 Figure 20 : My avatars in World of Warcraft and Planetside, respectively. I logged in to World of Warcraft at busy periods and found a prominent spot outside the more popular auction house, the social and economic hub of each faction. When it came to Planetside I tried to find populated facilities that were not under siege at the time (Planetside has no safe zones and action can become very intense when assaults start to approach facilities) and yelled out to people waiting to board planes and transport vehicles by the vehicle bay areas. Interested players were given a description of the interview procedure and subject matter and were directed to my website to read a summary of my thesis project ( The players that showed interest after this disclosure were invited to join me at a quiet inn were I offered them (virtual) drinks and conducted short interviews to make sure that they satisfied my selection requirements as well as enabling me to answer any pre-interview questions they had. Those who decided to participate were sent an with further details about the interview process and were also given a login name and a password to access my research website and read the information sheet and consent form therein. These forms generated reports that were automatically e- mailed to me. Aside from required ethical consent issues, the forms also asked participants to give an alias by which they wanted to be known (if this differed from their in-world character names), age, previous MMOGs played and preferred digital games in general. No other personal information relating to the participants off-line lives was sought in the form or in the course of the interview, although this information was volunteered on occasion by the participants themselves. 108

109 Figure 21 : World of Warcraft Focus group sessions on the Alliance and Horde factions respectively Considerations for the MMOG researcher My approach contrasts with Sherry Turkle s (1995) approach in Life on the Screen, where she states that only participants she was able to meet face to face were included in the study. Online interviewed participants were not included for reasons best given in her own words: I have chosen not to report on my own findings unless I have met the Internet player in person rather than simply in persona. I made this decision because of the focus of my research: how experiences in virtual reality affect real life and, more generally, on the relationship between the virtual and the real. In this way, my work on cyberspace to this point is conservative because of its distinctly real-life bias (p. 324). While we share an interest in the nature of the relationship between the virtual and the real I considered it more important to interview players online than in person. The World of Warcraft interviews and focus groups were held within the world itself. Participants were given the option of choosing a location to meet in and the interviews were held there, through the World of Warcraft chat box. A number of third party add-on programs enabled the extraction and exportation of chat logs from World of Warcraft to.txt files. No such programs were available for Planetside and thus I had to hold the Planetside interviews 109

110 over the MSN Messenger chat application. I chose online instead of face to face interviews for two main reasons. The first is that it would be hard to locate enough Planetside players in New Zealand; there is no known New Zealand outfit (Planetside s version of a clan) or website where players can be contacted due to the lack of popularity of Planetside in New Zealand. I also considered that the subject under question was more appropriately interrogated while in the world itself. Immediate contextualisation helped focus participants memories and their attention to the implications of the questions about their involvement in the world, rather than being removed from their online life and having to recall what it feels like being connected to the virtual world in question. Holding interviews and focus groups in-world also helped in creating better rapport with the participants, a crucial component to any qualitative research (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002), which needs to be given particular attention in the case of CMC mediated interactions (Hine, 2000; Mann & Stewart, 2000). Participants also commented on their preference for in-world interviews, finding them more conducive to an intimate exchange than other online chat options. Following Taylor (2006) I cannot emphasize enough the importance of being as familiar as possible with the virtual worlds researched. By familiarity I am here referring not only to knowledge of the social and cultural rules of the community in question but also to familiarity with game mechanics and the layout of the world. Knowledge of the gamerules, social structures and conventions as well as knowledge of the world s topographies and history are all aspects that will help the researcher formulate and conduct interviews as well as enable a comprehensive analysis of the data collected. Participation in the chosen MMOGs informed my research questions through my own development of the set of competencies needed for fluent participation in the virtual world and its constituent societies and, consequently, guided me in acting appropriately within them. This knowledge of appropriate behaviour related to my written communication with participants and my avatar s performative actions, appearance and other game-related data; both revealed to other players that reveal a considerable amount of information about my experience and participation in the MMOG. 110

111 Having experienced and interacted with the world for a number of months prior to the interviews became particularly important when the interviews started as participants expected me to be highly knowledgeable about the MMOG in question. Although the researcher can always ask for interpretation of specific terms, it would be counterproductive to stop every few sentences exchanged to ask for explanations (I say every few sentences here because specialist terms and references were used frequently by most participants in the course of the interviews). This would not only break up the momentum of the conversation but also get in the way of being able to contextualise responses and thus delve deeper in particular aspects pertinent to the focus of the research. Taylor (2006) emphasizes the importance of being able to live, talk, and work with and among the community members for a stretch of time (p. 16). I would similarly argue that the stretch of time I spent as an active member of the three virtual world communities (two servers on World of Warcraft and one on Planetside) were indispensable to achieving the outcomes of the research. MMOG research also differs considerably from qualitative research undertaken in other types of online communities. MMOGs are a phenomenon shaped by a matrix of three main elements: social aspects, representing all forms of competitive and collaborative associations with others; game aspects, representing rule structures and game mechanics; and world aspects, dealing with knowledge of geography, populations, economies and lore of the virtual world in question. Each of these elements affects the other two. If one decides to focus on certain elements pertaining to one category, knowledge and consideration of the effects of the other two will provide an informing context for a well rounded inquiry. This is not necessarily the case with online communities in general, such as those forming around IRC chat rooms, newsgroups and message boards which are not shaped by specific gaming or world mechanics written into the relevant communications application. Game and world mechanics play an important part in the social aspects and must be factored into the research design. Taylor (2006), for example, discusses the important role that choice of race and character class represent for MMOG researchers. In the case of other online communities like chat rooms, forums and other groups, the researcher is represented by their alias and the register they use in communicating with others. A practical example is the issue of levels. Characters start at level 1 and progress to a pre-determined level. In World of Warcraft the maximum level is 70. A level

112 character in World of Warcraft implies a prolonged engagement with the MMOG and thus automatically signals that the researcher is not an outsider bereft of knowledge of the world but an active, knowledgeable participant in the community. When I tried recruiting participants using a level 1 avatar in World of Warcraft I was often ignored or met with a certain degree of scorn. A number of World of Warcraft players expressed a certain amount of indignation towards game researchers who were perceived as being only interested in painting a negative picture of gamers and MMOG players without actually playing the games or inhabiting the worlds. My recruitment attempts using a level 40 avatar were met with far more respect and interest. This also meant that I needed to invest a considerable amount of time in developing my character. The character s level was also instrumental in getting to locations where the participants wished to have the interviews. Low level characters are restricted to the areas they can travel to and this may inhibit which locations one can recruit from and where interviews can be held, if it is a requirement of the interviewer for his/her avatar and that of the participants to be present in the same in-world location. Another issue related to world design and game mechanics that needs to be considered is the selection of factions. Since character development influences how the researcher is received and where recruitment and interviews can be held, choosing one faction over another means that participants from the opposing faction(s) may not be accessible (as is the case in World of Warcraft). This can be due either to in-world language differences (Elves cannot communicate with Trolls, for example) or because avatars in one faction would be hacked to bits (by both player and AI controlled characters) before they could reach a social hub of the opposite faction. Each MMOG will have its own peculiarities that need to be addressed by the potential researcher. This is particularly pertinent to qualitative research. Immediate contextualisation within the examined environment greatly enhances the potential for strengthening the relationship between interviewer and participant and allows the former to interpret data gathered with greater intimacy than a more de-contextualised interview process would allow. 112

113 An issue encountered during the course of some interviews related to outside interruptions; high level characters in particular, felt duty bound to respond to requests for help from their guild members, which interrupted the flow of some of the interviews. This only happened in a small number of cases. Most participants preferred using in-world mail over s to which they often did not respond. The problem with in-world mail is that it tends to get lost among the masses of items bid on or sold at the Auction House, as well as items sent by friends and other mail. Another issue with in-world mail is that some players play different characters and thus mail sent to one character might not always reach them. The above points identify issues relating to the accessibility structures of the MMOGs. Reseach in MMOGs has to take these issues into account, not least because the research benefits for an experienced player-researcher deriving from in-world interviews are considerable. Two worlds I will now give a description of the virtual worlds my participants inhabit. Readers who are familiar with World of Warcraft and Planetside might wish to skip to chapter 5. These descriptions are not only meant to highlight specific features of the two but also to provide readers who have not engaged with MMOGs with an overall description of the two genres. MMORPGs and MMOFPSs; World of Warcraft representing the former and Planetside the latter. The following discussions will take a number of design elements and provide a comparative description of the way these elements are realised in each game. Genres Although both MMOGs fall under the broader genre of Massively Multiplayer Online Games, World of Warcraft is usually classified as a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) while Planetside falls under the Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter (MOFPS), sub-genre. The role-playing tag in MMORPGs can be somewhat misleading to those familiar with their pen and paper forefathers. A salient characteristic of pen and paper RPGs involved the performance of character through verbal communication and gestures. This can range from speaking in-character by referring to oneself as such and acting out the character by changing tone of voice, accent, and gestures; in other words, a fully blown performance of the role enacted (Fine, 1983; Mackay, 2001). 113

114 For a variety of reasons, the vast majority of MMORPG players do not tend to filter their actions through a particular persona, as is more often the case in pen and paper RPGs. An exception to this can be found on MMORPG role-playing servers, which encourage more in-character behaviour. Rather than requiring players to play fictional characters or personas, the RP in MMORPG is most usefully applied to differentiate the broader genre of worlds from more particular ones like MMOFPSs and MMORTSs as well as giving a nod to their pen and paper lineage. Massively Multiplayer First Person Shooters can have very similar traits to MMORPGs, but their focus is on real time action which often requires a first person perspective. Currently, the main feature that distinguishes MMOFPSs from other MMOGs is the combat system. As their name implies, MMOFPSs tend to be set in environments that facilitate long range combat, such as WWII Online (Corner Rat Software & Playnet Inc., 2001), Face of Mankind (Duplex Systems, 2006), Planetside, or the upcoming Huxley (Webzen Inc., forthcoming). The game mechanics in MMOFPSs tend to require more twitch based skills. Twitch style games require players to employ faster paced hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes than MMOGs and MMORTSs. On the other hand, MMOFPSs also accommodate non-fighting playing styles in the form of support classes like medics, engineers and transport drivers. They may also include character progression, classes and missions/quests similar to MMORPGs. MMORPGs, for their part can be often played from a first person point of view and can involve real time combat. The dividing line between these two is therefore not set in stone but tends to be a product of the world s setting: the more guns available the more likely it is to be called an MMOFPS. Topographies World of Warcraft is set in Azeroth, a fantasy world made up of 96 regions spread over two continents. Each of the regions is either controlled by one of the two factions; the Alliance and the Horde, or contested areas with settlements of each faction present. Each region has been given a unique aesthetic style and painted in a distinct palette. The individuality this gives to each region enhances the sense of exploratory novelty when a new one is discovered. The transitions from region to region tend to be unnaturally abrupt with a 114

115 clearly locatable few metres of land containing a dramatic blend of colours from the two regions palettes. But this lack of mimetic realism is not viewed negatively by players. In fact it seems to work as an effective mechanism to differentiate the areas and make the world feel larger than it actually is. Figure 22 : Two regions in World of Warcraft Participants did not seem to be bothered by the lack of geographical coherence of the world. Geological principles are thrown to the wind as lush Feathermoon lies a few hundred metres from the barren rock desert of Desolace. A brief look at the Google map version of World of Warcraft ("Map World of Warcraft", 2006) makes it clear that a bird s eye view of the land reveals its quilt-like terrain. Rather than going for subtle shifts in terrain generated by geological principles, as is the case for MMOGs like Dark and Light s (NP Cube, 2006) Ganareth, Blizzard opted for a consistency of aesthetic implementation rather than scientific realism. Blizzard have also cleverly manipulated methods of creating unsurpassable boundaries like mountains, forests, walls and shores that channel players along designed pathways. This also makes the regions seem larger than they are as they seem to stretch further than the traversable terrain. These techniques are common in digital game environments where, for example, a city seems to trail of into the distance but the area that can be accessed consists only of a few streets, such as the initial areas in Half Life 2 (Valve Software, 2004b). Unlike World of Warcraft and the majority of MMOGs, Planetside is set in a futuristic era of space colonization gone wrong. A contingent of humans is stuck on a planet called Auraxis. The disconnection from the rest of the Terran Empire splinters the army into three 115

116 factions: the Terran Empire, The New Conglomerate and The Vanu Sovereignty. Players need to pledge allegiance to one of these three factions by creating a character under the respective faction and lend arms to the never ending battle against the other two. Auraxis consists of ten continents and five caverns. There are no entities in Auraxis aside from the players, and thus no AI controlled agents, as is the case in World of Warcraft. Each continent has a particular terrain theme and weather cycle, but the terrain is visually generic, and aside from weather effects there are negligible ambient sounds. Participants commented on their difficulties with differentiating the continents, even after having played regularly in them for over a year. Even though the terrain and climate is different for each continent, the visual difference between them is not as distinct as that of Azeroth. Auraxis is an aesthetically blander place than Azeroth. There are few distinguishing features to explore. The lack of AI also makes areas without human player presence incredibly barren. Aside from towers and facilities, there are no urban areas in Planetside, a point that was raised by the majority of players as something they would like to see in the world. Figure 23 : Two regions in Planetside In Planetside there are no safe areas aside from the starting factional continent called Sanctuary. The Planetside world does not have any calm, social spaces like marketplaces, auction houses, taverns and the like, restricting socialising to collaboration with comrades, most often originating from one s outfit. Thus it is rare to see gatherings of people socialising with friends as is often the case in the urban centres of World of Warcraft, especially around the auction houses in the main cities. The lack of social spaces in Planetside can also be attributed to the fact that items are obtained from equipment 116

117 terminals without there being a persistent, player driven economy as in World of Warcraft. The demand and supply of items creates a marketplace feel to some places, with players advertising their wares on the trade channel and needing to be close to buyers/sellers in order to secure a transaction. The geographic proximity is important as often Trade chat transactions are preferable over Auction House transactions when advantageous deals need to be snatched or because a particular item or material is required immediately. The lack of socialising spaces in Planetside is also due to the fast paced action and pervasive PvP. Players need to be on their guard at all times as one cannot know when a shock assault or infiltration mission is being launched by one of the opposing factions. Naturally, Planetside attracts more action minded players with socialising often being left to outfit chat channels or directed more specifically to collaboration in immediate tactical operations. The lore World of Warcraft s back-story builds on the highly popular Warcraft trilogy of RTS games. This eased entry into its setting for a number of players who played the earlier Warcraft games and were familiar with the lore portrayed in these titles. Nevertheless, the depth of geography, history and mythos are nowhere near as rich as literary and tabletop RPG worlds like Tolkien s Middle Earth or Greenwood s Forgotten Realms, to mention just a few. Blizzard s world seems to have just enough lore to keep those interested in it occupied without displaying a sense of depth and long term evolution characteristic of secondary worlds in fantasy literature or some pen and paper role-playing game settings. This has a lot to do with the lore s lineage. The initial Warcraft game pitted orcs against humans in a generic environment, not a setting conducive to a deep secondary world. Gordon: What role do the world history and background play for you? Haelvon: I'm curious, but I won't go out of my way for a lot of background. Orcs versus Humans. ;) WoW tries to have some sort of story background, but it's just so few and far between that you encounter it. Some of the quests have interesting mini-stories, but the overall game theme is a bit weak. Well, with new quests, I read the quest descriptions and tried to understand what was needed. Now, I just click the accept button and look for the bare minimum needed to be accomplished to get the reward. If the developers aren't willing to put effort into the story-theme, 117

118 then I'm not going to take away precious space in my brain's memory for the background info. Hehe. Haelvon s attitude towards the lore was common, and this is reinforced by the fact that players are not required to engage at all with the lore of the world in order to progress or be involved within its societies. Indeed, only two participants displayed an interest in engaging with it; all others paid very little attention to it, if at all. This was either because they did not find it rich enough to capture their attention or because they did not need to engage with it to solve quests or progress in any way: Gordon: What role does the world history or background play for you? Nombril: None whatsoever. I don't even read the quests...just look at what it takes to mark them as complete. It's not real and doesn't really impress or interest me. I don't think it really makes any difference if you know or follow the storyline. Gordon: What role does world history or background play for you? Snotplate: None at all. I log to meet new people and have a good time doing it. The back-story is nice to know, but not essential to my game-play. Clone worlds World of Warcraft s Azeroth exists on thousands of servers around the world. Each new character must be created on a specific server. Each server runs a clone of Azeroth which develops its own specific social and economic history through time. These thousand of Azeroth clones are divided by geographic region: America, Australasia, Europe and Asia. Once the World of Warcraft application is bought within one of these regions the player is restricted to playing on servers of that region. Players who want to play with friends in distant geographical locations may find it impossible to get together inside World of Warcraft. As some participants have noted, the reason why they stayed in a particular virtual world or moved to new ones was to keep previous actual connections alive when they move to another place: Ananke: I have changed games several times to stay with people that I have gamed with previously. Even when we moved to England I continued to play with people 118

119 that I had gamed with before. Although we didn t have to leave those friends behind I think that I would have felt bereft and more alone in a new country and in unfamiliar surroundings if I had had to do so! A group of friends that I have played with online together for approx. four years has pretty much stayed together and we live across the US and Canada. Currently we have played three different online games together (SWG, WoW, and now DDO). Although we keep in touch primarily in game we have all at some point or another communicated via , instant messenger, and voice chat, even though we have never met any of these people in person. Planetside s Auraxis has only 3 clones running: one on the US west coast, the other on the East coast and one in Europe. There are also no regional restrictions with regards to which servers players can log on to. Customized birth Players choose a race and character class, give their character a name and are able to alter the look of their character. Curiously, World of Warcraft s character customization is more restricted than other preceding and contemporary MMORPGs. Aside from a few options, like changing a character s hair style, skin colour, face shape, players have very little opportunity to make themselves look unique. This has been commented upon by all the participants interviewed, mostly in negative terms. The ability to make one s avatar unique is clearly an important factor for players, and World of Warcraft is somewhat underwhelming in this department: Lili: I am as pleased when someone compliments my avatar as when someone compliments me in RL. Maybe more so. More so because I have created my avatar. Especially in CoX 29 where there's the whole back story element. Requires cleverness. Gordon: Is that pleasure dependent on MMOG, or a universal thing? Lili: Depends on the MMO and the level of customization available. I don t feel anything special towards my WoW mage. Just frustrated that I couldn t make her cuter or more unique. But I love my CoX toons. I really think of them as facets of me. Or facets of potential me's. 119

120 Gordon: Does this frustration subsist through play? Lili: Yeah. I think she's butt ugly and I hate that. Plus she moves funny. My CoX toons are hot and look hot when they run. I want my avatars to be at least as cute as I am in RL, and ideally more so. Inauro: Character customization is limited. There are not nearly enough options that enable you to differentiate your character from others. No real way to make your character an individual Aside from the name and their gear, what does one level 60 rogue have that's different from another at the end of the day? Dagger build, Sword build, sheesh! As Inauro notes, one way of differentiating one s character from others in World of Warcraft is the acquisition of rare clothing, armour and other items. In many ways, World of Warcraft literalizes the idea that you are what you own. Differentiation from others is not dependent on one s creativity but on the investment of long hours in the world accumulating riches and goods, or the expenditure of real money on World of Warcraft gold and items. In World of Warcraft you are literally what you wear. Figure 24 : Character creation screens from World of Warcraft and Planetside respectively Planetside suffers from a greater lack of avatar customization than World of Warcraft. The only changes that can be made are to the character s facial features, hair and general head types. Otherwise all players look similar to others from their faction. As the character progresses though, the possible combination of skills makes for a greater variety of characters and play-styles. Unlike most MMOGs, there are no character classes. Each 120

121 character is defined by the skills chosen and how those skills are combined by the player in each session. Some skill groups enhance the chances of doing particular actions, while others enable completely new abilities that would not be otherwise available. Mechanics Although Planetside allows players to connect to any of the three servers, geographical distance from the game servers is more of a problematic issue than in World of Warcraft. Geographical distance as well as quality of network connection will determine the amount of latency from player pc to server and back. In the case of World of Warcraft a 300 millisecond ping will not create a great functional difference, as character actions consist of sequences of moves activated by key strokes. In Planetside, however, actions are performed in real time and distance. A slight delay in server response time means that you are shooting at things that were there half a second ago, causing your shot to miss. In World of Warcraft once a character has been ordered to attack an enemy, the character will automatically follow the enemy targeted, so if the enemy is not where they appear to be due to latency, your character is not there either, and has followed the mob and executed the strike anyway. In fact when clogs in online traffic occur, the screen might jam, but the sequence of attacks keyed in will still be performed by your character. In this way, the World of Warcraft character can retain a certain number of orders given and perform them regardless of continued player attention or input. In Planetside, the character is more closely aligned with the player s input. Characters do not perform any automatic actions. To highlight this important difference let us envision a similar situation in the two worlds. You are wandering through a dense forest at night. The darkness makes it harder for the player (and supposedly the character) to see what is lurking in the distance. Both World of Warcraft and Planetside players are being cautious and looking for enemies hiding in the vicinity. The Planetside character s and player s perception of environment are more closely aligned. If the player can t see the enemy, neither can the character. If the player didn t notice a figure running from tree to tree to their left, the character didn t see them either. In World of Warcraft the player can hit the Tab button repeatedly to target enemies in the vicinity. The character may target a creature the player cannot see, and even shoot at that target if it hasn t moved out of range. All the player needs to do is hit the right 121

122 command button and the character executes the action. In Planetside the player needs to see the target, align their crosshairs and click on the mouse to shoot. All of the World of Warcraft participants stated that they play in third person perspective so that they are able to have a wider field of vision than their character, including areas like the rear which the character cannot see. In Planetside there was unanimous agreement that it is only possible to play from a first person perspective, even though a third person one is available. This is simply because players need to be able to aim or operate objects themselves rather than have the character aim or perform actions for them. This means that every small change in environmental situation makes a far stronger impact on the Planetside player than the World of Warcraft one. The heavier the rain the more occluded the line of sight will be, making it easier for characters wearing infiltrator suits to remain undetected, and harder for characters shooting at a long distance to mark their target. The presence or lack of light raises similar issues. Use of cover and elevation are crucial in Planetside while in World of Warcraft the only terrain considerations are distance from computer-controlled or player targets and crossable/uncrossable features. Like the majority of MMORPGs, World of Warcraft operates on a level based structure. Every entity, item and location is assigned a level value. A character attains higher levels by completing quests, killing monsters and participating in specially designated PvP areas called Battlegrounds, that exist as instanced 30 mini-games within the world rather than a persistent part of it. The higher the difference in levels between the character and the entity defeated, the higher the amount of experience points (XP) gained. Characters are also awarded a token reward of XP when new areas are discovered although not enough to make exploration a specific incentive to develop one s character. Items and skills require a minimum level to be used, as do more efficient means of travel (mounts can be obtained at level 40 and level 60, which is the maximum possible level at the time of writing). Each area in the world is inhabited by entities of a certain level. These entities attack players when they come within a radius whose size depends on the difference in levels. The more in favour of the entity (normally called mobs 31, short for mobiles ) the difference in levels is, the larger the radius at which mobs will attack them. In World of 122

123 Warcraft, no matter how skilled one is, trying to defeat a mob or player 8 to 10 levels higher or more is almost impossible. There is a close relationship between a character s level, their freedom to travel in the world and their power over lower level characters. This means that players need to invest a serious amount of time in their characters to be able to experience the greater part of the world safely. Quests in World of Warcraft tend to be fairly straight forward affairs. You are usually asked to deliver something to someone, kill x number of y creatures, or kill x number of y creatures until you find z number of items on their dead bodies. There are a few more interesting quests peppered throughout the game, but most quests are structured in the above way. As participants have commented, it is often unnecessary to read the actual text of the quest. What is needed is a target, an amount and a location. As the majority of participants have confirmed, the narratives presented in the quests and the overall background of the world are often ignored as players deal with quests functionally. This functional perspective on questing is the direct result of a system which requires characters to acquire XP and thus ever higher levels in order to progress, rewarding efficiency over creativity. In order to boost efficiency most players use external web sites where other players have posted information about the relevant quests in order to speed up the quest process. The most common type of help given comes in the form of map coordinates where the quest objects or mobs are located. This is viewed by most players as being part of the game itself and it is an accepted part of World of Warcraft. The rationale given by players for using such sites is that since most quests are repetitive in structure, there is no satisfaction to solving them. It is normally a matter of locating the creatures that need to be killed or items that need to be collected along with their destination. Although most MMORPGs have level structures of some sort, how much these levels affect the overall possibilities for action in the world can vary. World of Warcraft is an example of an MMOG that places great emphasis on defining who characters are by their levels. In PvP servers, characters that are of a much lower level than their attacker have no chance of competing against their assailant, which can lead to situations of griefing. Griefing refers to a situation where one character is killed by another character without a chance of survival, and often, as in the case of World of Warcraft, without receiving any form of reward for the action. Some griefers corpse camp their victims, meaning they 123

124 stay close to the dead body of the victim in such a way as to slay them when they return to claim their body and continue on their way. Without outside intervention from the victim s faction, they can be locked outside their body indefinitely. This sort of behaviour is generally frowned upon, although some players will claim that it is part of the PvP mechanic and they are fully within their rights to attack whoever they like. There are no strict rules for preventing this behaviour, but it is socially frowned upon. Like World of Warcraft, Planetside s character development system is based on levels but, unlike World of Warcraft, this does not change the character s attributes, skills or powers. It only means that the character earns more points which can be assigned to proficiency in a particular weapon category or profession such as hackers, medics and engineers. The higher the character s level the more skill, vehicle and weapon categories (called certifications) that are available to them. So a starting character might be able to use 3 types of weapons and drive a bike, while an advanced character may be able to use 8 types of weapons, drive tanks and aircraft and be able to use medical devices on themselves and others. Nevertheless, the starting character can just as easily kill or help the advanced character with the right timing, tactics and skill employed. So advancement in Planetside results in a more flexible makeup of abilities, while in World of Warcraft level determines who one can usefully group with and how much absolute power they wield. In Planetside, no matter how strong and skillfull a character is, a handful of beginning characters are always going to beat him/her. It is a perilous world for all. In fact there are no restrictions on who can help or harm who. Disputes between team mates can erupt in duels and the calmest seeming bit of land can have enemies waiting to ambush. Planetside characters do not choose a particular race or class. Their capabilities are determined by the combination of certifications chosen and a separate line of progression based on Command Experience. This is accumulated by leading squads and platoons in facility captures and defence. Although Planetside may seem more combat oriented, as mentioned earlier, World of Warcraft characters are all essentially fighters with varying capabilities. In Planetside characters can be pure non- combatants focusing on being engineers, medics, hackers or drivers. Engineers repair vehicles, aircraft, turrets and other 124

125 facility equipment. Medics restore lost health to wounded infantry as well as being able to bring fallen comrades back to life. Hackers are key to capturing facilities and towers. They can also hack enemy vehicles and terminals, turning the tide of battle through tactical manipulation. Drivers can choose from a combination of land, sea and air vehicles usually choosing to focus on mass transport vehicles to enable airborne attacks and other tactical strategies. Characters can choose any combination of skills, but these dedicated to support can normally use only a limited range of weaponry as their certification points require focusing on support roles. Unlike World of Warcraft, Planetside also rewards support roles by giving Support Experience Points as well as a share of Battle Experience Points (the more general XP in Planetside) out of any XP that is accumulated by healed, repaired or driven units. This creates an XP system that rewards collaboration even to comrades outside one s squad and platoon. The combinations possible increase the scope and need for, teamwork as player-created tactical tasks usually require a certain number of specialised characters, without which the group in question is ineffective. For example, in World of Warcraft, although there are rogues that specialise in detecting traps and opening locks, there are no quests that require their specific expertise. In Planetside, a sabotage mission aimed at hacking an enemy facility requires the skills of a hacker. Other characters cannot replace this role, no matter how strong their firepower and fighting skill is. Planetside gives a more functional role to specialised characters that gives players a stronger sense of agency and belonging to their faction and platoon: Danor : My main character is mainly a pilot and secret ops character. I can fulfil a particular purpose in the game I have the ability to fly what I want and repair it. I also have the ability to sneak into bases and hack into stuff I have the certifications to do those roles not just random stuff. Baal : I like to be useful to others, so I choose certs that allow me to fulfil a tactically helpful role. First and foremost, I take an active part in leading platoons. The tactical side of ps is something that is quite unique. To fulfil this role I make sure I can fly transport aircraft to redeploy troops, engineering to repair others and set up defences and infiltration suit/wraith combo so I can move around rapidly and undetected. Like that I can give feedback to my troops and coordinate attacks with other leaders. 125

126 Another major difference between Planetside and World of Warcraft is the scope and variability of situations. Planetside is a more open world without any structured missions or AI entities. The events of the world are shaped completely by the players, which makes for varying and unpredictable situations in ways that cannot be anticipated by the individual player, or even a high level general. This has its advantages and disadvantages. The very nature of player generated situations often creates unbalanced scenarios. It is not uncommon to be defending a facility against an army that outnumbers the defenders by multiples of 4 or 5. But that is also part of the pleasure of these situations. The aim is not necessarily to win the battle, but to hold off the enemy, or whatever spin the participants in that situation decide to give it. Often it is obvious that the facility will fall, but the desperate defence is something that defenders enjoy, otherwise they would abandon the facility to its own devices. Planetside puts a lot of emphasis on mass collaboration and command structures coordinating mass efforts. Participants have stressed the attraction of a world that allows for mass battles between globally distributed humans. Figure 25 : Terran Republic armoured infantry preparing for an assault in Planetside Where World of Warcraft minimizes unpredictable situations by virtue of its tightly scripted and in many ways restrictive design, Planetside provides the game mechanics, rules, and uninhabited areas for players to create their own events, making for a more open 126

127 ended experience. On the other hand, this lack of regulation from the part of Planetside designers can lead to frustrating situations that may put off players since one is dependent solely on others to present things to do in the world, while World of Warcraft gives far more scope for solo activities ranging from quests to crafting to playing the auction house for economic gain. On the other hand World of Warcraft does not give much scope for players to feel like they can make a difference in the world. Mobs will respawn in the same locations, non-player characters (NPCs) 32 will give the same quests day after day and the resources gathered or mined in a particular location will pop back into existence in a few minutes. Planetside gives a greater sense of agency as players can change the course of a battle by their efforts, particularly if these efforts are concerted tactical ones and are well executed. Kumacho: I was in D2A when there were 5 servers. Two each for east and west coast. They were very organized and now I feel a certain devotion to the outfit. Gordon: Are they less organized now than they used to? Kumacho: Much less organized. It used to be a requirement to be in teamspeak. If you would like to see a really well organized outfit, make a VS on Emerald and join GoTR. They hold regular raids and require teamspeak. You should, just once experience one of their raids! Just that one outfit can totally change the shape of a battle. Gordon: because of the organisation? Kumacho: Imagine 10+ magriders with gunners, all in teamspeak and moving as a cohesive unit. That would be a typical Armor raid night. When they do an outfit raid you have those mags, air cover, grunts and support all working together. There are designated people that talk between the different channels and coordinate the movement of as many as 8 full platoons. Kumacho: One night they had over 85 people involved in a raid. It's a riot. And the sense of accomplishment is beyond anything I've ever seen in this game. Gordon: How so? Kumacho: To be able to say, GotR made this continent capture happen! It's a good feeling to know that you worked in tandem with that many other people and made something happen that might not have otherwise occurred. 127

128 It s hard to think of equivalent situations in World of Warcraft that highlight the exhilaration and sense of making a change in the world that Kumacho is describing here. Even if, on a PvP server, one faction captures an outpost or village belonging to the opposition, NPCs will keep respawning and it will be hard to hold the place for any length of time. And even if it is held, there is no in-world reward or advantage. When the aggressors leave the area it will resume its previous existence, as if nothing happened. In Planetside, taking a whole continent makes it very difficult for other factions to regain a foothold there due to the lack of spawn points and accumulated benefits that connected facilities give to their controlling faction. Why WoW? A common question on MMOG forums, news-sites and conferences has been, Why is World of Warcraft the roaring success that it is? The answers to this question are varied, some pointing to wise and diligent planning from the designers side; others are more speculative, placing the success on the saturation of titles at the time of release, Blizzard s previous track record, Warcraft s established intellectual property, and other extrinsic factors. As Rob Pardo pointed out at his keynote speech at the 2005 Australian Games Developers Conference when discussing this very question, the design team did not go for innovation, but polish. World of Warcraft combines a number of features found in other MMORPGs with a visual style that is widely appealing, executed with technical professionalism that was the downfall of many an MMOG s initial launch. Another major improvement over other MMOGs is what tends to be labelled as the newbie experience, or the first few hours and days in the world. World of Warcraft is very newbie-friendly, leading first time players through a chain of quests with increasing difficulty which, when completed, send the character to a neighbouring village, and then the region s capital and eventually out of the character s homeland into the dangerous world beyond. Its attractive graphics and ambient sound are of considerable importance in keeping new players involved long enough to get them interested in becoming long term inhabitants. 128

129 Figure 26 : The Tauren city of Thunderbluff in World of Warcraft Another reason for World of Warcraft s success is the ease with which one picks up the necessary controls and mechanics needed to perform adequately in the game aspects of the world. Mistakes are easily forgiven; a rash decision is punished by a short trip to one s corpse, or the vicinity thereof. If the area is overrun by mobs too powerful to be handled, the character can be resurrected at a nearby graveyard by a friendly spirit for a few minutes of docked abilities and a small fee to fix the added damage done to weapons and armour that this method of coming back to life entails. There is no penalty in terms of item loss or XP loss, as is generally the case in other MMOGs, making World of Warcraft a safe place to experiment. The downside of this, for certain players, is that it dampens excitement by decreasing the sense of risk in any given situation. World of Warcraft was responsible for attracting players off other MMOGs, but overall widened the market to proportions never seen before. And for the first time in MMOG history, a virtual world has been just as successful in North America as it is in Asian, European and Australasian markets. This marketing success should not be underestimated, since an MMOGs survival on the commercial market is based almost entirely on the virtual world s population size. In retrospect Developing this research process revealed a number of key issues for research design. The persistent nature, social complexities and game mechanics of MMOGs require the 129

130 researcher to spend an extended period of time participating in them before adequate interviews can be designed. Research methods specific to the MMOG in question have to be developed. Interview schedules, for example, need to be tailored to suit the nature of the MMOG which in turn requires a great deal of familiarity of the MMOG from the side of the researcher. Participants assume that the researcher is conversant with the language developed in the particular world. It is also necessary to be conversant in the language and register of the culture of the MMOG in question. The structural differences demonstrated in the comparison between just two digital games show how a particular games design features has extraordinary implications for the nature and quality of personal and social interaction in game-play. Figure 27 : Interview with Oriel 17 The original technical term proposed by Minsky in 1980 is telepresence, but in contemporary discussions this has been shortened to presence. 18 See Chapter 1 for a discussion of this concept and Chapter 2 for a definition of virtual environments 19 This applies to both virtual reality applications and digital games. 20 The central role of contingency in games has been discussed in Chapter For a more detailed explanation of this see chapters 1 and As defined in chapter Chapter 6 will discuss the use of this continuum between conscious to internalized involvement in more detail. 24 A machinima is a movie production technique using real-time, interactive game engines. MMOGs provide machinima producers with a variety of scenic locations, characters and items to use in their works and are 130

131 thus popular choices among machinima directors. Some games even include in-game tools to produce such movies, like the popular Sims series. 25 These included fifty hours or more in Anarchy Online, Matrix Online (including Beta testing), Irth Online (beta), Dark and Line (beta), Neocron, Face of Mankind, Dark age of Camelot, Dofus, Chronicles of Spellborn (beta), Guild Wars, Auto Assault (beta). Ryzom and a long term participation (over a year each) in World of Warcraft and Planetside. 26 Average monthly readership of 350,000 unique players. 27 Blizzard defines paying World of Warcraft customers as: World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules (Blizzard Entertainment, 2005). 28 Battlegrounds are mini-games within World of Warcraft that allow teams of similar levels to play games such as capture the flag. These areas are instanced, meaning they are spatially seperate from the rest of the world. 29 City of Heroes (and its expansion City of Villians) is an MMOG with a super-hero theme. 30 Instances are locations that exist areas created specifically for the group and running as pocket areas in the world which no other players outside the group can enter. In the case of Battlegrounds, players sign up by talking to the appropriate NPC. When enough characters from each of the two factions, Horde and Alliance, have signed up, characters get teleported to the instance and the game starts. When the game ends they get teleported to a designated area in the world. No other characters can wander in as a game is going on. 31 Mobs are computer-controlled agent that populate MMOG landscapes, often intended to be killed by players in exchange for experience points. 32 Non-player characters is a term derived from table-top RPGs that referred to characters in the game played by the Game Master. In the context of MMOGs, NPCs refer to computer controlled agents that have some degree of narrative character fleshed out. 131

132 Chapter 5: The Digital Game Experience Model: Macro-Involvement Chapter 3 highlighted a number of problematic issues in the conceptualisation of involvement, immersion and presence in digital games. As stated in chapter 1, this work views the player as an intrinsic constituent of the game process. This emphasizes the importance of having a clear set of conceptual tools that can further our understanding of player involvement. This chapter presents such a conceptual model that accounts for the salient aspects of involvement in digital games in three interrelated phases. Although the model was developed in conjunction with qualitative research in MMOGs, it has been designed to be applicable to any form of digital game or virtual environment, as defined in chapter 2. MMOGs have the advantage of encompassing a broad variety of activities ranging from twitch action to the formation of persistent social bonds and rivalries and a wide variety of problem solving scenarios as well as providing a rich basis for the creation of personal narratives. The Model As with any model attempting to describe experiential phenomena, categorical lines are drawn for the sake of analysis. The various elements of the model manifest themselves in the player s experience in a combined way, each influencing the others in such a way as to make it phenomenologically impossible to extricate one from the other. Aside from this intermingling of the elements represented by the model, the experience also occurs with varying degrees of intensity, with frequent, fluid shifts in attention between one element and another. In order to represent this fluid intermingling of players experiential intensities I decided to adopt Goffman s (1974) metaphor of the frame, following Fine s (1983) appropriation of Goffman s concept in his research on table-top role-playing game communities. In his book Shared Fantasy Fine used Goffman s Frame Analysis to identify three frames, which he also refers to as worlds of meaning (p. 181), in the context of table-top role playing games. Each frame represents a modality of meaning through which the role playing experience is interpreted and performed. 132

133 Fine s analysis has been recently appropriated to Game Studies by Salen and Zimmerman (2003) to account for the double-consciousness of play (p. 455), which acknowledges that players oscillate between interpreting their actions as person, player and character while always remaining conscious of their status as players of a game. Although this oscillation between interpretative frames is useful, it tells us very little about the nature of the player s experience itself. Salen and Zimmerman employ Fine s double consciousness of play to criticize immersion as a relevant part of the game-experience 33 without building a positive account of the phenomenon. The appropriation of Fine s work into a context of digital games also needs to be considered in terms of the significant qualitative difference between the strategies of representation employed by table-top RPGs and digital games. In the case of the former the spaces inhabited by player-characters and their actions are represented through verbal descriptions and thus exist in the shared imaginations of the players. Digital games, on the other hand, include perceivable graphical, audio and haptic representations enabled by a series of computerized operations. Fine was concerned with how players interpreted verbalisations around the game table, an element which is prominent in the process of table top RPGs but not as relevant to digital gaming. The experiential dimensions invoked by the two overlap to some degree, but the significant differences in the features of media involved mean that Fine s model cannot be imported without modification to digital games without risking gross over-simplification. For this reason my main use of Fine s model will be limited to the concept of simultaneous overlapping frames of experience and the fluid movement between them. The model will, however not follow Fine s three-tiered framework as this does not account for a whole range of experiential dimensions in the context of digital games. The Digital Game Experience Model is made of six frames of involvement structured on two temporal phases, macro-involvement and micro-involvement. The six frames of involvement correspond to the clusters of emphasis derived from analysis of the research data. These frames are not experienced in isolation but always in relation to each other, the separation here being made for the sake of analysis. This chapter will discuss these six frames relating to the long-term motivations and attractions of engaging with digital games represented by the macro-involvement phase. Chapter 6 relates each of the six frames to the moment by moment involvement or micro-involvement. Within this phase I found it necessary to distinguish between a general investment of attention towards a media object 133

134 which I will term absorption and the more active performance of the game-player, which I will call ergodic involvement, following Aarseth s (1997) use of the term ergodic. 34 Chapter 6 will also make a case for replacing the metaphor of immersion with that of incorporation by drawing together the intensity of experience resulting from the internalisation of the six frames. Thus, unlike the more common conceptualisation of immersion, the experiential phenomenon becomes attributable to a number of related dimensions rather than a single form of experience. These relationships are exemplified by the following diagram that will be referred to as The Digital Game Experience Model : Figure 28 : The Digital Game Experience Model As discussed in chapter 1, the concept of the magic circle involves a number of problematic assumptions in both the formal and experiential analysis of games. If I had followed the mainstream trend in contemporary Game Studies and applied the concept of the magic 134

135 circle to my model, I would have had to include an additional frame representing the player s attitude shifting to a disposition that accommodates game-playing (Juul, 2005; Salen & Zimmerman, 2003); what Bernard Suits (1978) has called the lusory attitude. But as Taylor (2006), Malaby (2007) and Pargman and Jakobsson (2006) found in their qualitative research, such a clear line of demarcation between game and non-game misrepresents the gaming situation, particularly when the emphasis of the study is experiential: Problems with using the concept of the magic circle as an analytical tool have made themselves known now and again. These problems become especially clear when the researcher in question has actual empirical material at hand that he or she without much success tries to understand by applying the dominant paradigm of the separateness of play (p. 18). For these and other reasons discussed in chapter 1, the concept of the magic circle is excluded from the model. The experiential basis of the model does not profit from the clear demarcation of digital games or virtual worlds from a supposedly separate real world. The complexity of game experience draws upon the wider social and cultural reservoir of the player in the journey to resolution, and this fluid interaction switches frequently from in-game to out of game contexts, obviating the need for a strict line of demarcation to be drawn. Macro-Involvement By placing into question the validity of a clear line of demarcation between game and nongame we open up the analysis of game involvement beyond the formal parameters of the game. This requires a perspective on involvement that extends along a continuum of attentional intensity ranging from a general motivation to participate in digital games to a focused deep involvement and finally an incorporation of the represented space into a habitable and immediately accessible domain for exerting agency. This chapter begins an exploration of this continuum from the broader end that emphasizes motivational aspects of digital game involvement. This phase of the model will explore the motivation to initiate and sustain engagement with digital games through the long-term (as opposed to imminent) aspects of each of the six frames. The frames outlined in this model are by no means of a 135

136 prescriptive nature, but find most use as descriptive concepts that articulate the salient aspects of digital game involvement. The question has been asked, and it has been asked often: why do people play digital games (Bryant & Davies, 2006) and what makes them such compelling media objects? A common response to that question is often: fun. People play games because they enjoy them (Crawford, 2003; Koster, 2005; Salen & Zimmerman, 2003). There are two major problems with this response. First, as Malaby (2007) argues, associating games with fun imbues them with a normative status that ignores their processual and contingent nature, which are, as I have argued in chapters 1 and 2, two of the key characteristics of games. This does not mean that games are not fun, but that fun is not an inherent characteristic of games as has been most generally taken to be the case. As the recent work of Dibbell (2006) Malaby (2007) and Taylor (2006) has shown, contemporary developments in online gaming, particularly where MMOGs are concerned, are emphasizing the problematic nature of this assumption. It does not denote a specific experiential phenomenon, but spans a whole series of emotional states that vary according to context and individual. As Taylor states, pinning motivation for game-playing on the notion of fun risks missing important dimensions of the game experience: The notion that people play differently, and that the subjective experience of play varies, is central to an argument that would suggest there is no single definitive way of enjoying a game or of talking about what constitutes fun. We need expansive definitions of play to account for the variety of participants pleasurable labor and activity. Those definitions must encompass both casual and hard-core gamers. Suggesting that games are always simply about fun (and then endlessly trying to design that fun) is likely to gloss over more analytically productive psychological, social and structural components of games (p. 70). Taylor emphasises the inclusion of labour within the gaming activity, disrupting the commonly held opposition of games to work. As Steinkeuhler (2005), Taylor (2006) and Yee (Yee, 2006a, 2006b) point out, MMOG players often spend extended periods of time engaging willingly in activities which can be viewed by the players themselves as tedious or laborious. 136

137 An early attempt at providing an analytical framework for player motivation in persistent virtual environments was made by Bartle (1996) in a paper titled Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds and Spades: Players who suit MUDs. In this essay he identifies four main types of players based on their preferred activities in the MUD. These are: achievers, socializers, explorers and killers. Bartle outlines the following motivations for play for each player type: Achievement within the game context: Players give themselves game-related goals, and vigorously set out to achieve them. This usually means accumulating and disposing of large quantities of high-value treasure, or cutting a swathe through hordes of mobiles (i.e. monsters built in to the virtual world). Exploration of the game: Players try to find out as much as they can about the virtual world. Although initially this means mapping its topology (ie. exploring the MUD's breadth), later it advances to experimentation with its physics (ie. exploring the MUD's depth). Socialising with others: Players use the game's communicative facilities, and apply the role-playing that these engender, as a context in which to converse (and otherwise interact) with their fellow players. Imposition upon others: Players use the tools provided by the game to cause distress to (or, in rare circumstances, to help) other players. Where permitted, this usually involves acquiring some weapon and applying it enthusiastically to the persona of another player in the game world. Bartle s taxonomy is a notable first step towards acknowledging the fact that game-players are individuals with multiple motivations for gaming. One significant shortfall with Bartle s taxonomy when applied to a practical analysis lies in the exclusive nature of each player type. If one is a dedicated explorer then they are assumed not to be a dedicated socialiser, for example. This goes against the views expressed by my research participants, which often showed equal interest in various aspects of the game at different stages of their MMOG experience: 137

138 Gordon: What are the elements of World of Warcraft that keep you guys coming back? Snotplate: The fact that I can have completely different experiences depending on which toons I log. This toon was built for team play, he's absolutely useless without my questbuddy, a priestess. I have a hunter for BG 35 and a mage for solo play when I don't feel like BG. So my mood and my surroundings determine what I experience when I log. The choices and variance keep me coming back. For Snotplate therefore, it is the very possibility of engaging with the MMOG in different ways depending on daily preference, that gives World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) its long-term appeal. Bartle s taxonomy of player types is built on the assumption that players are always inclined to prefer one play style over another without taking into account the fact that these preferences are affected by a player s disposition and circumstances. Yee (2006a) has carried out extensive quantitative research relating to user motivation in MMORPGs and has accumulated a wealth of demographic data. He proposes an empirical framework for understanding MMOG motivation based on online quantitative surveys posted on a number of MMOG resource sites like Lore, IGN Vault and Stratics. These sites act as a locus for forum discussions about the relevant MMORPGs as well as providing an archive of information and downloadable files and in some cases, they also provide for the sale of in-game money or items. Yee maps his research findings onto five factors: relationship, manipulation, escapism immersion and achievement: The Relationship factor measures the desire of users to interact with other users, and their willingness to form meaningful relationships that are supportive in nature, and which include a certain degree of disclosure of real-life problems and issues. The Manipulation factor measures how inclined a user is to objectify other users and manipulate them for his personal gains and satisfaction. Users who score high on the Manipulation factor enjoy deceiving, scamming, taunting and dominating other users. Users who score high on the Immersion factor enjoy being in a fantasy world as well as being someone else. They enjoy the story-telling aspect of these worlds and enjoy creating avatars with histories that extend and tie in with 138

139 the stories and lore of the world. The Escapism factor measures how much a user is using the virtual world to temporarily avoid, forget about and escape from reallife stress and problems. The Achievement factor measures the desire to become powerful in the context of the virtual environment through the achievement of goals and accumulation of items that confer power (p. 22). Yee analyses these factors in conjunction with the demographic data collected. This gives a helpful indicator of how various sections of the gaming demographic are motivated by different aspects of the MMOG. Yee further claims that this framework allows for a better understanding of individual user motivations than Bartle s player types model, but his categories group together such diverse experiential phenomena that they lose explanatory force. Survey respondents are asked to give a rating to questions that contribute to the immersion factor, for example, cover identity play, background story creation and participation in a narrative: I like to try out new roles and personalities with my characters. People who role-play extensively bore me. I like the feeling of being part of a story. I make up stories and histories for my character (p. 47). It is not that these are unimportant aspects of involvement, but taking these questions as representing the experiential phenomenon implied by immersion fails to analyse or describe the phenomenon. Instead, a ready-made prescription of what immersion is gets pre-written by the researcher into the survey document and this is then confirmed or negated by respondents. As Yee himself acknowledges, a major problem with the data is also that respondents were self-selected and more importantly that the recruitment was done through sites that cater for a very particular segment of the MMOG population. Active users of these sites tend to be more dedicated players. This means that the conclusions reached are applicable to this more serious segment of the MMOG population and cannot be generalised. Both Yee and Bartle also discussed player motivation and involvement on a generic temporal frame. This makes it hard to identify experiential factors that capture the attention 139

140 of the user in the moment of interaction with the game-world from elements that retain their players interest in the long run. What attracts players to a game and keeps them coming back is related to but distinct from the engagement that occurs during the game-session. This is the distinction I make in my model between macro and micro-involvement. The specific reasons why people play games, be they table-top or digital, MMOGs or single-player, are as varied as the dispositions of the players involved. For an analysis of motivating factors to have any long term utility, it need not list every possible specific reason for engaging with games but must identify key factors that lie at the roots of these motivators which, within the scope of this model, will be expressed in the six frames of involvement discussed below. Affective involvement Engagement with a digital game entails participation and action on the part of the player. More central than the normative implications of fun or pleasure as defining elements of games is their ergodicity (Aarseth, 1997). 36 Ergodicity implies a direction of active attention towards the game which needs to be, at least, mildly compelling for the player to interact with it. But obviously, players will try to engage with games which they perceive to be more than just mildly compelling. Players will generally interact with a game in order to be engaged in some way by it. The cognitive, emotional and kinaesthetic feedback loop that is formed between the game process and the player makes games particularly powerful media for affecting player s moods and emotional states (Bryant & Davies, 2006; Grodal, 2000). For those suffering from a lack of excitement, games offer an immediate channel of emotional arousal. Conversely, for those whose work or personal lives are too hectic, their compelling nature makes them ideal for shifting one s attention to a performative domain that suits the players needs: vent frustration through intense first person action, get absorbed in the cognitive challenge of a strategy game or stroll leisurely in aesthetically appealing landscapes. As will be discussed in the spatial involvement frame below, the appeal of beautifully rendered environments can be particularly powerful when contrasted with unattractive everyday surroundings. 140

141 Excitatory homeostasis is a term within media psychology that refers to the tendency of individuals to choose entertainment to achieve an optimal level of arousal (Bryant & Davies, 2006, p. 183). If one s emotional state is considered to be negative, understimulated persons will tend to choose media content that is arousing while over-stimulated persons tend to choose calmer media content. Games offer a variety of participatory means of affecting mood as well as allowing players to tweak game settings to bring about the desired affective change. If MMOGs are limited in the players ability to change difficulty levels and other game settings, they make up for this by providing a wide variety of activities that can often suit the needs of different emotional states. Research participants like Snotplate quoted above, commented on how they engage with different aspects of the MMOG depending on their current mood. Snotplate even created different characters to reflect these emotional preferences and articulates how this is one important aspect of World of Warcraft that keeps him coming back to it. Game design, like other forms of textual production, is imbued with the rhetorical strategies of affect. But unlike other forms of text this rhetorical power is emphasized by the conjunction of textual interpretation and the performed practice of gaming. The recursive input/output process inherent to virtual environment interaction has the potential to deliver an experience that extends affect beyond that allowed by other non-ergodic media. Designers aim to capitalize on these affective qualities by selling a packaged experience that meets the expectations of buyers while engaging the emotions the game aims to arouse. The compelling and mood-effecting qualities of games are often associated with the concept of escapism. Labelling an activity escapist carries with it at least a sense of triviality, and often more serious derogatory connotations. For the purpose of this work it will be worthwhile to note the difference between the attraction of an absorbing activity that is perceived as a pleasurable break from the everyday and the aesthetic attraction of an environment or world which has, what Tolkien (1983) called the inner consistency of reality (p. 140). Let us first, however look at the treatment and value of the term escapism. Andrew Evans, in his This Virtual Life: Escapism and Simulation in Our Media World (2001), notes that the term is shrouded in confusion and has suffered considerable neglect in academic discussions. Escapism is often considered to be a negative phenomenon that implies flight from immediate problems and a general avoidance 141

142 of real life. In Nick Yee s (2006a) MMORPG research discussed above, for example, escapism features as one of the five principal factors that measure user motivations: The escapism factor measures how much a user is using the virtual world to temporarily avoid, forget about and escape from real-life stress and problems (p. 22). This conception of escapism assumes a coherent, objective reality that one can escape from. The problem with such a view of escapism, as Evans notes, is that it fails to acknowledge that realities are contingent to the experient and thus escapism is always relative to the present situation of the individual. What is reality in an age when we do not need to hunt for food, guard ourselves from predators and migrate with the changing seasons? When the basic safety and physiological needs are met with a flick of a cash card or the click of a mouse, what makes up the rest of our reality are often routine work schedules and a considerable degree of free time: We have seen that reality can be difficult to define, depends on our human perception of it, is often represented in other forms like art and film, and is subject to all sorts of distortions from lies and spin. But is living in reality actually the goal of the human being? We should expect that enough time be spent in reality to satisfy our basic needs. But what, then, do we do with the time left over? We are not obliged to spend large quantities of time hunting or grazing like most animals, neither are we obliged to remain in a state of constant vigilance against predators. We have time on our hands, time that we have to spend if we choose to in activities only peripherally related to basic survival needs. And this is particularly true if our environment or perceived reality is difficult, stressful or just plain boring (Evans, 2001, p. 53). For most of us, our work lives are unrelated to the toils of securing the basic needs for survival and occur within the relational social systems that are far removed from the elements. The reality we escape from is, in the eyes of the Third World country farmer, not very real at all. Furthermore, our sense of what is real, as well as our dissatisfactions with our present lives, are strongly influenced by the media which have a vested interest in promoting this dissatisfaction since they also offer antidotes in the form of entertainment products. Both the reality we are meant to be escaping from and the reality into which we 142

143 escape are equally arbitrary products constructed by society and the media which makes separating the two less straightforward than is normally believed to be the case. Digital games have been described as escapist activities, often in the negative sense discussed above. They are seen as trivial time wasters that take users away from the important, real, things in life. Tuan (1998) however argues that escapism is an integral part of human life: Escapism, I will argue, is human and inescapable. There is nothing wrong with escape as such. What makes it suspect is the goal, which can be quite unreal. And what is wrong with unreal, with wild fantasy? Nothing, I would say, so long as it remains a passing mood, a temporary escape, a brief mental experiment with possibility. However, fantasy that is shut off too long from external reality risks degenerating into a self-deluding hell; a hell that can nevertheless have an insidious appeal (p. 23). Evans (2001) has a similarly broader conception of escapism than is generally the case. Like Tuan he sees it as an inevitable part of human life and stresses that escapism is not negative or positive in itself, but needs to be considered in terms of the context in which it occurs. He therefore proposes a fuller definition that highlights the importance of contextualising the activity rather than seeing it as a personal and social evil in itself: Escapism is the switch from a more pressing need, or a less pleasurable or more stressful situation, self-perception or feeling, to a more pleasurable activity, real or imagined, purposeful or not- which is often recreational and increasingly offered by the mass media and the leisure industry. Healthy escapism may have no negative consequences, while unhealthy escapism, such as procrastination, the addictions and neurotic or irresponsible behaviour may have negative consequences for both the individual and the wider social circle. Sometimes the distinction between one and the other can only be seen in retrospect (p. 72). Evans also distinguishes between passive (non-participant) and active (participant) escapism. Games fall under the latter category and as outlined by his definition, they are neither positive nor negative in themselves. Thus, escapist activities can be any activities 143

144 that involve our engagement with domains that are felt to be apart from what we view as routine, stressful or boring. For a housewife, sweeping the floor can be a chore while painting is an escapist activity. For an uninspired artist, sweeping the floor can be the escapist activity and painting the chore. In the context of digital games, this view of escapism avoids the dualistic rigidity of the game/work dichotomy discussed in chapter 1. Some escapist activities have the particular quality of occurring within aesthetically pleasing environments that operate on a believable logic. One of the important ways in which contemporary 3D games affect players moods is through the representational qualities of their environments. They enable a sense of habitable space that can be very appealing to traverse. This aspect of the attraction of game worlds has been brought up regularly by participants in a wide variety of contexts: Oriel: When I am alone... it's when I am relaxed and have the sounds on. I like to pretend I am actually there. Gordon: There? Oriel: I used to do more before level 60. And mostly on Saturday and Sunday mornings when noone in the house would bother me. Now that I am [level] I am busy doing chore stuff at those times. Gordon: You said you like to pretend and feel actually there... so you make a conscious effort to feel there? Oriel: yes, like...sun set time at Menethil Harbour... while waiting on the boat to show up. Flying through Gadgetzan at night over the ocean and looking at the stars. Listening to the crunching snow under my feet in Winter Spring. Hearing crickets chirp at night when going through the forest. I wish I could remember if I hear the ocean at Azshara... I love the beach by my memory... doesn't include that sound. Oh and the red and gold falling leaves in Azshara sooo pretty Gordon: Why do you try and consciously make yourself feel there? And could you try to describe how it makes you feel? Oriel: Peaceful. I want to live there. I would rather live there than here cause it's beautiful there. 144

145 Figure 29 The region of Azshara in World of Warcraft Oriel s desire to imagine that she is there, inside the virtual world, is both the product of the aesthetic beauty of the game world but also because the world of Azeroth is assimilated into her consciousness as a habitable place. It has the crafted quality of what I shall hereafter call habitability. Tolkien (1983) has remarked on this quality and sees it as an inherent feature of textual creations he calls secondary worlds : That state of mind has been called willing suspension of disbelief. But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful sub-creator. He makes a Secondary World, which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is true : it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside (p. 132). Responding to critics of such creations (and their creators) Tolkien argues that the faculty that creates and allows readers to enter such worlds is a sign of clarity of reason (p. 142). Like Evans and Tuan, he rejects academics who view such activity as negatively escapist: 145

146 I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which Escape is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers of Escape are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why would a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tried to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter (p. 148). Digital game-worlds continue this tradition of secondary world creation and strengthen the internal logic of sub-creation through the use of computing power that not only represents the world but automates the existence of its agents and keeps the internal logic in check by the parameters of performative affordances programmed into it. MMOGs further extend the powers of sub-creation through their persistent nature and the shared and synchronous experience this allows. The attractions of habitation and exploration of gameworlds relates to the spatial involvement frame. Spatial involvement As a number of theorists (Evans, 2001; Lewis-Williams, 2002; Tuan, 1998) have claimed, the desire to explore new lands has been an inherent part of human nature since the beginning of our species. As discussed in the affective involvement frame above, the places we yearn for most are those that are different from our everyday surroundings and whose image is promoted and popularized by the media. The resident of an urbanised country with scant greenery yearns for the vast mountains and forests of Norway, or the natural beauty of New Zealand, particularly after its association in the popular imagination with Tolkien s Middle-Earth following Peter Jackson s Lord of The Rings trilogy. New Zealanders, on the other hand, romanticize the old buildings and cobbled streets of Europe, yearning for the ambience that centuries-old architecture tends to create and is not found in 146

147 such a young country as New Zealand. Despite this desire for exploration of other-places, many people are not comfortable with the idea of leaving the comfort of familiar surroundings to actually visit strange lands, even though they might fantasize about such places. Aside from this, there are always problems related to job constraints, family, financial costs and other lifestyle related limitations that get in the way of undertaking such travels. One way of appeasing this penchant for exploration is therefore through representational media. Digital games and virtual worlds are particularly powerful forms of media in this respect, as they allow players not only to project their imagination to the represented lands, but offer the possibility of traversing them. In an age of urbanised living, the rural and pastoral become most attractive (Tuan, 1998). This might explain the appeal of fantasy settings like Tolkien s Middle Earth, which appeal to our romanticization of nature and consequently the appeal and dominant presence of the fantasy genre in MMOGs. With the considerable advances in graphics and sound technology it has become possible to create vast virtual worlds in which the desire for stimulation through active engagement with unfamiliar situations and settings, can be aesthetically satisfied: Rheric: I like foot travel for the sightseeing aspects: exploring new areas with new environments, but I wish it was a bit faster, so I want a mount. I like the bats, etc. because it is fast when I want to get somewhere, cause World of Warcraft is HUGE, but I have to say that I really enjoy finding new areas, the scenery. I've actually experienced "tourist" moments in some games. I've found a spot with such a great view I wanted to take a picture. Contemporary digital games offer players geographical expanses to inhabit, interact with and explore. Their game-worlds invite players into picturesque and impressive landscapes giving the impression that they extend as far as they eye can see. This fosters within players a scope for exploration and discovery that is made more appealing for those whose lifestyle prohibits travel to exotic new lands: There is so much world to run around in that every day is filled with new discoveries. The enormous scope of the worlds draws in players who feel stuck in the shrinking, overcrowded, polluted real world. In many games, its common, for example, for players to pause occasionally on a snow-capped mountain peak just to 147

148 look out over the forests that stretch for miles in every direction down to the palmfringed tropical beaches, parched deserts and vast steppes (Kelly, 2004, p. 63). Kelly s sentiments on exploration are in line with those of my research participants who found the size and exploratory scope of MMOGs like World of Warcraft very appealing. A number of participants also felt the sense of wonder which one participant (Rheric) calls tourist moments when reaching areas affording attractive vistas. Players tend to explore new areas either for functional, or goal related (see below) reasons, or as a pleasurable activity in its own sake. Some participants expressed a desire for more variability and change within the world environment, often in the form of weather and seasonal changes: Gordon: What role does the quality of graphics play in your enjoyment of a game? Baal: as long as it doesn t require a beast of a machine to run smoothly the cooler the graphics the better. I like World of Warcraft cause its pretty. You come over a hill and bang, you re struck by the scenery like you re on holiday somewhere exotic. Carlitos: It would be fun, being able to fly places. I would just fly around for a few hours, exploring. That s a whole new way to look at the game. It would be nice if the weather would change. Like, your running and it starts raining all of a sudden or having the tree leaves change colour with the season, maybe instead of rain, its snow. Gordon: Why would you like these kind of features? Carlitos: More realistic. It would be nice to swim across a lake and then a few weeks later you re walking across it. Or have droughts and floods; bringing the season into the game would be nice. Carlitos refers to his wish-list of ever-changing world features as realistic. It is easy to interpret realism as a form of mimesis of the material world: we are used to having seasonal changes in the weather and therefore we would prefer a game world that also had seasonal weather. But I would argue that what makes the dynamic changes Carlitos mentions most appealing is not the reproduction of the physical real. If the changes Carlitos wishes to see are made in the virtual world, it will become more realistic not because it looks more like 148

149 the offline world, but because it brings in a more familiar sense of contingency that is a crucial part of our everyday lives. The game-world is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men (Borges, 1972, p. 42). Their designed nature compels players to traverse and unravel them, to explore and understand not only their representational domains, but also the collective minds of their designers. Malaby (2007) argues that one of the most compelling aspects of games is their ability to represent the contingent nature of our existence. Compare the labyrinth to the uncharted bush. No matter how confusing the labyrinth is, its traversal promises a correct solution. The contingency of its traversal is contrived by its very design to yield a correct route and various dead-ends. The contingency present in the traversal of uncharted bush is of a different order. It has not been created with a specific solution and thus it cannot be read with such an aim in mind. The design of game-worlds thus involves the creation of complex, implicit, contingent conditions wherein the texture of engaged human experience can happen (p. 15). What makes virtual world travels appealing is therefore not only related to the affective power of their aesthetic beauty discussed in the previous section, but also to the combination of performed practice of exploring their technical 38 and topographical boundaries. Narrative involvement There have been numerous discussions within Game Studies about the role of narrative in digital games. The more vigorous, and at times heated, of these took place during the so called narratology-ludology debate. 39 One of the main points of contention in this series of discussions related to the applicability of narrative theory to digital games. One side contended that digital games are new forms of story telling while the other camp argued that narrative was of secondary importance to games defining trait: game-play. In today s literature on Game Studies, most theorists agree that conceptual models developed for use in other fields, including narrative theory, need to be adapted to the specific characteristics of digital games, if they are to be at all useful for their analysis. In the context of digital games, the term narrative has implications that are particular to the medium. As the long tradition of studying narrative attests, there are a number of approaches one can take to the analysis of narrative, each having different merits depending on the form of text discussed. 149

150 Developing an adequate narrative theory to be implemented in game analysis could well occupy the entirety of this work. My concern here is with the role narrative plays in attracting players to engage with digital games and virtual worlds. For the scope of the current analysis two perspectives on narrative will be helpful. On the one hand narrative, can refer to the mode of progression designed into the game-world, which ranges on a continuum from strictly procedural to open-ended, which I will term designed narrative. On the other hand, narrative can refer to the player s interpretation of the game-play experience. I will refer to this as personal narrative. When I started playing World of Warcraft I decided to try and travel from the starting-night elf island of Teldrassil to the human capital of Stormwind at a tender 10 th level. My memory of Muun s perilous journey, the obstacles encountered and people met are an example of personal narrative. Examples of designed narratives would be the assault on Max Payne s family in the game by the same name or the assassination of the king in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks LLC., 2006). The designed narrative tends to influence the formation of personal narrative, although this is not always the case and such exceptions will be discussed further in the narrative frame of the micro-involvement in chapter 6. Figure 30 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Although media objects like literature as well as digital games allow the reader/player to experience a secondary world, games have the added attraction of making users feel as though they are contributing to the generation of the narrative. This varies considerably 150

151 depending on the design of the game: more open ended games give users more input in the creation of their own narrative, while more linear games might give, at best, a few different endings. In the playable demo of the adventure thriller Farenheit (Quantic Dream, 2005), David Cage, its lead designer, emphasizes that the story is shaped by player s actions. In reality, there are only a few possible endings, but if players do not follow the requirements of the relevant segment of storyline they need to start again from a pre-saved position and try to fulfil the linear requirements of the game. Games like Mount and Blade (Tale Worlds, forthcoming) on the other hand, have limited linear designed narratives players can follow in the form of linked quests, and the players are free to decide whether they want to take them up or not. Single-player games are able to construct a designed narrative that centres around the player s actions. There tends to be a relationship between the linearity of the narrative and its dependence on specific player actions. This is particularly true with games that utilize cut-scenes to further the designed narrative. Specific locations or events must be reached before the story continues. Figure 31 : Mount and Blade MMOGs give the option to follow the linear progressions of quests without forcing the user to act in a particular way. Even within this genre, however, the freedom of action is still limited by the MMOG s structure. World of Warcraft, for example, restricts possible courses of action far more than EVE Online (CCP Games, 2003), although it does provide a wider range of designed stories to follow and a richer back-story than EVE. There was considerable variety of opinion on this subject among my research participants. Some World of Warcraft participants felt that the potential for narrative input was too limited 151

152 while others, like Rheric, found it to be a great source of pleasure. The former group were also the participants that expressed their dissatisfaction with the types of action and narrative surrounding the quests, which they felt were too repetitive: Rheric: I am drawn to the kind of lore that World of Warcraft has. Inauro: I can see that that interest might encourage you to read the quest dialogue and such, but doesn't it piss you off that you really can't get involved in the lore you're interested in, Rheric? Rheric: Not really. It s a bit tedious when I do the same quests for the fourth time with an alt, but I never play the same race/class combo, so I approach the solution differently. Inauro: I mean, nothing you do is going to affect the outcome of the scripted storyline, is it? You can only make up your own story within that framework. I think it'd be better if you could actually affect the framework and change the story. Rheric: I agree with you Inauro, and I would love a game like that. Inauro: One that requires thought and exploration. No FedEx, no kill tasks, FFS! Rheric: But we make do with what we have! Inauro: True enough, Rheric. Across the interviews and focus groups, participants expressed their desires for gameworlds whose designed narratives would evolve according to players collective collaborations and competitions. There is a call, therefore, for more interaction between the collective personal and designed narratives. MMOGs like Matrix Online (Monolith Inc., 2005b) have implemented such a system of player-determined story-arcs, but these are by far exceptional cases. A closer iterative relationship between the players personal narratives and the designed ones gives a greater sense of agency that is a crucial part of creating a compelling game experience. The more players feel that their own stories feed off into those of the larger game-world, the more meaningful their actions within the world feel, particularly when the world is inhabited by other humans. This creates what Tolkien (1983) has called the inner consistency of reality. Creating a believable world to interact with is a key element of MMOG design. The depths to which this consistency of reality can be carried are still far from being plumbed, yet the belief that such consistency of reality will deepen over time attracts an ever increasing number of users to virtual worlds. 152

153 In many ways, the process of keeping the world alive through belief advocated by Tolkien is made literal in virtual worlds since they provide an unprecedented degree of real-time shared habitability of a secondary world. This trait makes virtual worlds like MMOGs attractive domains rife with opportunities for creative participation: Rheric: I'd have to say that the aspect of MMOs that interest me the most are the massive worlds created, with a multitude of storylines that run parallel, concurrent, and often cross. They are worlds in which I can create a persona and live an experience beyond what I can have in the real world where I can create my own stories. Narrative involvement is not necessarily an overt motivational influence for many players. It infuses all other frames with an important context; heightening the relevance of an impressive victory, dramatizing a narrow escape or enriching the game experience by having a compelling in-world story to tell. Tactical involvement The American Heritage Dictionary defines tactics as an expedient for achieving a goal (Pickett, 2000). Within the macro phase, tactical involvement represents the satisfaction that results from working toward and reaching goals, whether these are stipulated by the game system or set by the players themselves. Pursuing a goal can be an end in itself, an autotelic experience yielding satisfaction within a system of meaning. It can also be fuelled by the desire of attaining reward. We get frustrated when we fail to achieve these goals and elated when we do. But often the goals that are set for us, or those that we set for ourselves, do not guarantee a reward or satisfaction. I may want recognition at my workplace in terms of a formal promotion, but factors outside my control may (and often do) conspire against my reaching this goal. I can act upon known courses of action that might improve my chances to succeed, but the final outcome may be beyond my control. Games constitute systems that can be interpreted and modulated to suit the skills of the participants, thus setting up opportunities for attaining goals in circumstances which make it easier to eliminate external unknown factors. Digital games are particularly malleable in setting achievable goals since other participating agents need not be human players but 153

154 computer-controlled agents and systems. This means that players can adjust levels of difficulty to suit their skills. Digital games also tend to facilitate identification of specific levels of difficulty. The most common method in single player games is to provide a choice among these difficulty levels which may either remain fixed for the duration of the game or can be changed manually during its course. Often games also include a built-in automatic increase in difficulty as the game progresses. There are also other forms of built-in adjustment mechanisms that attempt to match the difficulty of the game with the capabilities of the player. The car racing game Gran Turismo (Polyphony Digital, 1998), for example, gives an automatic speed boost to players that are lagging behind other cars in order to help them catch up with leading cars and keep the game competitive. MMOGs tend to structure the game world and everything in it on a range of levels. When a computer-controlled agent is selected their level is highlighted along with a colour coded level of danger to the character. In World of Warcraft, (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) for example, computer-controlled agents (often called mobs ) that can be overcome easily are coded in green while the most challenging are marked by a red border. Quests in World of Warcraft are similarly colour-coded so that players know the level of challenge to expect. Networked games like Counter-Strike (Valve Software, 1998a) that are constituted entirely of competing players do not offer the possibility of regulating difficulty since the level of challenge is more dependent on the skill of other players. Goals can be either set by the individual player, determined by the game or negotiated by the community, in the case of multiplayer games. The setting of personal goals can be separate from those established by the game and the scope of these personally set goals depends on the degree of open-ended play allowed by the game system. In a game of Space Invaders I might set myself the goal of clearing the first five levels without losing a single life. The range of activity that the Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) game system allows is rather limited and thus the personal goals that a player can set are equally limited. In contrast, more open-ended sandbox style games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks LLC., 2006) or the older Fallout (Interplay, 1997) have linear narratives built in them, but allow players to decide their course of action in the game environment without penalising them for not following the set storyline. For example, in 154

155 Oblivion, I can decide not to save the world from the hordes of demons threatening to overrun it and instead make a career of robbing people s houses for my own gain. My long-term goal could be simply to accumulate as much wealth as possible and/or a notorious reputation as a bandit, while short-term goals could be robbing rich people s houses, practicing useful skills like lock-picking or finding an adequate place to use as a base for my character s operations. The beauty of a game like Oblivion is that it is designed to react to my actions and thus make them more meaningful. The more criminal activity I engage in, the more notorious my activities will become and the more likely it will be for people to react negatively to me or for the authorities to try to arrest me. Thus my self-set goals are given meaning within the game context and actions have positive and negative repercussions built into the game system. MMOGs offer even more scope for determining one s own goals although these are often limited by the game mechanics. At level 1 in World of Warcraft, for example, I cannot decide to set out on a world exploration tour as each region has aggressive mobs that will attack characters of certain levels and thus my character will not get too far. Nevertheless, they allow for great scope in terms of self-created goals, both due to the size of their worlds, the various styles of play accommodated and, most importantly, the presence of persistent communities of other players. The interview participants expressed how attractive the opportunity of following self-created goals is to the MMOG experience: Ananke: I once swam from Darkshore. Took the better part of an afternoon. *Laughs* and I did it just because I wanted to and it was one of the few times that I didn't mind something taking so long. Gordon: Was it fun? Ananke: Yes! Gordon: Why didn t you mind? Ananke: It wasn't something that everyone has done. It was an adventure. I didn't know if I could or not. A nice challenge and not something that the game mechanics guided me through. Gordon: What made it challenging? Ananke: The fact that I didn't know what I would run into and that I died several times on the way. It was an achievable goal, but not "easy". 155

156 Gordon: What situations do you like more than others? Sunniva: Specifically I like sniping, especially when we are two or more players sniping together. I also like doing little quests with a small group of people, whether than involves sniping or not - like for example going to take over a new tower, or trying to attack a small group of enemies etc Gordon: So the little quests... those are self created right? Sunniva: Yes. Gordon: do you find that the ability to create your own little quests involves you more in the game? Sunniva: Yes. It allows you to control more of your own gaming experience and thinking out your own quests makes the game more engaging I think cause you need to plan more and think more around what you're doing. I also like small quests better following a "BIG" quest for the same reason, as you have less control in bigger quests and play a less central role in the overall planning and execution of that quest. These two participants are referring to World of Warcraft and Planetside respectively, which are very different in design, yet both are attracted by the possibility of creating their own achievable goals. For players that are more oriented to maximizing their character s progress in the game world (what is often called the numbers game ), Ananke s long distance swim might seem pointless as it does not yield specific game rewards, but for Ananke it was an enjoyable exploration of the limits of game-space traversal, as discussed in the spatial involvement frame. The reward of reaching Darkshore lay in the performance of the activity itself. There is a sense of satisfaction from feeling that one has the liberty of creating and striving towards one s own goals. Sunniva similarly enjoys a greater sense of control over her gaming experience when she follows self-created tasks. The ability for players to work towards their own goals is thus not only important in terms of satisfaction derived from reaching the goal but also because it gives a sense of freedom of action and control over one s experience in the world that will be discussed in the performative involvement frame. 156

157 MMOGs like World of Warcraft employ a number of mechanics that help players set attainable goals appropriate to their level by guiding them through the use of appropriate level quests. Quests tend to be easily achievable as long as they are of an appropriate level (green or yellow) for the character. These quests give a certain number of experience points (XP) that go towards character advancement and other forms of monetary or item rewards. Each quest therefore constitutes an attainable mini-goal that contributes towards the broader goal of developing a character through increasing levels, each level of which is a goal towards which players tend to work. The reward of reaching the level is autotelic, functional and social. Levelling is also autotelic in that reaching the goal is a pleasurable end in itself, particularly when the player has had his/her eye on the slowly increasing level metre. There is something alluring about seeing that bar get to the end, only to start again. Often players will stay online more than they intended in order to complete that goal, to give the game session a sense of closure and log off with the satisfaction of knowing that a concrete goal was reached. Sometimes, they will also pursue avenues of action which they find tedious in order to reach their goal. An example of this form of activity is grinding. Grinding is the act of repeatedly killing (usually easy) creatures (often referred to as mobs ) with the sole aim of gaining XP as efficiently as possible. Although players admit the activity is anything but pleasurable, the lure of attaining goals is so strong that it makes a tedious activity like grinding feel worthwhile: Gordon: Does it make a difference to you if you travel alone or with others? Aprile: Well since I end up grinding 90% of the time I would say no. Gordon: Do you enjoy grinding? Aprile: Nope. Rather old after 2 60's, me a 43 a 33 and several others. Gordon: Why do you still do it? Aprile: Well, pretty much the only way to level. This is so not like the other MMo's Can t count on people here for the most part. So, I do what I have to do to reach my goals. Gordon: What are your goals? Aprile: To get 60, be able to do raids/instances, obtain items I want/need. Gordon: What drives you to get to 60, what s the main motivation? Aprile: I dont know. 157

158 Figure 32 A player character gaining a level in World of Warcraft Part of this drive to level has to do with a betterment of the avatar s, and hence, the player s capabilities in the game-world. The increased abilities, attributes and overall prowess of the character result extending the range of opportunities for action which can lead to a greater sense of agency in the world, discussed in more detail in the performative involvement frame below. These functional improvements also have a social impact because the character is now higher up the food chain than other characters in a recognisable, numerically labelled fashion. Although this is true of all MMOGs to some degree or other, there are some titles like World of Warcraft that implement this design logic in a far more pervasive and functional way. The pleasure of development in World of Warcraft revolves around improving one s character by increasing his/her levels and obtaining better items. Some of the participants have identified this as one of the most alluring aspects of MMOGs: Gordon: What interests you about MMOGs? Oriel: At first the prettiness. It's eye candy. It's better than looking at pretty picture... cause you can explore inside the picture. Then came the numbers.., quickly getting higher levels higher skill points better armour (with higher numbers) 158

159 more back space to carry more and more items making more money for bigger items The lure of bigger numbers that Oriel describes is not particular to MMOGs. Games which display the improvement of the player s character, city, army or household members (to name a few) in a numerical fashion have the potential to hook players into the desire for higher and higher numbers. It seems that for a lot of players the clearly quantifiable improvement is a strong motivational factor in itself, but often the underlying reason for this satisfaction is that it increase the player s agency in the game-world and its resident players and/or AI agents. Performative involvement Performative involvement in the macro phase refers to the motivational draw exerted by the ability to act within the virtual environment, experienced as the capacity to exercise agency. This sense of agency will be considered in conjunction with the affordances and limitations written into the game-system and the actions of other players, in the case of multi-player games. The micro phase of this frame will deal more specifically with forms of avatar or game-piece control and the sensation of movement this can produce. The tactical involvement frame dealt with the compelling aspects of goal achievement and its rewards. Achieving goals depend on the ability of players to exert agency, that is, to perform actions which affect the state of the game-world and its inhabitants. Theorists like Schott (2006) and Murray (1998) have argued that it is the subjective experience of agency that players seem to desire from their engagement with game-play: they need to feel they have exerted power or control over events (Schott, 2006, p. 134). As this model demonstrates, the exertion of agency is not the sole factor that makes games compelling, but it is a necessary component. 40 Murray (1998) defines agency as the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices (p. 126). Although agency can be, and often is, satisfying, it is not always so. Murray and Schott (2006) assume that intentionality is an intrinsic determinant of agency. Although knowing that what occurred is a result of 159

160 intentional action, the effects of those intentions are not always satisfying. Let us take a game related situation as an example. Figure 33 : An unintended casualty in Counter-Strike Source In an online game of Counter-Strike Source (Valve Software, 2004a) I am covering a corridor that leads to a strategic position. An enemy peaks out and ducks back behind cover. I pull out a grenade and lob it into the room they are in. My remaining two teammates are rushing into the room from a back door I cannot see as I throw the grenade. I run into the room and find the corpses of my two team mates and the enemy. The rest of the opposing team overwhelm me and we lose the round. The outcome of my action is neither satisfying nor intended yet it is undeniably my exertion of agency that eliminated them and resulted in the loss for our team. Clearly, a more comprehensive conception of agency is needed. In his discussion of agency, Giddens (1984) emphasizes that: Agency refers not to the intentions people have in doing things but to their capability of doing those things in the first place (which is why agency implies power: cf. Oxford English Dictionary definition of an agent, as one who exerts power or produces an effect ). Agency concerns events of which an individual is the perpetrator in the sense that the individual could, at any phase in a given 160

161 sequence of conduct, have acted differently. Whatever happened would not have happened if that individual had not intervened (p. 9). Associating agency primarily with intentionality narrows the scope of contingency, which, as Malaby (2007) has rightly argued, is one of the reasons why both games and everyday life are compelling. One of the reasons why MMOGs represent such a qualitative advance in game design and experience is the very fact that actions in the world can have persistent effects that often go beyond those intended by their perpetrators. To take an example from an altogether different genre of game let us look at an online browser based strategy game called Travian (Travian GmbH., 2005). Each player controls a village and manages resources used to construct further resource fields, buildings and armies. Players can trade together, attack each other s villages to steal their resources and form alliances that often end up battling each other for months on end. Rather than focus on economic development, I built a small army as soon as I could afford one to attack villages in my immediate vicinity. To make retaliation against my attacks more daunting I tried to join an alliance, 41 but found it difficult as most have a minimum size of village for entry, which I was not even close to attaining. Finally, a small alliance took me in and I began raiding players close to my village that did not belong to an alliance. The resources raided were invested in more army units until I had a big enough force to empty my newly formed enemies of their resources, making it difficult for them to raise an army. This scheme went very well and soon I was dominating the sector. One day I log in and was shocked to see that all my victims had joined my alliance. It turns out that they tried to gang together to neutralize my army and realised the only way they could stop me from attacking them was to join my alliance (being not big enough themselves to join larger ones and give me the pounding I deserved). The concentrated dominance of the alliance in the region soon resulted in more players joining, turning the small alliance into a dominant power in the area and completely crippling my stream of raided resources. As this example shows, the unintended and unpredictable consequences of one s actions are precisely what makes the exertion of agency in games so meaningful and compelling. The designed nature of games compels players to narrow the breadth of contingency by becoming more competent at understanding their machinations and performing better. As 161

162 discussed in tactical involvement, the subjective view of success in games depends on the attainment of designed or self-set goals. A successful exertion of agency within the game setting can therefore be viewed as a reduction of its degree of contingency, but what makes games interesting is the fact that, as in our everyday lives, our actions and interactions, can succeed or fail. Malaby (2007) has identified this as one of the constituent aspects of contrived contingency in games, which he calls performative contingency : Here the issue is the execution of an action by a participant, an action that may succeed or fail. This kind of unpredictability plays a significant role in athletic contests, but also is the core of many action-oriented computer games. Games call upon you to perform, to accomplish the actions that give you the best opportunity to succeed in the game. At times this performance embodied and rapid, such as in first-person (FPS) games; at other times, it is simply about not making errors in following game procedures, such as in counting the proper spaces in Monopoly. In a way, all of our actions in games, as in life, are performative in this sense; they run the risk of failure (p. 16). The compelling nature of a multiplayer FPS game like Counter-Strike Source for example, lies in honing one s in-game performative abilities: reflexes, hand-eye coordination and so on. The measure of one s ability is here not determined by a set of difficulty levels, but the abilities of other players. As will be discussed in the shared involvement frame, multiplayer games, particularly competitive ones, multiply the contingency of the game by introducing into the game-experience of the individual player the actions and abilities of other players. Different games place varying demands on the player s performative ability, at times modulating actions by the attributes of the avatar. In the case of Counter-Strike the avatar does not affect the player s performative ability in any way. The different avatar models have no attributes that influence the accuracy of shooting or the running speed of the player, for example. In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks LLC., 2006) the skill of the player is important when fighting computer controlled agents but this ability is modified considerably by the numerical attributes of the character and the equipment he/she is carrying. For example, a character with a high sword wielding skill, is going to 162

163 inflict more damage per blow than one with a lower skill. A character with a higher speed characteristic is going to run faster, and so on. Thus time invested in Oblivion has the potential to develop both the player s performative ability and the character s statistics. The improved statistics narrow the performative contingency of related tasks which can result in a heightened sense of agency. It is important to note that the satisfaction derived from this increased sense of agency is not limited to the game-world but inevitably extends into the player s sense of personal achievement in general. In World of Warcraft, my performative ability as a player will only take me so far. Fighting against a player or creature 20 levels higher than me is going to result in certain death of my avatar, no matter how skilled I am as a player. The best I can hope for is to escape the encounter. Similarly, in a duel between two players of equal level, the player with powerful weapons and armour will have a huge advantage over the player with standard equipment, to the point where the actual skill of the player becomes insignificant. Planetside (Sony Online Entertainment, 2003), on the other hand, places more emphasis on the performative abilities of the player, making it perfectly possible for a level 1 character controlled by a skilful player to eliminate a level 25 (maximum level in Planetside) character. If a game rewards higher numbers, motivation and effort will tend to be directed towards improving these numbers and thus one s standing vis a vis other agents in the game-world (human or AI controlled). On the other hand, if the game rewards personal skill over length of time invested in increasing numbers, the motivational drive to hone one s abilities will tend to be stronger. Both these forms of performative involvement become particularly emphasized when the game-world is shared by other human players. Shared involvement Game-playing was, until the rise of PC gaming, a relatively social affair. Prior to their digital variety, games most often required more than one player, and often were played in public spaces. The rise of digital games resulted in an increased potential for the creation of games in which players would be pitted against an automated system rather than human opponents. Print media still allowed for solo-gaming, with games like Solitaire, the famous Fighting Fantasy (Livingstone & Jackson, 1980) book solo RPG series and the more 163

164 complex strategy board games like Wolfpack (Simulations Publications Inc., 1975). In the latter case the system was expressed in the rules and interaction occurred through cross referencing die-role results with rule tables. The change in the state of the game is recorded by the player, sometimes with the aid of props like miniatures and model terrain. Computers were perfect vehicles for working out the calculations required for the system to function and in time they also extended their utility in offering representational placeholders in the form of graphics instead of the more expensive (if charming) miniatures and model terrain. But the very first digital games, such as Spacewar (Russell, 1962) and Pong (Atari Inc., 1972), were designed to be played by two players and this trend continued through every generation of home computing technology. From the first Atari VCS to the Nintendo Wii, gaming machines have been built with more than one player in mind. PC gaming, however has not been as amenable to two-player gaming due to the lack of standard hardware that allowed the connection of multiple controllers. Now that multiple controllers are available, only a handful of titles give the opportunity for two players to act on a single machine. Multiplayer gaming on PCs, however, created a new form of gaming sociality: gaming with geographically distant players in real time. This form of multiplayer experience was distinctive in that, for the first time, the player was operating in a secluded physical space while having the results of his actions visible to others as they were executed. These actions become even more meaningful when the game-world is persistent because the inworld communities have more time and scope to develop and actions are placed in a historical context. Soon after, multiplayer gaming started being organised in local area networks, or LAN parties. These consist of a number of players connecting their machines through a router in the same building; often a big room rented specifically for the occasion. In most countries, LANs are organised on a regular basis, often including competitive tournaments and an inordinate amount of coffee and junk-food consumption. As attested by my participants, one of the main attractors of MMOGs is their inherently shared nature. This social participation can take many forms: from the direct conversations in group chat-channels to the presence of other human controlled characters one can bump into while travelling or the background hum of general 42 chat chatter. Even when players are not collaborating directly with others or competing against human opponents, the 164

165 presence of one s avatar creates a broader engagement with the world community. Having an audience, whether it is attentive to our actions or not, modifies considerably how we conceive of and interact with the digital world. MMOGs offer more than just a gamesystem or automated game-world to interact with. They are built with an aim at fostering persistent social structures that create a sense of being in a breathing, living world: Gordon: What interests you about Massive Multiplayer Online Games? Baal : Hmmm... I think what really strikes me is knowing that all these thousands of characters running around are actually people stuck to their PCs all over the world. There through my monitor is a whole living world. My room at night becomes a gateway to another place... that s what's cool for me. What sets MMOGs aside from other digital games is this propensity to be fully fledged online societies. Friendships are made and broken, love relationships formed, marriages sealed and betrayals played out on grand scales. An excellent example of a perfectly planned heist affected within an online world occurred in EVE Online (CCP Games, 2003), in April A mercenary corporation 43 known as the Guiding Hand Social Club was hired by a player-run corporation to infiltrate and sabotage an enemy corporation, Ubiqua Seraph. After months of careful planning and assimilation into Ubiqua Seraph, Guiding Hand made away with over USD16,500 worth of assets and brought Ubiqua Seraph to its knees

166 Figure 34 A wedding inside World of Warcraft The social ties and tensions formed in the virtual world are not separate from the everyday as proponents of the magic circle concept argue, but form an important part of it. In fact, MMOGs are so popular because the social conventions developed in other contexts crossover into them with such ease. As a number of participants have stated, once characters attain the highest levels in the game and the bigger instances 45 are run more than a few times, players often log on for the online company; to retain contact with friends made inside the world. Geography permitting, these friendships can turn into out-of-game partnerships. One participant describes how he left everything behind to move across the US in order to live with people he met in an online world: Gordon: Have you formed friendships in World of Warcraft or any other mmog/mud that have spilled on to real life? Snotplate: Yes actually. Two of the three people I live with are people I met through a MUD. I moved cross-country to move in with them, actually. Came across on a three-week visit and decided to just get a job and stay. Gordon: How did you feel about the transition from online to real life friends? Snotplate: I think they're really fulfilling. We all have similar interests so they're better roommates than the people I've come across through other social instances. Like the roommates I've had from school have usually ended in trouble. Having common interests is an important basis for many friendships, and so it is not surprising to find that users sometimes feel they can relate to others in the MMOG more than they do with other people in their daily life since, at the very least, they share one engaging interest: participation in a virtual world. This is facilitated by the fact that MMOGs are often designed in such a way as to make grouping with others inevitable at certain stages of the game and, more importantly, joining a guild becomes a prerequisite for experiencing the, so called, end-game content. 46 Being part of a guild gives the player a regular group of people to interact with. This potential for relationships to develop over time is made even more powerful by the fact that members of the guild will spend a lot of time resolving situations together. Doing things with others creates a strong social bond that often exceeds the intensity of experience of other forms of online communication, such 166

167 as chatting. Players have to depend on each other, interact in order to advance in the game, protect each other and overcome other players and computer-controlled agents together. Online communication is thus contextualised within a history of shared experiences that give more meaning to a specific interaction than a discussion over a chat channel ever can. On the other hand, chatting about things out of the game occurs frequently, particularly when players are engaged with easy or repetitive tasks like grinding or harvesting materials. Travelling is also a great opportunity to chat to others since long journeys have often to be undertaken and there is nothing much for the player to do aside from making sure his/her character is heading towards the right destination, which is often facilitated by automated commands. 47 Some guilds are organised by geographical location, such as a World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) guild made up of people from Austin, Texas that one of the participants belonged to. The guild organised monthly gatherings outside the game, giving people a chance to see the faces behind the avatars of the people they are used to playing with. Actions and communication in the game are thus given additional meaning since players know they might meet the people they are interacting with: Nombril: I tease one guy online all the time about sleeping with him cause I know he's recently divorced. I think he likes the attention. Gordon: And you know him in real life Nom? Nombril: I didn't but he's coming to a guild party here in TX in 2 weeks so I will then. He knows and chats with my husband too though so it's all harmless. I flirt with my husband too...we both have NE alts and I get naked in game and dance for him all the time. He LOVES it. Wouldn't do it in RL though. Snotplate: Not even for your hubby? Nombril: Nope...and I've had two kids with him. Snotplate: Odd. Nombril: Yeah, we use Ventrilo during quests so I even flirt with them over that too. Oriel: I don t think I could flirt over Ventrilo, too real. 167

168 Nombril: Actually I flirt less over Ventrilo cause when you attach a voice to someone, they become more human to you and less like the person you've invented in your head. Like other forms of online communication, MMOGs offer the possibility of being social in ways that might not be possible in daily life, because of geographical, personal or community reasons. The playful flirtations that Nombril enjoys are just one example of how MMOGs can extend social practices into the MMOG world. If, as Castronova argues, MMOGs are the current instantiations of the virtual reality worlds heralded in the nineties (Castronova, 2005), the reality they re-create is not what is generally meant by references to the real, that is, the tangible, physical matter, but the social reality of everyday life with all the opportunities and problems this involves. MMOGs are re-creating the social in a persistent online form which enables a degree of longevity, a crucial catalyst for the development of any society. MMOGs also differ from other forms of online communication because the goal directed activity they encourage creates a context and motivator for communicating and collaborating with others: Haelvon: MMORPGs offer a great way to interact with other people, too. Sometimes, just chatting with folks is amusing enough. Gordon: How do MMORPGs differ in that way from other net chat methods in your opinion? Haelvon: You have the opportunities to get to know other people and make new friends. Haelvon: Bleh. Chat rooms on the Internet don't have a "goal". MMORPGS offer the chance to work together at various puzzles, as opposed to just typing back and forth. Gordon: And you find that more involving? Haelvon: Definitely. Aspects of the pleasures of social life manifest themselves in virtual worlds along with its problems. In late January 2006, a new guild in World of Warcraft announced it was forming. As part of the process of describing the character of the guild, the founding member, Sarah Andrews, stated that the guild would be Gay and Lesbian and Transexual 168

169 friendly. When some users heard the announcement, they reported Andrews to Blizzard who warned Andrews to stop the guild forming process or face account suspension. They claimed that Andrews guild violated World of Warcraft s Terms of Use, under Harrasment-Sexual Orientation : When engaging in Chat in World of Warcraft, or otherwise utilizing World of Warcraft, you may not transmit or post any content or language which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard Entertainment, is deemed to be offensive, including without limitation content or language that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, sexually explicit, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, nor may you use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the content and language restrictions listed above (Blizzard Entertainment, 2006). The offence, in this case, was that Andrews guild brought into light the sexual orientation of its members, even if this was done only in the capacity of being friendly to gay people, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals. The ironic thing about this issue is that Andrews felt the need to be explicit about the guild s sexual policy in reaction to Blizzard s inability to uphold their terms of use. The term gay is often used in general chat as a derogatory term. Its frequent use made it easier for Blizzard to corner one entity that brought the issue to light instead of monitoring its chat channels for such infringements. Blizzard adopts a self-policing policy, where members are asked to report instances of policy infringement. Therefore what is acceptable is not ultimately dictated by Blizzard but by the general consensus of the population of the server. If there are too many players using the term, it becomes impossible to report them all. This led to a situation of contention between Andrews and Blizzard which the company addressed with the following statement: To promote a positive game environment for everyone and help prevent such harassment from taking place as best we can, we prohibit mention of topics related to sensitive real-world subjects in open chat within the game, and we do our best to take action whenever we see such topics being broadcast. This includes openly advertising a guild friendly to players based on a particular political, sexual, or religious preference, to list a few examples (Blizzard cited in Hunter, 2006). 169

170 In a personal communication to Andrews Blizzard claimed that Many people are insulted just at the word 'homosexual' or any other word referring to sexual orientation. This incident reminds us how dangerous notions such as the magic circle become when used to analyse and make decisions in virtual worlds like MMOGs. Blizzard have stated on a number of occasions that within the confines of the game, communication should be limited to discussion relating to the game and not to gravitate to political or social issues for fear of breaking the pleasure of the game for other players. For Blizzard, upholding the notion of the magic circle is an attractive option, as this means that the MMOG can be treated as a game cordoned off from the social concerns of the everyday and the problems of governance these entail. Companies like Blizzard expressly design the game elements to foster social ties, with the knowledge that such ties make it easier to keep users playing and thus paying monthly fees. Building community helps create richer gaming experiences and, more importantly, from a business perspective, it can often replace the excitement of gaming with shared involvement and participation. When the lure of game-goals and achievements outlined in the tactical involvement frame, starts to wane, the social can extend interest in the virtual world long enough for the MMOG company to release new areas to explore and other game content to renew the interest of bored players. In many ways, Blizzard wants to cash in on the fruits of a persistent society without dealing with the thorny problems such social structures and relations inevitably produce. Shared involvement is a crucial motivator for trying out and extending the player s experience in the virtual world. This section has focused mostly on MMOGs since they are the gaming environments which are strictly dependent on the existence of societies of considerable size in order to exist at all. Not surprisingly, when asked what aspects of MMOGs interested them the most, the majority of participants replied that it was due to the sense of being part of a larger evolving community that attracted them: Gordon: What interests you most about MMOGs? Inauro: Hmm, tough one. I guess, I'd have to say that the thing I like the most is the ability to engage in a vibrant online world with other players. The shared social experience of working together to do things is great. Gordon: What interests you about Massive Multiplayer Online Games? 170

171 Evita: the most interesting thing is probably the interaction with other players, playing games just by yourself is alright, but to know that there actually is a guy somewhere sitting behind his PC and sharing the same world is quite exciting. Also beating a human is better than beating a computer. Gordon: What interests you about Massive Multiplayer Online Games? Mokkan: MMO's offer all the fun and excitement of any regular game, but allow for a level of social interaction as well. It's a bit too seclusive playing a game by yourself. Gordon: What interests you about Massive Multiplayer Online Games? Sunniva: the experience of getting to play with other people in real time, to interact with these people etc. It somehow makes the experience more immersive/intense knowing that there's a real person behind the avatar. That's the main reason at least. Gordon: What interests you about MMORPGs? Nombril: I mostly play to talk with my friends and make new ones. Levelling my toon is nice, but it's secondary to just having fun and grouping with them and chatting. Gordon: What interests you about MMOGs? Carlitos: What interests me the most is the ability to interact with thousands of players without having to join "rooms" or "lobbies". Gordon: What is the main difference between rooms lobbies and meeting people in World of Warcraft? Carlitos: In World of Warcraft, you can meet someone that s running by you and ask them to join your party. You meet different people all the time. Carlitos brings up an important distinction between MMOG sociality and other multiplayer game lobbies and internet chat rooms. The persistent geographies of MMOGs allow for a feeling of being surrounded by others because one can actually see representations of the community wandering around the world. There is a particular kind of excitement associated with the potential of meeting someone new that can be hard to come by in 171

172 everyday life, particularly in the context of some cultures and geographical locations. In a discussion of social spaces in the contemporary United States, Oldenburg (1999) notes that the essential group experience is being replaced by the exaggerated self-consciousness of individuals. American lifestyles, for all the material acquisition and the seeking after comforts and pleasures, are plagued by boredom, loneliness, alienation (p. 13) Steinkeuhler and Williams (2006) used two sets of ethnographic data from participants in Lineage (NC Soft, 1998), Lineage 2 (NC Soft, 2003), Asheron s Call (Turbine Inc., 1999) and Asheron s Call 2 (Turbine Inc., 2002) to examine whether MMOGs fit Oldenburg s criteria of third places : Most needed are those third places which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase third places derives from considering our homes to be the first places in our lives, and our work places the second (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). Steinkuehler and Williams conclude that MMOGs fit the majority of Oldenburg s eight criteria for third places. They also state, however, that MMOGs are best at creating broad social connections between people from different backgrounds ( bridging ) rather than promoting deep, emotionally supportive ones ( bonding ). Oldenburg s argument is mostly aimed at the lack of opportunity for building the former type of social capital and thus Steinkuehler and Williams conclude that MMOGs are indeed sites which can perform the function of third spaces that Oldenburg feels are so sorely needed in contemporary, suburban United States. My own observations would be closely aligned with Steinkuehler and Williams, with the notable exception that over half of the participants reported forms of bonding relationships, while all articulated the importance of bridging relationships at some point or other during the interviews and focus groups. The attractions of the social in its myriad forms is thus a salient factor in the current boom of virtual worlds and if Steinkuehler and Williams are correct, this popularity is further fuelled by a decline in the quality of and accessibility to offline third spaces. The issues raised by Stienkuehler and Williams are based on the United States and other countries that have similar social structures. The social needs that MMOGs address might not be as 172

173 powerful in other societies which have retained the prominence of third spaces within their everyday social life. The macro-involvement phase of the above six frames of involvement aimed to provide a first step in developing a specialised vocabulary that accounts for the major motivational drives to engage with digital games and virtual worlds. The six frames represent a broad grouping of such motivational factors which are aimed at helping structure further research on game involvement. The next chapter will apply the six frames to the imminent instance of situated game-play involvement generated by the situated instance of game-play. 33 See Chapter 3 for more detail. 34 See Chapter 1 for a more thorough discussion of ergodicity. 35 In the context of World of Warcraft, BG refers to Battlegrounds. These are types of player versus player instances. Instances are locations that exist areas created specifically for the group and running as pocket areas in the world which no other players outside the group can enter. In the case of Battlegrounds, players sign up by talking to the appropriate NPC. When enough characters from each of the two factions, Horde and Alliance, have signed up, characters get teleported to the instance and the game starts. When the game ends they get teleported to a designated area in the world. No other characters can wander in as a game is going on. 36 See chapter 1 for a discussion of Aarseth s notion of the ergodic. 37 Menethil harbour, Gadzgetan, Winterspring and Azshara are areas in World of Warcraft. 38 By technical boundaries I am here referring to both the coded structures and game-rules. 39 See Chapter 1 for a more thorough exposition of this debate. 40 As noted in my definition of virtual environments, and hence digital games, in Chapter Alliances are similar to guilds, clans or corporations in other multiplayer games. 42 Most MMOGs have a communication channel that reaches the local region or entire world (depending on design) separate from the close proximity say or yell channel. 43 Eve Online s equivalent of a guild. 44 Detailed coverage of the event can be found at 45 Instances are areas created specifically for the group and are run as pocket areas in the world which no other users outside the group can enter. These often require the coordination of anywhere between 5 to 40 players to complete as well as a lot of preparation prior to the run. 46. MMOGs designed around a level structure (see Chapter 4 for a more detailed discussion of this) are frequently considered to have two main phases of the game: the progression from level 1 to the maximum level (60 in the case of World of Warcraft) and the qualitatively different activities available to characters of maximum level, often called the end-game. 173

174 47 When travelling in groups, players tend to use the follow function, which allows the player s avatar to follow another avatar often creating a train of avatars following each other. This means that only the leading player needs to navigate using the keyboard, leaving the other players hands free to converse. 174

175 CHAPTER 6: MICRO-INVOLVEMENT In the previous chapter I discussed each of the six frames in the macro-involvement phase treating the broad issues that motivate players to engage with games. In this chapter the focus shifts to the situated instance of game-play through six frames of moment by moment involvement. This will lead into a consideration of incorporation, which represents an internalised commingling of the six frames. Absorption This temporal phase of the model focuses on the imminent quality of involvement during game-play. I will argue that a crucial first step of forming a conceptual toolkit that would help in analysing and discussing game experience is to make a distinction between the general direction of attention towards a medium and the form of involvement prevalent during game-play. Chapter 3 discussed the tendency in Game Studies to treat involvement in digital games and other media using the same terms, but it has become evident in my research that it is necessary to make a distinction between the quality of the experience of involvement in digital games and that enabled by other media forms. The investment of attention towards the relevant medium is a prerequisite to engagement with any form of media. This in itself does not, however, adequately describe the experience. To this end, I will differentiate between general attention directed towards a medium here referred to as absorption, and ergodic involvement, which denotes a form of involvement requiring non-trivial effort (Aarseth, 1997, p. 1) on the part of the player to perform the game. Watching a movie doest not require the same kind of involvement as game-playing. Treating them as experiential equivalents ignores the specific qualities of each, a situation which has at times been the case with game scholarship when analytical frameworks from other disciplines are imported without modification. Aarseth s emphasis on non-trivial effort draws attention to the active participation of the player to construct the particular instance of the game-play. Newman (2002), however questions the validity of ergodicity in digital games: 175

176 Quite simply, videogames are not interactive, or even ergodic. While they may contain interactive or ergodic elements, it is a mistake to consider that they present only one type of experience and foster only one type of engagement. Play sequences, from where the idea of the interactivity or ergodicity of videogames derives, are framed and punctuated by movie sequences, map screens, score or laptime feedback screens and so on (Newman, 2002). He argues for a separation between what he calls on-line and off-line engagement, where the former refers to player input to the game and the latter denotes viewing of cutscenes, pre-race fly-throughs, score screens and the like. He places these two types of engagement at the polar ends of an ergodic continuum. Controlling players are referred to as primary players while non-controlling spectators that participate by communicating with the primary player are called secondary players. Newman s formulation has the benefit of acknowledging the multi-dimensional nature of game involvement. He rightly points out that segments like cut-scenes, background story text and the like are important parts of the game. But there are also some considerable problems with his argument that need to be addressed here. His critique of ergodicity is based on the existence of game segments which lack direct input from the player. Newman equates non-trivial effort with this form of input. So, according to Newman, while browsing maps or deciding on a course of action, ergodic effort is not being expended. But, the effort implicit in the ergodic is first and foremost a disposition and readiness to act, not just the actual action of pressing a button or pulling a joystick. To take just one of many possible examples of how Newman s argument is lacking, strategy games tend to require a degree of time thinking about one s moves. During very involving games, these periods of seeming inactivity can be long, but it would make little sense to label such periods as not being part of the game. Indeed for a large number of games, this is exactly what the game is all about. But this inconsistency is also applicable to action games. In an FPS game, for example, a player is lying on the ground of a 3 rd floor ruined building covering a street with a sniper rifle. There are no enemies in sight but the sniper expects them to emerge in the near future as the street leads to one of the main game-objectives on the map. Long minutes of inactivity result from such a wait, yet the sniper s job is often defined by this sort of patient waiting. Now, following Newman s logic, these minutes 176

177 waiting are not a form of ergodic involvement as they do not require input from the player, who is just watching the screen. This misses the obvious point that at any second someone might emerge around that street corner, and the sniper must be ready to deal with them, or the fruits of his labour will go to waste. Figure 35 : Covering a street in Red Orchestra (Tripwire Interactive, 2006). Turning to one of Newman s own exemplars, looking at a map screen and planning a perilous journey from Ratchet to Feathermoon in World of Warcraft s, (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) Azeroth is very much a form of ergodic, non-trivial effort. Just because no action is apparent on the screen, it does not mean that no game related effort is being invested in the mind of the player. I would argue that in discussing game involvement an indicator of game activity is not simply the direct input of the player or the display of such an action on the screen, but the potential and readiness to act. Within the scope of this model, viewing cut-scenes that further the game s designed narrative 48 are part of the narrative involvement frame in the micro phase, which I am relating to the ergodic. Consulting maps and planning journeys is part of the spatial and tactical involvement frames. This provides the basis for a more thorough conceptualisation of game involvement than does a simple on/off-line distinction. Distinguishing between kinds of involvement by introducing a new term like ergodic involvement follows from examining the applicability of terms borrowed from other disciplines and applied to digital games. The much discussed notion of identification is a case in point. There is an important qualitative difference in the set of relationships 177

178 operative in the player-avatar association and those present in identification between a spectator and a cinematic or literary character. Readers feel a degree of sadness at Romeo and Juliet s fate or a sense of anger at how the step-sisters treat Cinderella. They might cringe as the giant slug envelops the cook headfirst in Peter Jackson s King Kong (P. Jackson, 2005). Walton (1990) calls these fictionally generated emotions qausiemotions. In Mimesis and Make Believe he gives a detailed phenomenological account of how audiences are affected by what they see on screen or read in books. In one section he discusses identification more specifically: An important aspect of our emotional reaction to works of art that I have not mentioned is the experience of identifying with a character. What is it for a spectator of King Lear to identify with Lear in his disappointment and disillusion at Goneril and Regan s betrayal? The identification does not consist in its being fictional of the appreciator that he feels betrayed; it is not fictional that Goneril and Regan betray him. Still less does it consist in his actually feeling betrayed by them. I suggest that the spectator engages in imaginings that are not part of his authorized game but occur along with it. He imagines himself to be in Lear s shoes, to have been deceived by his daughters and to feel the intense pain of betrayal (Whether he imagines himself to be Lear and to have been deceived by Goneril and Regan or just to be in a situation like Lear s is a question we need not decide). These subsidiary imaginings may be more or less subliminal; perhaps they are not occurrent. But they are an important part of one s experience of the work and one s later meditations on it (p. 254) In the case of digital games we need to distinguish between this sort of identification; where the player puts himself in the shoes of a character (e.g. feeling sorrow for Max in Max Payne (Rockstar Toronto, 2001) for losing his family), and a more direct alignment with the avatar where the player interprets events in the game world as happening to him through the avatar. There is an important difference between being quasi-angry for what the villains did to Max or seeing my on-screen hero in a movie getting a bullet in the leg and being angry at having a team-mate shoot me in the back in a multiplayer round of Counter-Strike (Valve Software, 1998a). In the former case I might identify with the character and feel bad for him (particularly if I have been through a similar experience or 178

179 can imagine what such an experience might feel like), while in the latter example, I do not interpret the assault as occurring to my avatar, but to my represented self. There is a crucial difference between empathy and limitation of agency. Identification with a cinema character is a form of empathy that cannot affect my sense of agency in that particular medium, simply because I do not have the power to affect the course of events. Being shot removes or limits my possibility of action. It directly affects the player s agency. The micro-involvement phase will take the six frames discussed in chapter 5 and apply them to the specific instance of game-play. It refers to the process of involvement with the game. The six frames signal important experiential categories based largely on participants feedback and my own participation in a wide range of digital games and virtual worlds. The boundaries between these categories are malleable and should not be taken as rigid separators, owing largely to the subjective modulations of the experiential dimension of game involvement. Applying The Digital Game Experience Model to a practical analysis does not require all the frames to be equally relevant to a specific game; for example, the intensity and complexity of spatial involvement in Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks LLC., 2006) or Half-Life 2 (Valve Software, 2004b) far surpass those found in Space Invaders (Taito, 1978). Although the model presents the six frames separately the forms of involvement they represent tend to occur in combination, with varying degrees of conscious or internalised attention being committed to each in a fluid and oscillating fashion. Affective involvement As chapter 5 outlined, the affective qualities of digital games can exert a powerful motivational draw on their players. The rhetorical strategies employed in their design are geared towards creating specific emotional responses in players. The effects they are intended to have are by no means those that materialize in the actual gaming instance, however. This can be due to a variety of factors ranging from a lack of interest towards the particular game or game genre, interruptions from other sources demanding attention or quite simply, the personal interpretation of represented events that diverges from those intended by designers because of reasons personal to the player, or ineffective design. Although designers cannot dictate absolutely the specific effects of their creations, the 179

180 design choices made will tend to encourage a particular kind of reaction or emotional response from the players. A significant portion of this rhetorical power can be associated with the mode of representation of the particular medium. In the case of the moment by moment involvement with digital games the main vehicles of rhetorical delivery are visual graphics, audio effects and the physics built into the virtual environment. A number of theorists and designers have rightly argued that graphical power is not what makes games compelling. Although it is true that the quality and beauty of visual representation does not by itself make a compelling game, the evocative power of graphics and sound should not be discounted. Graphics are often the first aspect of a digital game to capture the player s attention when looking out for new games. It is no coincidence that all major game reviewing sites like and along with the game publishers themselves, include a link to a screenshot gallery. As the majority of the participants stated, attractive graphics can lure them towards game titles they would not have otherwise considered. Whether the quality of game-play keeps them interested is another matter altogether, but for the game-play to be trialled, some initial hook needs to be present, and often graphics serve that purpose. The graphical style of a game gives a good idea of the kind of genre the game draws from, the era and setting. Screenshots splattered with gore and body parts set in dark abandoned locations are not going to appeal to someone looking for a colourful and cheerful light game for their young daughter. Some genres are more dependent on specific forms of graphical and audio representation than others. An FPS set in World War 2 will tend to reproduce a sense of being in the period and will thus depend on a degree of verisimilitude, if not to the actual thing, to popular media representations of it. The distinction between the two is seldom made. Let us compare two FPSs set in World War 2. Medal of Honour: Allied Assault (2015 Inc., 2002), for example, draws its visual style strongly from contemporary World War 2 Hollywood movies such as Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998) and Pearl Harbour (Bay, 2001). The lighting and palette employed in the game as well as the dramatic action portrayed on-screen are reminiscent of these movies, with several scenes reproduced 180

181 wholesale either in cut-scenes or as playable level-sections. The aim here is to appeal to a popular movie rendition of World War 2, with only a limited concern for reproducing functional elements. Red Orchestra: Ostfront (Tripwire Interactive, 2006) is another FPS set in World War 2. The graphical style and audio effects both convey a stronger sense of historical accuracy. Unlike Medal of Honour the interface information provided is limited to the level of exhaustion, bodily hit-locations and the number of ammo clips remaining. Unlike the majority of FPSs, no crosshairs are provided making it almost impossible to hit a target further than a meter or so away without bringing the weapon s iron sites up to one s point of view. This also causes players to slow or halt their movement. Unlike FPSs like Medal of Honour or Counter-Strike Source (Valve Software, 2004a), trying to shoot accurately while moving is next to impossible often requiring a kneeling or prone stance in order to compensate for the weapon s recoil. Figure 36 : Iron sights aiming in Red Orchestra The majority of the infantry in Red Orchestra carry single-shot rifles, which require the player to pull back a catch after every shot in order to be able to shoot again. Although set in the same era, Medal of Honour includes a cross-hair in the middle of the screen, making it possible to move and shoot accurately, even with automatic weapons. Red Orchestra also pays closer attention to reproducing uniforms, weapons and objects true to the period, down to the smallest detail, as opposed to Medal of Honour whose settings, uniforms and 181

182 objects are only approximations of the period they are meant to represent. Graphical style, audio effect quality and physics come together to create a very different experience in these two games coming out of the same genre (FPS) and set in the same era (World War 2). Let us look at a practical example of the affective powers of combining graphics, audio and environmental physics. Multiplayer FPS game designers have been at pains to instil a need for team-work through the use of suppressing fire. The idea here is that one player shoots at the cover of an enemy player, or group of players, that are covering an area the assailants want to cross. When the player providing suppressing fire, usually with an automatic weapon, shoots bursts at the enemy cover, his/her team-mates rush from cover to cover, advancing on the desired objective. The problem is that the effectiveness of the cover will depend a lot on the ability of the person providing the suppressing fire. But the whole point of suppressing fire is not necessarily to hit the opponent but to make it harder for them to shoot at those being covered. Red Orchestra manages this better than most other FPS game before it by combining graphical distortion and loud audio effects with environmental physics, resulting in both a functional impediment and a heightened sense of urgency, if not panic. When a piece of cover is shot, the shots impacting it deliver a disorientating loud noise (as is the case with a lot of other FPSs), making it harder to register what is going on in the vicinity through aural orientation, a crucial part of spatial awareness in FPS games. If the players behind cover being shot at try to lean out and shoot their assailants, the screen blurs and shakes, making it incredibly difficult to aim accurately. This is made more challenging when the cover is made from destructible materials that generate dust and fragments such as stone walls or wooden window sills. Combining the visual impediments with the already challenging mode of aiming through iron-sights, creates a functionally viable use of suppressing fire. This combination of graphical, audio and physics techniques also tends to increase excitement through a heightened sense of urgency at stopping the suppressing fire-giver s team-mates from reaching a position which would offer clear aim to the players behind cover. The affective implications of such a technique thus influence the tactical and performative aspects of the game that will be discussed in more detail below. A number of participants have discussed the evocative, mood-changing powers of the aesthetic beauty of MMOGs. The dependence of these virtual worlds on extended 182

183 participation of players in their vast geographical expanses means that their designers need to provide places which create positive emotions for their inhabitants. The creators of World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) were very aware of the effect aesthetics have on players, creating appealing regions with varying palettes of tastefully blended colours and a design policy that aimed to appeal to the masses. 8 million paying subscribers confirm the wisdom of Blizzard s design. There is a particular kind of attraction to inhabiting beautiful landscapes wherein one can roam, that can have stronger affective qualities than viewing attractive images in non-ergodic media. In the words of one of the participants (Oriel): it's better than looking at a pretty picture... cause you can explore inside the picture. Figure 37 : Twilight Grove in World of Warcraft But some players find other forms of affective arousal appealing. The action FPS F.E.A.R (Monolith Inc., 2005a) is designed to maximize excitement by combining the captivating, fast paced characteristics of FPSs with hair-raising techniques borrowed from the horror movie genre. Players progress through F.E.A.R by following a linear plotline that takes them from one environment to another. Although there is no possibility of veering from the episodic nature of level progression, the environments themselves can be explored in any way the player likes with specific events triggered the first time an area is crossed. The game alternates between combat situations and paranormal horror scenes which may 183

184 require a specific reaction from the player to overcome, or less active sequences which are meant to further the plot and often make players jump three feet off their seats. The combat sequences are embellished by the advanced (at least at the time of writing) AI of the computer-controlled agents, who duck, take cover and collaborate to eliminate the player. If the player takes cover behind a wall corner and peaks out to take a quick pot-shot only to duck back into cover, the AI agents will call for covering fire while one or two of them advance on the player, making it harder to mow down the advancing agents without taking damage. In most FPS action games, once an area has been cleared of AI agents, players do not need to worry about their backs, focusing on clearing out new areas. The only exception to this is when a player attains an objective and needs to go back through a previously traversed area, which is now filled with new enemies. But AI agents do not normally try to sneak up from behind the player and knock him out with a good riflebutting, which has happened more than once in a game of F.E.A.R. These flanking attacks are not predetermined or triggered by traversal of an area, but occur as a result of the AI adapting to the player s behaviour. Playing through the same combat scene a few times, the flank manoeuvre was only performed when I was very conservative with my cover and managed to inflict serious casualties on my attackers. The possibility of being hit from areas other than the location where the present combat situation was initiated makes players stay on their toes and watch their backs more carefully, involving them more intensely on the spatial and tactical micro-involvement frames of the game. 49 The intense combat situations serve to increase the affective power of the horror sequences that follow them. When the player is moving cautiously through a corridor and peaking around every corner to avoid being ambushed, hearing a noise behind him/her tends to be interpreted as an enemy approaching causing the player to turn around (and often letting off a few rounds of ammo in mid air). Seeing objects flying off shelves conflicts with the operative mode of interpretation required by a combat situation where survival depends on objects and entities behaving as expected. The light bulbs start swaying and flickering, adding to the sense of eeriness, and when the player turns back to where he was headed a little girl suddenly appears out of the shadows scampering away on all fours giggling. By first increasing emotional affect through fast paced combat sequences and then changing the way objects behave in the game-world, the game creates an intensified sense of shock and uncanniness. 184

185 Figure 38 : F.E.A.R. This is just one perspective on the ways F.E.A.R s designers use aspects of the game to affect the player s emotional state. As the success of the game confirms, players look for different sorts of experiences in games: the pleasure of aesthetically beautiful and peaceful places like those described by the World of Warcraft participants, the appeal of visual styles borrowed from other popular media or the exhilaration brought on by startling effects of horror games such as F.E.A.R. At times, players will sacrifice great game-play for the chance to have experiences in specific settings they find appealing. Reiterating a point made at the start of this chapter, more powerful graphics, audio and physics might not be a determinant of good game design, but the appeal of representational strategies points to other considerations. Salen and Zimmerman (2003) are among a number of game designers who deplore the trend towards improving representation at the cost of innovations in design. There is no doubt that these game designers are right from the perspective of creating interesting game-systems. But we must not forget that digital games do not only attract players looking for interesting and cleverly designed game-systems, they also attract armies of players whose interest is to live a specific, packaged, experience: a formula one car driver, a World War 2 sniper, the manager of a football team or a murder victim on the Orient Express. Digital games are not only game-systems, they are also digitally mediated experiences that aim to satisfy the desires generated by movies, literature or free-ranging fantasy. 185

186 Spatial involvement The macro phase considered the attractions of exploration and discovery represented by the spatial involvement frame. The micro phase focuses on the internalization of spatial features of game environments and an awareness of one s immediate surroundings vis a vis the larger game world or map. Figure 39 : Medal of Honour: Allied Assault All the titles in the Medal of Honour series of WWII FPS games unerringly plunge the player in the midst of a hectic battle scenario. Medal of Honour: Allied Assault (2015 Inc., 2002), bears an uncanny resemblance to the beach landing scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998). Its sequel, Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault (EALA & TKO Software, 2004) is set in Pearl Harbour, minutes before the Japanese assault. The pace of the action is frantic: shells explode all around you, peppering the screen with shrapnel and sand. Injured soldiers cry out for assistance; your squad leader s orders are barely audible over the sound of gunfire and bombing. A short prelude to this scene has our newly-transferred player driven around Pearl Harbour by an officer. The path the jeep takes is pre-scripted and the only thing the player can do is look around the immediate environment. Although the rest of the game gives the player more freedom to move than this initial sequence, traversing the scenarios is a strictly linear affair. Most environments are far smaller than they seem. In the first level of Medal of Honour: Allied Assault, for example, the beach seems to extend left and right for miles, with the cliffs standing as temporary barriers to exploring the area of land beyond them. But in effect, there is a single path the player can take through this area. The pressure from bunker fire, strafing 186

187 planes and general chaos instils a sense of urgency in the player making it easier to conceal the limit of traversable space in the scene. As players explore the traversable limits of a game environment a different view of the space represented starts forming; a superimposition of the internalised model of the space with that represented on the screen. If, by trial and error, players realise that they can only access the eastern side of the beach represented because going west beyond a certain point will get them killed by mortar shells, the mental map of the environment is updated to account for this. The space represented on the map becomes internally modified by the locations that can actually be accessed, not the one portrayed visually. Other games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks LLC., 2006), a fantasy RPG, offer a wider area which players can explore freely. The borders of the traversable space in the game-world are less contrived than the ones described in Medal of Honour, consisting mostly of natural features that understandably impede their traversal; coastlines, mountain ranges and other types of non-traversable terrain. Players of Oblivion are not forced to move through a number of limited environments in a linear sequence. MMOGs tend to offer similarly large open tracts of land to be explored at players whims (barring restrictions imposed by the difficulty of aggressive inhabitants). Multi-player FPSs like Counter-Strike (Valve Software, 1998a) take place in smaller environments called maps that players compete over regularly. All the above game-spaces require players to internalise their immediate location within the map (Counter-Strike), level (Medal of Honour), region (Oblivion) or world (World of Warcraft). This mental mapping of traversable game-space works on various scales ranging from locating oneself in the immediate visible area to identifying one s location vis a vis the larger geographic context. An example of the former can be seen through a situation in Counter-Strike. I am playing on the Terrorist side on the de_dust2 map. As soon as the round starts I run towards bombsite B through an internal area. I go through the doorway and turn left only to hear the sound of a flash grenade bounce into the room from the left doorway. The screen goes white and the sound is blocked out by a high pitched screech. Knowing the map layout fairly well, I press the D key for a few seconds to move right and then the S and D keys simultaneously to make sure I m moving along the back wall and going down the steps. I then move the mouse left and let go of the D key so that I m facing up the steps when the 187

188 flash grenade s effect wears off, as in all likelihood, the Counter-terrorist that threw the flash grenade will be running into the corridor looking for a dazed opponent. The use of the flash grenade example foregrounds the internalised knowledge of the map which is acted upon in an almost instinctive way. This is also a good example of how multiple frames come together in a specific game instance. Spatial involvement accounts for the internalized knowledge of the map allowing the player to move blindly to a safer area. Tactical involvement brings in the knowledge of game rules and environmental physics, prompting the player into action. Flash grenades are thrown into rooms to visually and audibly incapacitate opposing players guarding the area. Thus their presence tends to be followed by a rush of enemies, signalling to the player to form and execute a plan to evacuate the area. The familiarity with the relationship between controls and movement that allows for such an evasion brings in the performative involvement frame. On a broader geographical scale (where one exists), spatial involvement relates to one s location within a larger world and the methods for their traversal allowed by the game in question. The inferred size of the world gives players a greater sense of grandeur, an indication that beyond those mountains there are further lands to be explored, when the player feels inclined to do so. This creates a sense of grandeur that helps make the world a more believable, habitable place than simply a chain of environments linked together as is the case in games like Medal of Honour or disconnected locations such as the maps in Counter-Strike. As new environments are mapped mentally, the player s spatial disposition to them diminishes in indexicality. Maps are consulted less often as the lay of the land is 188

189 memorized, thus requiring less investment of conscious attention to orient oneself. The process of internalization involved in learning the layout of a map, region or world leads to a stronger sense of inhabiting the game-space or, if looked at from a different perspective, that the game-environment becomes part of the player s immediate surroundings: Rheric: I am a pretty visual person. I drive by landmarks not by road names, so, I can visualize it pretty vividly. Though some of the in-between spaces are hazy cause I fly from Undercity to Tarren Mill now. Gordon: Do you think real life orientation spills onto virtual world navigation? Rheric: For people like me, absolutely yes. It doesn't matter if it s the real world or digital, as I travel around, and learn new areas, I naturally seek certain kinds of landmarks to help me keep my bearings. A twist in the road here, a tree there. I find it comforting when I start to get the lay of the land in an MMO. For others, I have no idea. Gordon: To what do you attribute the sense of comfort? Rheric: Familiarity. It's not just comfort, but also a bit of pride Gordon: In what way? Rheric: Well, I know where I am, I know where I want to go and I know how to get there. My father can draw you a map to nearly anywhere in the eastern half of his state from memory. We re talking very rural areas, towns, and even a few major urban areas as well. That's impressive to me. Gordon: It is! Rheric: It's kinda the same thing for me in MMOs. I know the nooks and crannies Gordon: So would you say charting these areas in your mind involves you more in the game? Rheric: Absolutley. 100%. Exploration is one of the things I enjoy the most, outside the stories. They help me to create my own stories... Rheric associates exploration and knowledge of the land with a sense of comfort and pride. The move towards transparency of spatial involvement creates a sense of being more part of the world. The knowledge of an area creates a sense of habitation and belonging to the region. This internalization process is crucial for the achievement of a sense of comfort and place, as Rheric stated, both in the physical and the digital worlds. You move to a new city 189

190 in a country you ve never visited. At first you start mapping the surrounding area, creating a mental image of where things are. In these initial phases people tend to feel lost and disconnected from the place. Mental maps of the area start being built and as these become internalised a sense of comfort and belonging settles in, as one feels a sense of attachment to the new city. In digital worlds, the primacy of visual information and mental map formation play an even more crucial part than similar processes in off-line life, because non-visual cues like heat, smells and the variety of sounds are either absent or restricted in the digital world. Thus the visual aspect of digital game-world mapping becomes even more salient than in physical life because it is the primary means of distinguishing zones. The speed and efficiency of this process of internalization is dependent on the individual but is strongly influenced by the design of areas in the world and how they can be traversed or manipulated. This becomes particularly important in large worlds which are often found in RPG games or MMOG worlds like Azeroth or Norrath. World geographies that have easily distinguishable areas with clearly delineated boundaries make it easier for players to remember and internalise the world layout. The more easily and rapidly players assemble a mental map of the continent, world or area, the easier it is for them to become, as Rheric points out, more involved in the world. The two worlds analysed seem to occupy polar opposites on a scale of regional distinctness and ease of remembrance. Planetside s (Sony Online Entertainment, 2003) continents are more difficult to take in and distinguish, while World of Warcraft s (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) regions have been described as being generally easily learnt and recalled. The careful selection of distinct palettes and styles with which World of Warcraft s designers fleshed out the world of Azeroth is a principal factor in this difference between these game worlds: Gordon: How distinctly can you visualise the different areas/regions in the world? Brannok: I'd say by this time, I can get a pretty good visualization of the areas, much better than I could when I first started playing. Gordon: So if you had to close your eyes and imagine going from where you are now in Feralas to Ratchet, do you think you could visualise most of the route? Brannok: For the most part, I think I could. 190

191 Gordon: How distinctly can you visualise the different areas in WoW? Rheric: Mostly, I can see them fairly well. Blizzard did a good job in making them distinct. They vary them by colour palette and by textures. Silverpine is blues and greens, with a lot of wood textures and fog. Barrens reds and oranges with rock textures. Stonetalon same colour scheme as barrens, but with more forested textures. Arathi and Hillsbrad...mostly greens with grass and leaves. Alterac white and snow, that kind of thing. Also, shapes. Silverpine...lots of verticals, that kind of thing. Two Planetside participants found it similarly easy to visualise the continents, while the other ten said they had trouble visualising specific areas because of a lack of features distinguishing the continents from each other: Gordon : How distinctly can you visualise the different planets in Planetside? Baal : Well, not really. Searhus i remember cause its volcanic and looks cool. Oshur cause of the islands otherwise they re pretty generic Gordon: How distinctly can you visualise the different planets/continents in Planetside? Kestra: Not very. I have to navigate by waypoints on long distance runs. It all kinda runs together at times Gordon: Do you think that has to do with your memory or with the way the planets are designed? Kestra: Most of the landscape isn't too different on a continent. All the trees look the same, etc... If I've been fighting in one place long enough I'll get the lay of the land. But a week later I'd be just as lost as before. Some areas tho have stuck in my memory. Gordon: Which are those? Kestra: I don't remember the name but it's in a valley, and it's a desert/volcanic planet. I played there quite a bit. Gordon: How distinctly can you visualise the different planets/continents in Planetside? Mokkan: Not very well, I associate just a few of the names with certain terrain. 191

192 Gordon: Why do you think this is? You ve been playing for quite a while. Mokkan: Some games I memorize maps and such, but PS doesn't really require it, and it doesn't really affect my in-game performance. If it was important in how well I did, I'd probably take a bit of time to do so. Spatial involvement is related to locating oneself within a wider game area than is visible on the screen. It can take the form of mental maps, directions from other players or referral to in-game or out of game maps and covers aspects such as exploration and exploitation of the game-space for strategic purposes. There is often a transition between the indexical map and the 3D environment surrounding the player, a switch between inhabiting the environment and a more detached disposition which describes, in respect of this frame, the shift between macro-involvement and the more internalised modes of spatial involvement characteristic of micro-involvement. Figure 40 : From map to 3D environment in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Narrative involvement In the macro phase we looked at the attraction of participating in the active formation of a given narrative. In the macro phase, narrative involvement related to memories of past game sessions that created a yearning for future participation of the narrative. In the micro phase, the focus shifts to how the present moment of game-engagement creates a meaningful narrative that extends into the future. Like other frames, narrative involvement in the macro phase possessed a past and the desire of a future, but no gaming-present. The focus in the micro phase is on that moment of narrative construction. To facilitate this 192

193 discussion, I will keep the distinction made in the macro phase between the narrative written by designers into the game (designed narrative) and the construction of a narrative that emerges from the game-playing process (personal narrative). As discussed in the macro phase, players rarely have the same expectations of the designed narrative in games and MMOGs as they do of literary works or movies, for example. Games emphasize player performance, while all of these different media forms can create compelling mediated experiences through skilful application of media form and content, games provide for the active participation of the player in the evolution of the narrative. In other words, the designed narrative and personal narratives in literary works and movies are far more closely aligned than in digital games. The role of personal interpretation will always mean that there is not a full equivalence between the narrative intended by the writer or director and that formed by the reader/audience. But, in digital games the very act of doing creates a player-defined narrative that is influenced but not determined by the game-system, its strategies of representation and its physics. The role played by the designed narrative differs according to the game. One way of representing the role of the designed narrative is to consider a continuum of designed narratives ranging from those that are necessary to progress in the game to those that have no functional effect on progression at all. The need for involvement with the designed narrative is dependent on this scale. Games like Syberia (Microïds, 2002), The Longest Journey or the more recent Phoenix Wright (Capcom, 2005) on the Nintendo DS require an engagement with their designed narrative in order for players to progress successfully in the game. The role of the designed narrative in Doom (id Software, 1993) is negligible. The majority of games fall between these two extremes, where the designed narrative assists with progression in the game without requiring players to engage with it in its entirety. In the majority of MMOGs, the designed narrative can be largely ignored without limiting the ability of players to progress and interact with the world. In fact, players would often skip reading or watching story elements to jump straight into the action. Out of all the participants, only two stated that they gave any importance to pre-structured narrative elements. Often in fact, players would skip reading quest descriptions and backgrounds to get to its functional aspects: Gordon: What role does the world history or background play for you? 193

194 Nombril: None whatsoever. I don't even read the quests...just look at what it takes to mark them as complete Gordon: What role do the game world history and background play in your gaming experience? Oriel: None. I hate to read. Joe started a character the same time I did so we quested to level 60 together. He read all the quests, I followed, and clicked on things... and enjoyed the environment as we explored. Gordon: What role does the background story of Planetside play for you? Drystan: Absolutely none, I haven't actually read it's background story, I just play the game. But a lack of engagement with the designed narrative doesn t mean that no narrative is being engaged with. Personal narrative, as defined in chapter 5, accounts for the creation of a narrative based on the situated actions of the player and the resultant outcomes. The lived experience of game-play is stored, like all other lived experience, in the player s memory, with certain episodes leaving a stronger imprint than others: spectacular goals in football games, overcoming seemingly impossible odds unexpectedly, comic instances in multiplayer games and so on. The accumulation of a personal narrative can heighten the affective dimensions of the game. It gives meaning to a player s actions, both in terms of past events and future plans as well as enhancing, to different degrees depending on the structure of the game, the player s sense of agency. As discussed in the performative involvement frame, the more players feel freedom in choosing what to do in the world while affecting others and the environment, the more rewarding the engagement with the game becomes, feeding back into the creation of memorable personal narrative. Although a number of participants commented on their lack of interest in the Planetside (Sony Online Entertainment, 2003) and World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) back-stories, the generation of personal narrative was clearly an attractive aspect of these worlds, whether these narratives were created consciously or retold when describing memorable sessions: 194

195 Gordon: What role does the background story of Planetside play for you? Sunniva: Not much really, especially not at the start when I first started playing what I enjoy most is being there in the action, but I think that the more I've played the more conscious of and interested I have become in the overall patterns of what's going on...but since it's kinda a never-ending thing...it isn't really that important for me. Sunniva: Specifically I like sniping, especially when we are two or more players sniping together. I also like doing little quests with a small group of people, whether than involves sniping or not - like for example going to take over a new tower, or trying to attack a small group of enemies etc Gordon: So the little quests... those are self created right? Sunniva: Yes. Gordon: do you find that the ability to create your own little quests involves you more in the game? Sunniva: Yes. It allows you to control more of your own gaming experience and thinking out your own quests makes the game more engaging I think cause you need to plan more and think more around what you're doing. I also like small quests better following a "BIG" quest for the same reason, as you have less control in bigger quests and play a less central role in the overall planning and execution of that quest. Gordon: Do you find yourself creating a narrative to what happens in the game? Sunniva: Narrative - maybe a little bit, but not much, I mean, being part of a gaming experience like the ones in Planetside automatically lead to some level of narrative as the story of the game keeps evolving, but I think personally it is more the moment to moment collective engagement with the game that creates my narrative for me. Sunniva emphasizes her preference for the formation of personal narrative over engagement with the designed narrative. For her, self created goals generate more interesting narratives than what she calls BIG quests or goals specifically because it gives her a stronger sense of agency. It is also interesting that she views the creation of a 195

196 personal narrative from the moment to moment collective engagement with the game as being a different issue from creating an overall narrative. Another participant, Rheric, similarly views the creation of personal stories as the most enjoyable aspect of MMOs: Gordon: What interests you about MMOGs? Rheric: I'd have to say that the aspect of MMOs that interest me the most are the massive worlds created, with a multitude of storylines that run parallel, concurrent, and often cross. They are worlds in which I can create a persona and live an experience beyond what I can have in the real world, where I can create my own stories. Figure 41 : Episodes in the life of Muun Narrative involvement deals with all aspects of engagement with the designed narrative and the flow of players personal experiences in the game world. The former may enrich the latter but it is not necessary for its formation. Of course, certain games and online worlds offer more interesting and appealing cues for the creation of personal narratives than others. The narrative hooks that exist in a game like Will Wright s The Sims (Maxis Software, 2000) are obviously more likely to lead to interesting stories than more abstract games like Tetris, but ultimately it is up to the player to engage with these narrative hooks. For 196

197 Sunniva, Planetside offers the potential for creating interesting personal narratives while for other participants, Planetside is all about shooting human- controlled avatars. The formation of an ongoing narrative is a crucial component of the way we make sense of the world (Dennett, 1991). If we follow philosophers of mind like Dennett (1991), Edelman (1989) and others, and view our lived experience as a collection of internally generated narratives, we need to account for the fact that in the contemporary world, an important part of our lived narratives occur within digital environments like games and MMOGs. Narrative, as I am using it here emphasizes this continuity of lived experience between the technologically mediated and the everyday, taking the interaction between personal and designed narratives as the locus of meaning making within designed environments. Tactical involvement In the macro phase, the tactical involvement frame discussed the motivational influence of attaining game goals and the associated rewards. In the micro phase tactical involvement represents engagement with all forms of decision making within the context of the game. This includes both interaction with the formal rules of the game as well as with the broader game environment and other players. Planning a journey from Ratchet to Feathermoon is an instance of tactical involvement. The plans made are amended on the spot when unforeseen circumstances arise, such as an unexpected skirmish between player factions in an area to be traversed. The complexity of emergent situations that arise in multiplayer games, particularly the open worlds of MMOGs, cannot be wholly subsumed under the scope of game rules. Tactical involvement in the micro phase includes all forms of plan formulation and on-the-spot decision making. Whether the decisions made relate to pricing items at the auction house in World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004), planning the team s defensive strategy in a round of Counter-Strike Source (Valve Software, 2004a)or deciding how many armies to devote to the siege of Aragon in Medieval Total War 2 (Creative Assembly, 2006), tactical involvement in the micro-phase accounts for the moment by moment assessments accompanying actions in a landscape of possibilities. 197

198 Games tend to be designed in such a way as to have a specified opportunity cost for every meaningful action performed. If this is similar to everyday life, it is a more dominant factor in digital games because of the contrived nature of the contingencies players need to negotiate. Using a game-turn s gathered resources to build an army barracks means that I cannot also build walls to protect my fledgling town, or extend resource fields that yield more resources, and so on. Decisions tend to have clearly labelled costs and benefits that both facilitate and problematize the process of decision making. Knowledge of the repercussions of specific actions serves to decrease uncertainty. This knowledge of consequences can lead to complex cognitive operations that often entail making most efficient use of the (usually limited) resources in order to secure a particular outcome (most commonly winning the game). The following quotations from research participants outline a number of tactical involvement concerns in their respective online worlds: Oriel: I think about strategies... when I get home, where do I want to run to get... then it's "When I get home what items do I want". Sometimes...I think about guild issues or ideas for improvements... like how do we handle the new guild bank 50 that we set up. Gordon: Which roles do you enjoy most and why? Kestra: Assault/support. It's more involved. Also it get's my mind going. Gordon: In what way is it more involved? How does it get your mind going? Kestra: You are more involved when you are actively trying to get into a base, pushing the enemy back, or trying to keep them penned in. You have to keep thinking. XOreo: Dropping out of aircraft is a quick way to get on top of structures (in Planetside called bases or towers) and get the advantage of being above the stairs. Being upstairs means you can easily view using third person view, down the stairs and you only have one way enemies can easily come up on you. Alertness and surprise is a key factor in Planetside. 198

199 Gordon: What aspects of WoW do you think about most actively? Carlitos: I usually think of ways I can level faster and the most effective ways of grinding or farming. As the above quotations demonstrate there might be very different types of tactical involvement, but whether it s building a character up or taking over the planet, this experiential dimension is one of the most fundamental corner-stones of games. Tactical involvement is compelling due to the landscape of cognitive challenges games are so apt at presenting. Without these cognitive challenges player interest can quickly wane: Inauro: On the whole I think WoW's quests are pretty dull. Most of them involve either collecting so many of such and such an item, or killing x number of monster type y. And none of them really offer different ways of resolving them. It makes little difference whether you're a fighter or a mage, you just kill the mobs, and get on with it. As opposed to the majority of table top games, strategic planning and action in digital games are more immediately related, unless the game in question is a simulation of a table top game such as computerized chess or other turn-based strategy game. In the case of the majority of digital games, the tactical frame is directly related to the performative frame: in the former, strategies are formed, in the latter they are acted out. Acting upon a strategy causes a change in the state of the game, which tends to involve an element of avatar or piece movement through player input. In Space Invaders (Taito, 1978), the tactical and kinaesthetic options are very simple and tightly bound. The player needs to clear the oncoming waves of aliens by deciding to move left, right or stay in the same place and timing laser beam shots at them, while avoiding alien beams by dodging them or hiding behind three destructible barriers. These simple elements allow the possibility for a strategy that requires quick action to bring it into being. Similarly the formation of a strategy in a multiplayer game of Counter-Strike-Source requires rapid execution in order to take effect. Performative involvement 199

200 The concept of agency in digital game contexts was considered in the discussions of the macro phase of performative involvement. The micro phase concerns how this agency is exerted in the instance of game-play with reference to movement and control. It will be helpful here to make a distinction between two types of entities which are controlled during game-play: the piece and the avatar. In some types of games, players manipulate a number of entities, or pieces, sometimes simultaneously and others individually. The term pieces (borrowed from table-top game pieces) refers to entities that players can fully or partially control that do not, in themselves, represent the player. Examples of pieces would be units of cavalry in Medieval Total War 2 (Creative Assembly, 2006), the workers in Age of Empires (Ensemble Studios, 1997) or the falling blocks in Tetris (Pajitnov, 1985). This form of control is not anchored to one particular entity but embraces the whole environment, as in the case of games like Tetris, or is a roving point of view as in the case of RTSs like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (Entertainment., 2004), Age of Empires and the like. On the other hand, the player s presence in the game environment can be fixed to that of a single entity, known as the avatar. Some games include multiple characters the player can take over at different stages in the game, but their control is always associated to a single entity at a time. Avatars can be controlled externally, from a third person point of view, or from a first person viewpoint, which gives the player a view of the game world from the avatar s eyes. Pieces can be controlled individually or simultaneously. In the case of Tetris, for example, the falling blocks are manipulated one at a time; therefore the player s attention is focused on rotating and speeding the descent of the falling block (performative involvement) to the most efficient location (tactical involvement) in order to clear layers of blocks and dominate the game-space (spatial involvement). In Medieval Total War 2, on the other hand, the player controls an entire army comprised of up to 20 units of multiple entities each. A crucial part of the game is the simultaneous control of the army to maintain battle lines, while performing strategic tasks to place the player in a more tactically viable position. The whole army can be given orders as a whole block, in player-assigned groups or as individual units. In games where the player issues orders to multiple agents there is a delay between the order and its execution, often a core mechanic of strategy games with real time control. 200

201 Figure 42 : Commanding large armies in Medieval Total War 2 Controlling a single avatar involves more immediate responses. Pressing a key, button or waving a Wii wand, will result in an immediate reaction from the avatar. In the case of first person point of view, the only parts of the avatar that are visible tend to be the hands, and when kicking objects or opponents, the legs. The player input results in immediate feedback. The relationship between player action and avatar response is thus closely aligned and attention can be devoted to controlling a single entity rather than keeping in mind the locations of multiple pieces under one s control. Some games require the player to oscillate between controlling multiple pieces and single avatars. FIFA 2005 (EA Sports, 2005) will serve as a representative example of this genre of game. The player controls the whole team, one player at a time - which is usually the one closest to the ball, unless the player presses a key/button to switch the active player, which can even be off-screen. Attention is therefore split between controlling the player and the location of other players on the field to who the player can pass the ball. These players are however, also controlled by the player through decisions about formation and pre-programmed patterns of movement assigned in the pre-match sequence. A game like FIFA 2005 also includes a function called assist where a key/button press will make an inactive player look for an opening in the opposing teams defence to receive a through pass from the active player. So even though, at first glance, the sort of control the player effects is similar to avatar control-oriented games, his/her attention is often directed to the movement and positioning 201

202 of other players, again combining performative involvement with tactical and spatial involvement. Figure 43 Controlling two players in FIFA 2005 The avatar can take any representational form: from a humanoid figure to a rally car or a toaster with legs. The most intimate link between a player and even the most unlikely looking avatar is movement. Even if the player is represented by a vertical bar of white pixels, as is the case in the classic Pong (Atari Inc., 1972), there is a sense of the player s connection with that bar because physical actions translate into corresponding movements of that white vertical bar. The link between player and game is created through the kinaesthetic relationship between player and avatar. As discussed in chapters 2 and 5, the ability for players to exert agency in the game environment is a necessary component of a digital game. In the case of avatar control games, the avatar constitutes the locus for the player s intentions, presence and perspective. The players control over the avatar s potential for action is experienced as agency in the game. Performative involvement is necessary for strategic plans to be effected and thus the distinctive characteristics of this frame are often experienced together with those of the tactical involvement frame. In many ways performative involvement can be viewed as the actualization of tactical involvement. Planned motion is made manifest by the controlled agent(s) creating a potential for action defined by the movement affordances designed into 202

203 the game. The space-ship or tank representing the player in Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) is able to move left or right and shoot vertically. There is no further potential for motion. Pacman moves in four directions on a two dimensional plane. On the other hand, Max Payne can walk, crouch, sprint and jump, often while aiming and shooting his assailants in normal speed or in bullet-time motion. Here action is slowed down, giving the player more time to execute complex manoeuvres to which real-time is rendered subservient. Fantasies of moving with Neo-like speed are partially assuaged by Max Payne (Rockstar Toronto, 2001), Enter The Matrix (Shiny Entertainment, 2003) and F.E.A.R, (Monolith Inc., 2005a) for above all, the facility to employ bullet-time is an invitation to reproduce on the screen the internal imagery inspired by other media texts that have popularized the concept. Digital games have the more absorbing quality of giving the responsibility for, and thus the satisfaction to be derived from, those moves to the player. Figure 44 : Max Payne - life in bullet time In the case of first person view games where the avatar is transparent, hand and finger actions translate into the player s movement in the world, rather than the movement of a manipulated object or character. Thumbing the space key and pressing W in an FPS is most often interpreted by the player as a forward jump. The lack of an intervening avatar can induce deeper involvement than third person manipulation because it anchors the player more directly in the world: Gordon: What perspective do you prefer playing in, first, third or a mix of both? BunkerBoy86: A mix 203

204 Gordon: What do you use each for? BunkerBoy86: It depends on the game and what you are trying to do. Like for Planetside 3rd person helps you to get a good look at what is around you, but you have very little aim control, while first person view gives you that soldiers eye view so you can aim and you get a sense of actually being there...controlling that character. Gordon: Which perspective do you prefer playing in, first, third or a mix of both? Kestra: Mix of both. Gordon: Would you say that one involves you more in the game than the other? Kestra: Yes. Gordon: Which one and why? Kestra: First person. In first person view you are usually more in control of the character. You can control almost every aspect of the movement, aiming, dodging. Gordon: What perspective do you prefer playing in, first, third or a mix of both? Mokkan: A mix is nice, first has the best immersion, but sometimes I like to just look at what my character is doing too. In third person view, the field of vision is wider than in first person and can be widened further by zooming out from the avatar. The camera is located somewhere at the back of the avatar. In this mode, however, it is harder to estimate the distance between avatar and other entities, objects or locations since the player is manipulating two objects in relation to each other, rather a first-person point of view relative to a target object. Thus it becomes harder to perform finer and more accurate movements such as running to a corner and stopping precisely at the edge. As the participants mentioned, it is also harder in third person view, to dodge or react to oncoming objects and almost impossible to aim accurately and rapidly. Certain games allow for a switch between first and third person point of view which is often exploited to look around corners without exposing one s avatar: 204

205 Gordon: If given the option of first and third person point of view, which one do you normally play in and why? XOreo: Ah, this is quite important in Planetside. I switch constantly to first and third person...i personally "whore" 51 the third person view and use it habitually. I use it when I'm outdoors but whenever I'm fighting I use first person. Third person is for view purposes only. To look around corners, have a better view of the space around me, look behind me, etc. In the case of the third person point of view, the player experiences a double awareness: awareness of the surrounding environment portrayed by the camera outside the avatar (including its rear, which is the most vulnerable position in first person games and indeed, real life); and that awareness filtered through the avatar. In games that allow for switching between points of view the player needs to keep in mind that if he/she is seeing around the corner, his/her avatar cannot and thus when switching back to 1 st person, the player needs to move in order to look around the corner and shoot, for example. An essential part of game-play is therefore movement. Movement is the key ingredient that enables acting upon the environment and thus a necessary condition for the sense of agency that is a crucial factor in the game experience. It is not only a central component of digital game-play but also an enjoyable part of the experience, particularly when controls are mastered, enabling a fluent engagement with the environment. Part of this pleasure is the ability to simulate experiences that are not possible in the physical world: Baal : Nothing I like more than hopping from building to building on my flight max. Now they got nerfed 52 so that sucks, but the cool thing is being able to do those big jumps, seeing buildings and people becoming smaller and then bigger again when you land on them especially if you re blazing your chain gun as you drop. Also love dropping from the air, don t know why, but it s a cool feeling. My favourite part of Matrix (Online) was doing those mega hyperjumps from (one) building to another. You have to calculate where to land from before and there s that excitement of barely making it... and then falling, or not, just like in the first Matrix (movie). 205

206 Bladerunner: Yea... Honestly the best feeling I get is when I am in a TR BFR with the anti-infanty chainguns walking and shooting at the same time.. I get all giddy. Carlitos: While flying across towns though, I like to switch it to 1 st. Gordon: Why? Carlitos: Seems more interesting, as if you were really flying. Gordon : Do you think about Planetside when not playing? Danor : Actually I do... This my sound really dumb but I imagine flying my Reaver 53 an aircraft in PS when I'm driving or riding in a car and imagine flying it in real life. Gordon: If you think back to your gaming sessions, would you say you ever enjoy the sensation of movement in the game? Evita: Yes, I do. I can get quite excited. Gordon: About the movement? Evita: What do you mean? Yes, sitting in a plane or car and speeding along is quite exciting for me. Gordon: If you think back to your gaming sessions, would you say you ever enjoy the sensation of movement in the game? Sunniva: Yes very much...it creates a certain flow in the game that I find important for keeping my attention in it - I think it affects the degree to which I stay immersed in the game Gordon: What do you mean by flow? Sunniva: Uhm..like a wave - a continuous motion that keeps my attention on the game...it's almost kinda peaceful - well, in the sense that it creates a certain steady, continuous focus...maybe its kinda like surfing hehe although I've never done that Lili: In MMOs... I have felt immersed while flying because it's a tactile/physical sensation. 206

207 Figure 45 : Acrobatic stunts in Matrix Online All the above participants speak about the sensation of movement as if they were experiencing it directly. The ability to fly in some MMOs is one of the main elements which give Lili a sense of being part of the world. The in-game motion is assimilated to the mostly inert physical body sitting in front of the PC. The participants often mentioned making an effort to gain these sensations. Carlitos switches perspective to heighten the sense of really flying, Danor actively imagines actually piloting his aircraft and Evita is excited by the prospect of speeding along in a vehicle. Sunniva uses the term flow to describe how the sensation of movement inside the game world holds her attention and creates a sensation of continuous focus which she likens to surfing. All these examples point to the more internalised areas of performative involvement that are seen as precursors for the incorporation frame, where the controls are internalised to a degree when there is a feeling of unmediated connection to the environment: Bladerunner: The Quan can only take place when you feel you feel your actions on the screen are taking place not because you re pushing keys on your keyboard and moving your mouse, but your mind it willing those actions. It s just you and the 207

208 image on the monitor. You can't get that with a game that her 3rd person because it breaks "the magic". The sensation that Sunniva calls flow and Bladerunner calls the Quan will be discussed in further detail in the following section on incorporation with reference to Csikszentmihalyi s (1990) work on the psychology of optimal experience. Performative involvement relates to all modes of avatar or game-piece control in digital environments, ranging from learning controls to the fluency of internalised movement. This frame of involvement requires more conscious attention when the controls make themselves present, either because the player hasn t fully mastered them or because a situation demands a complex sequence of actions that are challenging to the player. Players of varying skills and preferences will be engaged in different kinds of movement. Some love going as fast as possible down a racing track. Others get lost executing multiple barrel rolls in World War 1 biplanes. Some get involved in coordinating their actions with other players in frantically paced multiplayer FPSs while others become most involved when sneaking patiently and silently in an area infested by enemies that are unaware of their presence. Others still enjoy the leisurely ride on their World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) mount, taking in the beautifully designed landscape. The important thing to consider is that in all cases, movement is a crucial part of the gaming experience and the freedom of action allowed as well as the learning curve of controls involved will have a major influence on the players ergodic involvement in the game environment as most other aspects of involvement in games are dependent on at least a basic fluency of movement in the environment. Shared involvement One characteristic which distinguishes engagement with digital games from other media objects like literature and film is their ability to populate represented environments with other, human players. This effect of presence for the player is made more compelling when other agents respond to the player, whether these agents are human or AI controlled. This is particularly relevant in the case of games involving avatar control, as it anchors the player firmly to the location both spatially and socially. The shared involvement frame covers all aspects of communication with and relation to other agents in the game world. 208

209 Due to the limitation of current AI technology, human-controlled agents allow for an infinitely wider range of communication and interaction, responding in more unpredictable ways than any AI would. Multiplayer games, therefore, enable a more intense experience of shared involvement than single player ones. Figure 46 : Surrounded by AI characters in Hitman: Blood Money (IO Interactive, 2006) In a single player game, players are free to try different things out without being under the scrutiny of others. No judgements are passed on the player if they fail to meet their goal or make mistakes. In the case of multiplayer, particularly ones that allow for spectating, or the ability to look through other players perspectives when not playing, one s actions become a performance watched and often commented on by others. Players of online multiplayer games tend to keep the same alias for identification purposes. They build reputations based on their actions at times making certain players identifiable through their playing-style. Joining a clan 54 usually requires submitting to a test or trial where players interested in joining the clan are screened by senior members who assess the applicant s abilities by following their actions in spectator mode for a number of game rounds. In MMOGs, characters persist over an extended period of time and there is no option of changing a character s name or appearance aside from altering clothing and equipment. This means that characters accumulate a reputation, positive or negative among other 209

210 players on the same server. Some guilds or outfits keep kill on site lists for players whose actions are deemed to be unacceptable, such as ninja-looting (using unfair methods to take rare items off killed mobs and then leaving the group) or ganking (killing characters that have no chance of winning a fight because of a difference in levels, for no particular gain). Another aspect of multiplayer gaming is the importance of collaboration to achieve common goals. This creates the potential for involving players through communication and teamwork. Grouping is a necessary aspect of most MMOGs which are designed in such a way as to require team-play as characters progress in levels. Participants have stated that the possibility of working with other, geographically distant people to reach a common goal is a strong involving factor in MMOGs: Gordon: What interests you about Massive Multiplayer Online Games? BunkerBoy86: Well for starters, the fact that there are actually other people playing with you...or against you heheh. Not just some AI telling something what to do all the time. That, and there is just so much depth to them. It really just grabs you and takes you for a ride. The human element adds a lot of fun and surprises to a game. Makes it more challenging and realistic. Gordon: Do you have any memorable gaming session you could relate? Any particular day you played and got really into the game? Kestra: My favorite was fighting during the Monolith event. I just enjoyed playing as part of a large force. It was fun seeing all the roles. Gordon: Could you try and describe what intrigues you about the idea of an MMOG? Bladerunner: Its because it s massive, that sparks my interest. Hundreds of people "attempting" to work together for a common goal in a FPS. The idea of virtual armies that have a never ending battle really appeals to me. It s also the coordination of your specific allies to meet a certain goal. You get all warm and fuzzy when your team is kicking ass. And when it s on a massive scale, like it is in Planetside, that just megafized the feeling. 210

211 Figure 47 : Planetside players form up for a massed attack This element of shared involvement seems to be more intense the more people are working together, what Bladerunner calls a megafized feeling. More things can go wrong, but when the collaboration works, the efforts are seen as being more than worthwhile. When participants were asked to relate memorable sessions, a large percentage, particularly among the Planetside (Sony Online Entertainment, 2003) players, described situations of successful mass collaboration in large battles. Curiously enough, even though World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) participants included players from PvE and PvP 55 servers, the instances of involvement through collaboration mentioned were all related to PvE situations, particularly in the case of higher level instances. All but two participants stated that the main reason for their participation in MMOGs was interaction with others, whether collaboratively or competitively (although the collaborative aspect was the one sited most frequently as the main motivator). The salient elements of this frame of involvement include: general communication between players, collaboration and organisation, the presence of others as audience for the player s actions and the competitive, unpredictable and challenging aspects of PvP, including, as Evita mentioned, the satisfaction of beating other humans. Shared involvement thus encompasses all aspects relating to co-habitation in a common environment, ranging from making collaborative battle strategies to discussing guild politics or simply being aware of the fact that actions are occurring in a social context. 211

212 Figure 48 : Norwegian World of Warcraft players celebrate Norwegian National Day Incorporation In the first few hours of a new game, players go through tutorials and read manuals in order to acclimatize themselves with the operations of the game mechanics, physics and rules. Players take the first uncertain steps in the domains offered for exploration, experiment with running, jumping, leaning around corners. The boundaries of character creation are prodded and initial strategies of (virtual) world domination are formed; the immediate surroundings first, then onwards and outwards. In geographically rich game worlds, the first areas are explored slowly and thoroughly, until a mental image of the world/country/region/city s layout is formed. The background story, delivered in the game manual, scrolling text or introductory video is offered, and at times forced onto the player. In MMOGs, the first lines of communication are typed in chat boxes; in FPS multiplayers the frantic cries of Follow me, cover the corridor and come on RUSHHH you nooob are heard. It is all very confusing at first, but slowly, the player learns the ways of the (virtual) world, and with this learning comes a performed matter-of-factness. Each of the frames discussed above describes a spectrum of experience ranging from conscious attention (on the outer end of each frame on the diagram) to internalized knowledge (towards the centre of the hex). To take the performative frame as an example, when the movement controls are learnt, the player devotes less attention to figuring out 212

213 how to perform an action and simply does it. With time and confidence, this internalized kinaesthetic ability allows more complex and immediate performance. The player learns to run across narrow planks, throw him/herself down to a prone position behind cover, raise the rifle to their avatar s eyes, lean behind cover and deliver an accurate headshot at a distance, all in a fluid and continuous motion. Chapter 3 questioned the validity of the immersion metaphor based on the problematic issues relating to a dualistic perspective on virtual environment interaction. Placing a hard division between represented environment on one side of the screen and the human operator on the other, gives rise to an equally problematic assumption of the operator s plunge into the environment. As argued in chapter 3, problematic conceptualisations like these have limited understanding of the phenomenon. This has had the effect of restricting the utility of these conceptual models when applied to a practical analysis of complex virtual environments such as digital games and virtual worlds. I therefore propose to replace the metaphors of immersion and presence with that of incorporation. Incorporation turns the notion of a uni-directional plunge into the virtual environment with a conception that emphasizes the noetic nature of the phenomenon while accounting for the player s represented presence to other agents within the virtual environment. Incorporation operates on a double axis: the player incorporates (in the sense of assimilation or internalization) at the same time as being incorporated (in the sense of corporeal embodiment) through the avatar in that environment. Both processes occur simultaneously. Incorporation makes the game world present to the player while simultaneously placing a representation of the player within it through the avatar. In the case of multiplayer games or virtual worlds, the player thus becomes part of the game world that is incorporated by others connected to it. Within the context of The Digital Game Experience Model, incorporation 56 results from a synthesis of aesthetic affect (affective involvement), internalised tactics (tactical involvement), designed and personally created narrative (narrative involvement), communication and the presence of other agents (shared involvement) and movement (performative involvement) within a habitable domain (spatial involvement). Flow 213

214 The process of internalizing the various frames discussed in the model can be related to Czikszentmihalyi s (1990) concept of flow. Flow represents a state of deep, yet seemingly effortless, involvement with a particular task that is engaged with for its own sake: It is a state of consciousness where one becomes totally absorbed in what one is doing, to the exclusion of all other thoughts and emotions. So flow is about focus. More than just focus, however, flow is a harmonious experience where mind and body are working together effortlessly, leaving the person feeling that something special has just occurred Flow is a state with universal qualities that is experienced by people in a wide range of contexts. Elderly German gardeners describe the feeling of intense involvement they experience when tending their roses with similar words as Japanese teenagers use to describe how it feels to race their motorcycles (S. A. Jackson & Csíkszentmihályi, 1999, p. 5). Csíkszentmihályi identifies nine characteristics of flow: the balance of challenge and skill levels, the merging of action and awareness, the existence of clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration on the task at hand, a sense of control, the loss of self consciousness, a transformation of time and a sense that the activity engaged with is autotelic, or intrinsically rewarding. As a number of game theorists have argued (Carr et al., 2006; Juul, 2005; King & Krzywinska, 2006), the concept of flow is particularly relevant to digital games as core aspects of their design, such as the ability to adjust challenges to player skill, the existence of clearly defined goals and the provision of immediate feedback, make them ideal vehicles for experiencing flow. A potential outcome of these designed characteristics is the process of internalisation of involvement frames that entails the merging of action and awareness and loss of self consciousness described by Csíkszentmihályi. When the skills of the agent meet the challenges of the task, the strenuous physical exertion and mental concentration feel effortless because the actions performed become spontaneous to the degree that the activity becomes part of the automatic actions and reaction of the doer, much like breathing or walking. This results in a loss of self-consciousness and thus a decline in preoccupation with inward scrutiny that can be a great burden on attentional and emotional resources. In 214

215 collaborative activity the loss of sense of self can result in a sensation of oneness of action; the group acts as one organism, reading each other s actions as intimately linked with their own. This loss of self-consciousness in the flow experience tends to result in a transformation of time engendered by the intensity of involvement directed to the task at hand. A number of participants have reported similar experiences described by Csíkszentmihályi: Brannok: There are times I get the same sense of "zoning out" that I do when I'm reading a really good book or playing pen and paper games with some of my friends Gordon: Could you try and describe the "zoning out"? Brannok: The distinct lack of noticing the passage of time. I'll start playing in the afternoon, then all of a sudden it's dark out... Ananke: It's convoluted.. time passes differently here somehow. An hour when you're reading a book can seem like a long time.. and an hour here sometimes seems more like 15 minutes BunkerBoy86: After a few minutes of playing, for me at least, I don't even realise I'm in my room anymore...i feel like I am that character and that I have a mission to complete or something to do...and that I'm not alone. The qualities described by the concept of flow are thus strongly related to the experiential intensities represented by frames relating to activities in the virtual environment. On the other hand, incorporation, like immersion before it, cannot be equated directly with flow. Writers like Carr (2006), Douglas and Hargadon (2001) and Giddings and Kennedy (2006), equate flow with immersion, focusing on deep involvement with the game-playing activity to the detriment of the spatial qualities of the phenomenon implied by the term immersion. This is related to the vague application of the term that was the subject of chapter 3. The concept of incorporation outlined here, emphasizes the internalisation of a virtual environment s spatial qualities that flow does not account for, since it was developed to describe a form of activity, not the qualities of the space in which the activity takes place. The distinction between incorporation and flow is exemplified by Baal s articulation that: 215

216 Baal : Immersion is like when the world disappears from view and you are in the game. You forget that you are a player in this world and become your character in that world, the game one. The loss of consciousness characteristic of flow is one aspect of the experience described. The other aspect is Baal s incorporation of the game-world as a habitable domain in which he can act in. BunkerBoy 86 similarly comments on his sensation of spatial relocation. His locus for immediate action is shifted from the desk, chair, mouse and keyboard to the game-world facilitated by the urgency of having something to do while located in the game-space through the presence and accumulated narrative of his avatar ( I feel like I am that character ) and the avatar s presence to others ( and that I m not alone ). Within the scope of The Digital Game Experience Model, incorporation becomes contingent on the internalization of the spatial frame over time. 3D environments are more readily assimilated into consciousness by virtue of their ease of transfer from everyday experience to in-game practice. The phenomenon of virtual environment habitation to which the terms presence and immersion refer requires a degree of internalization of the spatial frame of involvement. The experience of habitation depends on digital games that allow players to absorb the game world into their consciousness as a habitable place as opposed to controlling a detached agent (or set of pieces) in a game-space. Keeping to the FPS example referred to above, game-maps are consulted regularly in order to orient oneself in the environment. The process of orientation is also crucial in establishing a sense of what is going on in surrounding areas that are not visible on the screen. As the environment is played in repeatedly and the player mentally maps the area, it becomes easier to interpret what the sound of enemy gunfire to the far left means. Guarding a building which should be at the front of the combat-line and hearing explosions directly to the left means that the enemy is probably outflanking the player s team. If the player has not internalized the layout of the map, the time taken to bring the in-game map up on screen, locate themselves on it and figure out what is to their left, will probably result in their in-game death. 216

217 But the spatial involvement frame, to which the above qualities relate to, does not, in itself, fully account for the phenomenon in question, which rests on the synthesis of all six frames. Half-Life 2 (Valve Software, 2004b), for example, uses a number of devices to create a heightened sense of being in the environment: AI characters follow the player s avatar with their eyes when he moves close to them (shared involvement), snippets of story are delivered periodically in the form of flashbacks and plot-furthering ergodic sequences (narrative involvement), the aesthetic beauty of its cityscapes and landscapes stretching into the distance (affective involvement), solving of environmental puzzles (tactical involvement) which often require precisely executed fluid movement (performative involvement). These are just a few examples of elements relating to the six frames that give the player a stronger sense of inhabiting Half-Life 2 s virtual environment. The reduction of conscious effort devoted to each frame that occurs during their internalization also means that more dimensions of the game can be engaged with at any particular time. As pointed out at the start of the chapter, the boundaries drawn between frames are analytical not actual. In reality, describing a particular instance of game-play will draw on a number of overlapping frames. Both their blending and the movement between them occurs in a fluid manner, with some being emphasized at times more than others. This blending of frames occurs with more frequency as the process of internalization intensifies. With less conscious attention being required, more dimensions can be addressed in close temporal proximity, if not simultaneously. When this shortening of distance occurs, however momentarily, players tend to interpret the actions of their avatar, as being their own. The book problem Debates on immersion and presence have often discussed the problem of whether the phenomenon occurs in engagement with literature and movies (Schubert & Crusius, 2002; Waterworth & Waterworth, 2003). Incorporation accounts for both the continuities of digital games with other media objects that represents spatial domains and the distinct experiential specificities of the former. Literary works, for example, can include vivid descriptions of locations that readers find so compelling that they imagine themselves in them. Similarly locations depicted in movies, photographs and paintings can lead viewers to feel a sense of inhabiting a point within the represented environment. The point of view 217

218 offered by games may create a similar effect, but the crucial difference is that the second constituent part of the incorporation metaphor is only satisfied by the digital game example. None of the other media forms anchors the reader/viewer into a specific location that is reacted to by others in that environment. Thus I can imagine I am in the Shire when reading its description, but no one else solidifies my presence. So from the perspective proposed here, this is not an experience of incorporation as only one of its two requirements is being satisfied. A working definition As part of the interviews I asked participants to retell memorable and important experiences in any game world they have engaged with. Their responses all described holistic experiences in which consciousness and environment were fully integrated and accompanied by powerful emotions. Here is an example: Rheric: I don't remember the name of the location, but there was a time when I was playing through Guild Wars it was in the war torn parts of Ascalon I was working through some ruins and I turned this corner, and came across this massive, ruined cathedral with this gorgeous stained glass window that was mostly intact. I just stopped, and stared at it. I worked my way around it as much as I could to see if from all angles and ended up on a rise a little above it, just watching it. I don't remember the time of day, that is, but it might have been like a sunset and I swore, I could practically feel the breeze on my face and hear the wildlife. If I could pay to experience that in real life I would. And I would pay A LOT. It was a real moment for me, a real experience that I carry with me not as great as, say, seeing the pyramids, but pretty damned great. This account brings to the fore the intensity of emotion felt in such holistic incorporating experiences. Removing the fantasy names it would be challenging to ascertain whether the experience Rheric describes occurred in a mediated environment or not. Rheric relates the event with strong connotations of inhabiting a place emphasized by the first person nature of the account ( I worked my way I just stopped and stared at it as opposed to my avatar/character worked) and the synaesthesiac addition of stimuli that were not part of the 218

219 environment ( I could practically feel the breeze on my face and hear the wildlife ). Rheric s concluding sentence emphasizes the experiential significance of this event and the lack of separation between it and a non-mediated equivalent. Figure 49 : Guild Wars cathedral Weaving together the related threads discussed in this section we can arrive at a clearer formulation of the term incorporation in the context of virtual environments generally and digital games in particular: Incorporation is the subjective experience of inhabiting a virtual environment facilitated by the potential to act meaningfully within it while being present to others. Metaphors are never neutral placeholders of signifieds; they actively shape our understanding of the experiences and artefacts being studied. The aim of replacing the metaphor of immersion is not intended to split hairs or increase confusion, but to build a better understanding of the experiential phenomenon this term was introduced to represent. With the increasing complexity of media objects that enable such experiences, and the sophistication of scholarship around them, more complete accounts of the interaction between players and virtual environments become possible. The aim of this model is just that: to take us a step further down the road of understanding the significance of our relationship with the digital worlds we are creating. 219

220 48 See the narrative involvement section of chapter 5 for a definition of this term. 49 These will be discussed in detail in chapter The guild bank is usually a character or number of characters that carries a pool of guild items and money. Guild members post excess items and donations to the guild bank and ask for particular items or money when needed. 51 whoring refers to the exploitation of particular game elements to derive an advantage over others. A similar term, Kill whoring refers to the creation of situations where one side can accumulate kills more easier than another due to a strategic advantage, severe outnumbering etc. often to the detriment of wiser strategic moves by the relevant side. Players kill whore to earn more XP or other reward or simply for the satisfaction of accumulating a high kill/death ratio. 52 A particular aspect of the game (such as a character class, spell, weapon, vehicle, skill etc) becomes nerfed when the game designers alter the characteristics of that object to make it less powerful, normally because it is seen as being too powerful or balance tipping. 53 The Reaver is the strongest aircraft in Planetside. 54 A clan is a group of players that play together in tournaments which can be organised online or at local LANs. 55 Some MMOGs exist on different servers. These may also operate on different game or social mechanics. For example, PvP (player versus player) servers in World of Warcraft allow characters of one faction to attack any character from other factions any time. On PvE (player versus environment) servers characters may only be attacked if they have their PvP flag on, which can occur if they engage in combat with other flagged characters or if they attack an NPC (non playing character) of the opposing faction. There are also Role Playing servers, where there is more emphasis on speaking in character (reminiscent of MMOGs pen and paper cousins). 56 I will use the notation incorporation to refer to the dual process of incorporation of the environment and reincorporation within the environment discussed in the previous paragraph. 220

221 Chapter 7: Designing Experience: Digital Games and Other Fictions This thesis has sought to reposition the interpretation of digital games and their social and cultural significance by reframing the relation between player and game as a relation between the social-real, the player and the media object. This tripartite relationship challenges the typical binaries like real/virtual, game/non-game, work/play by emphasising the mediated interactivity of player and game bound productively together by the common stock of social and cultural knowledge designed into the game and acquired through the practice of everyday social life by the player. While the thesis argues that digital games introduce a distinctively different kind of experience into human societies it also acknowledges that the tripartite relationship is not exclusive to digital games but is characteristic in basic ways of all involvement with aesthetic objects or texts. Furthermore, the adoption of Levy s account of the virtual as a potential state which can be actualised and produce real effects proposes that game experiences cannot be simply distinguished from so called real world experiences, as the notion of the magic circle implies. 57 By focusing on player experience I have aimed to bring out the often neglected internal dimension of digital game engagement, portraying game-play as first and foremost a synchronous interaction between player, surface sign, coded structure and medium. As discussed in chapter 1, these components create a matrix of relations where consideration of one component is invariably effected by the other three. It is inevitable, however, that for the sake of analysis a single component becomes the focus of the discussion. As playerexperience denotes a broad range of experiential phenomena I chose to focus the thesis by dealing primarily with player involvement, ranging from the broad attractions of digital games and the ways in which this initial interest changes into prolonged engagement (macro-involvement). 58 Then I set up a descriptive framework for interpreting the imminent quality of game involvement based on six frames: affective, spatial, narrative, tactical, performative and shared involvement. The fluid movement in and out of these frames and their resultant commingling creates the potential for an experience of what I have called incorporation. 59 Incorporation has been coined as a metaphor that replaces immersion and its implied binary implications 60 to account for the intensified involvement where players have the sensation of acting directly in the game environment. Incorporation 221

222 inverts the assumption of immersion as a leap into the virtual environment, by conceptualising the phenomenon as an absorption of the virtual environment into the player s consciousness as a domain for immediate action while the player is simultaneously present to other agents through his/her avatar. The relevance of the experiential phenomenon which presence and immersion were employed to express is foregrounded in a conceptually precise manner, avoiding the vagueness of terminology that has been hampering related discussions for a number of years. This formulation works within the perspective of games as designed participatory experiences by locating the four components of the digital game matrix simultaneously within the mind of the player and their social, practiced game-play. The notion of digital games as participatory, designed experiences foregrounds the relationship between the artefactual nature of games and their consumption through interpretation and practice. Designers code a potential set of activities within a representational space which is read and (re)written in the form of the specific instance of game-play manifest through practice. There is a close relationship, therefore, between the written text, at various modalities ranging from code to sign representation, and the ways these textual modalities are interpreted and re-assembled by the player through practice. Textuality becomes central to game-play when we consider that the player s experience of the game is contingent on unravelling the complex interplay of signs encoded by the designers. Digital games represent a circuitous, yet effective, transfer between the collective mental imagery of the design team and the internal, game-playing experience of the player. This relationship is complicated in multiplayer games and virtual worlds through the presence of other players that affect each other s subjective experience of the game environment. Human player and (although to a more limited degree) AI behaviour may modulate what the designers intended or expected players to experience, but designers nevertheless have a crucial role in determining the broad parameters of the experience: its setting, ambiance, characters, physics, game-rules, tempo and so on. My inclusion of the textual 61 dimension is not meant to downplay the significance of other components of game-play, but rather to foreground the role of the symbolic in effecting this transfer of experience between the minds of creators and consumers. 222

223 If in the greater part of this work I have argued predominantly for analytical models that account for the specificity of digital games, it is also worth considering their continuities with other media technologies. As these continuities can be approached from a multitude of disciplinary and thematic angles, I will here only venture to expand upon those that relate to the main concerns of this work by discussing a pre-digital literary work whose thematic content and formal structure challenge traditional formulations of the relation between fictionality and reality by foregrounding the role of the fictional and symbolic in a process of world creation and dissemination. In chapter 2 I consider a relationship between literary fictions and digital games in the context of cyberpunk literature. At this final stage in the thesis I want to reflect on that discussion through reference to another literary fiction, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius In May 1940, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius appeared for the first time in Sur, an Argentinian literary journal. Written by Jorge Luis Borges, the short story traces the creation of a fictional world called Tlön through the eyes of Borges himself as narrator. The story starts with a conversation between Borges and his friend Bioy Casares, who quotes a heresiarch from a land called Uqbar, about which he has been reading in a volume of the Anglo American Cyclopaedia. Borges argues that no such country exists and consults a copy of the Cyclopaedia he found in his rented residence, finding no entry referring to Uqbar. On a later day Bioy Casares returns with his copy of the XLVI volume of the Anglo American Cyclopaedia and, much to Borges surprise, it turns out to be four pages longer than his own version. The additional pages describe the land of Uqbar, its literature, language, geography and philosophy. The main peculiarity of Uqbar s description is its literature which always relates to two imaginary regions of Mlenjas and Tlön and never to the material world. Two years later Borges comes across the eleventh volume of A First Encyclopaedia of Tlön. The volume bears an inscription marked Orbis Tertius and gives detailed information about the imaginary planet. Interestingly, the Anglo American Cyclopaedia refers to Tlön as an imaginary region while the First Encyclopaedia of Tlön describes Tlön as a planet. The careful reader will notice that this change was done intentionally and 223

224 is later explained by reference to Orbis Tertius, a secret society formed in the seventeenth century with the task of inventing and cataloguing an imaginary land. Each member of the society was appointed the task of nominating a successor, in order to ensure the continuation of the process of creation across generations. In 1824 one of its members recruited a millionaire, Ezra Buckley, who was so interested in the project that he bestowed all his lands and riches to the society with the condition that the scope of the project would be expanded to cataloguing not only a land, but an entire planet. This process of creation would be given force by the publishing of a forty-volume encyclopaedia of Tlön. The complete First Encyclopaedia of Tlön is published in This marks the start of another, more ambitious project: the compilation of a revised encyclopaedia of Tlön written in one of Tlön s languages covering even more detail than the original version. This revision was to be called Orbis Tertius, latin for Third World. In 1942 physical objects from Tlön start appearing in our world. The first of these came in the form of a compass bearing the symbols of Tlönian language. A few months later Borges comes across a second Tlönian object; a small metal cone the diameter of a die of extraordinary weight. Two years later, the forty volumes of the First Enyclopaedia of Tlön are discovered by a journalist in Nashville, Tennessee. Although we are told that the encyclopaedia was discovered, Borges places the happenstance of the event into question, alluding to the possibility that Orbis Tertius staged the seemingly accidental discovery. The story ends with an ominous postscript where Borges explains how the minute and vast evidence of an ordered planet (Borges, 1993, p. 21) becomes so irresistible that it infiltrates and replaces the established orders of reality. Borges dates the postscript 1947, stating that the present article was originally published in 1940, the date of the story s first publication in Sur. The thematic concerns Borges explores in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius are not particular to this work, but are found in different strengths and configurations in the majority of his short stories, poems and essays. Nevertheless, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius occupies an important place in Borges oeuvre, being viewed by a number of critics as a virtual compendium of Borges s most typical characteristics and themes that sets forth nearly all of his key ideas, preoccupations, mannerisms, stray notions and conceits and is therefore the most Borgesian of all of Borges s works (Bell-Villada, 1981, p. 128). 224

225 In Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius Borges has created in literary form a powerful analysis of the cultural status of media texts and fictions which is directly applicable to contemporary networked culture, and particularly virtual worlds. Borges concerns find strong resonance with the main threads of argumentation outlined in this thesis, namely, the questioning of binaries like game/non-game, virtual/real and the problematic assumptions that place a hard divide between players and virtual environments, between the physical real and the symbolic. Although Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is a pre-digital literary work, it has clear continuities with the contemporary virtual condition (Hayles, 1999) and offers some important insights which are applicable to the analysis of digital games. Borges attributes the elusive discovery of Uqbar and Tlön to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia (Borges, 1993, p. 5). In texts that feature travels between real and fantastical other-worlds, mirrors are often used to mark gateways between them. In Through the Looking Glass (Carroll, 1962) Alice steps through a mirror to reach wonderland. The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999) inverts this passage having Neo exit rather than enter the digital other-world via a mirror. Borges bridges the real and fictional in such a way as to elude any possibility of locating a clearly defined boundary between them. Rather than acting as a boundary between worlds, the mirror mentioned in the first line of the story already includes a fusion between the fictional and the real in the form of an encyclopaedia. The conjunction of mirror and encyclopaedia foregrounds the theme and structure of the story to come; a text that passes as a factual catalogue of our knowledge of the real includes an imaginary reality. Rather than signalling a split or boundary, Borges use of the mirror indicates an ontological perspective that includes both the fictional and the material as manifestations of the real. Tlön is presented as a constructed fictional artefact that emerges into and modifies reality. The way in which Borges presents Tlön has close affinities with the way in which Ryan (2001) and Levy (1998) have conceptualised the virtual. 62 Like Borges, Ryan and Levy move away from a binary distinction that places the virtual in opposition to the real. Like Tlön, the virtual is viewed as an important constituent of reality. Levy conceives of the virtual as a powerful creative force in much the same way that Borges imbues the fictionality of Tlön with reality changing qualities. Tlön stands in stark contrast to 225

226 fictional worlds formulated according to a traditional conception which opposes fiction to reality. Although worlds like Tolkien s Middle-Earth or Howard s Cymeria borrow considerable elements from earthly geographies, histories and myths, the aim behind their creation is to stand as enclosed, fantastical otherworlds. Nowhere in Tolkien s works do we get a hint that the fictional might become actualized. Indeed, it was an important goal of Tolkien s conception of a secondary world, to create a fictional world that stood apart from the non-fictional. The formal structure of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius as well as its thematic content are specifically designed to counter the notion that the fictional exists in a separate realm to the real. Borges, in a lecture he gave at Montevideo on September , outlines four formal procedures which created this blending of real and fictional (Rodríguez Monegal, 1978). Rodriquez Monegal, who was present at this lecture, notes that Borges emphasized that these procedures were not simply thematic devices but formal procedures upon which the real and unreal are fused: the real world permeates Borges fantastic fiction to the point where it is almost impossible to draw the line between what is reality and what is fantasy (p. 409). This fusion is not effected solely upon the literary level but is intended to have ontological implications: [The procedures] allow the writer to destroy not only the conventions of realistic fiction but also those of reality (p. 406). One of these formal devices involves the attribution of invented texts to actual authors and vice versa. This creates a seemingly genuine intertext ambiguously shot through with imagined works and writers: From the past he [Borges] brings in real writings, bogus writings by real European authors, and some colourful but concocted personages This marriage between the factual and the fantastic, of course, is precisely what Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is about. Narrative procedure here thus corresponds closely to thematic meaning or, in more familiar terms, form adequately reflects content (Bell-Villada, 1981, p. 133). Tlön emphasizes the problematic assumptions with this binary structure through its process of becoming. Tlön represents the power of the symbolic to not only affect, but redefine the real. The real/fictional, symbolic/material binaries are undermined by a media text (in this instance, a short story in print) which demonstrates that the real is just as much an effect 226

227 of representation as the fictional. Borges thus reminds us that the symbolic, or textual, is a crucial constituent of the real. If we apply this emphasis on the symbolic to the analysis of digital games, we are reminded that the symbolic is always present in the process of transference between their creators and consumers. Focusing this perspective on gameexperience challenges existing metaphors like presence or immersion that are founded on a binary ontology. As discussed in chapter 3, the term immersion implies a submerging of the (real) player into a separate (virtual) substrate. By replacing immersion with incorporation I have attempted to avoid a formulation of game-engagement that operates within these binaries, privileging instead the noetic and thus social-symbolic dimensions of the player-game relationship. Another way in which Borges displaces the real/fictional binary is through the use of what Sarlo (1993) has called the structure en abîme, or the endless repetition of images within images. The Aleph, in the story by the same name, is an orb through which a viewer can see any point on the earth, including the Aleph itself: I saw the Aleph from every point and angle and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph, the earth. Similarly the postscript in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, dated 1947, includes a reference to the publication of the story in The reader of the story in 1940 would be thus included in the story he/she is reading by virtue of this reference in a future-dated postscript. The story was originally published in the sixty eighth issue of Sur as a reproduction of a text already published in the sixty-eighth issue of Sur. Applying this notion of an endless repetition of images within images reminds us that digital games and virtual worlds, for all their mimetic verisimilitude to the physical world we see and touch, are first and foremost reflections in mirrors of other representational media. The first point of reference for the digital game is the symbolic, not the material. The Kalashnikov in Counter-Strike Source (Valve Software, 2004a) might be a representation of a physical object, but it is first and foremost a representation of that object derived from its representation in movies, animations, paintings, photographs and literature. If its mimetic qualities are convincing or attractive, it is because they reproduce players mediainfluenced ideas of what a Kalashnikov is and how it should behave, rather than how one actually sounds and behaves. The Counter-Strike Kalashnikov is a media image in a long series of media images which most resemble each other even while also having a resemblance to the actual thing. 227

228 Borges perspective on the relationship between fictionality and reality runs counter to Juul s (2005) conceptualization of digital games as a conjunction of two separate entities: fictional representations and real rules. The split between real and fictional implied in Juul s conceptualisation hides the important fact that the symbolic and representational character of media texts constitutes their very existence. Both fictional representation and real rules are aspects of one and the same thing: a shared symbolic system. Starting from an assumption which places fictional representation on one side of a binary and real rules on the other ignores this most crucial characteristic shared by both. The represented game-world, the game rules, the coded physics and other automated behaviour all pertain to the Barthesian (Barthes, 1957, 1977) galaxy of signifiers that cannot be separated from an external real. If the pervasive presence of representational media plays a significant role in constructing our notion of the real, virtual worlds are particularly powerful in their affective qualities precisely because they embody the widest range of modalities that constitute the social. Each of the six frames discussed in The Digital Game Experience Model is intimately linked with a potent characteristic of social life: knowledge of possible actions and their consequences (tactical involvement); the ability to exert agency (performative involvement); the formation of a meaningful personal narrative (narrative involvement); interaction with others (shared involvement); the mapping of habitable space (spatial involvement) and the use of representational media to affect emotional states (affective involvement). MMOGs offer the most compelling potential for engaging all of these social characteristics over an extended period of time. They are specifically designed to be as appealing as possible to the widest range of people across cultures for the longest possible period of time, and one of the most effective ways of doing this is to import as many of these constituents of social life and combine them with attractively designed representations that are already, at least partly, familiar to players through other media. So while the thematic nature of MMOGs might be fantastic, their structural mechanics engineer experiences that are on an ontological par with other social realities. Their fictionality might conceal the important continuities MMOGs share with the personal experience of social reality, but a closer look will reveal that they should not be considered as somehow separate, as proponents of the magic circle such as Juul (2005), Salen and 228

229 Zimmerman (2003) among many other game theorists, claim. Neither is it useful to come up with weak substitutes for the concept of the magic circle such as Castronova s (2005) notion of a membrane that protects the virtual world from the Earth. Just as Tlön is part of the narrator s reality, virtual worlds are part of players reality. 63 Like Tlön, virtual worlds migrate from the minds of their creators to become actualized through digital technologies as shared and perceivable artefacts. They become not only a seamless part of players everyday lives, but often, the more exciting and anticipated parts of the daily routine. In his analysis of the role of images in contemporary culture, How Images Think, Burnett (2004) stresses the importance of considering how digital games and virtual worlds alter the sense of reality through its contact and fusion with the virtual: Human-computer interactions become the potential basis for an altered experience of the real, give a heightened sense of the virtual, and provide a genuine example of how the real and virtual are inseparable (p. 95) With digital games as with Tlön, the fictional is actualised through the creative efforts of a group of people and becomes actualized through technologies of inscription. The meticulous detail employed in the creation of Tlön gives it its world-penetrating appeal. The process of cataloguing the imagined world fixes the creators imaginary upon a sharable and perceivable material substrate, accelerating its process of actualisation. Similarly, the makers of virtual worlds mould their history, geography and so on before the imaginary is fixed upon the informational substrate of the graphically rendered skins that cover the 3D construct of the world and its inhabitants. Digital games and virtual worlds are thus powerful examples of a symbolic creation thought into being, that has an effect in the social-real. Another aspect of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius that conveys this notion beautifully comes in the form of the hronir. These are Tlönian objects that become manifest by sheer mental effort. Hronir bear a close relationship to virtual objects that are increasingly becoming valued in the same way as material goods and services. Julian Dibbell (2006) has written a thorough account of his forays into trading virtual goods for actual money. This phenomenon, often known as RMT or real money trade, is a powerful manifestation 229

230 of the social and cultural status of virtual objects. A recent report by Sony Online Entertainment (Terdiman, 2007) stated that some players of Sony MMOGs netted $37,000 from the sale of virtual items, with high level, fully equipped avatars going for over $1000. Virtual worlds like Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003) which allow and indeed, encourage, the creation of virtual objects by players, tend to also include a direct exchange rate between the world s currency and conventional currencies like the US dollar. The socially determined nature of value, monetary and otherwise, is another important reminder of the symbolic dimension of reality. By implication, items and experiences in virtual worlds are no less real than items and experiences in the material world. Another significant point of convergence between Tlön-as-metaphor and virtual worlds is the way they both alter what was thought of as the real prior to their inception. A virtual world, like Tlön, is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men (Borges, 1972, p. 42). Their status as designed artefacts makes them also understandable artefacts. They present a model of the social-real that players can take in. Everything inside the world is legible and quantifiable, either by explicit number-tagging and sign-posting or by a process of deducing the coded mechanics and the intentions of its makers. The determining factor that turns Tlön into reality is its decipherability. It promises reward to the diligent decipherer. Whether the process of deciphering is successful or not is not important. What makes the decipherer come back to the problem is the knowledge that the code can be mastered. Similarly, virtual worlds offer a model of society and existence where the unknowns are contrived for our pleasure in unravelling them. They are domains which can be accessed at will and switched off at will; that appear and disappear at the touch of a button and yet can never vanish altogether. Like Tlön, virtual worlds have written themselves into the very fabric of the real, a process which is all but impossible to reverse. 57 See chapters 1 and 2 for a discussion of the magic circle. 58 See chapter 5 for a detailed exposition of macro-involvement and its six constituent frames. 59 See chapter 6 for a description of micro-involvement, its six constituent frames as well as a discussion of the incorporation metaphor and its relation to related concepts like flow. 60 See chapter 3 for a discussion of problematic assumptions relating to the terms presence and immersion. 61 Here as elsewhere I am using the textual in its broader, Barthesian (Barthes, 1957, 1977) application rather than the verbal or alphanumeric sign. 230

231 62 See chapter The magic circle and the membrane are discussed in chapters 1 and 2, respectively. 231

232 Future Directions The Digital Game Experience Model developed in this thesis is a conceptual and terminological framework that can facilitate a better understanding and effective analysis of specific aspects of player involvement. Although the research participants were derived from MMOGs, the model is applicable to all forms of digital games, virtual environments and virtual worlds. Different types of these environments will tend to emphasize some frames more than others, with virtual worlds tending to be the more inclusive since they offer such a wide variety of possible forms of engagement. Due to the model s breadth of application, its specific use would entail a further elaboration of the frames more relevant to the text in question. Thus an in-depth analysis of FPSs, for example, could further collapse the performative, tactical and spatial frames into sub-frames that look in more detail to their constituent parts. Furthermore, as discussed in chapter 6, any particular instance of gameinvolvement tends to draw from multiple frames. Thus the overlaps between frames could be considered as part of this further branching of the categories offered in the model. If we are analysing the role of a sniper in a World War 2 FPS, we would have a sub-frame like positioning that draws from the spatial, tactical and shared involvement frames: the spatial positioning of objectives and layout of the map would dictate how and when opposing players will move through certain areas and the cover team members will need to reach or defend these objectives. The decision making process (tactical involvement) thus depends on knowledge and assessment of the layout o the map (spatial involvement), an interpretation of the current positioning of friends and enemies (spatial involvement). The likely next target for the enemy team (tactical and shared involvement) and the collaboration with team members (shared involvement). Each frame can support a further branching of sub-frames that can also connect to other frames, enabling the researcher to enter into an extremely detailed analysis, such as, for example, the effects of limiting the number of snipers on the team, or a comparative analysis of the role of sniper rifles in a number of networked FPSs. I am here using the sniper as an example of the ability of the model to handle specific analysis as well as the more general analyses that would result from retaining the six general frames on their two temporal levels, macro and micro. 232

233 This thesis marks an initial step in the development of such a model. Future research is needed to test it using a variety of games on different platforms, ranging from PCs to consoles and handhelds. A possible next step could be to apply the model to a comparative analysis of a number of games within a particular genre, such as strategy games or FPSs or even a comparative analysis of games across genres in order to test whether the model is more useful for some games than others. As I have mentioned earlier, the model is just as useful for virtual environments that do not have specific game goals and thus another line of research could see the model implemented in an analysis of user involvement in VR facilities particularly where a specific effect is desired, such as VR for psychological rehabilitation and other clinical uses. Due to the theoretical scope of the model, it has not been designed with a specific cultural group in mind. It would thus be profitable to apply the model to a study of similar genres of games across cultures in order to investigate the continuities and specificities that might exist across cultures and/or socio-economic groups. It is my hope that The Digital Game Experience Model and the research on which it is based will contribute not only to a better understanding of the social and personal significance and value of digital games, but also to further advances in their design. 233

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