Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture
* T.L. Taylor
The MIT Press, 2006
T.L. Taylor dives into the early culture of MMORPGs based on years of ethnographic fieldwork in EverQuest and its community. She is mainly concerned with how players navigate the boundaries between their in-game activities and their offline lives. The book highlights how the virtual world is not a simple escape, but a space where players develop complex social relationships, economies, and professions, which often bleed into their real-world identities. Her firsthand account of the rituals, languages, and social norms that emerged organically within the EverQuest community is especially interesting because it also illustrates how the game and its culture changed over time.
After a brief summary of the history of virtual worlds, Taylor provides us the reason how she came to know of EverQuest: "I came to the game in November of 1999 when I was in the final stages of a large project on MUDs and social graphical worlds. I had spent a number of years researching embodiment in virtual environments and was tapering off that project. It was then that I began to hear about 'this game, EverQuest.' As anyone who has spent time in virtual worlds can tell you, users of such spaces are often an inquisitive bunch when it comes to new places to explore. I was constantly tossed new leads on worlds to check out, and it was in this last half of 1999 that the word EverQuest began to appear more frequently in conversations. At the time the game had just hit somewhere around 150,000 subscribers, far more than I had ever seen in a multiuser space. I should note that the primary virtual world I was investigating at the time was not a gaming space and, not surprisingly, much of the way EQ was framed for me early on was as a world versus a game" (p. 28).
Following this initial distinction she continues that “the relationship between these two categories is a fascinating one and something explored more and more by those interested in multiuser spaces. On the one hand EverQuest has many of the characteristics of a game: hunting monsters, pursuing quests (also for experience points), advancing a character through levels and achievements, and competing (sometimes directly, sometimes not) against fellow players. On the other hand, there is no winner. There is no obvious finish line, no point of completion, where it is clear the game has been won. […] The game’s old tagline, 'You’re in our world now,' evokes the feeling that what you do in EQ is immerse yourself in a space. People create identities for themselves, have a variety of social networks, take on roles and obligations, build histories and communities. People live and through that living, play. Certainly MUDs have a history of this kind of rich social milieu and early graphical worlds had their fair share of gaming (typically player-drive), so this is not meant to be a story of two forms marrying to produce a new genre entirely. EverQuest instead popularized what had been brewing on a smaller scale for a number of years – the notion of shared persistent world environments full of both instrumental and free action" (p. 28).
This latter distinction forms the basis for much of her exploration of play throughout the book, and why play may feel like repetitive and boring work, something most MMORPG players are familiar with today – and what I would call algorithmic play, or play by recipe (e.g. skill rotations or group finder). Though her discussion of play in the context of "power gamers" in later parts of the book is interesting and worth reading, I will focus on the anthropology here and save the more precise exploration of cybernetic user-machine interaction for another time.
The question of social and cultural matters in videogames is always a question about the interplay between design and emergence. And so Taylor writes: "While we sometimes imagine games as contained spaces and experiences in which a player sits down, examines the rules, and begins play, those like EverQuest seem to suggest a more complicated engagement. In large measure because of the multiplayer nature of the game, participants undergo a socialization process and over time learn what it means to play far beyond what the manual or strict rules articulate. [...] There are then at least two levels - constantly interlinked and redefining each other - that work to acculturate players into the world and the game-play: the structure of the game itself, and the culture and practices that have emerged in and around it. These form a much broader game apparatus, a sociotechnical one, that goes well beyond the artifact contained within the off-the-shelf box the game purchaser first encounters" (p. 32).
She further notes that "while the game manual provides some of these basic guidelines, it is only the barest of frameworks for how to actually play the game. As Jackie suggests, new players are acculturated into the game and essentially taught not only how to play, but how to be. The manual can, for example, tell the player about the different kinds of 'buffs' - spells that enhance or protect a player - available but it says nothing about the process of getting and giving them. There is, however, an emergent culture in the game that has, over time, formulated norms around social behavior, how favors are given out, how killing is handled, and how help is requested. One of the most important lessons a new player learns is that there is an entire culture within the game that they must accommodate. Players are socialized into the space and over time learn what it means to become a good EQ player" (p. 36).
In the next section we will take a closer look at how design may facilitate or transform specific cultures and social interactions. Taylor uses the examples of buffing and teleporting to show how changes to the game's design had an effect on its' culture - a process she describes as a shift from gift to commodity, and from provincialism to cosmopolitanism respectively.
In relation to buffing she writes: "Buffing is an integral part of play, but how has the player community negotiated this aspect of the game? In the early years of EQ it was very common for people to ask for buffs with a fair amount of frequency. It was typically only done in particular environments - common areas where people gathered - and not when someone was in the middle of a battle. Generally social norms required people be polite and, in fact, this was one of the few spaces in which a role-play 'voice' would often occur. So, for example, a player might approach a Druid and say 'Kind sir, can I ask you please for a SoW,' the Spirit of Wolf spell, which increases running speed. It was very unusual for such a request to be turned down as it was typically seen as costing the caster very little and was in some ways interpreted as part of the work associated with being a class that could bestow such spells. Casting particular spells could be seen as a public-service duty, a way of contributing to the larger player base. Sometimes the player who received the buff would try and give the caster a bit of money in return, though just as often it was refused. Players who did not stick to some basic conventions were often thought of as rude, newbies, or young and socially inexperienced. In fact, the generosity of buff-giving was such that it was also not uncommon to see higher-level characters wander through lower-level zones buffing people randomly as they went. For a lower-level character, a 'drive by' buff or regeneration heal could be an enormous advantage for their hunting session and in such cases public acknowledgement of the good deed was typical via shouts of 'thanx' on the zone-wide communication channel" (p. 58f).
As the game is updated and the world develops further a change in player behavior begins to occur: "While there are still random acts of generosity in regards to doling out spells and within formal groups it is still the norm that people do not pay for buffs, it is now more common to see buffs advertised (or requested) in zone-wide channels via calls: 'Donating 100 plat for a virtue for me and mypartner.' This is certainly in part because the cost to the caster has risen over the years. Whereas in the past spells were typically purchased from game vendors or 'dropped' off killed monsters with a fair degree of frequency, the scenario for acquiring new spells at the higher levels has changed. Spells themselves have been altered such that they do a lot more relative to what they used to but are also now much rarer to find. This has produced an expensive market, where players pay upwards of 80,000 platinum for some of the most powerful spells. As the personal costs have become higher the social norm toward nonfriend gift-giving has decreased. Players now see charging for buffs as a way of recouping their costs. Requests to be buffed for free are met with replies about the high price of obtaining the spell. We can see in the shift from a gift to market economy around buffs how the design choices - combining very powerful, highly sought-after spells with scarcity - has produced a companion effect in social behaviors" (p. 59).
Being able to hand out buffs, especially to low-level players in newbie zones, has always been one of my favorite things to do in games that allow it. I see it as a simple mechanism for reciprocity and part of the social glue that holds communities together, and one that is ideally payed forward and not just payed back. One reason for this is that the buff produces an inter-subjective relation of mututal re-cognition (G.F. Hegel says hello!). In the book "My life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft", Bonni A. Nardi provides us with a great example of this: "The moment I began to find World of Warcraft truly interesting was when two small icons appeared on the top right portion of my screen. I had not placed them there, nor was I killing monsters; in fact I was relaxing in the woodsy hometown of the Night Elves, Shadowglen. My son explained to me that another player had caused the icons to appear - they were 'buffs', or temporary magic spells to enhance my powers. In that moment I became aware of other players. I was not alone in the Night Elves' Garden of Eden but surrounded by real human players who would interact with me. I was touched that another player had given me something for free, without my asking or even having a way to thank him" (Nardi 2010, p. 5). I always have to smile when I remember this paragraph as it is so adorable, though one should also wonder in what kind of society someone has been socialized to be so touched by getting something like a buff for free. I mean, come on!
In any case, pointing out that acts of generosity still happen within EverQuest despite changes to the game, Taylor continues that "they now operate in a much narrower sphere - tighter associations form a more central part of the game and, in turn, gift economies more closely map onto friendship and formal affiliation networks like guilds. This is in part a result of a change in mobility within the world and the advanced experience of the player base. The issue of mobility brings up the example of porting. In the beginning EQ was a game in which the work, and potential peril, it took to cross the vast geographical distances was not insignificant. Aside from the risks of encountering higher-level monsters, there was at a very basic level the need to run great distances to get around. Crossing continents required running through zones to get to a dock to wait for a ship that, when you got on it, actually simulated sailing by forcing the player to wait while the character crossed a virtual sea. For members of an evil race or class that wasnot allowed in good-aligned cities, journeys were even more dangerous and involved hiding, sneaking, taking underground passage ways, and all kinds of additional time-consuming activities. For lower-level characters, travel often necessitated companionship to avoid being caught alone having to fend off a tough monster. Into this structure the designers gave a helper - the classes of characters known as Druids and Wizards. Both are able to instantaneously transport (known in the game as 'port') other players to locations all over the gameworld. Each are constrained a bit in this ability in that they are granted the spells to do so only as they progress through levels in the game and can only port to specific areas. Given how valuable a resource porting is, both classes quickly realized they could make some additional in-game money through the service" (p. 60).
Here again, as the game and the world progress, a shift occurs in player behavior when the Shadows of Luclin Expansion is introduced: "Landscape and mobility in EQ now have a different configuration. Since newbies no longer are so tightly bound to their home and adjacent zones, only a handful of people still try to make a living by porting. People are, aside from zones requiring specific porters to get in, no longer reliant on each other for mobility. Indeed, even the boat that previously provided all travel from the continent of Antonica no longer runs. While the world has quantitatively grown (from 65 zones when I started to 222 now), in many ways it feels smaller. This radical change in culture occurred in large part because of two key design decisions - the introduction of a centralized transport zone with NPC porters and the inclusion of automated self-service porting" (p. 61).
The following expansion Planes of Power then further diminishes the value of player- and NPC-driven porting services: "While the previous change had kept intact the notion of needing someone to assist in porting (even if it was an NPC), in the Planes expansion this work was taken over by an object, a book on a stone pillar located in various zones in the game. Whena player clicked on this book they were instantly transported to another new hub - the Plane of Knowledge (PoK)- where another appropriate stone could provide transport to any other zone needed. Almost overnight the economy around porting crashed. Players who had formerly made a decent living as a kind of in-game taxi service found themselves practically out of work. Just as significantly, however, was the way this simultaneously changed the nature of the locales throughout the world that were once transportation zones. In the past people often gathered around popular porting spots. They were not only the places for picking up rides but for finding buffs, safely resting surrounded by other players likely to help out if something attacked, or simply a convenient meeting spot. With the automatization of porting and the introduction of centralized transportation zones like PoK and the Nexus, the regional gathering places died, as did the social life around them" (p. 61f).
tbc...