Ethnography and Game Spaces: Examining Sociality in Game Worlds | SPCM 529, Study notes of Theories of Communication

Download Ethnography and Game Spaces: Examining Sociality in Game Worlds | SPCM 529 and more Study notes Theories of Communication in PDF only on Docsity! Ethnography and Game Spaces: Examining Sociality in Game Worlds George W. Boone University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign SPCM 529: Unorthodox Research Methods Dr. Christian Sandvig December 15th, 2008 Digital Ethnography: 2 Ethnography and Game Spaces: Examining Social Interactions in Game Worlds “The ethnographer is a little like Hermes: a messenger who, given methodologies for uncovering the masked, the latent, the unconscious, may even obtain his message through stealth. He presents languages, cultures, and societies in all their opacity, their foreignness, their meaninglessness; then like the magician, the hermeneut, Hermes himself, he clarifies the opaque, renders the foreign familiar, and gives meaning to the meaningless. He decodes the message. He interprets.” Crapanzano (1986, p. 51) In the first issue of the academic journal Games and Culture, noted video-game researcher Dmitri Williams (2006) argues that one of the important reasons to study video games is the decline of civic space from real-world locations and their potential relocation to online worlds. He writes, “We should study games now because these networked social games are a wholly new form of community, social interaction, and social phenomenon that is becoming normative faster than we have been able to analyze it, theorize it, or collect data on it” (p. 13). For Williams, one of the most important reasons to examine video games and how they contribute to individual behavior, cultural practice, and human relationships is the important, but often overlooked, fact that people socialize with one another through the use of video games. However, Williams additionally cautions “We must not drape our own ideologies, hopes, fears, and suspicions on top of these questions” (p. 15). Thus, Williams worries that the examinations of video games that researchers develop will unnecessarily draw in several problematic assumptions and emotional responses into the research process, thereby echoing the social science value of objectivity. Social scientific approaches to video game research are numerous. Often, this research takes the form of quantitative approaches to video game violence (Anderson et al, 2008; Arriaga, Digital Ethnography: 5 qualitative research methods—these methods are specifically able to address issues of context and rely upon assumptions that explicitly challenge notions of objectivity and thus call for researchers to be wary of their own biases. This still, however, fails to answer the question as to whether one specific method of knowledge production can utilize the different philosophical assumptions of a researcher. Simply put, qualitative researchers must seek to answer the question as to how their methods are shaped by the philosophies they bring to bear on their topics. Ethnography, like other qualitative methods, has been discussed in many forums and under different sets of research goals. Mason (2002) writes, “Ethnographic approaches encompass such a range of perspectives and activities that the idea of adhering to an ethnographic position, as though there were only one, is faintly ridiculous” (p. 55). Mason also notes that ethnographers similarly detail their “immersion” in a location or among a group of people, and while doing so, they often engage in interviews and other qualitative or quantitative methods of research. “Immersion,” as a central term in ethnographic research, implies an important philosophical assumption. “The metaphor of ‘immersion’ in a setting is very frequently used,” states Mason, “and says much about ethnography’s ontological and epistemological orientations” (p. 55). She continues, “It emphasizes the use of cultural settings as data sources (sometimes seen as natural settings), and argues that the best—although not the only—way of generating knowledge of these is for a researcher to get right inside them” (p. 55). Ethnography, then, asks us to accept the premise that we can understand that which we are able to observe using the faculties of our own bodies. Simply put, ethnography as a research method relies on the senses, and sense-making, capabilities of the astute researcher. Digital Ethnography: 6 Through the vocabulary of immersion and firsthand knowledge, one may begin to see particular problems in using technology as an aid in ethnographic practices. As phenomenologist Van Manen (1990) writes, “From a phenomenological point of view, to do research is always to question the way we experience the world, to want to know the world in which we live as human beings” (p. 5). Thus, if we wish to question how we experience environments over the internet, we must use a research method that allows for the direct experience of these environments. Van Manen continues, “And since to know the world is profoundly to be in the world in a certain way, the act of researching—questioning—theorizing is the intentional act of attaching ourselves to the world, to become more fully part of it, or better, to become the world” (p. 5). To adopt this mantra for the purposes of research of online environments, and the questioning of the practices and strategies of communicating with others in these locations is to both participate and observe interactions. Simply put, a phenomenological approach to research in online environments necessitates, at least partially, an ethnographic approach because ethnography is immediately concerned with the capacity of an individual to experience something first hand. Although drastically different from social science approaches to video games that have already been discussed, this approach to the study of video games warrants further explication. The video games in question are those entitled “massively-multiplayer-online-games” or MMOG’s. Many researchers have begun inquiring about these video games specifically. Popular topics researchers often examine in relationship to this modern form of entertainment media include issues of property and ownership in these environments (Kennedy, 2008; Klang, 2004; Song, Korba, Yee, & Chen, 2007), the potential for these environments to foster educational goals (Childress & Braswell, 2006; de Freitas & Griffiths, 2007; Dickey, 2007), and more generally, how people socialize in these environments (Cole & Griffiths, 2007; Hussain & Digital Ethnography: 7 Griffiths, 2008; Krueger, Cody, & Peckham, 2006; Moore, Duchenaut, & Nickell, 2007). However, studies looking at how people socialize in online environments will often make use of survey methods that fail to capture the richness and complexity of online communication between and among online game players. The goal of this paper is not to attack social scientific attempts at understanding and explaining video games. Rather, my goal is to explore in depth how an ethnographic approach can be used to understand the ways people interact with one another in the virtual spaces of video games. Similarly, I will also examine the difficulties inherent in taking an ethnographic approach to studying video games and explicate several issues to which ethnographers of digital worlds must be sensitive. To do this, I will be drawing upon texts written by ethnographers where they question ethnographic methods and how it creates knowledge for academic communities. My goals in this research are simple: to outline the nuanced approach to cultural study that ethnography of digital spaces allows while cautioning researchers to reflect on how the technology which allows digital spaces to exist can simultaneously pose problems. Thus, my main argument is that researchers must be reflexive not only regarding their relationships to the various individuals, organizations, and cultural practices within the digital space they come to occupy during their research, but also the ways technology allows their “presence” to be felt by others. In the process of naming this methodology, researchers have often referred to ethnography of digital and online worlds as “virtual ethnography” (Hine, 2000). However, I will strive to avoid using the term “virtual” within this paper for several reasons. First, I agree with Guimarães (2005) when he writes, “The everyday use (and to some extent abuse) of the word ‘virtual’ attributes a meaning to it that seems to refer to non-real entities, to experiences realized Digital Ethnography: 10 particular game. Like Taylor, I will be discussing some of the important aspects of WoW that bring attention to the ways ethnographers of online environments must pay particular attention to their assumptions about technology. Having briefly introduced some of the relevant literature on video games and important research done on online environments, I turn now to the main arc of my argument. The first part of my argument will be devoted to the ways ethnography is represented in writing. This section of the paper addresses the relevant research that examines ethnographic research as a written commodity. Drawing on chapters in Clifford and Marcus’s (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, I present the ongoing discourse regarding the publishing of ethnographic research. As academic endeavors are primarily written in journals and books, any project depending on ethnographic methods is similarly textual. However, online situations are similarly text-filled. As a result, writing ethnographic accounts of online social interactions are faced with new issues of representation in writing. The second section of my paper centers on the concept of reflexivity. Here, I argue that ethnographers of online contexts need to pay special attention to the additional mediations between themselves, their interlocutors, and the technological apparatuses that make online socialization possible. To make this argument, I draw upon Doucet’s (2008) metaphor of “gossamer walls” and extend this metaphor to the interactions between the ethnographer and the technology one interacts with when doing online ethnography. Writing Digital Ethnography Day (2008) describes the ethnographic project of the famous evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. In her project, Day explains how the ethnographic work Darwin was engaging in could easily be classified as “imperialistic” for several reasons. By presenting Darwin in a Digital Ethnography: 11 historical context full of slavery and imperial expansion by Western Europe, Day is able to show how Darwin’s grappling with defining the traits that keep humans separate from animals is troubled by cultural discourses that treat aboriginal peoples in Africa, Asia, and both North and South America as less than human. Tied into Darwin’s presentation of the natives of South America is an ongoing tension over how these people should be treated by Europeans. Day shows this tension in Darwin’s comparison of humans to animals. She writes, “the trouble with convincing portraits of human uniqueness is that on any point the distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’ [animals] is astonishingly small” (p. 49). Darwin, then, is placed in the untenable position of having to scientifically produce a biological definition of humanity that serves both science and imperialist projects. Day continues, “The second problem is that if one shrinks the range of potentially unique human traits to those which seem safely exceptional—such as marriage dowries, novels, and the income tax—you do so at the risk of pushing any number of human communities out of the family tree” (p. 49). Although the social position in which Darwin’s scientific endeavors took place was linked to the imperialist discourses of his time, Day ends her essay by showing how Darwin’s writing did offer resistance to the prevailing norms of slavery advocated by most social figures of his time. Day’s work with Darwin’s writings shows how the final products of ethnographic research projects can be analyzed to demonstrate important cultural tensions with which the ethnographer must contend. By analyzing Darwin’s texts, Day is able to show how complex definitions of humanity are juggled. Working in the framework that the defining characteristic of humanity is religion, Darwin sets about describing the biological capacities that lead to this social reality. In describing these traits, however, Darwin is inevitably drawn into the complex work of representing both the people he has studied as well as people in general. The three Digital Ethnography: 12 faculties he deems necessary for religious belief leads Day to conclude, “Darwin’s hunch seems to be that all it takes to generate a religious impulse is an animal mind equipped with the concept of a cause and an inquisitive streak” (p. 611). In Darwin’s time, representing humanity as religious was a cultural imperative he was unable to avoid. Day’s project sheds light on the capacity for us to treat all ethnographic texts as rhetorical —whether it is the work of Darwin, or a more contemporary scholar, ethnography always ends up in the form of writing. In the introduction to Writing Culture, Clifford (1986) ties several factors together to characterize ethnographic writing. He describes six characteristics that constitute ethnographic writing, which include: context, rhetoric, institutions, generic conventions, political authority, and history. More importantly, however, is his position on what ethnographic project will represent. He writes, “Ethnographic texts—serious, true fictions—are systems, or economies, of truth. Power and history work through them, in ways their authors cannot fully control” (p. 7). He continues, “Ethnographic truths are thus inherently partial— committed and incomplete” (p. 7). Clifford is presenting a difficult scenario for the ethnographer. Although the researcher may wish to capture and represent accurately the myriad ways the culture they are studying is performed, changed, and lived by a people, it simply is not possible to do this within the purview of academic writing. Clifford ends his introduction with the striking command for future ethnographers—the historical, rhetorical, and institutional factors which constitute the practice of ethnography must be contended with if ethnography is to keep its epistemological privilege. He explains, “The writing and reading of ethnography are overdetermined by forces ultimately beyond the control of either an author or an interpretive community. These contingencies—of language, rhetoric, power, and historic—must now be openly confronted in the process of writing” (p. 25). It is in Digital Ethnography: 15 meaning of verisimilitude Denzin draws our attention to concerns the conventions of knowledge production accepted within a community of readers. Thus, the standards for this second branch of verisimilitude hinge on the community standards. Denzin writes, “Here, it is understood that separate interpretative communities have distinctively different standards or versions of verisimilitude as proof, truth, or validity” (p. 10). The third form of verisimilitude relates specifically to how the audience interprets the text. Denzin characterizes, “A text with high verisimilitude provides the opportunity for vicarious experience” (p. 10). Simply stated, this form of verisimilitude is shown when a text gives plenty of description so that the reader can form his or her own perspective on the occurrence. Thus, the author of an ethnography gives enough information to both make their own case regarding the social events they witness while simultaneously inviting the reader to interpret this. The representation and legitimation crises Denzin illustrates bear important tidings to those researchers who would embark on digital ethnography. While digital ethnography might not deal with representing an “other” in the sense of a colonized group or marginalized subculture, the people inhabiting these virtual spaces are still embodied members of social groups, be they dominant or suppressed. Further, the generic conventions of ethnographic research are also somewhat thwarted when applied to online gaming. Take, for example, the discussion Pratt (1986) offers regarding the narratives ethnographers offer when first entering the field. Pratt takes the conventional way ethnographers describe their arrival in the field and subjects it to critical analyses. She argues that the personal narratives ethnographers is an element that balances the tension between engaging with those living in the field and establishing authority for the readers of the ethnographic text. She writes, “Anthropologists stand to gain from looking at themselves as writing inside as well as outside the discursive traditions that Digital Ethnography: 16 precede them; inside as well as outside the histories of contact on which they follow” (p. 49). For Pratt, the ethnographic researcher will encounter social spheres impacted by previous curious researchers. How though, should an ethnographer represent, in writing, their first experiences into the digital world of a game like World of Warcraft? Upon entering the digital realm in WoW, it should first be noted that the mode of entry for the researcher is similar to the mode of entry for many of the other inhabitants of this space. For example, upon “logging on” to the game, I choose a server, create a character (or avatar), and am treated to a brief cinematic that explains the role of my character’s “race” in the game world. I am then placed next to several non-player characters (NPCs)—characters that are controlled by AI rather than human players. These characters offer quests that I can complete. Similarly, I can ignore these quests and just go about exploring the online world without paying attention to these animated figures and the purpose they serve. It bears noting, however, that in presenting this experience to the reader, I have yet to represent direct social interaction with others. Rather, I have charted an arrival in digital space that, thus far, is empty of sociality. The arrival stories Pratt describes begin with the ethnographer being confronted directly with the body of another human being. I enter into the online world and am confronted by impersonal representations of machine intelligence. These representations, in turn, are represented within my writing—though how they are treated requires self-awareness on my part. Do I describe these digital greeters in rich detail? Or, do I skip the arrival narrative altogether and thus avoid dealing with artificial intelligence completely? The core of this problem can be thought of within a simple statement: no one lives online. To my knowledge, there are no aboriginal tribes within the digital sphere of World of Warcraft, nor were there ever an original people for a colonizing group to enslave. Thus, ethnography of Digital Ethnography: 17 online worlds may seem to avoid the tricky moralized issues that confront a researcher who has journeyed to visit a supposedly isolated tribe in the Amazon, or a remote African village. The problematic exoticisms that made most anthropological academically interesting are the same exoticisms that undergird questions of “otherness.” The exotic natives of online environments, however, are collections of pixels responding to computer code—not peoples who have been displaced by colonization, violence, or slavery. This is not to say, however, that digital universes are devoid of exploitative histories in need of critical interpretations. Taylor’s (2006) work demonstrates that identities are constantly negotiated in online contexts. The situation Taylor observes concerns the use of non-English languages on a primarily English game server in WoW. Taylor cautions, “Analyses that foresee MMOGs as a place for cross-cultural border crossing need to be aware of the everyday context these games operate within and certainly how they are situated within a much broader, often ambivalent conversation about, for example, European identity and transnationalism” (p. 321). For servers based in Europe, this distinction is doubly important, but for servers based in the United States, a different dynamic results. Blizzard only provides English speaking servers to players in the United States, and it is yet to be seen if, or when, Blizzard will approach the large number of Spanish speaking people in the United States. Implicit in this discussion is the underlying theme that where one is located is the determining factor as to the cultural norms to which they will have access. Servers in World of Warcraft offer strange platforms for cultural intermingling. My own experience studying WoW had similar linguistic barriers, but rather as a situation which was partially based on issues of European identity, instead the issues centered around the “strangeness” of being confronted by a different language on a presumably completely English server. The gaming situation I am Digital Ethnography: 20 present Doucet’s notion of “gossamer walls,” or separations between ethnographer and other. For each of these three separations, I will briefly posit an additional consideration that should be considered by ethnographers who are exploring the online landscapes and sociality of video games. Moving on from these pre-existing walls, I then add a fourth separation to this mix. I argue, simply, that there exists not only a separation between the ethnographer and themselves, their respondents, and their audience, but also a distinct separation from the ethnographer and the technologies which they are study. Thus, this final separation warrants an additional consideration for the ethnographer of digital environments—the ethnographer must not only expose their social privileges and subjectivities to the rigor of academic discourse, they must also “show their hand” as to the philosophical assumptions they have regarding technology and humanity. Simply put, it is not enough for ethnographers to be wary of the social biases they bring to the ethnographic project—they must similarly be aware of how their representation of the social contexts of video-games are colored by their technological assumptions. Doucet (2008) offers a potential corrective to countering the “messiness” of ethnographic texts. Allowing that ethnography is ultimately at the hands of a very human, and thereby biased, flawed, and imperfect being, there needs to be a corrective for examining and bringing to light the ways prejudice—be it purely the result of social conventions of racism, sexism, or homophobia, or the more complicated, but still important, products of theoretical, ontological, and epistemological assumptions—shape the ethnographer’s experience and writing of the social world they observe. Doucet seeks to expand notions of reflexivity to cover critical relationships that enable ethnographic projects to even exist, and she seeks a “wide and ‘robust’ conception of reflexivity that includes reflecting upon the personal, political, intellectual, and theoretical autobiographies of ourselves as researchers throughout all stages of research” (p. 74). She Digital Ethnography: 21 continues, stating her goal to “widen dominant understandings of reflexivity from a self-centered exercise to consider other critical relationships that can matter in how we come to know and write about others” (p. 74). This expansion of reflexivity seeks to move beyond the simple awareness of one person’s private and public assumptions about the world. Doucet locates reflexivity in the relationships ethnographers maintain—with themselves, the social beings they study, and those who read their research. The first separation Doucet asks us to consider is the separation between the ethnographer and their own biographical existence. Doucet frames this in terms of the motivations one has in engaging in ethnographic work. She writes, “perhaps the most important consideration, when we consider the relationship between our projects and our selves, is to reflect on and dissect the personal or political motivations that matter in how we come to our research topics” (p. 75). The relationship between researcher and research, then, is complicated by the many other roles the researcher plays in his or her life. Simply explained, the researcher must confront, and make clear, the motivations behind their research. How this relates to online ethnography will be made clear by revisiting World of Warcraft. The motivations which a research may have for examining this artifact are numerous, one may be interested in anything from how people manage their identities in this context, to the ways family members treat one another in this setting. Doucet’s reflexivity brings to the forefront, however, the relationship one has with their identities outside of researcher. If we are to expand this reflexivity to online ethnographies of video games, we must similarly ask ethnographers to discuss their ability to play the game which they are studying. Asking ethnographers to discuss their ability to play these video games is not to allow them to brag about their gaming skills, nor is it to shame them into admitting an embarrassing Digital Ethnography: 22 lack of skill. Rather, it is to simply asking they provide the readers of their ethnographic writing a key component of online gaming that is often ignored in research projects. Namely, since online gaming is both social, and often requires group play, this means other players will at least partially have a say in what the ethnographer can, and cannot, be privy. Taylor’s (2006) account of WoW hints at this capacity when she discusses the use of player-created interface modifications. The software of World of Warcraft allows for players to modify the user interface in ways that allow them to monitor how successful other players are at performing game tasks. Taylor mentions that these modifications can, and often are, used by gamers in determining who to invite to in-game group activities and who to exclude. However, what Taylor does not acknowledge is that the ethnographer’s skill in playing WoW can ultimately determine what areas of the game the ethnographer will be able to visit and analyze. Poor gaming skill prevents ethnographers from accessing high-end game content, and these contexts are often where the players who spend the most time playing the game are located. Thus, a researcher interested in these individuals must, if they are going to examine these players in situ, learn the gaming skills necessary to accompany those players. This potentially barricades many gamer-researchers from being able to witness social activities in which they might be interested. The second relationship Doucet mentions is the relationship between ethnographer and the people being researched. In gaming terms, this refers to the other players inhabiting the game space. These relationships are also important for ethnographies in the traditional sense— the way the ethnographer gets along with those who call the “field” home will impact the observations he or she makes. A hostile ethnographer who is rudely inconsiderate of the cultural norms of the group which he or she is studying will encounter, not surprisingly, hostile informants. A socially aware ethnographer in the same context would, if we continue the Digital Ethnography: 25 find him- or herself framing their writing for this expanded audience, or leaving out important details about the behavior of that player in future interactions as a way of preserving privacy or saving face. Finally, this level of reflexivity calls attention to the “powerful political and community voices on the other side of gossamer walls—influencing, guiding, and moving us towards particular ways of seeing and writing” (Doucet, 2008, p. 82). Taking these three aspects of reflexivity together shows important relational considerations that mark ethnography of online games different from traditional ethnographic ventures. However, Doucet’s reflexivity is lacking in another important respect. As the brief engagement with Latour at the beginning of this section of the paper reminds us, technology itself is often a social actor. As such, we should also expand reflexivity to include the ways the technologies of online communication both structure and inform the epistemological strengths of online ethnography. Being reflexive regarding our philosophic assumptions regarding technology is not enough, however, because the immediate interface between human and online world presents an important issue for the ethnographer. In addition to the three “gossamer walls” that Doucet discusses, I add that ethnographic researchers should also be explicit regarding the technology they use to access the digital world. This means that a researcher should present in their ethnographic writings the computer, or cell phone, or laptop, or other digital device, they use to enter into the digital worlds of online video games. Online ethnographers should also describe the accessories that are pertinent to their online excursion, as these are directly relevant to the modes of communication available to the researcher. Returning one final time (at least in this paper) to World of Warcraft, we can immediately see why this is necessary. The type of computer one uses has significant impacts on the actions Digital Ethnography: 26 that the researcher can witness. Since WoW incorporates heavy graphics, the use of player- made-modifications, and VOIP capabilities, an ethnographer with a computer that is specifically designed for playing video games is at a distinct advantage over the ethnographer who has only the minimum computer requirements for game play. For instance, without enough memory capacity, some of the more populated areas of World of Warcraft will cause the ethnographer’s computer to shut down. This can be problematic if the ethnographer’s research questions deal specifically with the emergent behavior of players in these locations. Further, without a computer with VOIP compatible hardware, the ethnographer is unable to engage interlocutors in the field via vocal utterances. This may, or may not, impact how other players interact with the ethnographer in ways which depend highly on the context in which these vocal utterances would be required by other players. There is another way that the technologies of game software impact the firsthand knowledge ethnographers can perceive. In World of Warcraft, players have many ways to communicate with one another, including several different channels for textual communication. A wary and reflexive ethnographer will be aware of these channels and note that there can be, and often is, multitudes of messages to which he or she will not have access. This often takes the form of private messages between two players (who may even be playing alongside the researcher), or the use of different message channels to which the investigator may not have access. Further, the researcher should also note that other players have the capacity to block communication from others—simply put, one player can set their computer to ignore incoming messages from another player. For example, a player who consistently curses may be blocked by another player who becomes frustrated by the consistent use of vulgarity. Thus, a player could place the ethnographer on ignore status without the ethnographer ever being aware. On Digital Ethnography: 27 top of this, the ethnographer should also note that the words, text, and interactions they are able to perceive might not be perceived by other players. Suddenly, the online interactions an ethnographer describes require a more nuanced, and technologically savvy, appreciation for detail. Ethnographers may need to question their assumptions regarding who can, and cannot, communicate in a given online situation. Our discussion of ethnographic methods applied to the online contexts of video games has covered many areas of concern. First, I presented some problems with treating ethnographic methods of research similarly to quantitative methods. Building upon this, I moved our discussion into the two crises of ethnographic research—representation and legitimation—with particular emphasis on issues regarding representation. From here, I argued that ethnographic methods of online contexts need to exhibit reflexivity of the ways technology challenges the first-hand gathering of knowledge in which an ethnographer engages. Finally, I advocated the necessity for observing, and detailing, the technological mediums which grant an ethnographer access to the online field of inquiry. Each of these arguments was illustrated using examples from World of Warcraft. Future projects which undertake the important, but often difficult, work of ethnography in online environments can provide a rich, although partial, view of how many people have decided to interact with one another. Though calling these online gatherings of people a community is still contested by different philosophers and researchers, I agree with Hine’s (2000) conclusion regarding socialization which occurs through computer-mediated-communication. Hine writes, “Arguing over whether online social formations map directly on to those that occur either ideally or actually in offline settings may be a distraction from the study of whatever develops online in Digital Ethnography: 30 Guimarães, M. J. L. (2005). Doing anthropology in cyberspace: Fieldwork boundaries and social environments. In C. Hine, Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet (pp. 141-156). Oxford, England: Berg Publishers. Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. London: Sage Publications. 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