[Air-l] Re: MMORPGs as MOOs/MUDs

[Kathy Mancuso]

> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 16:01:36 -0500
> From: Radhika Gajjala <radhika at cyberdiva.org>
> Subject: Re: [Air-l] hanging out and mushes - performatively masculine
>         still?
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Message-ID: <a0611042abe68da67d933@[192.168.1.101]>
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> 
> >On Mar 24, 2005, at 12:47 PM, Kendall, Lori wrote:
> >
> >>I'm also interested in what people have found on this issue.  It is
> >>worth noting that the mud I studied was more male-dominated (in
> >>both numbers and culture) than many, if not most, existing at that
> >>time.  That group still exists online (with some loss of original
> >>members and some new participants) and remains as male-dominated as
> >>ever.  But it has never been typical.
> >>
> >>As for the young generation of mush-ers, how active and big is it?
> >>Even among my most online-active students, only a very few even
> >>know what a mud/moo/etc. is.  They participate on message boards,
> >>blogs, IM, but don't mud.
> >
> >From your analytical perspective would the MMPORGs (eg Sims online,
> >World of Warcraft, Second Life and so on) be the same as MUDs?  I'd
> >say that there would be plenty of people that don't know a MUD from
> >a MOO but are active MMPORGers.
> 
> I agree - they follow similar logics - but several players dont
> necessarily know this.

I think first of all we need a distinction here between MMORPG games
that are ostensibly about scoring points/leveling/advancing (world of
warcraft, knights of the old republic, everquest) and simulation games
which don't have any of that and are more about
roleplaying/performativity (second life, there).  Correct me if I'm
wrong Radhika, you know I don't know much about history, but this
would be like the MUD/TinyMUD distinction, no?

Re age: I am the younger generation of which we speak.  I only
personally or from online know one active MOO user under 30, who is
part of LambdaMOO.  A quick LiveJournal search turned up only 43
communities and 173 users interested in mu*, but this only tenuously
points to a possible low interest among young people.  It assumes a
correlation between 1) youth and livejournal use 2) livejournal use
and use of other internet sites and it also assumes that people
actually bother to fill out the interests thing in their profile.  
All those assumptions are problematic, especially #2.

There are already several people doing research in both fields:
*http://socialstudygames.com/ is a site where a bunch of ethnographers
come together to post about their work
*http://xirdal.lmu.de/ is a study of the quake modding subculture,
which is really interesting because of his research design.
*http://www.alex.golub.name/log/ Alex Golub is a UChicago PhD
candidate who is working on a project in Second Life among other
places and teaches a class on this topic
*there's definitely at least one other anthropologist who calls
herself an "embedded ethnographer" on an MMORPG but I can't remember
her name.
> 
> >
> >Do you think that the non-text based and unarchived nature of the
> >games might make them harder to study?
> 
> I would say you can study this -  a triangulation of some particular
> methodologies would be useful - self-observation (actually playing
> and making notes), participant observation, reading manuals, and
> doing an observation of other players while they are playing and you
> are not, doing interviews...
> 
> available static text transcripts are not necessarily the best way
> even with text based moos really.

Of course you can study it!  How do you think ethnographers work in
the offline world?  No, it's not any harder--in some ways as an
anthropologist it's harder to have your fieldsite online because you
don't have the same Going To The Field separation experience as other
people do and thus you find yourself typically living life half in the
field and half at school and not doing either terribly well.  I agree
with Radhika.  Go take notes while watching people fragging IRL at
cons, if what you want to study is Quake.  Observe your own
participation in the world.  Copy and paste text from the talk
channels.  Hang out in the world practicing some passive skill like
fishing or sitting around town so that you're a participant, yet you
can focus on chat.  You might also look at avatars and the way they
interact through emotes, and who follows who in groups.  The hard
thing about studying some MMORPGs would be that most of the activity
takes place within clan groups, which means that you would probably
have to qualify and maintain the requirements to be in one or maybe
several.  This is also true of some simulation games, surprisingly.

Kathy Mancuso
Department of Anthropology
University of South Carolina

-- 
"Sometimes, I get so sick of fighting.  I have to slay the dragons of
the myth of heterosexual European [able-bodied] male society in my
dreams, then get up in the morning and be an activist . . .  What if
there really was a level playing field? I would love to see how far I
could actually go. What if all I had to show off was my mad skills?
Wouldn't I really be able to fly then?"  --Margaret Cho

Websites for my projects:
Anthropologists and labor unions allied: http://AAAUnite.blogspot.com
Orphan Films (22-26 March 2006, CFP): http://www.sc.edu/filmsymposium
Social software/blogging research (ask for CFP): http://del.icio.us/museumfreak
SC Student Anth Conf (CFP): http://www.cas.sc.edu/Anth/events/scconference.htm
USC does Britten's War Requiem: April 19, 7:30, Koger Center