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Knowing the Way. Managing Epistemic Topologies in Virtual Game Worlds

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Abstract

This is a study of interaction in massively multiplayer online games. The general interest concerns how action is coordinated in practices that neither rely on the use of talk-in-interaction nor on a socially present living body. For the participants studied, the use of text typed chat and the largely underexplored domain of virtual actions remain as materials on which to build consecutive action. How, then, members of these games can and do collaborate, in spite of such apparent interactional deprivation, are the topics of the study. More specifically, it addresses the situated practices that participants rely on in order to monitor other players’ conduct, and through which online actions become recognizable as specific actions with implications for the further achievement of the collaborative events. The analysis shows that these practices share the common phenomenon of projections. As an interactional phenomenon, projection of the next action has been extensively studied. In relation to previous research, this study shows that the projection of a next action can be construed with resources that do not build on turns-at-talk or on actions immediately stemming from the physical body—in the domain of online games, players project activity shifts by means of completely different resources. This observation further suggests that projection should be possible through the reconfiguration of any material, on condition that those reconfigurations and materials are recurrent aspects of some established practice.

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Notes

  1. For the accomplishment of more demanding and highly complex affairs in the game worlds (e.g. so-called raids) there exists additional technological support that can sustain even larger groups.

  2. Normally, this would be the eyes, but in practices based on optical instruments it might be configured differently (see e.g. Mondada 2003).

  3. A common tool utilized builds on need, greed or pass, where need is loosely defined as items that the avatar can use while greed is used for items, to sell to other players or give away to other avatars. Needless to say, this practice can lead to disputes.

  4. A directed emote is accomplished by targeting an avatar with the mouse cursor and typing “/e” followed by the intended action.

  5. Another practice observed is that of escaping combat situations. When a team has entered into combat, they can at times be overwhelmed. Since the non-player characters will only pursue a fleeing player to a certain extent, it is possible to escape from a pending defeat. The central problem with this practice is to organize it as a highly coordinated event. If an escape is initiated by one player who starts to run away from the scene, the other players must recognize the action as exactly that. Any player staying behind will find him or herself in dire trouble.

  6. An attack on a team member will also be displayed by changed status of their energy bars and additional icons in the game interface.

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Acknowledgements

The work reported was supported by the Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction, and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS). It has been financed by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish Research Council by means of the project ‘Learning, interactive technologies and the development of narrative knowing and remembering’. The study has also been funded by the Swedish Research Council through a grant to the project ‘Representation in imaginative practice’. We also wish to express our gratitude to Charles Goodwin, Christian Greiffenhagen, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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  1. Department of Education, University of Gothenburg, Box 300, 405 30, Göteborg, Sweden

    Ulrika Bennerstedt & Jonas Ivarsson

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  1. Ulrika Bennerstedt
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Correspondence to Ulrika Bennerstedt.

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Bennerstedt, U., Ivarsson, J. Knowing the Way. Managing Epistemic Topologies in Virtual Game Worlds. Comput Supported Coop Work 19, 201–230 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-010-9109-8

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