Post # 14, Pearce, The Conclusion

There is a bit of irony in the way Pearce concludes her study of the Myst/Uru population. We were initially introduced to them for only a brief period before we read of the shutting down of their community. At the time, they are all rightfully devastated and hurt by having their online homeland destroyed. But they picked themselves up from their loss and perpetuated their community in different online locales. So when Pearce had the amazingly serendipitous opportunity to help relaunch the MOUL world, it came as a shock to the game developers that the refugees didn't come running back with open arms. I think this is a good example of the adage, "too little, too late." Uru refugees didn't come running back in the large numbers that were expected because they'd recreated their communities elsewhere like there.com, Second Life, and Until Uru.

The game developers for MOUL were much more humane about the second closing than the developers who conducted the first closing, and that definitely contributed to good will in the community, but what I think Pearce fails to make clear is exactly why MOUL failed. Yes, the refugees didn't come back in mass as was expected, but there were still people that played and they attracted new subscribers. What ultimately doomed MOUL? I think that perhaps the game developers, while more empathetic, still didn't really know what the gamers wanted. Something that Pearce brings up is ownership: who owns these game worlds? While the developers are the ones that created the world, it really belongs to the players that inhabit it. This is something that I have had issue with in the past, the concept of an author's work not being his own. I still resist it to a point. As a creative writer, I think it's a bit insulting to presume to tell me that my writings, that I put my time and effort into, that I brought into existence, don't belong to me. But I also realize that everyone approaches a text with their own perspective (well, usually).

Pearce wonders how game designers can guide emergent cultures and I think it's really a moot question. An online gaming world that promotes customization, interaction, and community will inevitably evolve into what the community makes it, not what the designers want it to be. Pearce eventually makes a pitch for the importance of cyberethnographers like herself. Anthropologists or sociologists, Pearce posits, have an advantage over the community leaders because they are able to step back from the community and observe it without the interference of personal investment; in essence, they are the bridge between the community and the designers. It is important for the future of online play communities for the designers to adapt to emergent cultures, even from the very beginning of the design process.

Questions:

1) Having read all of Pearce's book, are you more inclined to participate in an online play community than you might have been before?

2) Pearce lists her avatar, Artemesia, as a co-author of her book. What are your thoughts on this?

3) Pearce started her book by pointing out that play is and has always been a very important and natural part of human nature. How has her book affected your perception of what play means?

Post # 13, Pearce, Raena is a Man (and so is Leshan and Teddy)

I decided to focus this blog on part 4 of Pearce's book because, to be quite honest, it was the drama of multiple events she details that kept me even remotely interested. Pearce makes this comment in the section, I, Avatar:

"Some people think that inhabiting an online world is a way of escaping from yourself; others think it is a way of escaping from others. This is not the case; not in my case, and certainly not in the cases of those I study. Being an avatar means exploring the self  as much as it means exploring others; more specifically, it measn exploring the self through others." (215)

Man or Woman?

I do agree partially with Pearce in that inhabiting an online world isn't always about escapism, but exploration. However, it is also just as much about escapism for some people. Some people can only feel free to be who they really are in a place that offers anonymity and/or encourages self-expression like online worlds. To that effect, gender benders have long found refuge in online worlds, as evidenced by Artemesia's friends, Leshan, Teddy, and Raena. I have always been intrigued by gender roles and the implications they have on individuals in both their real lives and their in-game lives. As a bisexual African-American male with friends and acquaintances that are predominantly from a different race, I tend to see things from multiple perspectives at once; for instance, when my heterosexual male friends do or say something insensitive that sparks the ire of their girlfriends or wives, it usually falls on me to point out to them where they went wrong and how they can make amends and avoid a similar situation again. Likewise, when my female friends come to me complaining that they're not able to get through to their husbands and boyfriends, I can usually point out the flaws in their approaches that hinder their progress. So when Pearce details the account of Raena coming out as a man in real life, I was intrigued by the reaction that she and other members of the community had.

We typically want people to behave a certain way, and a large part of this expected behavior is determined by gender. In an online world like the one Pearce was a member of, people also have expectations and preferences for gender behavior When Pearce found out that Raena was a man named Steve in real life, she said she didn't really care about the revelation. However, when Steve created a male avatar named Raenen and started playing the game with this avatar, Pearce noted that she was not receptive to this change. In fact, most members of the group weren't fond of Raenen, even though it was a truer representation of who was behind the Raena/Raenen persona. Conversely, Leshan, though a man in real life, felt that having a female avatar in-game was a truer representation of who he was, and though he eventually started talking with his natural male voice as opposed to using gender-neutral texts, he kept his avatar female.

Another thing I found interesting in section IV was Leesa and Revelations's wedding. I'm not convinced that in-game weddings are valid due to legal issues and the potential for "digital adultery," but that is irrelevant. The fact that they take place is what's important. It is amazing to me how every aspect of real life becomes duplicated in these meta-worlds. Pearce even mentions another character, Zaire, who has had 3 in-game divorces because her game-spouses wanted to meet her in real life. This is where I feel escapism is a large part of even Pearce's community, though she makes a point of denying so.


Questions:

1) Do you think in-game marriages should be permitted?

2) Mark Zuckerberg's sister is making a push for the eradication of online anonymity in order to combat digital bullying. Taking characters like Raena and Leshan into consideration, do you think this is a good idea?

3) It is interesting to me how people are allowed to create multiple personas within game worlds. However, when we find out that someone is not who we really think they are in real life, we react with feelings of anger and distrust. Considering all that we have learned about the depth and validity on play-communities, why is it acceptable to take on alternate personas in a game-world and not in real life?

Post # 12, Pearce, Part 2

If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck. This common adage is what came to mind when I read about The Gathering of Uru in section two. Pearce continues with her theme of play communities by pointing us to this loyal group of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst players and I found myself thinking, "If it looks like a community, and convenes like a community, and emotes like a community, then it must be a community." TGU members eagerly participated in Pearce's study of them and actively welcomed her into their fold. It sounds not unlike the documentaries on remote tribal people that frequently air on TV stations like The National Geographic Channel or The Discovery Channel. The eagerness of TGU to participate in a study of their community, as well as their hospitality to Pearce, supports the notion of online gaming worlds as "imaginary homelands." The online world that TGU participated in seems as valid a community as any. Pearce reveals that the TGU members are very diverse, ranging "in age from mid-teens to mid-seventies" (72). Another thing that I found noteworthy about this community is that they are evenly made up of male and female players. Female gamers are very much underestimated and often times underrepresented in gaming studies and I thought this was a great example of how games cross gender barriers.

In-game screenshot from L4D2

In-game screenshot from L4D2

It is interesting to note that anytime we play online, we become part of a new community. This online community need not be particularly large, nor does it need to be distinctly different from the social circles that we are a part of in our daily lives. For example, I do not play any games with a massive online community such as Myst or World of Warcraft, however, my three best friends and I play the X-Box 360 game, Left 4 Dead 2, on X-Box live from time to time. We behave pretty much the same as we do whenever we are face to face and in each other's physical presences, but something that we've all noticed before is that when we are in the L4D world, we don't refer to each other by our real names. Instead, we refer to each other by our X-Box Live gamertags (mine, for example, is AMBROCI0US). We really have no reason why we do so, except that when we log in to XBL we know we are entering a different world where we are taking on new personas--ourselves as a group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse. In a co-op survival horror game like L4D, there's no particular push to become different person, so with the exception of running into a horde of flesh-eating zombies in order to rescue each other (something I'm not sure my very potent fight-or-flight response would allow me to do in a real life zombie attack scenario) we behave much the way we do in real life.

I was not riveted by Riven

Pearce points out that Uru Myst and other MMOWs and MMORPGs influence the behavior of their players. Uru players in particular, already seemed to have a lot in common with each other prior to playing together in that world. Most were already intimately familiar with Myst and its narrative and gameplay mechanics. Most did not like or play other types of games, and they typically had a negative impression of games that included violence and killing. They were, in short, very much different from the average gamer. Myst, it seems, in being such a different kind of game, courted a very different type of gamer and I can personally attest to that. In the summer of 1998, just before I left for Marine Corps boot camp, I purchased the game, Riven, for my PSX (the original Playstation is now commonly referred to as the PSX). Riven is the sequel to Myst and it got very high reviews in gaming magazines of the time, so I purchased it based on those reviews and a very flawed assumption that it would have at least some similarities with my then-favorite RPG, Final Fantasy VIII. I would soon regret it. With the exception of games like Number Munchers and The Oregon Trail that I played in elementary school on Apple IIe computers, I'd never played a computer game. Myst (Riven) was a PC game that was ported to the PSX, and it was a very different experience than I was expecting. There was no dynamic action, no on screen character (it was completely first-person), no explosions or violence...in short, nothing that a testosterone-laden, teenage boy expected from a videogame. I was bored to tears with Riven, but this underscores Pearce's observation that game worlds attract certain gamers. I wasn't, at that time, the type of gamer that would have gravitated to Myst, and I only purchased the game for lack of proper research on my behalf. It was not a homeworld designed for me, and I would not have conformed to it the way TGU members willingly and eagerly did. That is not to say that it isn't a valid homeworld, because it is. The way the TGU members fought for their world, the way they congregated hours before their community was shutdown, and the way they migrated to new online worlds afterwards attests to the importance and validity of this digital world to its denizens.


Questions:
1) Does the experience TGU suffered by having their gaming world shutdown elicit more, less, or equal pity from you than that of real world communities that are shut down?

2) The Myst shaped and/or confined the behavior of those that participated in its online world, attracting certain people to the game. Do you think society is more or less influential on your personal behavior than a gameworld is on its players?

3) Do you think hospitals and therapy institutions should implement an online world where patients can create avatars and convene with each other in order to facilitate the healing process?