amablog

Working title:
Textual Productivity and Creativity in Online Gaming Communities: Understanding User Experience as Narrative Engagement

The focus of this project is motivated by a wish to expand on and supplement the research on user experience especially within the two fields of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and computer game studies, which can be said to belong to the broader field of cyberculture studies.

In game studies, the question of the role of narrativity has been widely discussed. Since the establishment of game studies as a field during the 1990s, the criteria for analyzing, evaluating and defining computer games as an aesthetical genre has been debated, and the pitfalls of simply transferring terminology and methods from other aesthetical research fields such as literature and film have been pointed out by Espen Aarseth and Gonzalo Frasca, among others (e.g. Aarseth, 2001). In my project, I wish to introduce a more hermeneutical understanding of the role of narrative in computer games, which has more to do with the experience and co-creation of the player that the formal characteristics of the game.

More often than not, HCI research has been occupied with issues of work and study, but now that the use of IT – especially the personal computer and the Internet – has become a major part of our private lives and homes, issues of enjoyment and fun through the use of technology has become an issue not to be overlooked (Blythe et al, 2003, p. ). In recent years, designers and researchers have become aware that the specific kind of experience and use that computer games offer the player is something to strive for in other kinds of interaction with web services and interfaces (as is discussed in e.g. Blythe et al, 2003).

One of the central characteristics of computer gaming is that it demands creative activity and performance from the user, whether it be simply clicking on the right button at the right time or moving around in a vast virtual world, handling various levels of goals and situations. But not only gaming itself invites this high level of creativity – around various types of computer games, communities arise, where players creatively relate to the game and to themselves as players, and they seem to be doing this through various forms of storytelling. In this way, values and identities are formed, negotiated and exchanged at the intersection of game, community and user. In other words, computer games are examples of design that engages the user immensely, and in my project, I wish to seek out and describe this user engagement.

I am interested generally in the textual and cultural strategies in online communication, identity formation and community building, and my specific study cases are examples of textual productivity and creativity in online gaming communities relating to the online multiplayer game World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004) and the singleplayer simulation game The Sims 2 (Maxis 2004). My assumption is that there are many insights to gain about the lived experience of players of computer games from the textual analysis of their writings and a sensitivity towards the literary techniques and fictional projections that can be observed in many of the online writings of players. In other words, as a humanist scholar I am more interested in meanings and contexts that in effects and statistics, and I hope to show in my PhD project that by studying what and how people write about the games they play, we can gain knowledge about why they play and participate and who they construct themselves to be.

My project is guided by the idea that narrativity offers a fundamental framework for meaningful experience and interaction in our lives, online as well as offline. This idea rests especially on the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur about the relationship between narrative and identity, which implicates that we understand our personal identity through narrative and emplotting, that these narratives involve not only other people and their narratives, but also greater cultural and social narratives. And that personal identity is a narrative identity also means that identity is something dynamic, not fixed (Ricoeur, 1994). Moreover, Ricoeur’s theories on mimesis as a dynamic process (as in Ricouer, 1988), are highly relevant as an illustration of gaming also being an interpretative and constantly reconfiguring experience.

In short, the purpose of my project is to investigate and describe the narrative practices in online communities around computer games, with the intention of grasping which qualities about these games and their communities are facilitating and encouraging user creativity and engagement.

The motivations behind my project can be turned into the following research questions that guide my work:

• How do players of computer games make sense of their experience, and how do they communicate it?
• Which role does the practice of storytelling play in the formation of both commu-nity and player identities?
• What and how can we learn about the game and the community of players through studying their texts?

My study will hopefully also contribute with knowledge in the more general area of HCI  and digital media studies, as the following broader questions arise:

• What in the game and in the web environment especially facilitates and promotes these narrative practices?
• By which means are non-commercial or non-institutional online communities as a social space developed and sustained by the users themselves?

References:
Aarseth, Espen (2001). ). ”Computer Game Studies, Year One” in Game Studies, Volume 1, issue 1. Link.
Blythe, M. A., Overbeeke, K., Monk, A. F., & Wright, P. C. (Eds.). (2003). Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment: Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Ricoeur, P. (1992). Oneself as Another: University Of Chicago Press.
Ricœur, P. (1984-88). Time and Narrative I-III: University of Chicago Press.