| Description |
xiii, 327 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Methods of culture / Tom Boellstorff -- Play, community, and history / Bonnie A. Nardi -- Play, community, and emergent cultures -- Communities of play and the global playground -- Virtual worlds, play ecosystems, and the ludisphere -- Emergence in cultures, games, and virtual worlds -- Reading, writing, and playing cultures -- An imaginary homeland -- Identity as place -- The inner lives of avatars -- Communities and cultures of play -- Patterns of emergence -- Productive play : cultural production, meaning-making, and agency -- Porous magic circles and the ludisphere -- Emergence as design material -- Methodology : playing ethnography -- Being Artemesia : my life as an avatar -- Coda: Uru resurrection : applied cyberethnography as action research -- Crafting cultures : emergence as design material -- Global playgrounds and the "play turn" in culture. |
| Summary |
Play communities existed long before massively multiplayer online games; they have ranged from bridge clubs to sports leagues, from tabletop role-playing games to Civil War reenactments. With the emergence of digital networks, however, new varieties of adult play communities have appeared, most notably within online games and virtual worlds. Players in these networked worlds sometimes develop a sense of community that transcends the game itself. In Communities of Play, game researcher and designer Celia Pearce explores emergent fan cultures in networked digital worlds - actions by players that do not coincide with the intentions of the game's designers. Pearce looks in particular at the Uru Diaspora - a group of players whose game, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, closed. These players (primarily baby boomers) immigrated into other worlds, self-identifying as "refugees"; relocated in There.com, they created a hybrid culture integrating aspects of their old world. Ostracized at first, they became community leaders. Pearce analyzes the properties of virtual worlds and looks at the ways design affects emergent behavior. She discusses the methodologies for studying online games, including a personal account of the sometimes messy process of ethnography. |
| Subject |
Video games -- Social aspects.
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Video games -- Social aspects. |
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Fantasy games -- Social aspects.
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Fantasy games -- Social aspects. |
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Fantasy games. |
| Genre/Form |
Fantasy games.
|
| Subject |
Role playing -- Social aspects.
|
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Role playing -- Social aspects. |
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Role playing. |
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Shared virtual environments -- Social aspects.
|
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Shared virtual environments. |
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Social aspects. |
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Communities.
|
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Communities. |
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Community life.
|
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Community life. |
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Roleplay. |
| Added Author |
Boellstorff, Tom, 1969-
|
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Nardi, Bonnie A.
|
| Added Title |
Emergent cultures in multiplayer games and virtual worlds |
| ISBN |
9780262162579 hardcover alkaline paper |
|
0262162571 hardcover alkaline paper |
|
