Technology In Situ:
Can Legitimate Field Research
Be Performed When There is No
There There?
AUT Postgraduate Symposium: Techno Praxis:
Questioning the place of technology in research
Kevin M. Sherman
Institute of Culture, Discourse and Communication
Auckland University of Technology
29 August, 2007
Background
• Online Virtual Worlds (OVWs) comprise a
growing and increasingly lucrative industry
– It is predicted that worldwide online game
revenue will increase from $3.4 billion US in
2005 to more than $13 billion US in 2011.
– A single game, World of Warcraft, took in $1
billion US in 2006 alone.
– The OVW, Second Life, claims that more than
$1 million US is spent in-world each day.
Background (cont.)
• Furthermore, Some research suggests
intense involvement by some OVW
participants.
– 30% of active SLers spend more than 20
hours per week in-world (Mallon, 2007).
– Some 20% of Norrath players consider it their
place of residence— “they just commute to
earth and back” (Castronova, 2001, p. 3)
• Despite their growing popularity and the
sometimes intense involvement that occurs
within OVWs…
Very little social scientific research has
considered computer games as behaviour
settings in their own right, or investigated
computer gaming in situ, as a form of human
behavior with its own characteristics worthy of
study. (Clarke & Duimering, 2006, p. 2)
Introduction
• Rather, OVW research tends to follow one
of two tracks:
– Instrumentality
– Experimental approach
Introduction (cont.)
This begs the question—why?
That is, why are there so few studies that
approach OVWs as legitimate sites for
research in their own right?
Introduction (cont.)
• In this paper I will interrogate two possible
sources of this particular gap in the
literature:
– Marginalisation through game comparisons
– Virtual marginalisation
Why game studies now? Because the
information age has, under our noses, become
the gaming age. It appears likely that gaming
and its associated notion of play may become a
master metaphor for a range of human social
relations, with the potential for new freedoms
and new creativity as well as new oppressions
and inequality.
(Boellstorff, 2006, p. 33)
Marginalisation Through Game
Comparisons
• Are all OVWs created equal? Are they all
games?
– Types of OVWs seem to fall along a
continuum of the very game like to the not so
game like
Marginalisation Through Game
Comparisons (cont.)
• Why comparisons between games and the
not-so-game like OVSWs (eg SL) are
legitimate.
Marginalisation Through Game
Comparisons (cont.)
• The issue is not the validity of
comparisons to games
• The issue, from my perspective, is the
effect of such comparisons on the study of
virtual worlds
“The key idea here is not that VR [virtual
reality] worlds have the final claim on
reality, so much as that the RW [real
world] has overstated its claim on reality.
Maybe RW isn't the final arbiter of what's
real after all” (Peter Ludlow, 2001, p. 4)
Virtual Marginalisation
• The very nature of virtual worlds, that is,
their virtuality, has also helped to
marginalise OVW-centric research.
Virtual Marginalisation (cont.)
• The Virtual is real
• The experiences are real, the relationships
formed are real
Virtual Marginalisation (cont.)
• Discussions relating to the Internet and
this notion of virtual are nothing new
• Yet, there is a qualitative difference
between an OVW and a blog, for instance.
Virtual Marginalisation (cont.)
• One of the things that distinguishes OVWs
from other Internet-related phenomenon is
this notion of mediated presence
Other Explanations
• Computing power and Internet speeds
• OVWs are still only a recent phenomenon
Concluding Remarks
• I think it is high time rigorous field research
within virtual worlds took place.
• Although online virtual worlds may seem
like silly little games, for many who inhabit
them they are anything but.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxVDVg
gLqsA
An example of the way in which people
are investing intellectual and emotional
time and energy in OVWs
My Second Life avatar,
archmunster Toll
Acknowledgements
• Professor Allan Bell, primary supervisor
• Lecturer Ian Goodwin, secondary
supervisor
• Institute of Culture, Discourse &
Communication (ICDC)
• Education New Zealand: New Zealand
International Doctoral Research
Scholarship