Download Massively Multiplayer Online Videogames as a Constellation of

Massively Multiplayer Online Videogames as a Constellation of Literacy Practices
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Constance A. Steinkuehler
Curriculum & Instruction
University of Wisconsin-Madison
A paper presented at International Conference on Literacy, Ghent, Belgium, 2003
Special thanks to the Lineage gamers who have graciously allowed me to study them. Without their
participation
and enthusiastic support, this work would not be possible. So, to those interviewees, informants,
pledgemates, and
friends: ty so! ^_^*
Before symbolic processing theory developed in the late 1950’s, psychology was
dominated by theories of behaviorism that treated human behavior as nothing more than direct
response to environmental stimuli (SÆR). Symbolic processing theory later rejected this
assumption, concluding that human behavior could not be explained without positing an
intermediate stratum of mental processes that occur between input (stimuli from the
environment) and output (behavior). Human beings, it was argued, mentally represent
information from the environment, process that information, then select behaviors accordingly.
The mind, from this perspective, is an information processing system analogous to a computer:
literally, a physical symbol system. Perceptual processes encode information as symbols; motor
processes decode symbols into behavioral outputs, and, together, these two input/output
processes “connect the symbol system with its environment, providing it with its semantics, the
operational definitions of its symbols” (Vera & Simon, 1993, p. 9). Thus, cognition is
traditionally “factored” out from its social, material, and temporal context, and the question of
how meaning gets made is reduced to a question of how symbolic information is processed “in
the head.”
From the perspective of New Cognitive Studies, however, meaning, cannot be adequately
accounted for by computational models of structures and processes “in the head”; rather, one
must look to the intact activity systems — structures of interactions between individuals and
their social and material contexts — in which the individual participates. This new body of
theory and research includes work in activity theory (e.g., Engestrom, Miettinen, & Punamaki,
1999), connectionism (Allman, 1989; Johnson & Brown, 1998), Discourse theory (Gee, 1992,
1996, 1999), distributed cognition (e.g., Hutchins, 1995), ecological psychology (e.g., Gibson,
1979/1986), ethnomethodology (e.g., Garfinkel, 1967), mediated action (e.g., Wertsch, 1998),
situated learning (e.g., Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991), sociocultural theory (e.g., Vygotsky,
1978), and situativity theory (e.g., Greeno, & Moore, 1993). From this perspective, cognition is
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(inter)action in the social and material world; thus the focus is on interactive systems of activity
of which the individual is only one part. Such systems always necessarily include social
relationships, physical and temporal contexts, symbolic and material resources, and historical
change. Within such systems, cognition is “a complex social phenomenon…distributed —
stretched over, not divided among — mind, body, activity and culturally organized settings
(which include other actors)” (Lave, 1988, p.1). In contrast to symbolic processing theory,
which takes the meaning of a symbol (what it “designates or denotes,” Vera & Simon, 1993, p.9)
as given, New Cognitive Studies focuses on how meaning evolves through enculturation.
Through participation in a community of practice, an individual comes to understand the world
(and themselves) from the perspective of that community. Thus, semantic interpretation is taken
as part of what people do in the lived-in world; it arises through interaction with social and
material resources in the context of a community with its own participant structures, values, and
goals (Gee, 1992; Greeno, & Moore, 1993).
To date, the most comprehensive and methodologically coherent strand of the New
Cognitive Studies is Gee’s (1992, 1996, 1999) work on Discourse theory and analysis. Coming
out of the New Literacy Studies (e.g., Barton, 1994; Cazden 1988; Cook-Gumperz 1986;
Gumperz, 1982; Halliday, 1978; Heath, 1983; Kress, 1985; Scollon & Scollon, 1981; Street,
1984, 1993; Wells, 1986), Discourse theory maintains the New Cognitive Studies’ focus on
individuals’ (inter)action in the social and material world, but, by foregrounding the role of
d/Discourse (language-in-use/”kinds of people”) in such interactions, it provides a fulcrum about
which theory and method can be coherently leveraged to gain insight into the situated meanings
individuals construct (not just the information they process) and the definitive role of
communities in that meaning.
From the Discourse Theory perspective, the transmission model of communication that
underlies symbolic processing theory (and, for that matter, our everyday folk theory of how
communication works, Lakoff & Johnson 1980) is a red herring. Meaning is not something
transparently encoded from the environment, stored in one’s head, and then packaged in
language for transmission to someone else’s cranial container, for decoding and storage on the
opposite end. Rather, the mind operates as a “pattern recognition device” (for a discussion of
neural networks and connectionist models of the mind, see Allman, 1989; Churchland, 1989;
Johnson & Brown, 1988; McClelland, Rumelhard, & the PDP Research Group, 1986): It
encodes experiences as massively parallel, networked, and variably weighted associations among
features of a given experience, actively generates emergent patterns from those networked
features, and applies and adapts those patterns (features, connections, and weights) in the face of
new experiences (Gee, 1992). Therefore, the “meaning” of a symbol (e.g., a word) is not a
stable, abstract, general, or decontextualized entity. Rather, it is situated (Gee, 1999): It is a
pattern that we assemble “on the fly,” from and for particular contexts of use. It is multiple,
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varying across different situations, integrally tied to specific contexts of use, and based on how
the current context and prior experiences are construed (Agar, 1994; Barsalou 1991, 1992; Clark
1993, 1996; Hofstadter 1997; Kress 1985; Levinson 1983).
Meaning is also, therefore, thoroughly social. Something must guide an individual’s
sense making given the infinite ways in which any particular context of an utterance might be
construed. This “something” is (often tacit) assumptions about how the world “works,”
assumptions that hang together to form cultural models, explanatory theories or “story lines” of
prototypical people and events (Gee, 1999) that are created, maintained, and transformed by
specific social groups whose ways of being in the world underwrite them (Gee, 1999). These
“ways of being in the world” or “forms of life” (Wittgenstein, 1958) are what Gee (1992, 1996,
1999) calls “big D Discourses.” Big-D Discourses are “different ways in which we humans
integrate language with non-language 'stuff,' such as different ways of thinking, acting,
interacting, valuing, feeling, believing, and using symbols, tools, and objects in the right places
and at the right times so as to… give the material world certain meanings… make certain sorts of
meaningful connections in our experience, and privilege certain symbols systems and ways of
knowing over others" (Gee, 1999, p. 13). They are what others theorists have, at different times,
called (“small d”) discourses (Foucault, 1966, 1977, 1980), communities of practice (Lave &
Wenger, 1991), discourse communities (Miller, 1984), distributed knowledge systems (Hutchins,
1995), thought collectives (Fleck, 1979), practices (Bourdieu 1977, 1990; Heidegger 1996),
cultures (Geertz 1973, 1983), and actor-actant networks (Latour 1987).
MMORPGaming
Gee’s Discourse theory has been applied with great success to widely disparate domains
of practice, such as “sharing time” in early elementary classrooms (Gee, 1996), the academic
versus ‘streetcorner” Discourses of adolescents (Knobel, 1999, p.37), and the workplace
practices of “new capitalist” corporations (Gee, Hull & Lankshear, 1996). It has yet to be
applied, however, to the domain of “Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games”
(MMORPGs) – highly graphical 3-D videogames played online, allowing individuals, through
their self-created digital characters or “avatars,” to interact not only with the gaming software
(the designed environment of the game and the computer-controlled characters within it) but
with other players’ avatars as well. Such games are ripe for analysis of the discourse/Discourse
(language-in-use/”kinds of people”) attending them: Given their increasing domination of the
entertainment industry, wide-spread and growing popularity with people of all age groups,
ethnicities, and economic classes, and purported addictive quality for those who plug in (Jewels,
2002), MMORPGs are quickly becoming the form of entertainment and an important mechanism
of socialization for young and old alike.
Online gaming is “one of the few unambiguously profitable uses of the Internet, other
than pornography” (Kolbert, 2001). Last year, the videogame industry made a reported $9.3
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billion – more money than Hollywood box office movies ($8.1 million). As more and more
games go online (e.g., games designed for Sony’s PlayStation2 and Microsoft’s Xbox, Vaknin,
2002), the gaming industry will soon out-profit both the record industry ($14.3 billion) and home
video rentals ($19 billion) as well (Snider, 2002). The virtual worlds created for such games are
non-trivial. Thanks to out-of-game trading of in-game items, Norrath, the virtual setting of the
MMORPG EverQuest, is the seventy-seventh largest economy in the real world, with a GNP per
capita between that of Russia and Bulgaria. One platinum piece, the unit of currency in Norrath,
trades on real world exchange markets higher than both the Yen and the Lira (Castronova, 2001).
Lineage, for example, boasts more than 2.5 million current subscribers (Vaknin, 2002) and, in
the course of a year, Ultima Online devours more than one hundred and sixty million man-hours
(Kolbert, 2001).
The virtual worlds that MMORPGamers routinely plug in and inhabit are persistent social
and material worlds, loosely structured by open-ended (fantasy) narratives, where players are
largely free to do as they please – slay ogres, siege castles, barter goods in town, or shake the
fruit out of trees. They are notorious for their peculiar combination of designed “escapist
fantasy” yet emergent “social realism” (Kolbert, 2001): in a setting of wizards and elves, princes
and knights, people save for homes, create basket indices of the trading market, build
relationships of status and solidarity, and worry about crime. And should we think videogames
are merely transient fads of marginal populations with no bearing on the “real world,” consider a
small segment of current world news: On January 30, 2003, as I write this manuscript, legislator
Trond Helleland, a member of the ruling Conservative Party of the Norwegian parliament, was
forced to issue a public apology for getting caught playing a war game on his pocket computer
during a parliamentary session while the legislators around him debated the very real and very
impending war in Iraq (“Norway MP plays,” 2003).
Despite frequent public dismissals and indictments from the non-gaming community,
videogames do constitute a complex and nuanced set of multi-modal social and communicative
practices, tied to particular communities and consequential for membership and identity (Gee,
2003); as such MMORPGaming is participation in a Discourse. This Discourse is consequential
for its participants: What is at first confined to the game alone soon spills over into the virtual
world beyond it (e.g., websites, chatrooms, email) and even life off-screen (e.g., telephone calls,
face-to-face meetings), and collections of in-character playmates likewise expand into real-world
affinity groups. “Playing one's character(s) and living in [these virtual worlds] becomes an
important part of daily life. Since much of the excitement of the game depends on having
personal relationships and being part of [the] community's developing politics and projects, it is
hard to participate just a little" (Turkle, p. 184).
My ongoing research is on the Discourse of MMORPGaming, a Discourse constituted by
language and practice both within the game (e.g., virtual social interaction and joint activity
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conducted through the gaming software) and beyond (e.g., the creation of written game-related
narratives and websites). The analysis presented here is an initial attempt to explicate the kinds
of social and material activities that MMORPGamers routinely participate in and, more
specifically, how language functions within such activities. I will first briefly review the context
of my research and the data collection and analysis methods I use to get at meaning-making
(thus, cognition) in such settings. The remainder of this paper then focuses on the meaning and
function of one utterance that occurred on an MMORPG called Lineage, demonstrating how this
instance of language-in-use is situated in its particular (virtual) social and material context, tied
to the Discourse community of MMORPGamers, and consequential for marking membership in
that community. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this work for theory
and practice, and the research questions this initial analysis raises.
Method
Context of Study: The Game Lineage
The MMORPG “Lineage: The Blood Pledge” was strategically chosen as the site of this
ongoing research based on its success on the gaming market and reputation for “depth of play.”
After 3 years of domination in the Korean gaming sphere (Becker, 2001), Lineage expanded to
America and now boasts over 10 million accumulated members globally on over 35 different
servers. (“Lineage Guidebook,” 2002, p. 3). Peaking at roughly 1400 users on the North
American servers (Lafferty, 2002), Lineage has been “quietly outperforming all the rest” since
release in 1998 (Xander, 2002) and has earned itself a reputation as an “excellent balance of a
single-player vicariousness with group cooperation” (Brandon, 2002) and “a worthy addition [to
the MMORPG world] that is able to stand up to the big three of Everquest, Asheron’s Call and
Ultima Online and even triumph over them in some aspects” (Becker, 2001). Its most noted
feature, however, is its depth of play (Becker, 2001; Brandon, 2002; Foster, 2001; Lafferty,
2002; Warso, 2002; Xander, 2002).
Lineage’s reputation for “depth of play” stems from its complex “blood pledge system,” a
system tightly coupled to both the guiding narrative and the virtual world’s economic system.
The guiding narrative
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behind Lineage gameplay is that once upon a (medieval) time, the
kingdom of Aden (the virtual world of Lineage, see Appendix A) was in a terrible state of war
and disorder. A heroic knight rescued the kingdom and, out of gratitude, the reigning Queen
married him, essentially handing him the throne. This hero King suspiciously died a short time
after, leaving behind the grieving Queen and their 3-year old child. About this time, a second
knight arrived on the scene, usurping the Queen’s heart and the throne of Aden with it; unlike the
first, however, this knight was an evil man who took the throne out of lust and greed and quickly
returned the kingdom to its former state of poverty and war. In fear for her heir’s life, the Queen
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sent her child to be raised secretly by a loyal member of the hero King’s former blood pledge.
The young child knew his/her destiny was to grow strong and reclaim the throne from the evil
King, but s/he also knew he could not achieve this alone. Hence, s/he sets out to roam the
kingdom in search of honorable subjects willing to pledge their allegiance to him/her and the
cause – reclamation of the throne from the bad King and the restoration of peace and prosperity
across the land.
This guiding narrative combines with the game design to engender “depth of play” in
terms of goal-driven and globally
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consequential social interaction. When you first begin the
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I will call this a “guiding narrative” despite the fact that that it only loosely structures
gameplay. Like most
gamers, I never read the complete story behind Lineage, which can be found in the Lineage Guidebook
(2002). In
fact, I only found out about it when it was “orated” to me (orally delivered, though, in the game, oral
speaking must
be accomplished through typed text) one day in an area called “the wastelands” when I happened to ask
my hunting
partner why that particular territory was so ugly and desolate.
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Global in terms of the virtual kingdom of Aden.
game, you have the option of playing a male or female elf, knight, mage (magician), or royal (a
prince or princess)
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. “Like chess, the prince or princess is frail and must be protected” (Foster,
2001); therefore, they must compete with one another to recruit other classes into their pledge as
both personal protection and armed forces for bloody competition for the limited number of
castles in the kingdom. Royals enlist other players to join their pledge, conferring each recruited
member their pledge emblem and title that displays the player’s allegiance (both of which appear
above the avatar’s head, along with the avatar’s name). Within- and between-pledge activities
are the yarn from which Lineage history and narrative is woven: Pledges (and individual players)
quickly gain reputations over daily affairs, wars break out over who said/did what to whom,
alliances are made and broken, and stories of intrigue perpetually fill the air (or, more
specifically, the chat window). Such pledge politics drive the entire kingdom’s economic
system: Each castle in the kingdom collects taxes from the local area – on local houses, on
purchases at village stores, on gambling proceeds (e.g., slime races), and on profits earned from
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death-match coliseums (where players sign up to show off their gladiator skills). The currently
holding royal sets the local tax rate and distributes such castle income as she sees fit (e.g., she
can pay castle defenders, hold local lotteries, or hoard it for her own use), yet her decisions have
political consequences. Local village citizens can revolt should the tax rate be set to high, pledge
members can betray their monarch should they find themselves shedding blood at the castle gates
for no profit, and allies and enemies are quickly made over whose pockets are being
surreptitiously lined with adena (the unit of currency within the game). “After joining a
[pledge], players develop a pride and loyalty that is unique to the multiplaying world. Until now,
online games had not been designed to wholly incorporate players’ actions into the over-arcing
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A single user account on Lineage actually allows the creation of up to three characters, so one can play
several different genders and classes, should one so choose.
story of the game. In Lineage, players can assume the role of hero or villain and their exploits
can live on in the legends and curses of thousands of gamers. The potential for ego boosting and
bashing, epic [pledge] feuds, and history-making battles is so great for Lineage that it is hard to
imagine the game not impressing American gamers”(Murphy, 2001). The end result is a
complex social space of affiliations and disaffiliations, constructed largely out of shared (or
disparate) social and material practices – ways of behaving, communicating, interacting, and
valuing that are “forms of life” (albeit virtual) through which individuals enact not just their
character class, be it elf or princess, but the “kinds of people” (Hacking, 1986, 1994) that they
construe themselves to be and that others can recognize. The gaming community calls this
“depth of play”; from a New Cognitivist perspective, it is the workings of “big D” Discourse
(Gee, 1992, 1996, 1999).
Figure 1. Lineage game play and interface, depicting a pledge hunt for the Giant
Ant Queen in the main game window.
Data Collection Method & Analytic Framework
Because Discourse theory takes the proper unit of study for work on cognition as the
Discourses of socially defined groups rather than the individual “head” per se (Gee, 1992), the
proper research method is cognitive ethnography using discourse analysis. Cognitive
ethnography — the description of specific cultures in terms of cognitive practices, their basis,
and their consequences — was chosen as the primary research methodology as a way to tease out
what happens in the virtual setting of the game and how the people involved consider their own
activities, the activities of others, and the contexts in which those activities takes place. Because
distributed and situated cognition is “not in anyone's head, but embedded in the history and
social practices of the group” (Gee, 1992, p. 105), “think description” (Geertz, 1973) is required
in order to unearth the cultural models embedded in the d/Discourse of the group under study
(Gee, 1992), how these models transform and are transformed by the social and material
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activities of the group, and how these assumptions, values and beliefs shape identity and
membership of those who engage in such d/Discourse practices. Thick description necessarily
includes the collection and analysis of recorded observation of naturally occurring gameplay,
game-related player communications (e.g., discussion board posts, chatroom and instant message
conversations, emails), community documents (e.g., fan websites, community-authored game
fictions, company- and community-written player manuals and guidebooks), and on- or offline
interviews with informants.
Such thick description, however, can only be accomplished through discourse analysis
(Fairclough 1989, 1995; Gee, 1999; Gumperz 1982; Halliday & Hasan, 1989) – “the analysis of
language as it is used to enact activities, perspectives, and identities" (Gee, 1999, p. 4-5). Such
analyses focus on the collocational patterns of linguistic cues such as word choice,
foregrounding/backgrounding syntactic and prosodic markers, cohesion devices, discourse
organization, contextualization signals, and thematic organization (Gee, 1996) used in spoken or
written utterances in order to invite certain interpretive practices (Gee, 1992). Configurations of
such devices signal how the language of the particular utterance is being used to construe various
aspects of reality such as which facets of the (virtual) material world are relevant and in what
way, the implied identity of the speaker/writer and who the audience is construed to be, and what
specific social activities the speaker and her interlocutors are taken to be engaged in (Gee, 1999).
Particular configurations of linguistic cues prompt specific situated meanings of various aspects
of “reality,” meanings which evoke and exploit specific cultural models which are indelibly
linked to particular Discourses, allowing speakers and hearers to display and recognize the “kind
of people” each is purported to be. Through microanalysis of how group members’ utterances
construe the world in particular ways and not others, we are able to infer the cultural models and
concomitant Discourse(s) as play. With such analyses comes explication of the full range of
social and material practices with which they are inextricably linked, since the meaning of those
practices is done with and through language-in-use. Through such discourse-analysis-based and
cognitively-focused ethnographic work, then, we capture the sense human beings make of the
social and material world and their (inter)action with it – in other words, we finally get at the
phenomena of cognition itself, in all its unbounded, situated, distributed, social, and ideological
messiness.
Analysis
This cognitive ethnography of Lineage gameplay is in its beginning stages. Rather than
start with a broad (but shallow) description of Lineage Discourse in all its on- and offline
complexity, I want to begin with a concentrated examination of a single unremarkable utterance
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that occurred during routine collaborative activity in the virtual world of Lineage:
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There are various ways to talk to one another in the game. You can (a)
public chat such that the words you type
appear in a bubble over your head and within the chat window of anyone on your screen, (b) pledge chat
such that
only (and all) members of your pledge can view it in their chat window, (c) yell, such that a range of
players within
your virtual vicinity can see it (along with an arrow indicating where you character is located in relation to
the
hearer, (d) whisper, so that your utterance only appears on the chat window of the person you whisper to,
and (e)
Gaveldor
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:
afk
g2g
too
ef
ot
regen
no
poms
Away
got
to
Elven
to
regenerate
no
mana
from
to
Forest
potions
keys
go
Just a minute, I have to go to the Eleven Forest to regenerate.
I’m out of mana potions.
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This utterance, which roughly translates as “Just a minute, I have to go to the Elven Forest to
regenerate. I’m out of manna potions”, was issued by an experienced Lineage gamer during a
group expedition into a moderately difficult hunting area of the virtual kingdom Aden. I chose it
for its banality rather than its distinctiveness, based on the premise that any claims about a
“big-D” Discourse in operation in the game must be grounded in analysis of the small, routine
accomplishments of its members. This analysis, therefore, begins with the small and seemingly
inconsequential, and from there builds up to claims about broader “forms of life” enacted in the
game through which Lineage community members display their allegiance and identity.
Morphological Analysis
As Turkle (1995) notes, the specialized linguistic practices online gamers use to
communicate appear to a non-gamer much like the “discourse of Dante scholars, ‘a closed world
of references, cross-references, and code’” (p.67). It is a sort of hybrid writing, “speech
momentarily frozen into… ephemeral artifact" (p. 183). Given the medium of communication
— one small chat window (see Figure 1) with a maximum turn of 58 characters allowed per turn
party chat, such that only the members of your current “party” (detailed below) see the utterance. The
utterance
analyzed in this paper was delivered as “party chat.”
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I am using pseudonyms in place of actual avatars names in order to protect (virtual) confidentiality.
— and the fact that talk often occurs in tandem with ongoing activity (e.g., hunts, battles, trades),
abbreviations and truncations riddle player speech. The focal utterance is a case in point:
Gaveldor: afk g2g too ef ot regen no poms
The abbreviation “afk” replaces the prepositional phrase “away from keys,” “g2g” replaces the
verbal clause “got to go” (which in turn stands in for the complete clause “[I have] got to go”)
and “ef” replaces “Elven Forest,” a particular territory in the virtual kingdom that elves call
home. Truncation is also present in the use of “regen” for “regenerate,” which in this context
means to restore one’s health in terms of both “hit points” and “mana points” — the amount of
damage one can survive, (0 HP is death) and the amount of spell power (SP) one has remaining.
Some of the contractions used in Lineage have their origins outside the game; for example, the
abbreviation “g2g” is commonly used in a wide variety of online communicative settings such as
email or instant messaging discussions (e.g., using ICQ or chatrooms), making them standard
fare for gamers and nongamers alike. Others are quite specific to virtual multiplayer gaming.
The abbreviation “afk” is an intriguing case in point.
“Afk” literally stands for the prepositional phrase “away from keys” and, as such, applies
to situations in which the individual so described is (or is about to become) temporarily absent
from her computer but does not disconnect, leaving her avatar present in the virtual space but
momentarily unavailable for conversation or activity; in practice, however, the function and
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meaning of “afk” is far richer than this literal expansion suggests. Less common but
“grammatical” uses (i.e., novel forms considered appropriate use by speakers and hearers in the
game) such as “the afk elf” (meaning “the inactive elf”) suggest that “afk” can function as an
attributive adjectival modifier unlike prepositional phrases in English (note: *the away from keys
elf”), able to be syntactically placed where the literal expansion cannot. Other uses of “afk”
support this interpretation; for example, in my own gameplay on Lineage, I have been called “a
bit afk” while conducting multiple whispered threaded conversations at once and therefore being
slow to respond or react to social and/or material activities in my current gaming window. Here
“afk” is functioning as a predicative adjective as in “[she is] a bit silly” modified by an adverb,
something not possible in English when prepositional phrases are used in predicative position
(note: *[she is] a bit away from keys”
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). Thus, it is used in a wider variety of contexts than its
literal expansion, including situations in which the speaker may very well still be “at their
computer keys” but is temporarily unavailable for activity in the current context, whether that be
activity in the main game window or conversation conducted at a distance through such channels
as pledge chat or whispers. “Afk,” then, seems to function more broadly as an adjective meaning
“distracted” or “disengaged,” one describing some state with gradations rather than the
dichotomous locative prepositional phrase “at/away from keys.”
“Afk” does more work than even this analysis suggests, however. In practice, it can also
serve as a request. The focal utterance of this analysis is a case in point: Gaveldor’s statement
occurred during a collaborative activity called a “pledge hunt.” Immediately after delivering the
utterance, Gaveldor did not go “away from keys” but rather left the joint endeavor to return to
the Elven Forest in order to restore his hit and mana points, an action necessary to continue the
activity at some later point in time if his avatar’s health had already substantially declined. In
this context, “afk” functions much like the more common requests “just a minute” or “one sec,”
(Jesperson, 1924) which temporarily disengage the speaker from the “here and now” and
momentarily suspending one’s obligation to the (social) interaction at hand. One variant of this
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Note, however, expressions like: “That’s a bit over the top.” Where a prepositional phrase used in
predicative
position can take an adverb. Here the prepositional phrase appears to function idiomatically much like
“afk.”
interactional use of “afk” is its inclusion in pledge- or self-designated
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character titles. I have
seen individuals running around various hunting grounds, actively killing mops (monsters) with
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the title “AFK Queen,” for example, suspended over their avatar name, who, when queried,
justified it as a deterrent to other-initiated idle social chat. Such uses seem to be a metonymic
play on afk’s interactional function, where one attribute of something (i.e., disengagement from
social interaction) is used to stand in for the thing itself (i.e. investment in only the ‘hack and
slash’ elements of game rather than the social aspects)
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.
Other features of Lineage gaming linguistic practices that lend it its code-like appearance
include frequent “errors” and specialized vocabulary. In the focal utterance, both typographical
and grammatical errors are present: the typo “ot” for “to” and the use of the adverbial form “too”
where the prepositional form “to” is normally expected. It is curious that Gaveldor distinguishes
the two functions of “to” in this utterance, using “to” to mark the infinitive “to regen(erate)” and
“too” for the preposition. Whether these two functions of “to” are systematically distinguished,
either by this particular gamer or by (some subset of) gamers more generally, is an open
question. At present, I have no data that speaks to the issue. However, both typos and “bad
grammar” are largely accepted as unproblematic and inferentially sparse within Lineage,
meaning that unless such errors are significant enough to interfere with interpretation (e.g., to
make the utterance, in its context, too ambiguous to decipher), they are largely ignored. Players
do not, for example, treat “poor spelling” as indicative of level of education, social class, or
anything else one might expect in everyday communication; rather, they are assumed the
outcome of the medium and context, which in combination force users to communicate through a
highly-constrained channel while engaging in other gaming activities (such as hunting, trading,
8
Most character receive a title from the prince/ ss whose pledge they join; however, after one reaches the
experience
level of 40, one can also self-title should they remain pledgeless.
9
Special thanks to Katherine Clinton for this insight into the metonymic use of “afk” in avatar titling.
and maintaining several conversations at once through various talk types such as pledge chat,
public chat, and whispers).
Specialized vocabulary (and their standard abbreviations) is also ubiquitous to Lineage
communication. In the focal utterance, Gaveldor uses two such terms – “ef” for “Elven Forest”
and “poms” for “potions of mana.” The Elven Forest is a particular territory in the kingdom of
Aden that elves call home. In its center is the “Mother Tree”; elves who stand under its branches
regenerate health and magic power more rapidly. Generally, all Lineage gamers are familiar
with this territory given its inclusion on standard Aden maps found both within the game and
beyond (e.g., maps featured on the official Lineage website, manuals, and fansites); only veteran
12
gamers, however, are familiar with the abbreviation “poms” for “potions of mana,” which are
more typically called “mana pots” or “blues” (given their unique color). “Potions of mana”
function to increase the rate at which a character’s “mana” or magic power is restored after
depletion from repeated spell use. Thus, the specialized terminology regularly used in the game
requires varying levels of familiarity with normative game play.
Syntactic Analysis
Truncation on the clausal level recapitulates truncation on the morphological level, as
revealed when we parse Gaveldor’s utterance into its three functional parts:
Gaveldor: [afk]
= just a minute
(1)
[g2g too ef ot regen]
= got to go to the Elven (2)
Forest to regenerate
[no poms]
= no manna potions
(3)
In regular writing, this utterance would be partitioned by punctuation into three separate tone
units; in Lineage communication, however, standard punctuation
10
and capitalization
conventions are flouted. If and when such conventions are used, they serve a different purpose
than marking tone unit boundaries. For example, capitalization is used to mark intonation (e.g.,
“do NOT put carrots in pstorage dammit”
11
), and periods occupy entire turns to mark the end of a
speaker’s multiple-turn monologue in contexts where turn-taking is critical and problematic (e.g.,
meetings where several individuals have to vie for extended access to the floor). Once so
segmented, the omitted initial strings in parts (2) and (3) become apparent. In both (2) and (3),
the nominative personal pronoun “I” is omitted as well as “have,” but in (2) “have” serves as an
auxiliary verb of the present perfect tense “I have got” while in (3) it functions as the main
transitive verb. Although the grammatical function of the deleted elements varies, in both cases,
the missing elements are sentence-initial and recoverable from the utterance’s context (discursive
or otherwise). Such clause-initial deletion is customary not only in first-person declaratives but
also in second-person interrogatives. When such “erosion” occurs, it tends to include all initial
articles, pronouns, dummies, and auxiliaries that can be readily inferred from context (Thrasher,
1974). This phenomenon can also be found in colloquial English (Napoli, 1982; Schmerling,
13
1973, 1975; Thrasher, 1974), yet it is a ubiquitous pattern in Lineage communication, again
presumably the consequence of the combined temporal and material constraints on typed talk.
Gaveldor: [afk]
= interpersonal
(1)
[g2g too ef ot regen]
= ideational
(2)
10
Except question marks, which are used in the same ways as in everyday written text.
11
The abbreviation “ pstorage” is one variant of “pledge storage,” a place where pledge members can store
items to
share among their group. This command was issued by the General in the pledge I lead in Lineage (my
avatar is a
princess) and was his response (on pledge chat) to finding worthless goods occupying limited storage
space which
was intended for more useful raw material than carrots, which are relatively good for little except
consumption.
[no poms]
= interpersonal
(3)
These three functional units form a pattern in which the social is monitored on the
boundaries of the informational (cf. speakers’ heightened attention to audience at the boundaries
of narrative units in Chipewyan story-telling, Scollon & Scollon, 1979). Functional unit (1) is
interpersonal and serves as a request that temporarily disengages the speaker from the “here and
now.” It displays, at least partially, the speaker’s “framework of expectations” (Levinson, 1983,
p. 280) about the nature of the speech event (Turner, 1972). Gaveldor’s bid for exemption from
the current collaborative activity only makes sense if one presumes that the event (i.e., the
“pledge hunt” during which this utterance was delivered) has some conclusion defined by
something other than one participant’s resources being depleted (i.e., that the event has some
goal other than using up supplies) and that, once engaged in the activity, one normally remains in
it through completion (i.e. until that goal has been reached).
Functional unit (2) is ideational, foregrounding a particular configuration of process,
participants, and circumstance (Martin, Matthiessen, & Painter, 1997):
Gaveldor: [ellipsed “I”]
[g2g]
14
[too ef]
[ot regen] (2)
actor
process:
location
cause:
material
12
purpose
Gaveldor states where he is about to go and why, providing content information that characterize
his forthcoming respite from the activity in terms that assume familiarity of the constraints and
affordances and being a Lineage elf. In terms of constraints, elves rely on mana power to cast
maintenance and enhancement spells on themselves and others, for example, spells that increase
one’s immunity against mop attacks or the potency of one’s assault. An elf drained of mana
12
The modality of “gtg” is necessity and therefore, at least in one way, may also serve an interpersonal
function.
power is seriously compromised; thus, regeneration is crucial to an elf’s ability to participate in
hunts in any useful way. In terms of affordances, elves also have the capacity to travel to the
Elven Forest and back quite rapidly, making quick medicinal runs customary, even in the middle
of ongoing activities. Without this shared knowledge, Gaveldor’s characterization of his
impending “afk-ness” would make little coherent sense.
Functional unit (3) is again interpersonal, serving as a justification for unit (2). Gaveldor
does not simply take leave as needed; instead, he provides his audience an account: he has “no
poms” (i.e., no mana potions). Here, regeneration in the Elven Forest is treated as the logical
alternative to consuming “mana pots” such that the impossibility of one (i.e. taking mana
potions) necessitates the other (i.e. regeneration in the Elven Forest) — a closed set of
alternatives that only makes sense if his listeners are familiar with standard Lineage game play.
This final clause orients to the social in the fact that it provides his audience an explanation for
his impending action and, with its production, Gaveldor displays a sense of social obligation to
the ongoing event. Gaveldor treats his taking temporary leave from this collaborative activity as
an “accountable action” (Sack, 1989), one that requires some form of explanation and therefore
is presumably not within the normal course of the main activity. This is likewise seen in the
utterance’s shifting temporal sense: The “here and now” of Gaveldor’s utterance is the pledge
hunt; his trip the forest is a forthcoming detour.
discourse Analysis
Making sense of Gaveldor’s utterance, given its morphological and syntactic omissions
15
and complexities, requires familiarity with the lexical and grammatical features of “Lineagese,”
but it also requires considerable background knowledge acquired only through having actually
played. Manuals and guidebooks may outline the territories of the virtual kingdom Aden, the
features of each character class, and the material goods available in the game, but they do no
(perhaps even cannot) teach you what the different territories are good for, what the constraints
and affordances of various character classes are in actual practice, or what alternative actions are
possible given the characteristics of each class and the supplies they might carry with. The
ability to expand and translate “Lineagese” into standard English and knowledge of the game as
a designed object (rather than as an emergent practice) are insufficient for grasping the meaning
and function of Gaveldor’s utterance as a whole. Without some understanding of gaming
practice, Gaveldor’s utterance would appear of little consequence. And yet, if we examine the
social practice in which Gaveldor’s utterance is situated, we find that it most certainly does have
consequence. His utterance is aligned with — and aligns — social action and, as such, can be
analyzed as one “move” in a complex coordination not only of language but of (virtual) material
objects and people as well.
Pledge Hunt. In Lineage, players regularly go on what is called a pledge hunt. Pledge
hunts can be declared by anyone, although the most senior attending member of the declarer’s
pledge normally acts as “point man,” the designated coordinator who leads the group during the
activity itself. To make a pledge hunt happen is fairly simple: you just announce over “pledge
chat” the place where you want to group hunt and a town close to that location where people can
meet and buy supplies. Oftentimes, the declarer announces the hunt publicly, wherever she
happens to be at the time, so that others outside the pledge (even members of rival pledges,
should they care to) can also join.
Once a pledge hunt is announced, individuals who want to participate travel (“venz”
should they have a scroll of teleportation, take the long and expensive travel route should they be
out) to the designated town and gather their supplies, for example healing potions, escape scrolls
(that, when used, transport you from wherever you are to the nearest village), polymorph scrolls
(that enable you to temporarily transform your avatar into some selected monster), arrows (if one
is a range fighter), and food (if one is the point man and therefore will have to yell a lot – which
does make a person hungry), arranging their interface hot-keys for quick access to crucial items
such as “pots” and “escapes” (see Figure 1).
Next, participants “poly” and restart the game software — peculiar, yes, but a commonly
known and accepted way to “exploit” the game (i.e., to take advantage of a widely known bug in
the software). When you use a polymorph, you transform your avatar into whatever mop you
choose, gaining not only the appearance but also the strengths and weakness of that particular
creature. However, if you then log out of the game and then log back in, something the
designers never intended occurs: other mops will not recognize you as a player-character and
16
therefore will not aggressively attack you until you attack them. The advantage is huge,
allowing you to choose which mops to fight rather than having to fight any and all that come at
you.
After polying and restarting, members “party” up. A “party” is a group of hunters who
share “experience” – the numeric increase level you get each time you kill a mop, which
increases your strength and skill. How exactly the experience is shared in parties is a highly
debated and researched topic by Lineage gamers themselves with at least two competing
mathematical models in circulation (both based on data individuals collected from trial runs of
various party configurations with various ranges of leveled characters within them, etc.).
Regardless, partied members can see one another’s “health points” in a bar over each avatar’s
head (see Figure 1), crucially allowing them to monitor one another’s welfare. They also share
their own “party chat,” enabling them to talk among each other but no one else. Depending on
the number attending the pledge hunt, up to three separate parties are normally formed. Party
composition matters: Ideally, each party consists of two-three knights, two mages, three-four
elves, and one royal, but players make due with whoever is on hand. People form their parties,
check maps, take (real life) beverage or bathroom breaks, and the pledge hunt begins.
The group moves in masse to the chosen area, by default only going as fast as the slowest
person. Once the group reaches their hunting destination, its full-scale pandemonium. Knights
take the lead, mages follow, elves hang back, and the point-man commands from the very back
of the group, essentially faced with a challenge similar to conducting an orchestra from the
position normally occupied by the tuba. At the end of a pledge hunt, when either mops or
supplies are exhausted, the group “escapes” back to the nearest town and meets to divide up the
booty from the hunt (the “mop drops”). Debriefing discussions usually follow, focusing on what
strategies or actions did or did not work well and what to change for the next go round.
Complex Coordinations. For an individual to participate in routine activities such as
these, they have to get multiple things in sync as once. First and most obviously, they have to
coordinate/get coordinated by virtual material objects, some of which are (virtually) concrete,
some (virtually) abstract, and some a mixture of both (Gee, 1992). The interface itself appears as
a daunting semiotic system to non-players, but for those who play it is transparent cognitive
prosthetic or external memory device (cf. Norman, 1988), through which one “experiences”
one’s avatar’s current state (e.g., health, hunger, wealth, weight, position, and interactions).
Once we move past the interface and into the actual game space players inhabit, we come upon
the virtual objects gamers interact with in highly embodied ways: equipment (engaged and
disengaged at various times for particular goal-driven activities), potions (some to be taken to
increase your health or magic power, others to get a “power up” in speed or amount of damage
you inflict), mops (all of which vary in terms of multiple dimensions, such as how hard they are
to kill, how much damage they can inflict on you, standard approach and attack methods, where
17
they can be found, and what kind of items they commonly or rarely drop), various scrolls with
various effects (from polymorphing your avatar to repositioning it instantly in the virtual world),
and artifacts (such as in-game but vague territory maps, more detailed player-authored and webpublished path maps to various areas with mops that drop highly specific and sought after items).
Gamers have to know how to coordinate such objects and how to get coordinated by
them in return. For example, you have to know how to symbolically arrange critical inventory
items such as potions, scrolls, and frequently used equipment on “hot keys” (function keys for
quick access) and coordinate their use in terms of the on-going activity (here, a pledge hunt).
Crucially, you must also know how to get “in sync” with a myriad assortment of (virtual)
material objects within the game space. In order to successfully participate something as
common as a pledge hunt, for example, you have to be able to anticipate the movement trajectory
of both an incoming mop and your hunting partners, estimate where your avatar must be in order
to attack the monster but not your friends, and then position yourself so that you inflict damage
on the former but not the latter. Should you fail in any part of this complex coordination of such
(virtual) material, symbolic or quasi-material-symbolic objects (e.g. polying into a deer because
its pretty rather than a orc ranger because it can fight), other members of the discourse will
discipline you (e.g. call you a “newbie” in no uncertain terms, and cease to invite you in to
shared endeavors should the verbal accosts fail to “take”) as will the game (you will, by all
means, die again and again).
Getting the material (inter)actions “right,” however, is not enough. There are subtle (and
not so subtle) was you have to coordinate your (inter)actions with other gamers, display tacit
understanding of what the community’s traditional practices are, and align your values with the
norms implicit in those practices. The sheer complexity of the social practices is astounding
13
, as
is the amount of coordination (and patience) it takes to get through everyday joint activities.
Simply staying on the same screen during such events can be a challenge, yet such coordination
is critical. Hunting partners must monitor each other’s current location, health status, and target,
and then use this information to anticipate where different players are likely to go next, what
target they are likely to attack next, and how extensive the damage they will so incur may be
given their class and current strength. Without such coordinated interactions among the gamers,
events such as pledge hunts would end in tangled piles of avatars hitting one another instead of
mops and certain death (with its attending drop in hard-earned leveling experience).
How Gaveldor’s utterance aligns with social action. Gaveldor’s utterance was issued in
the midst of just such a complex coordination of (virtual) material objects and people, and as
such, its architecture reflects the very context for which it is designed.
Gaveldor: [afk]
= interpersonal
18
(1)
[g2g too ef ot regen]
= ideational
(2)
[no poms]
= interpersonal
(3)
13
One vivid though off-topic example of the sheer complexity of Lineage social practices is a meeting I once
attended in order to request alliance with the oldest and most powerful pledge on the server, a pledge
called “DAM.”
After several attempts to set up a meeting with the five DAM princes, I was finally called to a city called
Giran
(where most barter and trade is conducted) to meet. When I arrived, the five famous DAM royals were
lined up in
the town square. I went through the standard formalities (e.g., bowing, addressing each as “M’Lord”), and
at once
was verbally accosted by a mage, polyed into skeleton form, who was strutting back and forth behind the
wall of
DAM royals. The princes remained utterly silent; the mage, on the other hand, began a verbal “spar” (a
practice in
which gamers exchange clever insults and off-color innuendoes, seemingly with the goal of enraging your
adversary
to the point of verbal stupidity, at which point you “win”). Shocked, given the political gravity of the
situation, I
withheld retort. Eventually, however, worn down by the verbal attacks and complete disengagement of
the five
DAM royals, I engaged in the spar and doled out insult for insult, keeping the requisite sense of humor
while,
nonetheless, attempting full humiliation of my opponent (e.g., calling him a bed-wetter whose most
coveted
possession was “Return to SI scrolls,” SI being Singing Island, training grounds only accessible by
characters lower
than level ten). After several minutes of public banter, the mage character whispered me: “I am the core
DAM
prince. Follow me.” He led me to DAM’s pledge house in Giran and commended me on “passing the test”
–
showing verbal acuity and confidence in the face of some of the most legendary and powerful players on
the server.
The core prince, who gave this complex social “test” of my worthiness as a Lineage gamer, was fourteen.
First, the “theme” or point of departure for the entire utterance, functional unit (1), which sets up
the local linguistic context against which the remainder of the utterance is to be interpreted,
foregrounds that his absence will be temporary. Given the way in which pledge hunt
participants’ actions (and survival) are contingent on not only the landscape of the hunting
ground and the incoming mops encountered there but also, and more critically, the ongoing
activities of one another, this initial framing of his absence as “temporary” is important. How (or
whether) the remainder of the group continues hunting is contingent on who is there to
participate; Gaveldor’s utterance foregrounds consideration of his hunting partners by expressing
first the most consequential aspect of his impending move: that he will soon return.
The central part of Gaveldor’s utterance, functional unit (2), is committed to explaining
where he is going and why, the upshot of which is that this temporary absence is required in
order for him to continue participating in the hunt in a useful way. In order to grasp this, one
must know something about the customary composition, arrangement, and distribution of
responsibilities of pledge hunt parties. Knights are melee hunters, designed for close combat and
able to withstand greater damage that other classes; hence, they go in front of the other players to
19
stall any incoming mops and act as a human shield. Next go the mages whose main task is to
monitor their party members’ health (via the bar over their head) and heal as necessary, keeping
a particularly close eye on the knights in front. Next go the elves, who serve a crucial supportive
role to both the knights and the mages. Because elves are, by and large, range fighters, inflicting
significant damage from a distance but unable to withstand repeated blows themselves, they hang
back, shooting arrows from a distance, shifting their attack to wherever the knights needs it the
most. At the same time, elves have significant healing capacity and function to aid the mages in
healing the knights, the point man, the mages and themselves. Gaveldor’s utterance frames
where he is going and why in terms that pay tribute to this customary composition and function
of elves in just such hunts: If he is out of mana, then he is unable to function in the expected
ways; if he regenerates his health, however, he can return to continue supporting the other
members of the hunt as tacitly required.
The final functional unit of Gaveldor’s utterance eliminates the alternative solution to the
problem of no mana (i.e. consuming mana potions), and itself pays tribute to customary pledge
hunting practice. Participants are expected to stock up on any needed potions or equipment prior
to embarking; hence, the account he gives for why he must leave the hunt temporarily is framed
in terms that presume this common preparatory procedure. He states that he has “no poms” as
would normally be expected had he followed common protocol for preparing for the activity.
Other, more general features of the utterance as a whole likewise reflect the context in
which it is situated. The interpersonal functions of the clause-initial and -final units frame the
entire remark as directed to the social, with due consideration displayed to the group whose
actions are contingent on the speaker’s own activities. Overall, his utterance is realized in the
most abbreviated forms available, a format ostensibly the byproduct of the extreme temporal &
material constraints placed on typed text during periods of intense activity such as this. And,
finally, the utterance is issued through the public talk channel rather than “underground” (i.e.
using other channels, such as party chat or whispers), a common practice used during a pledge
hunts in order to differentiate between on-topic talk (i.e. talk relevant to the ongoing hunt) and
nonessential social exchange.
How Gaveldor’s utterance aligns social action. Gaveldor’s utterance is not only shaped
by the context in which it is situated; it also crucially shapes that context in return, transforming
the ongoing activity in a manner consequential for those involved. First, the group must now
commit to remaining in their current location until his return. Should they move too far away, it
is unlikely that the speaker will find them before other participants’ supplies run out and the hunt
will necessarily be called to an end. Second, the group must now adjust the distribution of
responsibilities across the remaining participants. Since the knights lose supportive fire on
incoming mops and the mages lose one member of their medicinal team, the remaining elves
must pick up the slack or risk the pledge hunt degenerating into futile bedlam. Finally, and more
subtly, Gaveldor’s utterance signals that the hunt will presumably continue for some significant
period of time, at least long enough to justify the time and labor involved in one elf going back to
the Elven Forest to regenerate. These are precisely the effects Gaveldor’s utterance has on the
ongoing activity: Though the hunt continues in his absence, the group members, all the while
never voicing these conclusions outright, remain in their location, redistribute the workload, and
even, in this instance, engage in a brief public survey of their remaining supplies under the tacit
assumption that the hunt will indeed continue for some extended period of time.
Situating Gaveldor’s utterance in its social and material context reveals how it
simultaneously reflects and shapes the activity of which it is part. In Lineage, participating in
everyday routine activities such as pledge hunts crucially involves getting “in sync” with virtual
material objects, other gamers, and specific forms of hybrid writing used in specific ways, at
specific times and places, for specific ends. “Doing being a Lineage gamer” means engaging in
just such coordinations, and it is through such routine accomplishments that participants display
their allegiance to and identity in the broader “form of life” or “big-D Discourse” of the Lineage
gaming community itself.
Discourse Analysis
A “Discourse” is the social and material practices of a given socioculturally defined
20
group of people associated around a set of shared interest, goals, and/or activities (Gee, 1992).
These practices include precisely those we have examined in our analysis of Gaveldor’s
utterance: discourse practices including word choice and grammar as well as other
communicative devices involved in language-in-use such as gestures and prosody (Gee, 1992);
customary practices for social interaction (Gee, 1992); and characteristic ways to coordinate and
be coordinated by material resources or “props” such as tools, technologies, and systems of
representation (Gee, 1996; Knorr Cetina 1992). These practices, however, are only the means by
which Discourses are enacted and historically preserved (if only for a brief time), not the ends to
which they are put. Rather, it is the shared goals and values embedded in those practices (Gee,
1999) and their bearing on individual identity that define a Discourse as more than a mere
constellation of practices and that warrant the use of this broader theoretical concept.
Community valued goals. Gaveldor’s utterance “afk g2g too ef ot regen no poms” is one
move in an ongoing activity which functions as a way to accomplish two widespread
community-valued goals at once: developing your avatar in terms of experience and equipment,
and creating and maintaining social relationships. Pledge hunts function to increase the level of
experience (hence, strength) of those participating; the experience gained from the mops killed is
distributed across all members of the “party” and, because several hunters can kill more mops
than any one individual hunter can alone, the individuals participating profit from such
collaboration. The ongoing debate — conducted in the game, on Lineage-related discussion
boards, and via emails, instant messaging, and chatrooms — regarding how experience is
mathematically distributed among party members evidences the importance of “leveling up” to
the Lineage community. Gamers not only debate it, they gather data, create mathematical
models, and test those models so created in terms of fit and predictability. Dividing up the
bootie (i.e. the “mop drops”) from a collaborative hunt is also a volatile topic and considerable
time and energy is spent on the game (and off) discussing fair practice and equity in terms of
who should get what from group hunts. Gaveldor displays his allegiance to this community
value not only through the delivery of an utterance whose function is to allow action that furthers
the activity but also through the sheer fact of participating in the first place. Collaborative hunts
are not easy; participating in them requires extraordinary skill and patience.
Gaveldor’s utterance also displays his allegiance to the community-valued goal of
creating and maintaining social relationships, be they friendly or adversarial. Collaborative
activity is the hallmark of multiplayer gaming and few people who log in remain social isolates.
The overwhelmingly most popular topic for conversation is who said/did what to whom, who
have “paired up” (platonically or otherwise) and who have parted ways, and how doing x betrays
y but befriends q since it benefits r. Pledge hunt practices pay homage to this preoccupation with
status versus solidarity: The roles and responsibilities distributed across participants (such as
who serves as “point man” and who as “medic”), the unofficial policy of inviting strangers (even
members of rival pledges), and the expectation of sticking with it once the activity has begun all
evidence the event as definitely social in nature. Gaveldor’s utterance, as a part of this activity,
likewise attends to the value placed on social relationships. It monitors the social (functional
units 1 and 3) on the boundaries of the ideational (functional unit 2), framing a material act as a
social one. He signals that he will take respite in the forest but initiates it as a request,
emphasizes that his absence will be temporary hence not a flouting of social obligation, and
signals some sense of obligation to his interlocutors by providing them an account.
It is through participation in standard community practices such as pledge hunts that
players display tacit knowledge of (and alignment with) shared community values and goals. By
engaging in the practices, they get the meaning of those practices – the goals and values implicit
in them – “for free” (Gee, 1996, p. 159). That failure in such practices is routinely interpreted as
rejection of their concomitant values and goals evidences this. For example, if a mage takes the
lead in front of the knights and tries to fight incoming monsters hand-to-hand, other party
members will not recognize their actions as a meaningful performance of “pledge hunting” and
will assume the individual has foregone all collaboration and is now selfishly attempting to “steal
mops” (and therefore experience and booty) rather than share. And so it is that the small and
seemingly inconsequential utterance of one player in one context at one brief moment in time is
21
indelibly tied to broader Discourse enacted in the game.
Identity. So too it is that Gaveldor’s utterance indexes his membership within the
community underwriting the Discourse of Lineage gaming. "It is in and through Discourses that
we make clear to ourselves and others who we are" (Gee, 1996, pp. 128-129). In the context of
Lineage, individuals do not simply play the classes of characters the game design provides them
(i.e. elf, knight, mage, royal); rather, they play highly specific versions of those roles, defined in
terms of several tacit taxonomies or “interpretive systems” (Gee, 2000) embedded in community
practice that overlap and intersect in complex ways. In combination, these interpretive systems
underwrite the situated online identities that gamers both perform and recognize. Though one’s
on-screen identity, whether ascribed or achieved, is never static or determined once and for all,
one’s position within this multi-dimensional space of coinciding taxonomies determines who one
is in the “here and now” (Gee, 2000). And Gaveldor is no exception.
Imbedded in the Lineage community is a “stat + class” interpretive system applied to all
who participate in the game. Although avatars of a given class all look the same on the screen,
they functionally vary depending on the “stats” (numerical levels) individuals assign themselves
when they first design their character. “Stats” determine such characteristics as constitution
(how much a beating from a monster or another player hurts you), strength (how much your own
beatings hurt them), and dexterity (the deftness of your character, especially in range attacks).
Vastly different gaming experiences emerge as a result of one’s avatar design and the community
orients to such differences by describing themselves and one another in terms of it. For example,
one is not merely an “elf” but rather a “con elf” (an elf high in “constitution,” therefore able to
hunt by sword) or a “dex elf” (an elf high in dexterity, therefore a range hitter not suited for
substantial melee). These roles are virtual analogs to “nature identities” (Gee, 2000); yet,
crucially, they have to be performed. If, for example. I design my elf to be a “con elf” but fail to
engage in the material practices that accompany such a role – practices such as hunting with a
sword, focusing on strong equipment to reduce damage such up-close combat sword-fighting
risks, hunting areas that are denser with mops so I do not have to waste time walking from one
mop to the next – I am no longer recognized as a “con elf.”
Throughout the pledge hunt, Gaveldor displays himself as a “dex elf” through what he
says and does. First, the sheer fact that regenerating in the Elven Forest is an option for him
reveals his character class. When combined with his method of interaction during the pledge
hunt — predominant bow use, maintained distance from the incoming mops (where the knights
are located) and use of range attack rather then melee, it also becomes clear that he is not just any
sort of elf, but a “dex elf” rather than “con.” Even when polyed and therefore visually in
disguise, Gaveldor’s verbal and material behavior thoroughly mark him as a prototypical “dex
elf.”
In addition to the “stat + class” interpretive system used in the Lineage community, there
is an overwhelming characterization of players in terms of a continuum that runs from “newbie”
(peripheral participant, Lave & Wenger, 1991) to “beta vet” (central participant). Gamers’
varying use of “Lineagese” functions in part to display their standing in the virtual community in
along these lines. Members who are central to the Discourse use terminology left over from
Lineage’s early beta-testing period that is no longer officially used by the game company;
peripheral members, on the other hand, use the terms that have now replaced these older beta
ones. For a beta vet, moving around the virtual world by means of special scrolls is “venzing”;
for a newbie, it is “teleporting.” For a beta vet, the huge spider mop found in Heine forests is a
“shelob”; for a newbie, it is an “aracnid,” the name that now appears above the creature’s head.
Through participation in valued Discourse practices such as leveling up one’s character,
acquiring goods, interacting in the right ways at the right times with the right people, and even
knowing where to hunt and with whom, players move from periphery to center (Lave & Wenger,
1991); however, if one’s social or material practices should at any time fail to display community
norms, the Discourse will “discipline” you to get your practices back “in line” (Gee, 1992, p.
108). For example, in my own online history as Princess Adeleide, I have been called “newbie”
for lack of knowledge (playfully stabbing my personal guard in front of town guards, not
realizing that the town guards kill anyone who attacks another player within their range), lack of
skill (mistaking an innocent snowman for a mop and therefore attempting to kill it with my bow
22
and attack dogs, thereby accidentally shooting one of my own dogs and turning myself
chaotic
14
), being “out of sync” with social norms (not realizing that it was considered a shame on
the heads of my members for me to die in battle, and therefore fighting in a pledge vs. pledge
war alongside them
15
), and flouting core community values (responding “apples” to the question
“what is the best thing an owlbear drops?” on pledge chat, effectively inverting the community’s
preference for function over form). As one gamer remarked, “newbie is a derogatory term that
applies to anyone who you want to demean, and has shown any lack of knowledge on any facet
of the game. For some people it’s anyone less knowledgeable than themselves. For others, it
stops at a certain level” (Lindon, August.26, 2002). Being a “newbie” or a “beta vet” is
contingent, not a game-granted right. Though by definition one’s current level of experience in
the game and length of time playing it determine where one is on the continuum, by practice it
must be interactionally achieved.
Throughout the pledge hunt, through both language and activity, Gaveldor displays
himself as a “beta vet.” His use of the outdated beta term “poms” for what currently is more
commonly called “mana pots” or “blues” places him at the core of the Lineage gaming
community by indexing his own history of game play stemming back to Lineage’s beta days.
Moreover, the skillfulness he shows throughout the hunt in changing locations in response to
terrain and incoming mops, monitoring the health and position of other participants, and even
knowing when to return to the Elven Forest in response to depleted supplies reveal him as a
highly skilled and professional gamer. His fluency in the linguistic, material and social practices
14
There is an “alignment system” in the game such that every character has a certain amount of “law.” You
gain
law by killing monsters; you lose law by killing other players or certain designated animals (e.g., cows,
deer, dogs).
The amount of law you have is represented by the color of your avatar’s name (blue for lawful, red for
chaotic) and
determines such things as monster aggression, the ability to shop in village stores, and whether or not
your character
will “drop” items in inventory should you reach an untimely end.
15
a knight on the enemy side did take pity on me at one point, despite my indiscretion, taking me out behind
a
nearby building and killing me in private in order to end the war without scandalizing my members with a
public
princess death.
highly valued within the Lineage community position him as the kind of “old timer” us
“newcomers” aspire to become.
These interpretive systems (and these are by no means the only ones) are not in “in the
head” of any particular individual; they are embedded in the ways in which gamers orient to one
another in their social/material interactions. In combination, they underwrite the situated online
identities that gamers both perform and recognize. Individuals design their on-screen presence
through words, symbols, gestures, and activities (Gee, 2002) and as such they are both the
creators and consumers (Turkle, 1995, p.11) of the “kinds of people” within the game. By
design, virtual worlds such as Lineage provide a “highly visible medium for the scripting of
social roles" (Lam, 2000, p. 474), leaving it up to the gamer what kind of virtual someone he
wants to craft himself to be. For Gaveldor, it is an “dex elf beta vet” sort of someone that is
crafted in the interstices of the combination of social and material (inter)action and typed talk.
Conclusions
This analysis began with inspection of a single utterance’s most basic constituent parts,
its morphology and syntax, and from there progressed to increasingly broader units of analysis,
23
treating the utterance as small “d” discourse or language-in-use, situated in a particular social
and material context, and finally as one instantiation of a big “D” Discourse operative in the
game. Thus, although we began with a close examination of a single utterance, we arrived at
broader claims about the “form of life” enacted in the game, forms of life through which this
speaker, like all Lineage gamers, indexes his identity and membership in the Lineage
community.
What conclusions might we draw from this analysis? At this point in my ongoing
research, I might suggest two. First, that MMORPGaming is not trivial. Although the worlds so
lived in (if only for brief periods of time) are virtual, they are not “less real” in any meaningful
sense. Perhaps Sherry Turkle (1995), whose work in psychology is psychoanalytic rather than
cognitive like my own, expresses this best: “Some are tempted to think of life in cyberspace as
insignificant, as escape or meaningless diversion. It is not. Our experiences there are serious
play. We belittle them at our risk” (p. 268). Second, that the form (morphology, syntax) and
function (as situated action, as participation in Discourse) of language used in such worlds is not
merely more of the same. The hybrid writing used by gamers to all its sundry ends warrants
further investigation not only in terms of linguistic realization but in terms of cognitive
achievement as well. What people are “doing” in such cyberspaces is not barren play. It is
consequential for those who participate, and our task as researchers should be to find out how.
Thus, I will leave off with some suggestive comments on the kinds of questions I feel warrant
further exploration (if nowhere else, then at least within my own ongoing research).
Real versus virtual identity. In MMORPGs, between logging in and logging off lies a
“pscychosocial moratorium” (Erikson, 1963) where one finds intense and significant experiences
without the consequences accompanying then in everyday real life. Yet, the discourse space of
the game is one with fuzzy boundaries that expand with continued play: What is at first confined
to the game alone soon spills over into the virtual world beyond it (e.g., websites, chatrooms,
email) and even life off-screen (e.g., telephone calls, face-to-face meetings). The communities
these practices serve likewise expand from collections of in-character playmates to real-world
affinity groups. Given the degrees of freedom one has within the game to design the kind of
“who” one wants to be, coupled with the fuzzy boundaries that distinguish Lineage life from
everyday affairs, what, then, is the relationship between who one is on- and off-screen?
Learning. In New Cognitive Studies, accounts of how an individual interacts with their
material and social contexts, and how these interactions change over time, replace accounts of
individual knowledge construction occurring “in the head.” Learning, from this perspective, is
progress along “trajectories of participation” (Greeno, 1997) and growth of identity within a
given community of practice (Gee, 1999). It is the gradual transformation of an individual from
“legitimate peripheral participant” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) to central member of a community
through apprenticeship and increased participation in values community practices. Discourses
are not mastered by overt instruction but through apprenticeship (Gee, 1992, 1996, 1999; Tharp
& Gallimore, 1988). And the Discourse of Lineage gaming, in my experience, is no exception.
How do “beta pro” gamers who have already mastered the social and material practices requisite
to game play enculturate “newbies” who lack such knowledge and skill? What does this process
look like, what are the mechanisms through which such socialization is accomplished, and how
might it compare with learning in more formal settings such as everyday classrooms?
Retribalizing and the self. In his latest work on videogaming and literacy, (2003), Gee
discusses the function of online avatars as a “projective identities,” entities taken up by their
creators as their own project, develop in particular ways, and onto which are project the gamers’
real life aspirations, values and beliefs. My experience gaming in these environments supports
the validity and usefulness of this theoretical construct, yet my hunch is that such identity
projects are, at root, thoroughly social – to use Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, a “searching not for
goals but for roles, a striving for an identity that eludes” (“Playboy Interview,” 1969). In a
“winner take all” global society (Frank & Cook, 1996) comprised of many “weak links” among
people rather than strong ones (Gee, 2002) where individual income is highly fetishized, perhaps
it is quite reasonable for people to “retribalize” via technology, creating communities with a
shared sense of place and history, where income is not the measure of an individual’s worth, and
24
where local heroes are not only possible but probable. The perspectives of other Lineage gamers seem
to resonate with this working hypothesis:
Sometimes I pause and think to myself why we do what we do online. After all, sometimes this starts to
feel like another job even though it's just a game.
And after asking myself why, I think that it's because we are making so much progress. And in the end, if
we can accomplish our goal, hold every castle, take Aden, and maybe leave some kind of legacy... that
perhaps years down the road there will be another generation of gamers. And maybe they will say, do
you remember
that pledge? Did you actually meet Princess Adeleide, or General Lindon?
Maybe when you get down to it, this is just another
goal of life - to achieve immortality by being remembered in some way. In the end I think everyone has to
ask themselves that basic question. Did I make an impact on someone's life? Positive or negative?Will I
be remembered for it? (General Lindon, personal
correspondence, 01.17.03)
As yet, I can only speculate on these topics. However, treating Lineage as a “big D”
Discourse (Gee, 1992, 1996, 1999) in its own right, one fundamentally consequential for the identities of
its members and constituted by shared language and practice, as I have done here, raises critical
questions that warrant not only initial speculation but subsequent systematic research. And so my work
continues.
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Appendix A
The virtual world of Lineage called the Kingdom of Aden.
28