50 Word Summary:
The two articles I selected were linked by the common factor of considering the systems and behaviors that exist within massively multiplayer online role playing games as analogous to real-world parallels; one with the purpose of discussing gender, and the other with a view to refining the concept of cheating.
De Paoli, Stefano and Aphra Kerr. “FCJ-107 The Assemblage of Cheating: How to Study Cheating as Imbroglio in MMORPGs.” The Fibreculture Journal 16 (2010). Web. 19 Jan 2012. <http://sixteen.fibreculturejournal.org/the-assemblage-of-cheating-how-to-study-cheating-as-imbroglio-in-mmorpgs%3E%3C/a%3E.:link http://sixteen.fibreculturejournal.org/the-assemblage-of-cheating-how-to-study-cheating-as-imbroglio-in-mmorpgs/%3E.
Woolums, Viola. “Gendered Avatar Identity.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 16.1 (2011). Web. 19 Jan 2012. <http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/16.1/topoi/woolums/>.
The first piece that I chose to focus on was published in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy. Kairos seems to be published independently and focuses on “digital and multimodal composing practices” as well as “scholarly argument through rhetorical and innovative uses of new media.” While it claims what it says is a fairly impressive readership, it is focused mainly on topics in English and related fields. The other piece comes from The Fibreculture Journal, which was more forthcoming with publication information; it is published by Fibreculture Publications and The Open Humanities Press. Like Kairos, this journal adheres to a policy of open access and its contents are freely available through its webpage. The Fibreculture Journal is a peer reviewed scholarly journal concerned with digital media, or what it calls “the fibreculture community.”
“Gendered Avatar Identity” combines the author’s interests in gender studies and online gaming, and to a certain extent references prior work in both of these areas, though the works consulted seem to come more publications focused on the digital scholarship aspect. The work is also a revision of an earlier project assigned as part of a class in Multimodal Composition taught by Dr. Cheryl Ball. Because the author considers previous research on this topic to be “outdated or non-existent,” the piece is more of an introductory investigation than an addition to some ongoing academic discourse; there is also little reference to established feminist or gender theory. The question posed by Woolums is essentially, what goes into a player’s choice of avatar gender, and how does this decision affect the experience of the game from there? This is of interest to Woolums because, as she puts it, “gendered appearance… seems to infiltrate interactions between individuals without serving a functional purpose within the game itself.” She also believes that the way different genders are perceived and treated in an online community can illuminate attitudes and tendencies in real life society.
Although a number of interesting points come up over the course of the article’s discussion of these topics, it generally only catalyzed the predictable responses to these questions. Most people who play MMORPGs or are part of the video game community have heard about the different ways female players are treated online, and there is little in Woolums’ report that subverts expectations or produces any surprising conclusions. Woolums herself notes that her interviews on the subject are not statistically significant, and her primary conclusion is that more study is needed. The part that I found most interesting was her elaboration on the conclusion made by Judith Donath in a referenced work that despite the seeming lack of a need for gendered identities in online communities, perceived gender will nonetheless arise, and that in fact gender and even race identification may be necessary to create a sense of communication. It is also noted that even when gender is hidden, a person’s communication style will lead to inferences and perceptions of it.
What I found to be least effective in this article was Woolums exploration of gender as an advantage or disadvantage in the game. Woolums seemed to push her interview subjects to discuss this matter, even though most seemed ambivalent that gender played any major role in making the game easier or harder. Woolums then used their reticent responses to make conclusions that I hardly felt were founded, such as the idea that male players saw playing with a female avatar as being in opposition to “playing to win.” Part of the problem (as the author recognizes) is that the subject was studied only by a series of short interviews with a small group of people. While this allows for the subjects to more fully articulate their thoughts, perhaps a more exhaustive study of the concrete factors involved, across a much larger sample would yield more useful data.
While Woolums saw the game environment, in which female players (or rather, openly female players) are seen as using their sexuality as an advantage, and are subjected to a certain degree of antisocial behavior, as a reflection of the problems of the real world ("The overarching problem here is that the tendency to stereotype has seeped into the internet."), I wonder if in fact some of these problems are not created or exaggerated by the in-game environment. The factor of anonymity and the predilections of the gaming subculture may play some role, complicating the idea of the virtual space of the game as a mirror for real world issues. Nonetheless, the ideas raised by Woolums and her predecessors, especially concerning the necessity and realization of gender in ostensibly genderless online spaces, have a great deal of fascinating potential.
The Fibreculture Journal article, “The Assemblage of Cheating: How to Study Cheating as Imbroglio in MMORPGs” takes more of an argumentative stance than Woolums’ investigative one. The piece builds upon the idea of assemblage put forward by Deleuze and Guattari and expanded by DeLanda and applies it directly to the author’s interest of cheating, especially in online games. These works are cited extensively throughout the article, and thoroughly relied upon as the framework for De Paoli and Kerr’s construction of a new definition for cheating. The authors of this piece make a strong and intentional claim that cheating is currently through an essentialist view, which must be replaced with a more complex definition based on assemblage theory – in essence, that cheating is an outcome of a series of interactions between disparate elements, not just a single act or tool that creates “unfair advantage”. The authors believe that in addition to opening up a new understanding and potential direction for the study of cheating, that this will also fuel the understanding of counterplay (which was the overarching topic of this issue of The Fibreculture Journal).
While DePaoli and Kerr must be credited for their ambition and thorough investigation of cheating, I was ultimately unmoved by the new paradigm they introduced. While they raise compelling points about the complexities of the game world, and the various levels in which the game interacts with its players (“legal, architectural, and code”), I don’t know that it changes the “definition” of cheating as such. It still seems that there is an “essential” spirit or purpose of rule-abiding gameplay that is intentionally broken in most cases. And while discussions of where the lines are between cheating, modding, and emergent play could take many forms, the framework introduced in this piece is only one way of addressing them.
The two articles I selected were linked by the common factor of considering the systems and behaviors that exist within massively multiplayer online role playing games as analogous to real-world parallels; one with the purpose of discussing gender, and the other with a view to refining the concept of cheating.
De Paoli, Stefano and Aphra Kerr. “FCJ-107 The Assemblage of Cheating: How to Study Cheating as Imbroglio in MMORPGs.” The Fibreculture Journal 16 (2010). Web. 19 Jan 2012. <http://sixteen.fibreculturejournal.org/the-assemblage-of-cheating-how-to-study-cheating-as-imbroglio-in-mmorpgs%3E%3C/a%3E.:link http://sixteen.fibreculturejournal.org/the-assemblage-of-cheating-how-to-study-cheating-as-imbroglio-in-mmorpgs/%3E.
Woolums, Viola. “Gendered Avatar Identity.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 16.1 (2011). Web. 19 Jan 2012. <http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/16.1/topoi/woolums/>.
The first piece that I chose to focus on was published in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy. Kairos seems to be published independently and focuses on “digital and multimodal composing practices” as well as “scholarly argument through rhetorical and innovative uses of new media.” While it claims what it says is a fairly impressive readership, it is focused mainly on topics in English and related fields. The other piece comes from The Fibreculture Journal, which was more forthcoming with publication information; it is published by Fibreculture Publications and The Open Humanities Press. Like Kairos, this journal adheres to a policy of open access and its contents are freely available through its webpage. The Fibreculture Journal is a peer reviewed scholarly journal concerned with digital media, or what it calls “the fibreculture community.”
“Gendered Avatar Identity” combines the author’s interests in gender studies and online gaming, and to a certain extent references prior work in both of these areas, though the works consulted seem to come more publications focused on the digital scholarship aspect. The work is also a revision of an earlier project assigned as part of a class in Multimodal Composition taught by Dr. Cheryl Ball. Because the author considers previous research on this topic to be “outdated or non-existent,” the piece is more of an introductory investigation than an addition to some ongoing academic discourse; there is also little reference to established feminist or gender theory. The question posed by Woolums is essentially, what goes into a player’s choice of avatar gender, and how does this decision affect the experience of the game from there? This is of interest to Woolums because, as she puts it, “gendered appearance… seems to infiltrate interactions between individuals without serving a functional purpose within the game itself.” She also believes that the way different genders are perceived and treated in an online community can illuminate attitudes and tendencies in real life society.
Although a number of interesting points come up over the course of the article’s discussion of these topics, it generally only catalyzed the predictable responses to these questions. Most people who play MMORPGs or are part of the video game community have heard about the different ways female players are treated online, and there is little in Woolums’ report that subverts expectations or produces any surprising conclusions. Woolums herself notes that her interviews on the subject are not statistically significant, and her primary conclusion is that more study is needed. The part that I found most interesting was her elaboration on the conclusion made by Judith Donath in a referenced work that despite the seeming lack of a need for gendered identities in online communities, perceived gender will nonetheless arise, and that in fact gender and even race identification may be necessary to create a sense of communication. It is also noted that even when gender is hidden, a person’s communication style will lead to inferences and perceptions of it.
What I found to be least effective in this article was Woolums exploration of gender as an advantage or disadvantage in the game. Woolums seemed to push her interview subjects to discuss this matter, even though most seemed ambivalent that gender played any major role in making the game easier or harder. Woolums then used their reticent responses to make conclusions that I hardly felt were founded, such as the idea that male players saw playing with a female avatar as being in opposition to “playing to win.” Part of the problem (as the author recognizes) is that the subject was studied only by a series of short interviews with a small group of people. While this allows for the subjects to more fully articulate their thoughts, perhaps a more exhaustive study of the concrete factors involved, across a much larger sample would yield more useful data.
While Woolums saw the game environment, in which female players (or rather, openly female players) are seen as using their sexuality as an advantage, and are subjected to a certain degree of antisocial behavior, as a reflection of the problems of the real world ("The overarching problem here is that the tendency to stereotype has seeped into the internet."), I wonder if in fact some of these problems are not created or exaggerated by the in-game environment. The factor of anonymity and the predilections of the gaming subculture may play some role, complicating the idea of the virtual space of the game as a mirror for real world issues. Nonetheless, the ideas raised by Woolums and her predecessors, especially concerning the necessity and realization of gender in ostensibly genderless online spaces, have a great deal of fascinating potential.
The Fibreculture Journal article, “The Assemblage of Cheating: How to Study Cheating as Imbroglio in MMORPGs” takes more of an argumentative stance than Woolums’ investigative one. The piece builds upon the idea of assemblage put forward by Deleuze and Guattari and expanded by DeLanda and applies it directly to the author’s interest of cheating, especially in online games. These works are cited extensively throughout the article, and thoroughly relied upon as the framework for De Paoli and Kerr’s construction of a new definition for cheating. The authors of this piece make a strong and intentional claim that cheating is currently through an essentialist view, which must be replaced with a more complex definition based on assemblage theory – in essence, that cheating is an outcome of a series of interactions between disparate elements, not just a single act or tool that creates “unfair advantage”. The authors believe that in addition to opening up a new understanding and potential direction for the study of cheating, that this will also fuel the understanding of counterplay (which was the overarching topic of this issue of The Fibreculture Journal).
While DePaoli and Kerr must be credited for their ambition and thorough investigation of cheating, I was ultimately unmoved by the new paradigm they introduced. While they raise compelling points about the complexities of the game world, and the various levels in which the game interacts with its players (“legal, architectural, and code”), I don’t know that it changes the “definition” of cheating as such. It still seems that there is an “essential” spirit or purpose of rule-abiding gameplay that is intentionally broken in most cases. And while discussions of where the lines are between cheating, modding, and emergent play could take many forms, the framework introduced in this piece is only one way of addressing them.