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Free to try, no credit card requiredThe Mangle of Play
Gameplay is:
The Mangle of
(Identity) Play
...the contours of material agency are mangled in practice, meaning emergently transformed and delineated in the dialectic of resistance and accommodation (Pickering, 1993)
Guild Leadership
WoW Raiding Dependent on Mods
World of Warcraft raiding depended on a group's ability to monitor and manage its performance. A mod was created (early 2006) to help players keep track of a specific performance number, "threat."
By redistributing their cognition and responsibilities to a nonhuman actor, players could diagnose moments of failure and change their practice for future success.
Using the mod became common practice, which had a normalizing effect on what it meant to play WoW. WoW playing became even more numbers-centric and less about role-playing or other ways of interacting with the game and the social community.
Newcomers
to a raid group
What are the forms of practice in which a newcomer participates?
Small Worlds &
Tiny Acts of
Subversion
"Designed Emergence"
Themes:
Contact Us!
Mark Chen (University of Washington):
markchen@uw.edu @mcdanger
Ben DeVane (University of Wisconsin, Madison) :
ben.devane@gmail.com
Sara M. Grimes (Simon Fraser University):
smgrimes@sfu.ca
Sarah E. Walter (Stanford University):
swalt@stanford.edu
Moses Wolfenstein (University of Wisconsin, Madison): moses.wolfenstein@gmail.com
The Mangle
Summary of Findings
Cultural Resources
Social Resources
Material Resources
Research Context
Analysis of language: level of analysis is the where “social action takes place” (Linde, 1988)
Identity in
Digital Media and Learning
VENT:
...they summon like every 3k it looks like, I've been noticing. Or less. Um everyone's going to be in this corner, downing the Shaman. It's not going to be like short; it's going to take a while to down each one; they have like 20k each…
Um there's gonna be four waves that we have to deal with, we're going to fight them down here. Um, there's going to be a tank and a minstrel over here tanking this big giant in red that you see.
Don't worry about them, for the mean time. After - on the fourth wave, we're going to keep one of them alive, everyone is going to go into this corner that I am in right now.
NO VENT:
I'll just tell him to focus on someone's target.
Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO)
Learning is, in this purview,
more basically
a process of coming to be,
of forging identities
in activity in the world. (Lave, 1992)
Data collection: Participant-observation (~ 2 yrs)
Research Questions
“participation in social practice is the fundamental form of learning”
- Lave & Wenger, 1991
The Mangle of Play - Constance Steinkuehler (2006)
"The game that's actually played by participants is not the game designers originally had in mind but rather one that is the outcomes of an interactively established (Pickering, 1995) "mangle of practice" of designers, players, in-game currency farmers, and broader social norms."
Game challenges and player workarounds
Mark Chen | Ben DeVane | Sara M Grimes | Sarah E Walter | Moses Wolfenstein
Peer Play & Groupings
Safe Chat Mechanisms
Notably, the threat meter helped us remember.
Cross-promotional references:
Various UI elements do different things.
UI helped players interpret what is going on.
Pre-determined phrases:
Sometimes difficult to make sense of what was going on in a WoW fight.
Design Challenges Intertwined with Commercial Content and Priorities
Emergent Play
Performatives & "Flash Mobs"
Unanticipated Uses:
- Gender Bending
- Subverting gendered subjectivities
Narrow margins of manoeuvre afford highly reflexive forms of player initiative (workarounds, etc.)
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