Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Through devices like deeds, quests, and guilds,
WoW
as well as many other
games of its ilk, provides affordances—often necessities—for signifi cant
interaction among players, to work together for common goals or against
common enemies.
Lord of the Rings Online
(
LotRO
, launched in 2007) employs similar
structures that necessitate collaboration. Player-characters have vocations
and talents, and most quests cannot be completed by a solo player because
they don't have the requisite talents. For example, the “vocation” of the
player-character consists of two talents that go together and one that does
not. A Tinkerer, for example, can fi nd ore, make jewelry, and collect wood.
She can't make anything out of wood, but someone who can will trade her
for it. “Everybody gets good equipment out of exchanges,” says regular
LotRO
player Lisa McDonald. Trade and commerce—the internal economy
of the game—are extremely important to gameplay.
7
Beginning in the early 2000s, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has
grown as part of multiplayer game experience. Players use a voice channel
to shorten communication time, for example. They also use it in-game for
social chat and networking. This channel of communication is human-to-
human, not to be confused with speech recognition. Voice can enrich the
game experience in many ways, from direct impact on the strategies and
actions of a player or group to emotional depth and social interaction as
well as opportunities for shared criticality.
Like other kinds of properties, multiplayer games engender enthusias-
tic fan activities outside of the game world, including fan art, conventions,
Cosplay, and intertextual fan activities (Jenkins 2006a). These activities form
economies of attention as well as legitimate commerce. They provide ways
for fans to extend their personal constructions of meaning. Purple Moon
provides an earlier example, but one near to my heart. Near the end of the
company (and its eventual acquisition), we discovered multiple fan sites
where “scarce” gifts and objects from the Web site were being traded by
girls. In 2012, the mother of one of the original players alerted me to a Face-
book Community called “I Miss Purple Moon.” Sweet!
Of course, interaction among players has its dark sides. Sexual harass-
ment continues to be an issue. Cheating in various forms continues as a
thriving parasite industry. The ready availability of “legitimate” cheat
topics and websites suggests that the game industry has had to give up on
7. Interview with LotRO player Lisa McDonald, April 2013.
