Sheeping, sapping and avatars-in-action: An in-screen perspective on online gameplay

• This paper is about the various practices that players use to coordinate their in-game activities. In the paper, screen-captured video data of one group of players’ gameplay are scrutinized in order to explicate coordination work. Instead of seeing interaction between online players as design issues or focusing off-screen events, the paper reframes in-screen collaboration activities as participants’ concerns. In order to explore empirical examples of players’ accomplishment of tight coordination in massively multiplayer online games, ethnomethodological influenced interaction analysis is used. The paper elaborates a player perspective by bridging the researcher’s knowledge of gameplay with empirical in-screen data. This study shows the work players do as coordinated, referential activities; accomplished by means of avatar movements and actions, as well as highlighted and made observable by visual markers and gaming discourse. The players’ achievement of mundane, jointly activities are termed routine play.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Information Systems (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Communication Studies (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

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