Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture

Ross MacDonald (Auckland War Memorial Museum)

Online Information Review

ISSN: 1468-4527

Article publication date: 2 October 2007

633

Keywords

Citation

MacDonald, R. (2007), "Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture", Online Information Review, Vol. 31 No. 5, pp. 710-711. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520710832414

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Play between Worlds examines the world of online gaming – specifically, the social activities of those who play the adventure‐role‐playing game, EverQuest. At first glance, this might not seem of central importance to information professionals. However, the picture it paints of online gamers and their activities raises many points that bear on the future of library and information management.

Taylor, currently Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, begins by describing the ethnographic, qualitative approach she has taken in investigating game culture: actually becoming an EverQuest player, analyzing the various activities she becomes a part of, and entering the mind‐set of the players. She describes how playing MMORGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role‐playing Games) like EverQuest, far from being an isolating experience, actually requires socializing with others. She illustrates the various forms this can take, showing that the culture of online gaming ranges from in‐game actions (chat, “guild” formation) and other online activities (creating/using other websites) to conventions involving hundreds of gamers and long‐lasting friendships in the “real world”.

A fairly lengthy section describes much of what goes on in the game; this is probably necessary for many readers, and helps explain Taylor's insights into the goals of gamers. More importantly, it is when describing these goals – and gamers' responses to them – that Taylor's work gains relevance to the information profession, simply because players are constantly looking for information in order to achieve them. While Taylor's interest as a sociologist is on the interplay between online and off‐line activities, any librarian reading this book would recognize a description of the information needs and resources of a particular community. Players might want to know about the monsters in a particular area of the EverQuest world, how to play a particular type of character, or how best to use a magic spell. These information needs are met by in‐game communication (real‐time chat), various blogs, chat boards, and even ethically questionable software that can interrogate sections of the game and tell players what they will be up against. Two chapters explore in more depth the experiences of particular kinds of player (power gamers and women gamers), and in the process illustrate the differences in their information needs and how they satisfy them.

Play between Worlds offers a glimpse of a future where life might be lived largely online. For instance, gamers themselves generate almost all of the information sources described in the game. In addition, a later chapter addresses the issue of who really “owns” the game – Sony Online Entertainment, who created the game system and the game world, or the thousands of gamers who have developed characters in ways that go far beyond anything in the source code. At what point does a part of the game become public property? Such intellectual property issues will become more important as user‐generated content becomes an increasingly important part of the web. And once again, this book – and the world of online gamers – turns out to be of surprising relevance to information professionals.

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