Open AccessPublic Displays of Play: Studying Online Games in Physical Settings
Author(s) -
Taylor Nicholas,
Jenson Jennifer,
de Castell Suzanne,
Dilouya Barry
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of computer‐mediated communication
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.15
H-Index - 119
ISSN - 1083-6101
DOI - 10.1111/jcc4.12054
Subject(s) - metaverse , social worlds , point (geometry) , scale (ratio) , computer science , virtual world , virtual reality , data science , internet privacy , psychology , human–computer interaction , sociology , social science , geography , geometry , mathematics , cartography
As research on virtual worlds gains increasing attention in educational, commercial, and military domains, a consideration of how player populations are ‘reassembled’ through social scientific data is a timely matter for communication scholars. This paper describes a large‐scale study of virtual worlds in which participants were recruited at public gaming events, as opposed to through online means, and explores the dynamic relationships between players and contexts of play that this approach makes visible. Challenging conventional approaches to quantitatively driven virtual worlds research, which categorizes players based on their involvement in an online game at a particular point in time, this account demonstrates how players' networked gaming activities are contingent on who they are playing with, where, and when .