Ethnography in an Online World

In this essay I will describe how I have tried to try to apply anthropological fieldwork methods in a MMOG (massive multiplayer online game) world. Due to time constraints and other factors, this is perhaps not as readily feasible as doing fieldwork in the real world. However, I certainly believe that this experiment nonetheless can serve as an opportunity to discuss issues relating to anthropological fieldwork as well as the emerging phenomena of online worlds.

A MMOG is thus a so called massive multiplayer online game; a game”populated” by hundreds or thousands of ”characters” or avatars controlled by human players around the world. Specifically, I did my fieldwork in one of the worlds of thegame Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). This game belongs to the genre massive multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG is thus a slightly more specific term than MMOG. However, infact, most MMOGs today are MMORPGs).

For those who are not familiar with computer games, roleplaying games and online rpgs (roleplaying games) some introductory information will be necessary here.

One can trace the origin of the today’s MMORPGs to the paper, pen and dice-based roleplaying games that appeared inthe US in the 1970s, most famously Dungeons and Dragons. Thesegames quickly spread across the western hemisphere and in Sweden became popular mainly in the form of ”Drakar och Demoner”. Another famous fantasy role-playing game is the internationally bestselling game ”Warhammer” produced by Games Workshop. Whereas Dungeons and Dragons is an American game, Warhammer is a game originating in the UK. To this date, American and English games remain very different from each other as do their computer game derivatives.

The non-computer based roleplaying games were all – and still are -- games in which the players create ”characters”

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(player characters or pcs) with which they ”adventure” in a fantasy world described to them by the so called dungeon master or game master – a kind of storyteller who also managesthe environment and the (non-player) characters which the pcs encounter. Dices are used to resolve the outcome of certain situations and combat between pcs and npcs. Usually,the game master has bought a or written an ”adventure scenario” which forms the story backbone which guides the players -- but the success of the pcs is determined mainly by their own choices as they interact with the characters and environment within the fantasy or science fiction world in which they are playing.

In the late seventies and eighties these rpgs already started appearing in the format of computer games. Initiallythese computer-based rpgs were entirely text based due to extremely limited graphic capabilities of early computers. The text-based format, however, did not stop massive multiplayer online games from developing very early (although in the early days they were often referred to as MUDs; multi-user dungeons).

Today, although the market for the non-computer-game rpgs has shrunk considerably, the market for rpg computer-games has exploded (and of all games the online rpgs are not only the most popular, but the genre is also the most lucrative, since players continue paying for a subscription for many months and even years after purchasing the original game box. (Online games usually require not only the consumer to buy the game itself but also to pay for a monthly subscription in order to be able to play online).

Currently, the most profitable game on the entire market appears to be ”WoW” (World of Warcraft), a game which has survived ever since 2003 without being substantially upgraded (a very long lifespan for a computer game).

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According to a Wikipedia article about MMORPGs, WoW recentlyhad over 8 million active subscribers1.

Both the ”classic” and the computerized rpgs share many common features: for example you will generally start the game by creating your character and customizing it. You willchoose your race (e.g. elf, man, dwarf), your gender, your profession and and your appearance after which you enter thegame world. There is, however, a very big difference betweennormal rpgs and MMORPGs (and indeed between ”normal” computer games and MMORPGs): in the MMORPGs you will actually interact not only with the computer-managed environment (including monsters etc.) but also with tens of thousands of characters played by real world humans around the world.

According to the background research I did about the MMORPG phenomena, it is precisely the element of socializing between these player characters -- inside the fictional world (in the case of my fieldwork, in a computer generated Middle Earth2) -- which constitutes the biggest thrill for players and which makes them spend enormous amounts of time on MMORPGS.

Why do people play MMORPGs?

Through interviews quoted in a published essay by Marklund (2006) it becomes clear that two of the most negative aspects of playing MMORPGs mentioned by longtime players was(1) the enormous amount of time which they took away from “real life” and (2) the notion that players had of creating ”false friendships” in the game world” while losing their real life friends and girl/boyfriends etc. Some players, however, also felt burdened by their responsibilities towards the social groups they had formed with other pcs they had encountered in the game. Since all player characters are controlled by real persons and some events in1 Wikipedia….2 (the name of J.R.R Tolkien’s world)

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the game require the cooperation of fairly large groups people (these events/quests are called raids) this means thatthese entire groups who have to coordinate their playing times.

Since the game creators recognise this sociality as one of the most alluring/addictive aspects of online games these forms of association are actually pre-supported by the games. For example, if you form a fellowship (the smallest form of inter-player association) you will automatically share experience points from the kills performed by any fellowship member. You will also be able to communicate easier with other fellowship members, no matter how far away, through ”fellowship chat”. It seems that, as opposed to most games (which usually only take a couple of weeks to “complete”) which become boring after a while, online games only grow more and more addictive the longer you play due tothe social attachments you form in the game world.

Note: The reasons why I use terms such as RL (real life) andso forth, is because these kinds of words are commonly used in the short conversations which appear to characterise the sociality between MMOG players and in internet discussions and bloggs about such games.

Why carry out fieldwork in a MMORPG?

Although I had never participated in a MMORPG before starting this experimental fieldwork the thought of interacting and observing the modes of sociality of tens of thousands of characters played by real humans in a fictitious world seemed extremely interesting. (In LOTRO there are about seven [“physically”] identical worlds but with different names. The reason for these multiple worlds is because the game managers do not want any of the individual worlds to be over-loaded with players and prefer to keep the population of the individual worlds down to about 10 000. But the worlds are also divided by languages to facilitate communication between players: Thus, there are

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French-speaking, German-speaking and English-speaking LOTRO worlds.)

In theory, if both time and energy are put into such an endeavour, I certainly believe that fieldwork in an online world can be a a scientifically rewarding activity. Such online “worlds” are of course much more limited worlds than the ”normal” world we live in, but they are nonetheless arenas of human interaction in which many people in fact dedicate a large part of their ”real” lives. In fact, many players invest as much time and energy (and perhaps more “soul”) into these games as others do into their professional lives. Moreover, since anthropologists and ethnographers have already been exploring (for many decades)the types of sociality that evolve in workplaces, in companies or within a profession, it is perhaps time to extend such fieldwork to the online gamers and their worlds as well.

In fact, however, there is already abundant research into the topic of MMO games and gamers, its just not done by anthropologists: A number of American scientists have already dedicated the better part of their careers on the subject among. Most notable among them are Sherry Turkle, Nick Yee and Edward Castronova. They have covered a whole range of aspects such as the phenomena of the emerging relationship between online and real-world economies (peopletrading real money for online virtual objects such as magical weapons). In fact, Castronova – an economist -- estimated that the GDP of the game Everquest was higher than that of Russia! Many games have also formalised some sort of relationship between the in-game and the real world economies; this is the case with the game Second Life where you can buy ingame currency using real life currency. Some games also allow you to convert the ingame money into real world currency.

A search in New Scientist’s database yielded no less than 20-30 articles about various aspects relating to online games. One of the most interesting of these articles

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describes how the creators of World of Warcraft decided to release a minor ”disease” in the game which they called the Blood Plague. To their demise the disease started infecting hundreds of thousands player characters, spreading in ways which were entirely unforeseen by its creators. Epidemologists soon took an interest in this virtual disease, speculating as to whether the its spread pattern could teach them more about the spreading of real world epidemics.

What all this interest really boils down to is the fact eventhough the online worlds might be considered virtual, the characters which populate them are in fact not virtual but played and by real humans. And in this sense, even a fantasy world such as LOTRO’s Middle Earth is a more real world thanthe largest and most costly attempt to produce a “realistic”simulation that is not populated by human agents. Online worlds are thus the only existing grounds for empirical research on human behaviour – the only place where human behaviour can be observed in relation to a totally controllable environment.

However, in the context of this essay, considering the limited time available, I am going to try to focus not on what makes research into online worlds interesting, but morespecifically on what problems an anthropologist conducting fieldworkthere might encounter. Nonetheless, I have summed up some ofmy findings while doing such fieldwork in the section following the section below about fieldwork.

The anthropologist as stranger, native or player

One aspect which sets MMORGs clearly apart from other games,also played in groups – such as card-games or bingo – is thespecial relationship which a rpg player develops with his alter ego, i.e. his character (also referred to as avatar). This is the primary element of attraction of a MMORPG and itis thus not surprising that most transactions of real-life

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money to buy virtual goods are related to avatar improvement in one way or another.

The satisfaction derived from MMORPGs is thus primarily derived from the identification between the player and his character and the expression of this (dual?) identity. This identity can be expressed through in-game clothing, behaviour, level, titles and possessions, but also through character or clan housing; as the CEO (Jeff Andersson) of LOTRO himself acknowledges in an interview about the game:

“(…) Players love housing. I think of housing as kind of your second avatar, because when you're in the game as your character, everyone gets to see who you are, but then when you log out you're gone. Homes are one of those persistent avatars that exist even when you're not online, and people can see by looking atyour home the amount of energy that you've placed into it, the commitment you'vehad to the game. You can express a lot of your persistence through that.”

(from the website Shacknews at http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2007/053007_jeffanderson_1.x)

It’s a generally held opinion that the anthropologist conducting fieldwork is a professional stranger (Agar 1980),an outsider coming to observe groups or categories of peoples among whom “he does not belong”. Even when doing fieldwork in his own society the anthropologist will, mostly, be a sort of stranger to those he is observing and analyzing.

However, in most fieldwork situations the anthropologist must at least become accepted as an observer from the outside by the community he is studying least he will not be able to do anyuseful fieldwork at all. Being accepted, however, is far forfrom becoming a member of this community, nor is it his objective to truly become a member of the group. As far is Iknow it only happens extremely rarely that an anthropologistdoes become a full member of a group which he is studying.

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At least when it comes to a “first-world”3 anthropologist dealing with indigenous peoples or (poor) people from the Third World it is easy to understand why this doesn’t happen: the anthropologist, even if he were to be allowed tojoin a community (which he is generally not4) almost always prefers not to. This refusal to become a member of the studied community may stem from his addiction to the comfortable lifestyle he is used to as a member of the middle class, or as a member of the academic community, the social life of his department or simply from his wish to honour his professional commitments: Suffice to say, it almost never happens. Even when he or she is doing fieldworkin his own society, or one similar to his own.

There also seems to be a tendency among anthropologists to search for “the exotic” even when they are doing fieldwork in their own societies; many anthropologists have chosen to do fieldwork among gay or transvestite communities, criminals, lunatics, monks, policemen and drug addicts (to name a few examples). Fieldwork at the post office or similar – less exciting places – exist as well but seem to draws less applauses from the anthropological community. Nonetheless, even in these cases, the phenomena of the anthropologist becoming a part of his former “field” is extremely rare.

Moreover, the work of the anthropologist would not always bepossible if he were to participate fully (and equally) in the activities of the groups which he is studying: he cannothunt and gather with a group of hunter-gatherers as much as everybody else and still have time over to write down his field notes and keep up with his other professional 3 I have to use this very “ethnocentric” (or rather culture-centric) expression for lack of other terms describing the peoples of the “rich” (fat?) world.4 Many indigenous peoples probably realize that an anthropologist that really cuts off the ties with his society would mostly become a burden rather than a benefit to the community: no longer able to farm cash frommodern society and distribute it among his informants and totally incompetent in the skills required by indigenous mode of subsistence, hewould probably be regarded as a nuisance in the village.

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commitments as an anthropologist (participate in seminars, lectures, conferences etc.). Nor could he be an efficient police officer if he always tried to interview his colleagues and take notes while on-duty.

Thus I believe that in the great majority of cases the anthropologist the anthropologist is in no position to trulybecome part of the group/field which he or she is studying. In fact, trying to delude himself that he should become a member of the group he is studying could render his work more difficult:

I remember my frustration I felt about one of my informants in Burkina faso – while I was doing fieldwork there – tryingto make me pay him more money than we had agreed (for his work as an my interpreter …). He also made me pay not only adaily fee for staying in his compound but also an extra fee for every pärlhöna he slaughtered during my stay. Of course that was only reasonable since I “required” more meat than his household would usually have eaten themselves. But it nonetheless struck me when my Swedish supervisor came by in his fancy car that my host would clearly never dream of begging him for money. Moreover, my supervisor was given a chicken for free although compared to me clearly radiated much money and prosperity. Of course this was because my supervisor was a “big man” -- and you do not beg from a big man.

At the moment I was just a student and, since I was living in the compound of my interpreter I had to shower with a bucket of water and could not always wear impeccable clothesand my interpreter often, in fact, told me to improve my outwardly aspect by wearing a shirt instead of a t-shirt andso on (even he himself always wore torn and worn old clothes). I realized that this was so that I might conform more to peoples expectations about the incredible rich and powerful white people: a white person wearing the same kind of clothes as themselves would be an unheard of abnormality (and as such raise suspicion).

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Eventually I realized that by trying to over-emphasizing (perhaps unconsciously) that I was a “poor student” (or something like that) partly to try to reduce the “differences” between me and the much poorer (?) I had in fact victimized myself, and made it easier for them to beg money from me and treat me in a way they wouldn’t imagine treating an anthropologist with a more “aloof” and “professional” attitude towards them. My supervisor at the time succinctly clarified the dilemma to me “you are not supposed to become a villager, you are only doing some fieldwork here”.

* * *

Back to Middle Earth: Although my initial plan was to more or less follow the loose set of “rules of conduct” relating to the fieldwork practice (which have evolved spontaneously among anthropologists) I quickly began to deviate from theserules when doing fieldwork in Middle Earth -- especially from the code of conduct expressed at AAAs (American Association of Anthropologists) website5. Partly, this was to be expected, since I had immediately felt that the AAAs Code of Conduct was far too dogmatic and ethnocentric; basically a reflection of Western mainstream society’s current opinions about “good and bad” (they are even flirting with the animal rights movements by including animal rights into this CoC). However shocking this might seem, I am a cultural relativist and I do not believe in anygod-given rights and wrongs (not even any god-given “human rights”). There are many “values” in my own or other societies which I agree with, but there are also others which I do not. But this does not take away the fact that every society has its own rules which you break at your own risk. Moreover, in relationship to the in-game fieldwork, itwas clear that the in-game morality and rules clearly differed from the “real world” rules and the “real world” morality.

5 (XXXXXX)

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For example, to kill a wolf in Sweden is a very serious crime, but the game virtually forces you to kill hundred of wolves, bears and other animals. However, as you are predefined as a member of the “free peoples of Middle Earth”and as “fighting the forces of darkness” and these animal-killing quests are handed to you by the game creators themselves, you obviously do not need to question their (in-game) “morality”. To make a long story short, I began fighting and killing wolves and “bandits” as soon as I realized that it was necessary in order to advance in the game (and I needed to advance in order to be able to carry out my fieldwork better). It might seem that “killing” “graphic” depictions of wolves is an activity which hardly deserves a morality or ethics discussion: but there are someareas where “online morality” has had to conform to offline morality’s conventions. Such an area is sexuality: [apparent] online rape and pedophilia, for example, is not allowed even when it is (actually) carried out by two consenting adults. This topic is currently hotly debated on Second-Life bloggs and the Second Life’s managers have already given out real life information to the (real life) police about activities carried out in the virtual world. Some things are thus so holy (holy cows?) that they are not to be tampered with even in the virtual worlds.

By killing wolves and bandits I was obviously much less “detached” than what an anthropologist is generally supposedto be from his “field”. I also, however, broke another widely held rule of fieldwork conduct, namely that an anthropologist’s “subjects” should be “fully” informed abouthis or her anthropologist’s activities. But here too, I felt that “normal” anthropologist conduct was not really possible because if you would try to impose your real life identity into the game you would be breaking another of the in-game rules of conduct: when you are in the game you are supposed to conform to the atmosphere of the game. In fact, the closest thing that LOTRO has to a police force are the “game masters” (GMs); fully salaried RL individuals who roamthe gameworld in search for all characters who have “unsuitable” names (such as Madonna, Allah and George Bush…

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but also Aragorn, Frodo and Gandalf). These are not the onlypeople they are after but it is the issue that they are forced to deal with most frequently.

If I would have insisted on introducing my real life identity into the game I too would thus have become one of these “atmosphere” destroyers. On top of this, there is in the list of the game’s “Code of Conduct” (in the game manual) one rule which forbids any form of survey in the game. Nonetheless, even though I chose to do interviews without revealing my “true identity” I would nonetheless protect their real identities I had asked about them (which I did not). As concerns in-game identities, I have chosen to mention some of my (in-game) friends avatars by name (since I only have good things to say about them) but I do not revealthe names of other avatars.

Moreover, I felt that the amount and nature of the information that I asked for did not differ much from the kind of questions players asked each other and me: These were questions, e.g., about age, nationality, and questions relating to the game and gaming habits in general. However, I did ask a couple of characters about their real life gender, which, surprisingly, I never observed any other player (characters?) do. To some extent, thus, player communication is not aligned to the atmosphere of the world, but neither does it generally blatantly break with it.

… becoming an avatar

I believe that I gradually moved from being an anthropologist to being just another player. To relate back to the discussion of the anthropologist as a “professional stranger”: Once the anthropologist has become fully converted into a “native” (or in this case player) he has perhaps outlived his usefulness as an anthropologist.

Why so? Because, despite what anthropologists themselves sayabout the “mission of their discipline”, it is clear that

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one of the anthropologist’s primary duties is simply to report/inform the “anthropological community” about his observations in the field and, possibly, their “theoretical implications”. This he must do using the anthropological language (some might call it jargon for it is very often unintelligible to non-anthropologists), and this, in essence, is what an anthropologist does.

As xxxx points out, a “native” or “insider” will be aware ofall the cultural phenomena which the outsider anthropologisttakes an interest in, but will not perceive them the same way nor perceive them in the same contexts as the outsider anthropologist will do.

“XXXXXXXX” Should it happen, thus, against all odds, that the anthropologist should trade his anthropological, theoretical(…modern, academic, scientific etc) world view for the natives world view and, consequently stop perceiving the “field” in a manner at least partly in line with the “anthropological” way to see things, he will no longer useful to that community. If, for example, an anthropologistbecomes an animist and starts perceiving reality the animistway, he will probably no longer to keep his position as an anthropologist.

But being a “stranger” also means that you have the “outsider’s sensitivity” – that you are able to observe things that go unnoticed (because of their banality) to “thenative”. Some of these things which I noticed during my first ten days of fieldwork in the LOTRO game world, I believe, were quite interesting: For instance, I caught myself, using the special “chat language” which characterizes in-game communication with other players – even outside the game: This “chat language” (part of which isperhaps mainstream among today’s youth) was entirely new to me. It is extremely heavily laden with unconventional

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abbreviations (e.g. “lol”6) and “smileys”. It is also used on bloggs” and chatboards”. There is also a whole vocabularyof words which all players are familiar which “ordinary” people would not understand (the same way). To “whisper”, e.g., means to use the ims chat rather than the fellowship when you talking to someone in the game. A “nuker” is a wizard etc.

How to ask questions and what to ask about…

One often tries to prepare oneself thoroughly before starting interviewing people during a fieldwork, yet one seldom follows the line of questioning that one had envisaged before the fieldwork.

In fact, many anthropologists are not entirely clear about what it is exactly they want to inquire about before gettingto the field. And even if when they know what they want to Iinquire about they usually cannot know the proper way of how to inquire about it. Only the trials and errors of the fieldwork itself will enable them to find the way to do this.

Usually, the initial questions are simply not suitable at all due to the fact that they are built on flawed preconceptions. The fieldwork experience reveals these flawsand the anthropologist must consequently continuously changehis fieldwork strategy and line of inquiry to fit the reality which unravels itself. Moreover, the fieldwork experience itself will often drive the anthropologist to change his topical focus – altogether or slightly – as more interesting (but unexpected) become apparent.

It was difficult to envisage doing fieldwork in an online world, but I imagined myself nonetheless applying more or less the same “strategies” which I had used earlier, in Africa and Vietnam. Of course, rule number one is to be

6 ”lord o lord”

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well-prepared and informed about the group or community you intend to study. To this end I did a fairly comprehensive background research about some of the hotter issues relatingto online games and tried to get an initial understanding ofthe lives of gamers (XXXXXXXXXX). In particular, I found Marklunds essay quite interesting since Marklund himself used to be an avid player and his own personal reflections are in fact much more revealing than the interviews he quotes.

Although the literature about this topic is already quite extensive I nonetheless perceived that most of the literature focuses on the real-life implications and not so much about the in-game worlds and societies themselves. In other words, I felt that the emic aspect was missing. I believed that trying to put myself in the shoes of the native (i.e. by entering his world) could potentially revealsome new insights.

Fieldwork observations/results

The quest-based sociality: the level system and its implications

In LOTRO players join in groups in order to be able to perform quests succesfully. After completing a quest, the players character receives both experience points and material rewards (money and items). Performing quests vastly increases the speed by which a player can level-up and become more powerful.

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Sociality, “for its own sake” (so to speak), is very limitedin the game world. Players do use ”emotes”7, clothing, titles, kinship membership, housing and even music8 to express themselves, impress other players and to strengthen group bonds – but although there is clearly social componentin virtual life it is very limited compared to that of real life. Above all, it seems -- at least to a relative newcomerto the MMORPG worlds – that most players are obsessed with with “leveling up”. However, this might be that this almost desperate urge of leveling up is only a “stage” in the character’s development. Once characters have attained higher levels it is possible that their goals and objectivesstarts changing… (I have not been able to observe high-levelcharacters since my avatar is not a high level character andbonding with characters of a different level range is virtually impossible). Even though the social elements of the game are probably more evident at higher levels, the main purpose of online the existence of an avatar continues to be the “completion of quests” and this makes socializing between high and low-level characters extremely rare since quests are usually adapted to a certain level (and groups never allow a “weak link” in their fellowships).

To most computer computer game and rpg players the concept of “level” seems very self-explanatory, unambiguous and simple. As a newcomer to a MMOG and interaction with the 7 Typing an emote command in the chat window will make the player bow, wave, laugh, cower, smoke, dance etc. These emotes are usually used whenplayers do not have anything else to do, i.e. when they are waiting to be recruited or when they are waiting for fellowship members to arrive to a gathering. They do, however, clearly have a social function as well. E.g. fellowship members often bow to each other when forming a fellowship and players who have happen to meet again after having been separated also often spend some time ”socializing” either with chat or with emotes (or both). 8 You can purchase a musical instrument and then use the keyboard of your computer to play music which other players will hear if they pass by close. Normally the playing of music will happen near ”meeting areas”in the game (usually a guest house xxxxx where there are many important npcs with which players need to interact [characters played by the computer]).

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real humans behind the characters with which I interacted inLOTRO, the implications of the level system nonetheless struck me as rather interesting for it was clear that in the game world level totally superseded any real life status indicators such as age etc. and clearly structured the social hierarchy between avatars (players?). High level characters will not let follow low level characters even if they are 12 years old in RL while the low level character is actually old enough to be their father or teacher! And low level characters, no matter how old and in what real life position, will usually appear submissive towards higher level characters!

Thus, due to the structure of the game, level is an extremelyimportant factor structuring sociality between players. ”Level” basically means power in the game (even though, due to the somewhat unimaginative nature of the nature of the game the only way to use ”power” is to kill monsters). I cannot say exactly why it is so important for players to quickly attain this power but this objective clearly supersedes that of ”saving Middle Earth from the forces of darkness”. In player terminology this phenomenon is called “the level tread-mill” and is often compared to the “rat race” in real life (wiki ref).

Nonetheless, there is also a feeling in the game (I say thisbased on interviews and from reading game-related bloggs) that this obsession on leveling up also seemed to be in order to a achieve a distant goal, as if the game only really begins once you have attained the maximum level: As one player i interviewed pointed out ”the game really only gets exciting when you do raids with max [maximum] level characters ”. These so called ”raids” are large expeditions of up to 24 players (from four co-operating fellowships) fighting alongside each.

The organization of raids obviously takes careful preparation, punctuality, obedience and some sort of leadership structure in order to work: It is the highest level of gameplay (c.f. the quotes below from applications to a Swedish LOTRO kinship…). At this maximum level game

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play, belonging to a kinship (it seems) appears to be a virtual necessity and it also at this level that kinships start vying for status and competing with each other for reputation within the gamer community.

The formation of fellowships and in-game friendships

After just spending a few days playing the game I started tonotice that certain areas of the game where hotspots where these hierarchy-formations could be noticed more clearly than elsewhere: in some entrances to caves (or other places)which where starting points for very difficult quests/missions, groups of players would gather and intensively try to recruit members to their fellowships or themselves be recruited into fellowships.

Some players, without stable fellowships (like myself) couldonly hope to be recruited in such hotspots only to be discarded immediately after the completion of the mission. Sometimes players (including myself) would be recruited intoa fellowship outside such a cave/dungeon/starting point onlyto realize the moment later that the recruiter – the fellowship leader – has disbanded the fellowship and joined a more powerful (higher-level) fellowship. Since participating and succeeding with difficult quests is necessary to progress quickly in the game the lack of a real, stable fellowship hampers the development of lonely players. For this reason, as well as perhaps to make the game experience more interesting, there is a natural urge among all players to try find/create more stable fellowships. In essence, this requires finding other lonely avatars and trying to bond with them over time, helping themcomplete missions which you have already completed (and viceversa) in the hope that, over time, the entire fellowship can streamline its quests. This, of course, also requires that the members of such a fellowship start coordinating their real life playing times.

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However, there are two other options for players who want toprogress as fast as possible: One way is to buy a character equipment or even an entire character for real money, illegally, from a so called “gold farmer”. The other way to progress faster is to quickly join a guild and take advantage of the services provided by such a community (see below).

Kinship: the most advanced form of “society” in the online world

Although I had heard of online ”guilds” and ”clans” (in LOTRO: kinships) ever since people started talking about online games it was only after doing fieldwork in LOTRO’s Middle Earth that I started to realise what they really were. I noticed that many players in the game had a ”second name” below their character names (which is displayed when your mouse-pointer touches a character on the screen). Thesenames could be anything from ”The Core Within” to (e.g.) ”The Power of Greece”9. I asked a character about this name but was merely told laconically that it was ”kinship”. Later, while playing the game however, a message appeared inthe chat window which said:

(see picture XXX below)

This was in fact a recruitment ad for the”Riders of Rohan”. After visiting the web site of the Riders of Rohan as well as that of a Swedish kinship I started to get a picture of what a kinship really was and that (as opposed to many fellowships) kinships also have “a life” outside the gameworld. As became clear when I investigated a little more9 can this be considered a case of indigenization of an external identity into the native online world?

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a Swedish LOTRO kinship, people were actually standing in line to be allowed to enter it: Prospective members had to fill out application forms in which they had to indicate their age, describe their personalities, gaming habits and their familiarity with Tolkien’s books (etc.). In fact, virtually all online players (or is it their characters?) try – sooner or later -- to become members of a kinship. Butwhat are the benefits of being a kinship member? I have not personally become a kinship member in LOTRO yet so I can only give a preliminary answer to this question: being a member of a kinship means that in exchange for performing duties to your kinship you too will be able to receive help and benefits from other kinship members, but as opposed to when you are a member of a fellowship (and when the computerwill calculate and divide equally the experience points earned by the group) the benefits of being in a kinship are not so direct and immediate and also depend on the members of the kinship actually keeping their commitments (which they can just as well ignore: the only thing they risk is exclusion from the kinship).

It appears that (usually) there is some sort of loyalty, more or less formally structured between kinship members. For example, as I read on the website of the Riders of Rohankinship ”all level 30+ characters were asked by the kinship leader to try to spend at least three hours per week helpinglow-level kinship members with their quests” (so that their levelling-up can speed up). Once aware of this fascinating phenomena, it did not take long before I stumbled upon lots of player characters who were, in fact, performing various duties for their kinships (one dwarf, for example, was crafting items for the benefit of his kin).

But kinship is probably also a way for players to feel more emotionally involved in the game experience – and, in fact, of extending it more into real life. When not playing the game, kinship members often write comments on their kinship bloggs and share information with each other about how to overcome certain problems in the game (always using their in-game character names). It is also on the kinship website

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that they receive information about their duties and important kinship events. In the applications for membershipin the only Swedish LOTRO kinship, several of the prospective members mentioned their membership in presumablyprestigious kinships/guilds in other games (as well as theirmany years of in-game experience). Here are couple of sentences written by the prospective kinship members:

“(jag) har ju en stor erfarenhet från WoW [World of Warcraft] vad det gäller guild då man var den ledande Fury warrior i guilden, i en guild som va bland dom som hade börjat på tier3 samlandet innan expansionen kom ut.”

”(…) Spelade i en seriös guild som raidade 3-4 dagar I veckan.”

”Är medlem i House [namnet på klanen] i Dungeons and Dragonsonline.”

Extract from my fieldwork journal: Lonelands(an attempt of writing some fieldnotes summing up observations during a game session)June 2, 2007-06-06

”spent the whole day [in game days are about four hours long] trying to kill norbogs (a kind of giant swamp insect].12 norbog legs were necessary to complete the mission. Managed to create a fellowship [a group of players that share experience points from killing monsters and try to help each other] but the fellowship soon disbanded after some of the members managed to collect their 12 legs before others. One player, eower (??), however, stayed on to help me complete the ”quest” (fotnot). After that he logged off (fotnot).

Later – again on my own – i met the character ”fireborn” outside ost guruth. I had been in fellowship with fireborn on the previous day so we immediately formed a fellowship again. He asked me to transfer the fellowship leadership to

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him so that he could invite a friend to join the fellowship (only leaders can invite, the person who initiates a fel automatically becomes the leader). He told me that his friend, a halfling (hobbit) called belliwyn was a healer andhe seemed to express admiration about this. ------

After completing another quest with belliwyn, fireborn and acharacter called ondgrim i felt very tired. Before logging out, however, all the characters in the fellowship (spontaneously bowed to each other ... see pic below). Just before quitting the game (logging out) i decided to lay down. Ondgrim and belliwyn also lay down (see pic). Also note the text box on the bottom right side of the pictures. In game language is very particular, smileys and abbreviations are extensively used (indeed one is virtually forced to use them since the chat is used the way talk is used in real life).”

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((observations: summing up???)) ((at the outset i had beenexpecting ...)The way i saw it, the behaviour of ”masked” real persons interacting in an unconstrained world could reveal interesting features of human sociality and behavioural patterns. Of course this would require an extremely extensive fieldwork in such worlds and not just a couple of game sessions. However, from what little i have seen so far of an online fantasy world ... these games are still too simple to enable any particularly ”advanced” forms of sociality or ... cultures (??). As for know, mmorpg players still constrained to ”bashing monsters” and showing of theirhigh levels (see below) in front of other players by ”bashing monsters”.

In fact, the level of ”realism” is actually reduced by the high number of player characters. In non-online fantasy worlds (where monsters and characters are played by the computer) these characters and monsters will conform more tothe particular ”atmosphere” which the world is supposed to convey. In an online game such lotro, the fact that 90% of the (visible) ”population” in the online worrld (middle earth) are real life players, makes it hard for the world tokeep an atmosphere of mystique and fantasy.

References

Agar, M. 1980. “ “

Balalaki, A. 1997. “Students, natives, colleagues: encounters in academia and in the field.” Cultural Anthropology,21 (4): 502-526.

Briggs, C. B. 1986. Learning How to Ask: a sociolinguistic appraisal of therole of the interview in social science research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Burke, T. May 26, 2007. ”Structuration, synthetic worlds-style: LOTRO and emotes” from http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/05/structuration_s.html#more

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I. and Shaw, L. L. 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hannerz, U. 1983. Över Gränser. Lund: Bröderna Ekstrands Tryckeri.

Hannerz, U. 2003. ”Being there... and there... and there! Reflections on multi-sited ethnography.” In Ethnography, 4(2): 201-216.

Hammersley, M. & Atkinson, P. 2003. Ethnography. London: Routledge.

Okely, J. & Callaway, H. (eds). 1992. Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge.

Marklund, F. 2006. ”Kul, spännande och socialt. Online-spelare om livet i ”bubblan.” C-uppsats (2006:184). Luleå Universitet. ISSN: 1402-1773.

Narayan, K. 1993. “How native is the native anthropologist?”American Anthropologist, 95(3): 671-686.

Wallman, S., Dhooge, Y., Goldman, A. and Kosmin, B. 1980. “Ethnography by proxy: strategies for research in the inner city.” Ethnos, 45:5-38.

Wulff, H. 2002. “Yo-Yo fieldwork: mobility and time in a multi-local study of dance in Ireland.” in Shifting Grounds. XXXX: Anthropological Journal on European Cultures.

Rynkiewich, M. A. & Spradley, J. P. 1981. Ethics and Anthropology. Malabar, Florida: Robert E. Krieger.

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Sanjek, R. (ed). 1990. Fieldnotes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Spradley, J. P. 1979. The Ethnographic Interview. New York: Hold,Rhineheart and Winston.

Tolkien, J.R.R. ( ). Härskarringen

Turkle, S. 1997 (1995). Leva.online. Stockholm: Norstedts.

Rosaldo, R. 1989. “Introduction: Grief and the headhunter’s rage.” In Culture and Truth. Boston: Beacon Press.

social rules of conduct in middle earth

-- Sigh i must be pompous as well as i hate it too.. nothing worse thanminding your own business and suddenly a box pops up,you decline, another box, decline, another box.. it happened so many times a couple of weeks ago i ended up whispering the person asking him to stop, still no response just another box, and again and again and again... where does it become harrassment, i mean for me it went way over the line after 4th invite, in the end i think he finished on the 8-9th time i asked him to stop and in the end only then because i said i was screenying and going to report for harassment if he carried on.

I have no problem helping anyone im in the same area too, be it on my LMor the Mini but pls pls no more box - wordless invites.. just drives me crackers more than i usually am __________________AelarisLoreMasterEvernight

The Loremaster class - think outside the box

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2676774#2676774

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Transcript of conversation in dol dinen when I was cast out to “die” in the middle of an enemy camp because I had brokenthe rules (unknowingly):

Background: We are a party of four members of which I am a newcomer while the others seem to “know” each other already.Suddenly in the middle of the enemy base – an extremely “dangerous” place – I realise that I have been thrown out ofthe fellowship: left to fend for myself.

(in ims channel with Chaoskeeper)

Aarhem: im out of party

Chaoskeeper: yes

Chaoskeeper: good bye

Aarhem: ur kicking me out?

Chaoskeeper: he talks in pms

Chaoskeeper: yes we were talking with u and no answer

Aarhem: soo?

Chaoskeeper: bye

Aarhem: werdo

After receiving this rather shocking communication. The shock, of course, was not related to the hostile environmentitself in which I was located but to fact that I had suddenly been cast out and humiliated by a group of players

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in the middle of a quest without knowing why. I quickly checked my fellowship chat and realised that it was about meusing the wrong button while picking up loot of fallen enemies (I had used the “need” instead of the “greed” button.) And this had apparently caused enormous resentment,at least to the leader of the party. These are the lines in the fellowship chat preceded my kicking out.

(in fellowship channel)

Chaoskeeper: Aaarhem if u keep needing everything I’m gonna let us see how many of them u can earn yourself

Chaoskeeper: u want hides that are for tailors,u want armoursmith recipes,scholar stuff…

Thommili: aarhem

Thommili: he asks you something

Thommili: respond please

Thommili: AARHEM

Thommili: tts [I do not know the meaning of this]

Thommili: otherwise we kick you m8 if you don’t stop pushingneed

Finally; my reply once I realise what the matter was about. In fact, however, I had had the feeling of being unwelcome in the party from the outset.

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Aarhem: I hadn’t got this need greed thing

Chaoskeeper: lol now he explains he didn’t got the greed/need/pass thing

Chaoskeeper: and why don’t u say so?

Aarhem: I wasn’t looking in fel chat

Chaoskeeper: why not?

Aarhem: was just sending yum a message that my pack was fulln needed to unload some stuff to her

Chaoskeeper: u asked to join this party, so follow its rules

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