Kelly Bergstrom

Alienated Playbour Relations of Production in EVE Online

This article explores the play practices of EVE Online industrialists: those primarily responsible for generating the materials and equipment that drive the game’s robust economy. Applying the concept of “immaterial labor” to this underattended aspect of the EVE community, we consider the range of communicative and informational artifacts and activities industrialists enact in support of their involvement in the game—work that happens both in game and crucially outside of it. Moving past the increasingly anachronistic distinctions between digitally mediated labor and leisure, in game and out of game, we examine the relations of production in which these players are situated: to other EVE players, in-game corporations, the game’s developer, and the broader digital economy. Seen from this perspective, we consider the extent to which EVE both ideologically and economically supports the extension of capital into increasing aspects of our everyday lives—a “game” in which many play, but few win.

Disavowing ‘That Guy’: Identity construction and massively multiplayer online game players

Using Goffman’s ‘keys and frames’ as an analytical framework, this article explores depictions of massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) players in newspaper coverage, popular media (South Park and The Big Bang Theory), and Web-based productions (The Guild and Pure Pwnage) and player reactions to these largely stereotypical portrayals. Following this discussion, we present data from a longitudinal study of MMOG players, focusing on our study’s unintentional provoking of participants to react to (and ultimately reject) these stereotypes in their survey responses. We argue this is of particular interest to researchers studying MMOG players or members of other heavily satirized communities, as these stereotypes influence the ways study participants practice identity management and frame their own gaming practices, even in the context of an academic study that was explicitly not about addiction or the negative effects of digital game play.

Virtual inequality: a woman's place in cyberspace

EVE Online is a space-themed Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) that to date has remained largely unexplored in an academic context. This particular MMOG has a reputation among players as being both extremely difficult to learn how to play, as well as being unattractive to female players. In this paper I describe my proposed dissertation research that will trace the relationships between the human and non-human actors that have resulted in the EVE Online player communitys demographic makeup being so different than other, more gender-balanced, MMOGs.

Temporary Break or Permanent Departure? Rethinking What It Means to Quit EVE Online:

To date, much of the research about massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and the people who play them has focused on studies of current players. Comparatively, little is known about why players quit. Rather than assuming MMOG play begins and ends with personal interest, this article uses a leisure studies framework to account for barriers and participation to play. Drawing on survey responses from 133 former EVE Online players, this article demonstrates that quitting is not a strict binary where one moves from playing to not playing. Furthermore, quitting in the context of MMOGs is not always a definitive act as some players will leave and then return to a particular game numerous times. Ultimately, this article argues that the voices of former players are an underattended demographic that can add further insights allowing game scholars to better understand why players gravitate toward particular games and not others.

Moving Beyond Churn: Barriers and Constraints to Playing a Social Network Game:

Social network games (SNGs) are genre of casual games that require being logged into a social networking site (e.g., Facebook) to access the gameworld. To date, investigations of these games are typically focused on the rate of attrition or “churn,” reinforcing the idea that SNG players exist to make the developer money rather than participating in a game they derive pleasure from. Seeking to recenter the player in research about SNGs, this article reports on a survey of former players (N = 147) who were queried about their reason(s) for no longer participating in YoWorld, a Facebook-based SNG. Findings indicate that players typically quit because of external constraints to their leisure time rather than no longer interested in the game, which are not barriers to play that can be overcome by personalized in-game incentives, the typical developer response to prevent churn from taking place.