Authors
Bonnie Nardi, Justin Harris
Publication date
2006/11/4
Book
Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Pages
149-158
Description
We analyze collaborative play in an online video game, World of Warcraft, the most popular personal computer game in the United States, with significant markets in Asia and Europe. Based on an immersive ethnographic study, we describe how the social organization of the game and player culture affect players' enjoyment and learning of the game. We discovered that play is characterized by a multiplicity of collaborations from brief informal encounters to highly organized play in structured groups. The variety of collaborations makes the game more fun and provides rich learning opportunities. We contrast these varied collaborations, including those with strangers, to the "gold standard" of Gemeinschaft-like communities of close relations in tightknit groups. We suggest populations for whom similar games could be designed.
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Scholar articles
B Nardi, J Harris - Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference …, 2006