Comments on: A Notes and Queries of MMOGs?

By: Lyn Jeffery

Lyn Jeffery — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 03:13:20 +0000

I’ve been thinking about the same issue in describing virtual Chinese worlds. Or, virtual worlds inhabited by Chinese players. Mainland Chinese players. You see where it starts to disintegrate rather quickly? We need papers that help us think about all the ways that “culture” and virtuality constitute one another. It seems to me that much of what we use in exploring cultural construction in real life can be used as ethnographers online; but there are significant differences as well, which will contribute to the literature on culture and economy, gender, space, and identity in the next decade. And then of course, how to theorize the blended nature of physical and virtual worlds is another avenue to explore through richly detailed ethnographies. Looking forward to reading your students’ papers!

Report this comment

By: museumfreak

museumfreak — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:55:57 +0000

I think that Annette Markham’s Life Online can help us think about this . . .

Report this comment

By: Comet Jo

Comet Jo — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 02:27:54 +0000

But what if I wanted from an ethnography of MMOGs what I want from any other ethnography (outside my areal interest): which is not to know “all about” MMOGs but to tell me why I would want to know anything about them at all–why are they interesting, what do they tell me about their context, what does a description of them tell me about our world or what it means to be human in it? In descriptive terms, what I need to know is what I need to know to follow the answers to these sorts of questions, which is why we don’t approach our field carrying copies of Notes and Queries any more.

Report this comment

By: Kerim

Kerim — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 22:15:26 +0000

I tried logging in to Second Life, but my iBook couldn’t handle the graphics and I just bumped into walls for a while. I finally gave up.

I’m self-concious enough about requiring students to purchase expensive books for a course, I’d be even more worried about an ethnographic project that required a hardware upgrade. And don’t many of these require a paid subscription as well?

Report this comment