MMORPGs as a "Public Space"

MMORPGs as a "Public Space"

Retrieved from "http://www.digra.org:8080/Plone/dl/db/05164.45486.pdf" on 16/01/2008



The Similar Eye: Proxy Life and Public Space in the MMORPG

By:Julian Holland Oliver

171 Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference,ed. Frans Mäyrä. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.





(171)We must begin to think of the MMORPG as a public space. More importantly it provides tools for thinking how this rich platform for human interaction is actually produced.



(172)Game-play in an MMORPG is in this way constantly affirming, historicizing and complexifying inter-animations of the agent in a place, whose whole momentum is to be capable enough for the world.


(173)The exercising of these skills in turn affirms individual’s value within the context of the group.

(173)The players of an MMORPG are united in interest by way of similar predicament. This ‘world opposition’ in turn gives benevolence a utility; gamers in an MMORPG soon find themselves helping other gamers as a means of ensuring prolonged and successful game-play.

(173)But action, or the practices of people, has never been enough to produce
a public space.

(173-174) According to Gibson, cyberspace is about total immersion in the media itself, ultimately in order to take the agent away from all encounters with daily life: “a consensual hallucination ... the point at which media (flows) together and surrounds as ... the ultimate extension of the exclusion of daily life. With cyberspace ... you can literally wrap yourself in media and not have to see what is really going on around you” [19].

(174)Within the dominant configuration of productive opposition in MMORPG game worlds we find an interior zoned with other ‘dispositions’ of landscape. These can largely be broken down to the zones of city (settlement), quest, and wilderness. a)_Cities or settlements are where game-play begins, resources are most concentrated. b)_Wild is the realm of the game world nature / super-nature. c)_Quests are areas dedicated to objective driven game-play.

(175)When the character dies or resources run out they are forced to return to the city or settlement to gather items and recoup lost health.

(175)The wild of the world is unstable, unsafe, populated by storms, surprises and death...Cities and settlements therefore become safety zones, where players recoup equipment, find team members, and re-address failed efforts...At some point, co-habitation, regardless of moral alignment becomes an inevitable function of game-play; the city or settlement must be the first and final fold. This is how MMORPGs have, at their very core, a mechanism that produces and supports the formation of public-space.

(175)In her thesis, “Inhabiting the Virtual City,” Judith Donath asserts--There are parallels both between real-world cities and virtual environments as well as between real-world architect and virtual system designers. Both real-world and virtual cities are (or should be) vibrant gathering places of people, centers of commerce and entertainment. [8]

(176)