The Proteus Paradox (29 page)

5
. Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass,
The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Televisions, and New Media Like Real People and Places
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

6
. See Michael Argyle and Janet Dean, “Eye-Contact, Distance and Affiliation,”
Sociometry
28 (1965): 289–304; and Nick Yee et al., “The Unbearable Likeness of Being Digital: The Persistence of Nonverbal Social Norms in Online Virtual Environments,”
Journal of CyberPsychology and Behavior
10 (2007): 115–121.

7
. There are many other examples of these cognitive shortcuts. See, e.g., Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,”
Science
185 (1974): 1124–1131.

8
. For examples of known effects of moon phases in
Final Fantasy XI,
see this wiki page:
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/MoonePhase
. Note how the unproven effects of moon phases are explicitly marked.

9
. The player behind Wi describes the early dismissal of his digital torment on this guild post:
http://www.gamerdna.com/GuildHome.php?guildid=5849&page=2
. Turbine's initial denial and subsequent discovery of the bug were originally released at:
http://www.zone.com/asheronscall/news/ASHEletter0702.asp
. That link is no longer available, but the letter has been archived and is available at:
http://asheron.wikia.com/wiki/Wi_Flag
.

1
. In game studies, the philosophical distinction between play and nonplay usually centers on debates around the concept of the “magic circle”—the special space created by a game that marks it off from reality—originally coined by Johan Huizinga in
Homo Ludens: A Study of Play Element in Culture
(Boston: Beacon, 1938). It is a highly abstract and theoretical discussion, and I refer interested readers to a recent review of the literature: Jaakko Stenros, “In Defence of a Magic Circle: The Social and Mental Boundaries of Play,”
Proceedings of 2012 DiGRA Nordic
(2012),
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/12168.43543.pdf
. See also Bonnie A. Nardi, “Work, Play, and the Magic
Circle,” in
My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 94–122.

2
. One of many equations from the “SWG Profession Guide—Doctor”:
http://forum.galaxiesreborn.com/star-wars-galaxies-profession-guides/swg-profession-guide-doctor-t3208.html
.

3
. Excerpted from:
www.hadean.org
in 2005.

4
. Excerpted from:
http://eve-search.com/thread/622081/page/1
.

5
. Full interview available at:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001334.php
.

6
. Here, “classism” refers to the periodic preferences and non-preferences for certain classes in the game owing to changes in game balancing. Classes that are perceived as nonoptimal may be shunned by other players when forming raids and dungeon groups.

7
. John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade,
Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever
(Boston: Harvard Business School, 2004).

8
. Jane McGonigal,
Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
(New York: Penguin, 2011); Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read,
Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete
(Boston: Harvard Business School, 2009).

9
. “Gartner Says by 2014, 80 Percent of Current Gamified Applications Will Fail to Meet Business Objectives Primarily Due to Poor Design,”
Gartner Newsroom,
November 27, 2012,
www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2251015
.

10
. See Tiziana Terranova, “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,”
Social Text
63 (2000): 33–58. For more on free labor, see Trebor Scholz, ed.,
Internet as Playground and Factory
(New York: Routledge, 2012). For news coverage of the protein folding game, see Michael J. Coren and Fast Company, “Foldit Gamers Solve Riddle of HIV Enzyme within 3 Weeks,”
Scientific American,
September 20, 2011. For more on how gamification can be exploitative, see Ian Bogost, “Persuasive Games: Exploitationware,”
Gamasutra,
May 3, 2011, available at:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6366/persuasive_games
_exploitationware.php
.

1
. These player-made videos first reported in Constance Steinkuehler, “The Mangle of Play,”
Games and Culture
1 (2006): 199–213.

2
. Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nick Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert J. Moore, “Building an MMO with Mass Appeal: A Look at Gameplay in World of Warcraft,”
Games and Culture
1 (2006): 281–317.

3
. Julian Dibbell, “The Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer,”
New York Times,
June 17, 2007.

4
. Richard Heeks, “Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on ‘Gold
Farming': Real-World Production in Developing Countries for Virtual Economies of Online Games,”
Development Informatics Working Paper Series
(2008), retrieved from:
http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/
wp/di/di_wp32.htm
.

5
. Danny Vincent, “China Used Prisoners in Lucrative Internet Gaming Work,”
Guardian,
May 25, 2011.

6
. In games like
World of Warcraft,
PvP on most servers is meant to be a mutually consensual activity. Players can toggle their PvP status. When toggled off, no other player can attack them. When toggled on, they can attack other PvP-flagged players. If a non-PvP-flagged Player A attacks a PvP-flagged Player B, Player A's PvP-flag is toggled on. Gold farmers sometimes try to trick normal players by first toggling on their PvP-flag and then step into monsters the player is attacking, hoping that the player clicks on them instead of the monster and accidentally causing them to become PvP-flagged. When this happens, the gold farmer can attack and attempt to kill the player via PvP. In resource-rich areas, there are often multiple gold farmers. Thus, when normal players are tricked to becoming PvP-flagged, they may be set upon by multiple gold farmers.

7
. Heeks, “Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda,” 11–12.

8
. Thread now defunct but originally available at:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-mage&T=283346
.

9
. Thread now defunct but originally available at:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=4007590
.

10
. Lisa Nakamura, “Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft,”
Critical Studies in Media Communication
26 (2009): 128–144.

11
. Dean Chan, “Being Played: Games Culture and Asian American Dis/Identifications,”
Refractory
16 (2009): 1.

12
. See
http://web.archive.org/web/20060708212246/
http://www.hellomonster.net/2006/04/18/blizzards-patriot-act/
.

13
.
Yi-shan-guan
was a euphemism that implied a tailoring or clothing emporium, without any direct reference to washing or laundry. Iris Chang,
The Chinese in America: A Narrative History
(New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 48–49, 169.

14
. Ibid., 119, 132.

15
. Edward Castronova, “Is Inflation Fun?”
Terra Nova,
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2005/08/iseinflationefu.html
.

16
. Heeks, “Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda,” 23.

17
. Nate Combs, “Why Are In-Game Economies so Hard to Get Right?”
TerraNova,
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/02/whyeare_ingamee.html
.

18
. This finding on lynching was first reported in C. Hovland and R. Sears, “Minor Studies of Aggression: Correlation of Lynchings with Economic Indices,”
Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied
9 (1940): 301–310. A reanalysis revealed some statistical flaws, but the corrected analysis still showed the same correlations at a lower magnitude: Alexander Mintz, “A Re-Examination of Correlations between
Lynchings and Economic Indices,”
Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology
41 (1946): 154–160. A definitive reanalysis using time series analysis has confirmed that the correlations are real and not simply artifacts of incorrect statistics: E. M. Beck and Stewart E. Tolnay, “The Killing Fields of the Deep South: The Market for Cotton and the Lynchings of Blacks,”
American Sociological Review
55 (1990): 526–539. The study of ethnic stereotypes in the European Union is reported in Edwin Poppe, “Effects of Changes in GNP and Perceived Group Characteristics on National and Ethnic Stereotypes in Central and Eastern Europe,”
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
31 (2006): 1689–1708.

1
. Edward Castronova,
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Statistics of gender ratio across all video games can be found in Entertainment Software Association, “2012 Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry,”
http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2012.pdf
. The ratio of female gamers is reported as 26% in a study of
World of Warcraft
players in Nick Yee, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Han-Tai Shiao, and Les Nelson, “Through the Azerothian Looking Glass: Mapping In-Game Preferences to Real World Demographics,”
Proceedings of CHI 2012
1 (2012): 2811–2814; as 19.7% women in a study of
EverQuest II
players in Dmitri Williams, Mia Consalvo, Scott Caplan, and Nick Yee, “Looking for Gender: Gender Roles and Behaviors among Online Gamers,”
Journal of Communication
59 (2009): 700–725; and as 15% women in an earlier study across multiple online games in Nick Yee, “The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments,”
Presence
15 (2006): 309–329.

2
. Torben Grodal, “Video Games and the Pleasure of Control,” in
Media Entertainment: The Psychology of Its Appeal,
ed. Dolf Zillman and Peter Vorderer (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000), 197–213; Kristen Lucas and John L. Sherry, “Sex Differences in Video Game Play: A Communication-Based Explanation,”
Communication Research
31 (2004): 499–523; Chris Crawford, “Women in Games,”
Escapist
17 (2005): 3–9.

3
. T. L. Taylor,
Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 113.

4
. Holin Lin, “Body, Space, and Gendered Gaming Experiences: A Cultural Geography of Homes, Cybercafés and Dormitories,”
Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Computer Games,
ed. Yasmin B. Kafai et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 54–67.

5
. Parenting differences in arcade access reported in Desmond Ellis, “Video Arcades, Youth, and Trouble,”
Youth and Society
16 (1984): 47–65. For Williams's studies of women in gaming, see Dmitri Williams, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo, and James D. Ivory, “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in
Video Games,”
New Media and Society
11 (2009): 815–834; and Dmitri Williams, “A Brief Social History of Video Games,” in
Playing Computer Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences,
ed. Peter Vorderer and Jennings Bryant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006), 229–247.

6
. David Alan Grier,
When Computers Were Human
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); T. Camp, “Women in Computer Studies: Reversing the Trend,”
Syllabus
24 (2001): 24–26; Computing Research Association, “Computing Degree and Enrollment Trends,”
http://www.cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree_
and_Enrollment_Trends_2010-11.pdf
.

7
. Yee, “Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences.”

8
. Jennifer Jenson and Suzanne de Castell, “Her Own Boss: Gender and the Pursuit of Incompetent Play” (Paper presented at DiGRA 2005).

9
. In the interest of full disclosure, I am currently employed by Ubisoft, but since I had previously recounted this story with Romine in a book chapter long before I was employed by Ubisoft, I felt it was acceptable to reproduce it here without seeming too biased.

10
. See
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001557.php
.

11
. Sheri Graner Ray,
Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market
(Hingham, MA: Charles River Media, 2004), 104.

12
.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5968887243
.

13
. Here are three studies that report very consistent gender differences in gaming: T. Hartmann and C. Klimmt, “Gender and Computer Games: Exploring Females' Dislikes,”
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
11 (2006): 910–931; Lucas and Sherry, “Sex Differences in Video Game Play”; and Williams, Consalvo, Caplan, and Yee, “Looking for Gender.” In addition to the last source cited, I've also reported this in a different data set: Nick Yee, “Motivations for Play in Online Games,”
Journal of CyberPsychology and Behavior
9 (2006): 772–775.

14
. Nick Yee, “WoW Alliance vs. Horde,”
The Daedalus Project,
available at:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001366.php
.