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Virtual postcards: multimodal stories of online play

Published: 05 May 2012 Publication History

Abstract

This paper documents the use of a multimodal data collection tool developed for research on Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). Addressing a central problem of qualitative research on MMOGs - how to document the activities of players' domestic, everyday/everynight play practices - we describe how the virtual 'travelogue' allows participants to share, and annotate, screenshots of their MMOG play. Based on our preliminary analysis of 69 travelogues, we explore how these texts function similar to travel postcards, as generic images of in-game events and environments that are personalized and narrativized through players' annotations. We also discuss two themes across the travelogues, (in)authenticity and individualization, that illuminate the ways players negotiate the standardizing effect of many MMOG play experiences.

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  • (2019)The ownership and control of online photos and game dataProceedings of the 18th Joint Conference on Digital Libraries10.1109/JCDL.2019.00022(87-96)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2019
  • (2015)Alienated PlaybourGames and Culture10.1177/155541201456550710:4(365-388)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2015

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '12: CHI '12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2012
    2864 pages
    ISBN:9781450310161
    DOI:10.1145/2212776
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 05 May 2012

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    Author Tags

    1. mmogs
    2. postcards
    3. qualitative research
    4. travelogue
    5. visual methods

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    View all
    • (2019)The ownership and control of online photos and game dataProceedings of the 18th Joint Conference on Digital Libraries10.1109/JCDL.2019.00022(87-96)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2019
    • (2015)Alienated PlaybourGames and Culture10.1177/155541201456550710:4(365-388)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2015

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