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Playing around with Game StudiesChallenge of Locating “Culture” in Location-Based Games

Kyle MoorePhD Candidate, Department of Media and Communications Twitter: @kylejmoore

Crossroads in Cultural StudiesSydney, Australia17 December 2016

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Overview of Doctoral Research

– Doctoral research, an ethnography of Sydney-based Ingress players

– Ingress, also developed by Niantic Labs, while still a subsidiary of Google

– Team-based Resistance vs Enlightened

– Exploring the sociocultural and material circumstance underscoring urban play

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What is Ingress?

Developed by Niantic labs in 2012 prior to split from GoogleLocation-based alternate-reality game Fits within broad category of ‘urban mobile game’ Global player base, beyond just urban city centres Two teams – ENL and RESCapture-the-flag style game play Game with no foreseeable end

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‘Situated Play’

– The notion that all play is underscored by socio-cultural and material circumstance

– Draws from HCI ‘situated actions’ (Suchman, 1987; 2007)

– ‘Situated Gaming’ – Yates and Littleton (1999);

gaming within ‘cultural niches’

– Apperley (2010); tensions between local and global, embodied player engages within this space

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Aegis Nova AnomalySydney 25th of June

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Mixed Methodology for Mobile Media

Draws from virtual ethnographic methods – treating Ingress as a multi-sited game ‘Play’ and organisation of community across multiple platforms – GChat, in-person, in-game Participant observations Chat logs and event historyScreen shots of locations and activitiesCentred around social events – farms, fracks, competitive micro-events and large scale global events

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Resistance Players at Aegis Nova AnomalySydney, 25th of June 2016

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Entering the Community

Initial interactions with Ingress community based on proximity Solo play easily transforms into co-operative or team-based play Visibility of game system – a log of player interactions – allow for easy means of contact and development of community Social events organised via online groups and platforms e.g. Google+Online groups recruit via in-game communications

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Challenges

Everyday urban mobility – moving between points of interest and social interaction Community involvement – in depth engagement with communitiesReflexive research practices – community often willing to alter ‘everyday’ habits to attempt to accommodate me as researcher Shifting social landscape post ‘Pokémon Go’ – re-entering community for follow up interviews

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Preliminary Conclusions

Play is situational i.e. it draws from sociocultural and material contextsOne of these being ‘gaming culture’ more broadly. Play also able to alter and reframe our understanding of these conditionsDraws from a range of localitiesnotions of ‘the local’ become intertwined with playGaming culture is localised and reframed through specific location-based gaming practices