‘The Challenge of Locating ‘Culture’ in Location-Based Games’ presented at Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference ‘Playing Around with Game Studies: Experiences in Methodologies for Analysing Video Game Cultures’ Panel with Apperley, T. Fordyce, F. van Ryn, L. and Butt, M., University of Sydney, 14-17 December, 2016.
The Challenge of Locating ‘Culture’ in Location-Based Games
1. The University of Sydney Page 1
Playing around with
Game Studies
Challenge of Locating
“Culture” in Location-
Based Games
Kyle Moore
PhD Candidate, Department of Media and
Communications
Twitter: @kylejmoore
Crossroads in Cultural Studies
Sydney, Australia
17 December 2016
2. The University of Sydney Page 2
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
3. The University of Sydney Page 3
What is Ingress?
Developed by Niantic labs in 2012
prior to split from Google
Location-based alternate-reality game
Fits within broad category of ‘urban
mobile game’
Global player base, beyond just urban
city centres
Two teams – ENL and RES
Capture-the-flag style game play
Game with no foreseeable end
4. The University of Sydney Page 4
‘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
6. The University of Sydney Page 6
Aegis Nova Anomaly
Sydney 25th of June
7. The University of Sydney Page 7
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 history
Screen shots of locations and
activities
Centred around social events – farms,
fracks, competitive micro-events and
large scale global events
8. The University of Sydney Page 8
Resistance Players at Aegis Nova Anomaly
Sydney, 25th of June 2016
9. The University of Sydney Page 9
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
10. The University of Sydney Page 10
Challenges
Everyday urban mobility – moving
between points of interest and social
interaction
Community involvement – in depth
engagement with communities
Reflexive 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
11. The University of Sydney Page 11
Preliminary Conclusions
Play is situational
i.e. it draws from sociocultural and material
contexts
One of these being ‘gaming culture’ more
broadly.
Play also able to alter and reframe our
understanding of these conditions
Draws from a range of localities
notions of ‘the local’ become intertwined with
play
Gaming culture is localised and reframed
through specific location-based gaming
practices
Editor's Notes
I want to address the idea of a ‘challenge’
Firstly, to think of our definitions of games and genres as a challenge, and as constantly shifting and changing through technological and theoretical paradigm shifts.
Secondly, the challenge of selecting an object of study – from games, to game communities.
Lastly, how to locate this object of study (the gaming situation – the intersection of multiple participants [games, players, communities, developers etc]) within a specific mixed methodology.
Urban mobile gaming – a term drawn from Larissa Hjorth and Adriana de Souza e Silva’s work – it is a blanket term to refer to mobile mediated games that use ‘the urban’ as their primary site of interaction.
Shira Chess, 2014 states that Ingress is both regional and global.
The urban then, becomes too limiting a location – and in my own research I’ve had to come to terms what firstly, what constitutes the urban, and secondly, how we might move beyond these ideas towards a more inclusive playful practice.
Situated play as a tool to combat the lack of specificity to localities.
Concept draws from HCI – the work of Suchman and her concept of situated actions – the idea that engagement with technology draws from socio cultural and material circumstances.
I expand on this idea using Paul Dourish’s idea of ‘practice’ – to focus less on context and more on how users make sense of these context and develop a new shared understanding of technology.
As such, I define locative media such as Ingress as a form of situated play – using play as a means to understand and make new meaning of material and socio cultural contexts – specifically within my research, the role Sydney plays.
My research thus, is draws from ethnographic methodologies in an attempt to understand how multiple localities – from the regional to the global – and the interplay these localities have wiith communities and software.
For the development of my methodology, I primarily drew from previous ethnographic studies into MMOs and virtual worlds – the work of TomBoellstorff (2008), TL Taylor (2006), Celica Pearce (2011) – looking at how one may document and understand cultural practices that emerge around gaming technologies and communities.
I also focus on the idea of the mobile phone as implicated in a larger culture – that is an everyday object of communication and used for multiple purposes – an often pervasive media object, at that.
the next step in my research is to conduct semi structured interviews with key participants to further my understand of the game’s intricacies
Research deals primarily with Sydney based resistance agents