Cyber Anthropology

You have met them before, may have children that are or even consider yourself one. This group of people cuts across all demographics including age, race, gender, class, nationality, and education (Squire and Steinkuehler, 2005). Together they spend an average of $7.4 billion dollars a year on their hobby (Smith, 2008), they devote an average of 22 hours a week to it (Reeves et al., 2008) and 67% of American heads of households say they do it (Scordato, 2008). I am talking about a user group collectively known as gamers.

Video games have become an important part of our culture. They were the first medium to transform the computer from a utilitarian device into a recreational one, thus being the instigators behind bringing computers into the home (Wolf, 2001). Can you imagine life today without home computers? Games are also considered by some to be the driving force behind improvements in computer technology (Wolf 2001). Take for example the game 7th Guest. It was the first game to be available only on CD-ROM as it was too large to fit on floppy disks because the videos that were a part of it could not be left out as it would be a detriment to the game play (Wikipedia).

Video games have evolved quite a bit over the last 30 years as have the cultures surrounding them. Not only are games entertaining, but they are also methods to ‘promote various types of information literacy, develop information seeking habits and product practices (like writing), and require good, old fashioned research skills, albeit using a wide spectrum of content.’ (Squire and Steinkuehler, 2005) All of which will be analyzed in the following pages of this gamer user group analysis.

Gamers and their Information Needs
Consider this, over 10 million people play the game World of Warcraft (Reeves et al., 2008) and I am one of them. While I am a student of information behavior, I am also an anthropologist who has done ethnographic research on a guild in World of Warcraft and I self identify as a gamer. In fact, I have played World of Warcraft since the date of its release. In this section, I will speak from personal experience of what my needs as a gamer are, as well as supplement my experiences with research I have collected for this user group analysis.

To begin, as a gamer, my needs are not only for how to play the game i.e. the mechanics of it, but also for the best strategies to employ while trying to complete quests within the game. Additionally, I do not only need information on how to play the game myself, but also information on group dynamics, as well as how to strategize with others in completing difficult dungeons and defeating major bosses. Also just as important as the mechanics and the strategy behind the actual game play, is how to best outfit my character to perform at her best both by herself and within a group. So, to that end I look up information on gear, enchants, gems, tradeskills, and more that will help make my character both fun to play and a valuable part of any group. I also play more than one type of character so this information is multifold as it is different for each one of them.

As you can see, the amount of information required to play can be large and varied. What is interesting though is that I as well as millions of others will gladly go out of our way to seek out this information in order to ‘play’ a game. One difference to consider between gamers or the digital generation and traditional information seekers is that we approach the need for information collaboratively, we actively and almost immediately use it (either in game play or through sharing), and it is just as important to us to find and use good information as to be producers of it ourselves.

Gamers as Collaborative Information Seekers, Consumers, and Producers
Considering all of the knowledge required to play World of Warcraft, the first question that may come to mind is where does one start? The first stop for many, especially within collaborative online games (but certainly not to the exclusion of other gaming genres), is to consult other gamers. Within World of Warcraft, groups of gamers come together in the form of guilds. These guilds consist of a variety of people each with their own needs, knowledge, approach, and skills. In my guild, age ranges from 18 to 52, it is made up of about 20% women and 80% men, we have everyone from housewives to marines, from college graduates to high school students, and we hail from several different countries including Canada, US, Mexico, and England. About 75% of us participate regularly on our message boards where we socialize, ask questions, as well as consume and produce information.
Squire and Steinkuehler in the article Meet the Gamers state:

‘Game cultures feature participation in a collective intelligence, blur the distinction between the production and consumption of information, emphasize expertise rather than status, and promote international and cross-cultural media and communities.’ (Squire and Steinkuehler, 2005)

When one of us needs help, it is common practice to consult the guild first. In fact, I would suggest it would be considered an insult if one did not do this. This means the 18 year old from Indiana can answer just as well as the 42 year old from England and usually both do where one agrees or disagrees with the other then provides examples to backup their statement. If it is a question that no one outright has the answer to, it is understood that several will go out to find the answer and then come back with examples in the form of posted tried and true strategies, popular blogs, or even YouTube video examples to share. Some have even made YouTube movies of their own, and others have created maps made out of screenshots and uploaded them to the forums as a way to produce and share information. Sometimes this information is taken at face value, other times it is tested and argued about. ‘Groups of people from around the world solve problems with an array of information, digital tools, resources, screen shots and arguments.’ (Squire and Steinkuehler, 2005) In short, as has been my experience and as has been studied by other researchers, gamers ‘play, think, and learn together’. (Squire and Steinkuehler, 2005)

As was demonstrated by the above example, the production and consumption of information takes place not only within the game, but also in various forms outside of the game. These forms can include things such as guild forums, official and unofficial game forums, blogs, voice over IP systems, and within information repositories such as WoWWiki, a Wikipedia type compendium put together by gamers for gamers about the game. These resources span the range of official to unofficial and it is up to the gamer to seek out what is usable, what is current, and what is not. In any case, seeking outside information is as much vital to successful game play as it is to being a successful contributing member of a guild.

In Play Between Worlds, T.L.Taylor states the following:
‘The collective production of game experience and knowledge does not simply constitute a helpful “addon” to the game, but is a fundamental factor in both its pleasure and sustainability. Most radically put, the very product of the game is not constructed simply by the designers or publisher, nor contained within the boxed product, but produced only in conjunction with the players.’ (Taylor, 2006)

Knowing what the best sources are, staying up with the latest information, and being quick to offer it to those who ask is a matter of pride for many gamers. As Squire and Steinkuehler point out ‘Knowing where and how to find the right information isn’t just entertainment, it’s also a source of prestige’. (Squire and Steinkuehler, 2005)

Gamers as Leaders and Information Users
Another source of prestige as a gamer is the ability to use the information you have gathered in order to lead a group of fellow gamers to complete a goal successfully. People who emerge as leaders within games such as World of Warcraft are called on to use the information they have gathered in order to recruit other players, assess the skills of these players, motivate them, reward them, retain them for the next encounter, identify and capitalize on the groups competitive advantage, and analyze ‘multiple streams of constantly changing and often incomplete data in order to make quick decisions that have wide-ranging and sometimes long lasting effects.’ (Reeves et al., 2008)

These skills are becoming highly prized skills of leaders in the business world as well. While there is not a one to one relationship between being a leader in game to be a leader in business, it has been surmised that ‘leadership in online games offers a sneak preview of tomorrow’s business world.’ (Reeves et al., 2008) At the beginning of the article Leadership’s Online Labs Reeves, Malone, and O’Driscoll paint this picture of the business landscape of the future:

‘At many companies, important decision making will be distributed throughout the organization to enable people to respond rapidly to change. A lot of work will be done by global teams – partly composed of people from outside the institution, over whom a leader has no formal authority – that are assembled for a single project and then disbanded. Collaboration within these geographically diverse groups will, by necessity, occur mainly through digital rather than face-to-face interaction.’ (Reeves et al., 2008)

Not only is it intriguing to look at those who emerge as leaders, but also it is important to consider the environment in which they become leaders. ‘Perhaps the right environment is what really matters, whoever the leader happens to be.’ (Reeves et al., 2008) Considering the fact that it is often an act of collaborative leadership, collaborative game play, and collaborative information seeking, consuming and producing that leads to the success of an in game endeavor, this is likely not far off the mark.

Conclusions
Taking into consideration the varied information needs of gamers, as well as the way they collaboratively seek, consume, and produce data not to mention the potential affects gaming will have on the business landscape in the future, it is apparent that gamers make up a specific user group that requires the attention of information professionals.

First, we should consider the fact that gamers have diverse information seeking needs and they are not afraid of utilizing multiple resources and tools. ‘One core competency in gaming communities is the ability to negotiate multiple, competing information spaces that span different media and officially/unofficial channels.’ (Squire and Steinkuehler, 2005) This means information professionals need to be inclusive of various spaces within which gamers are allowed to seek instead of trying to restrict gamers into one space over another.

Secondly, more attention needs to be paid to the collaborative collection, sharing, and producing of information. How do we make this easier to do? How do we encourage people to come back to and share valued resources? What kind of tools can we come up with to make their seeking and collaboration easier? In what ways can we promote collaborative production of information? How can we harness these skills in children (and adults for that matter) and refocus them toward even academic or industrial uses?

Lastly, how do we help game leaders utilize the skills they are building in their game time in the business world? How do we harness the gaming environment as a way to help make leaders out of whomever happens to come into that position?

If information professionals hope to harness the skills and fulfill the needs of gamers and the digital generation, it is obvious by these unanswered questions that more research needs to be performed on and even in conjunction with them. Yes, with them. Make a game of it. There is no use in letting their skills go to waste!

[Written for an Information Behavior Class - School of Library and Information Sciences - UNT.]

References

Reeves, Byron; Malone, Thomas W.; O’Driscoll, Tony. (2008). Leadership’s Online Labs. Journal Harvard Business Review. Vol 86, no. 5 (May): 58-67. Retrieved March, 21th, 2009, from EBSCO HOST – Business Source® Complete ™

Scordato, Julie. (2008). Gaming As A Library Service. Journal Public Libraries Vol 47, no. 1 (January/February): 67-73. Retrieved March, 21th, 2009, from EBSCO HOST – Education Research Complete

Smith, Brena. (2008). Twenty-first century game studies in the academy: Libraries and an emerging discipline. Reference Services Review Vol 36, no. 2 (February): 205-220. Retrieved March, 21th, 2009, from EBSCO HOST – LISA: Library and Information Science Abstracts

Squire, Kurt; Steinkuehler, Constance. (2005). Meet the Gamers. Library Journal Vol 130, no. 7 (April): 38-42. Retrieved March, 21th, 2009, from EBSCO HOST Academic Search Complete ™

Taylor, T. L., (2006) Play Between Worlds, Exploring Online Game Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Wolf, Mark J.P. (ed) (2001). The Medium of the Video Game. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.