Abstract
This chapter develops a methodological concept that is new in this area of research, latitudinal studies that look at phenomena across multiple virtual worlds, as a means to draw generalizable conclusions. For the purposes of illustration, it uses the remarkable case history of a community of players that arose in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, a massively multiplayer online game, and who migrated to other virtual worlds when it closed down, taking their Uru culture with them. Uru refugees entered other online game worlds, and the non-game worlds There.com and Second Life, where they created their own fictive ethnic identities, communities, and cultures. A 5-year research project has studied the emergence of game refugees, trans-ludic diasporas, and the development of trans-ludic identities, while exploring a range of methodological challenges and opportunities. It is becoming increasingly feasible to conduct ethnographic studies with teams of researchers or graduate students that provide comparative analysis across multiple games or worlds.
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Notes
- 1.
All player avatar names are pseudonyms.
- 2.
- 3.
See also http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/home.html.
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Pearce, C., Artemesia (2010). The Diasporic Game Community: Trans-Ludic Cultures and Latitudinal Research Across Multiple Games and Virtual Worlds. In: Bainbridge, W. (eds) Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-825-4_4
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