Expertise and collaboration in online gaming

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Expertise and collaboration in online gaming

• Leet noobs Expertise and collaboration in a
  World of Warcraft player group as distributed
  sociomaterial practice

Mark Chen University of Washington _at_mcdanger markc
hen_at_uw.edu
This work is funded by the National Science
Foundation through the Science of Learning Center
program under grant SBE-0354453.
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Some game play
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World of Warcraft

• MMOG
• 6 million subscribers in 2006

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World of Warcraft

• MMOG
• 6 million subscribers in 2006
• Fantasy with races / classes

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World of Warcraft

• MMOG
• 6 million subscribers in 2006
• Fantasy with races / classes
• Complete quests, kill monsters for loot and XP

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Raiding

• Large group joint activity
• Highly coordinated
• Specialized roles
• Organization and leadership
• Molten Core

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Leadership tasks required for raiding
Also see Reeves Read, 2009
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Ethnographic methods (Steinkuehler, 2004)

• Pool of 60 regular players, 40 per session
• Met 2-3 times a week for 10 mos (11/05-8/06), 4-5
  hrs each time
• Larger ethnography has over 1000 hrs of chat data
• 100 hrs of video select posts on web forums
• Disciplined perception (Stevens Hall, 1998)

a magic item that warlocks can give to others so
that they can come back to life if they are killed
priests and shaman can bring others back to life
(resurrect)
Remember, who you give soulstones to will change
when we encounter Majordomo Executus, but, until
then, the priest or shaman who youve been
assigned to should have your soulstone at all
times.
Remember, ss target will change at Domo, but
until then, your rezzer is to be ssed at all
times.
its important to give rezzers the ability to
come back to life so they can rez the rest of the
raid group
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Theorizing the practice

• Push-pull relationship of objects in a network of
  activity
• Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2005)
• Distributed Cognition (Hutchins, 1995)
• Mangle (Pickering, 1993 Steinkuehler 2006)
• Assemblage (Deleuze Guitarri, 1987 Taylor,
  2006)
• Arrangement (Stevens, Satwicz, McCarthy, 2009)
• Object-Oriented Ontology (Bogost, 2006, 2009)
• Roles and responsibilities constantly
  renegotiated, redistributed, and reconfigured to
  adapt to local settings

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Analyses

• Expertise as sociomaterial practice
• Communication, coordination, and camaraderie
• A new addon and its effect on raiding

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Expertise in game mechanics?
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various bits of info to keep track of
minimap and addon buttons
temporary bonuses or impairments (buffs and
debuffs)
streaming combat text
name and health of enemy
tank targets
more ability buttons
the jumble in the middle is the actual in-game
fight
cooldown timers for temporary effects
my health and status enemy health and status
threat meter
enemy debuffs
unit frames showing health and status of raid
members
chat window
ability buttons
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Expertise as sociomaterial practice

• Emergent through push-pull of constraints-workarou
  nds
• Limited by access to the right social networks

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World of Warcraft wiki
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Communication, coordination, and camaraderie

• Regular chat channels and specialized ones by
  character role
• say
• whisper
• party
• raid
• healsting
• madtankin
• rottentranq
• madsheep
• soulburn
• madrogues

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Communication, coordination, and camaraderie

• Hierarchical and interwoven

193000.953 2. madrogues Rebecca good... poison up... assist wei -'good' refers to the fact that no Rogues said they have not done this fight. Even so, Rebecca clarifies our roleuse poisons on our weapons and focus-fire on Wei's target.
193002.484 5. madtankin William where is wallace tonight? -madtankin channel for the Warriors. wallace is a character who usually comes to our raids.
193007.703 Raid Maxwell Henry peels to Marcie -role assignment
193010.468 3. healsting Drusella runs around like crazy people -Druids are getting a little silly now...
193012.656 3. healsting Sven We could... DPS shaman, Holy Nova priests? -more suggestions on turning certain healers into damage dealers instead
193015.312 5. madtankin Wallace I didn't make it in time. Rawr! -Wallace is still subscribed to the madtankin channel even though he is not part of the raid. These custom chat channels exist independently from any other channels in the game.
193017.453 To Lori May I have a healthstone pretty please? -Healthstones made by different Warlocks sometimes have different amounts of healing they can do (depending on how a player has 'specced' the character) which means they can be stored in one's inventory at the same time. In this case, I know Larry and Lori create different types of healthstones, so I've requested one from each.
193017.687 Raid Maxwell Horace peels to Mary -role assignment
193019.640 4. soulburn Lori Les-for this fight you will be ssing Derek. -what to do with that one soulstone that Lester has available
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Communication, coordination, and camaraderie

• Trust/performance evidenced by joviality, level
  of chat

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Communication, coordination, and camaraderie

• Meltdown prevented by realignment / reiteration
  of group values

I love our raid. I know we are all going to get
burned out at times and frustrated and upset and
disagree with one another. It is part of being
human. We are like brothers and sisters really.
Stuff like this is going to happen.
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Fight continued

• Look at coordination and use of addons

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A new addon and its effect on raiding

• Tripartite roles tank, healer, DPS
• Threat and aggro
• KTM no longer keeping it in our heads
• Yet KTM only used temporarily in Rags fight
• KTM used on multiple scales of time and actor
  networks / mangles (Latour, 2005 Pickering,
  1993 Steinkuehler, 2006)

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Tripartite roles tank, healer, DPS
pew pew!
SS, SS, Eviscerate!
mage (DPS)
Yeah, hit me!
rogue (DPS)
300 120
warrior (tank)
Has the most threat and monster aggro
priest (healer)
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Threat and aggro
Time 1 Time 1 Time 1 Time 1 Time 1
Player Ability Activated Threat Generated (hypothetical) Existing Threat Total Threat (hypothetical)
Wendy (tank) Sunder 260 780 1040
Rand (DPS) Sinister Strike 140 560 700
Shaun (healer) L. Healing Wave 400 400 800
Mandy (DPS) Frostbolt 500 0 500
Time 2 Time 2 Time 2 Time 2 Time 2
Player Ability Activated Threat Generated (hypothetical) Existing Threat Total Threat (hypothetical)
Wendy (tank) Sunder 260 1040 1300
Rand (DPS) Sinister Strike 140 700 840
Shaun (healer) L. Healing Wave 400 800 1200
Mandy (DPS) Frostbolt 500 500 1000
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KTM (KLH Threat Meter)
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• Knockback
• Rogues getting aggro

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this is a steady high dps fight, no bursting,
bursting will get you aggro, in my experiance,
anything over 1000 gets rags to say hi to ya
unless you are feint everytime its up, and a
split second after your burst.
I got aggro on that one. Not sure how, was using
the same technique as last time.
so, I have threatmeter on... noticed I wasnt
very high up and did a cold blood evis just
fine. I strongly suggest you get the mod... so
you can judge how good you are on aggro
i hit him once. that made no sense
Roger, they the tanks may have been out of
position for just a second which is enough for
anyone else to get aggro who is in melee range.
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• KTM configured to help diagnose aggro problems
• Enrolled in a temporary rather than designed role

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Conclusions

• Becoming expert depended on access to expert
  groups and expert practice (Collins Evans,
  2007)
• Not all players could gain access
• Group success depended on coordinated action and
  trust in others to play their roles (Hutchins,
  1995)
• Disruptions in the network required renegotiation
  of roles failure required reconfiguration
  (Latour, 2005)

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Take-aways

• Cognitive frameworks for expertise dont account
  for emergent situated practice that depend on
  available sociomaterial resources.

• New actors to a network require a redistribution
  of roles and responsibilities and is situated in
  local practice (e.g., KTM)

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Final look at video