Expertise and collaboration in online gaming

1. Leet noobs: Expertise and collaboration in a World of Warcraft player group as distributed sociomaterial practice Expertise and collaboration in online gaming Mark Chen University of Washington @mcdanger markchen@uw.edu This work is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Science of Learning Center program under grant SBE-0354453.

2. Some game play

3. World of Warcraft • MMOG • 6 million subscribers in 2006

4. World of Warcraft • MMOG • 6 million subscribers in 2006 • Fantasy with races / classes

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

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

7. Leadership tasks required for raiding Also see Reeves & Read, 2009

8. 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) Remember, ss target will change at Domo, but until then, your rezzer is to be ssed at all times.

9. 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) Remember, who you give soulstones to will change when we encounter Majordomo Executus, but, until then, the priest or shaman who you’ve 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.

10. 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 you’ve 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. it’s important to give rezzers the ability to come back to life so they can rez the rest of the raid group

11. 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

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

13. Expertise in game mechanics?

15. 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

16. Expertise as sociomaterial practice • Emergent through push-pull of constraints-workarounds • Limited by access to the right social networks

23. World of Warcraftwiki

24. Communication, coordination, and camaraderie • Regular chat channels and specialized ones by character role • say • whisper • party • raid • healsting • madtankin • rottentranq • madsheep • soulburn • madrogues

25. Communication, coordination, and camaraderie • Hierarchical and interwoven

26. Communication, coordination, and camaraderie • Trust/performance evidenced by joviality, level of chat

27. 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.

28. Fight continued • Look at coordination and use of addons

29. 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)

30. Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS

31. Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS

32. Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS ! Yo, over here!

33. Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS mage (DPS) Yeah, hit me! rogue (DPS) warrior (tank) priest (healer)

34. Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS pew pew! SS, SS, Eviscerate! mage (DPS) Yeah, hit me! rogue (DPS) +300 +120 warrior (tank) priest (healer)

35. Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS pew pew! SS, SS, Eviscerate! mage (DPS) Yeah, hit me! rogue (DPS) +300 +120 warrior (tank) Has the most threatand monster “aggro” priest (healer)

36. Threat and aggro

37. KTM (KLH Threat Meter)

39. Knockback • Rogues getting aggro

40. 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.

41. 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.

42. 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

43. 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

44. 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.

45. KTM configured to help diagnose aggro problems • Enrolled in a temporary rather than designed role

46. 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)

47. Take-aways • Cognitive frameworks for expertise don’t 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)

48. Final look at video

49. Leet noobs: Expertise and collaboration in a World of Warcraft player group as distributed sociomaterial practice Expertise and collaboration in online gaming Mark Chen University of Washington @mcdanger markchen@uw.edu This work is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Science of Learning Center program under grant SBE-0354453.

50. Analysis methods • Discourse and interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) • Functional Pattern Analysis (FPA) (Rogoff et al., 2002) • Visualization of chat (Chen, 2009)