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Friday, November 11
1 4 : 3 0 – 1 6 : 0 0
Darfur is Dying, My Cotton Picking Life and September the 12
th
. We develop the content of this MOOC in close collaboration with game companies. They
contribute their own serious games as case studies. The second part of our paper includes the results of our audience research. Obviously, a MOOC is open
to participants from whatever background, but we also target our work at a specific audience. NGO's and Small and Medium Enterprises may consider
using a serious game in their campaigns. But development costs are generally high, and the expectations of the client and the game studio may not match
perfectly.This MOOC may help potential clients to come to a balanced decision about employing a serious game. Our user data will inform us about the com‑
position of our audience and whether we have been able to reach our specific target audience as well.
PS 049
Analyzing the Participatory Creation of aWorld of Warcraft Modification – The 12-Steps Analytical Toolkit on the Test Rig
P. Prax
1
, N. Carpentier
1
1
Uppsala University, Informatics and Media, Uppsala, Sweden
This paper demonstrates the use of the 12-steps analytical toolkit for the critical analysis of participatory media processes (Carpentier, forthcoming) us‑
ing a particular case study: namely the participatory creation of a particular level in the online game World of Warcraft (WoW) (Blizzard, 2004–2016)
(see Ducheneaut et.al., 2006; Chen, 2008; Sherlock, 2009; Golub, 2010 for WoW research) through the modification of the game interface. The 12-steps
analytical toolkit is grounded in an evaluation of participatory models, fine-tuning older models (Arnstein, 1969) by bringing in a more sophisticated
and explicit reflection on power and decision-making, and a more culturalist perspective on identities and sense-making practices of participants which
escapes the default interpretation of them being exploited (Fuchs, 2015). The objective of this paper is to test and further refine the 12-steps analytical
toolkit, by confronting it with a particular participatory setting from the field of online gaming. Player-created interface modifications have been shown to
be central part of WoW (Taylor, 2008) by either getting included into the default interface of the game or co-creating the design of the game (Prax, 2012,
2015; Tschang et.al, 2010). The example discussed here is an add-on that was developed by a player creator in a high-end raiding guild. The add-on was
created to simplify a particular ability of a boss monster and allowed this guild to kill this boss the fastest in the world. The analysis of this process is guided
by the 12-steps analytical toolkit, with its four main stages (1/field context, 2/actor analysis, 3/decision analysis and 4/power analysis). Methodologically,
it relies on a participant observation of one of the paper’s authors, in combination with an analysis of the connection between game design and interface
development and the qualitative analysis of interviews with player creators. The actor analysis component shows the centrality of the actors’identifications
for understanding participatory processes, with the add-on authors as co-creators but also as players, still different from the company (Blizzard). Under‑
standing his double identification of player-creators makes it possible to investigate the social pressures and power dynamics between the actors in the par‑
ticipatory process. The decision and power analysis will show that even though the identity of player-creators allows for some leeway in the encounter with
Blizzard’s design and they do impact on the design of the game, the power position of player-creators is still weakened by the power strategies of Blizzard
to protect themselves from those add-ons which could damage the company economically. Moreover, the interface’s materiality will also intervene in this
process, as disabling specific add-ons is hardly possible without also breaking other, 'benign”add-ons, which might create a player backlash. Our analysis
of the actors and their identities here opens up a more detailed picture of the participatory dynamics ofWoW, and provides us with a more nuanced analysis
that avoids homogenizing players and juxtaposing them to an exploitative company. Moreover, our analysis will also allow evaluate and refine the 12-steps
analytical toolkit that will be used as an instrument to support this critical reflection.