It’s official: An invasion force fielded by the Republic of Xerox PARC has established a beachhead
on the shores of Terra Nova. To the three PARCers who had already infiltrated
our author roll (Nicolas Ducheneaut, Eric Nickell, Nick Yee) a fourth now adds
his name: Bob Moore, whose expertise in conversation analysis and other tricks
of the ethnomethodological trade has long rounded out the intellectual arsenal
of PARC’s PlayOn team of crack virtual-world watchers. Co-author, with
Ducheneaut and Nickell, of the wave-making paper Doing Virtually Nothing:
Awareness and Accountability in Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds, Moore has brought
his mad social-analytic skillz to bear on an illustrious CV’s worth of workplace-
and “third place”-oriented studies — and was of course the author of 1995’s
cult hit "Dereification in Zen Buddhism," delivered at the annual meeting of the Midwest
Sociological Society and now available only as a rare drop deep within World of
Warcraft’s Dire Maul dungeon. Phear him if you must, but I, for one, welcome Bob Moore. Please join me.
Yay, Bob! I'm a fan of any method with 'ethno' in it, though yours has more syllables than mine which makes me feel a bit self-conscious. But nevermind. Welcome!
Posted by: Lisa Galarneau | Jul 19, 2006 at 09:47
Hi Bob! I welcome my ethnomethodological overlord.
Posted by: Jerry Paffendorf | Jul 19, 2006 at 11:07
Having tried, often fruitlessly, to discern teamwork expectations in pick-up groups by watching what other team members are actually DOING, I confidently look forward to learning what to REALLY look for in such situations.
However, I am also interested in how social norms can change within virtual worlds. I recently returned to AO (Anarchy Online) to see how the game was "working" after over a year of "free play" for the core game. I was very surprised to find the game populated and played in VERY different ways than its heyday as a subscription product. It appears that changing business strategies resulted in a changing customer base. That had HUGE effects on the entire social mechanism within the game, even though game mechanics hadn't changed in the least.
This is significant in AO because it's literally impossible to wear good armor or hold the best weapons (for your current level) without someone else helping you into them! The amount of social cooperation theoretically necessary for successful play greatly exceeds anything found in WoW.
My challenge is simply this: when it comes to social interaction, often ignored variables can have dramatic effects.
Posted by: Arnold Hendrick | Jul 19, 2006 at 15:33
I thought you had to have "Nic" in your name to be a PARC TerraNova author..? In any case, welcome to the madness Bob!
Posted by: Samantha LeCraft | Jul 19, 2006 at 16:27
I thought you had to have "Nic" in your name to be a PARC TerraNova author..? In any case, welcome to the madness Bob!
He's a
mutantspecial PARC TerraNova author. Welcome, Bob. =DPosted by: Michael Chui | Jul 19, 2006 at 17:12
Julian, thank you for the kind welcome and for highlighting my very first conference presentation and journal article! But I must make one correction: "Dereification in Zen Buddhism" is actually the reward for completing the heritage quest, "One Clapping Hand," that you get from Gildas Cedartree in Eldar Grove (in the rock garden). If only more people played EQ2, I'm sure it would be more widely read.
Posted by: Bob Moore | Jul 20, 2006 at 00:05
Welcome, Bob!
Posted by: Aaron Delwiche | Jul 20, 2006 at 09:01
Samantha,
This problem has been discussed in PlayOn's team meetings. Really. Bob has decided to get around this issue by naming his in-game characters 'Nic'.
Posted by: Eric Nickell | Jul 20, 2006 at 13:58