The Diasporic Game Community: Trans-Ludic Cultures and Latitudinal Research Across Multiple Games and Virtual Worlds

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First Online:
Part of the Human-Computer Interaction Series book series (HCIS)

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.

Keywords

Virtual World Baby Boomer Game World Refugee Community Multiple World 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag London Limited 2010

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Georgia Institute of TechnologyAtlantaUSA

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