This chapter explains the process of collecting data for an ethnographic case study in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMOG) called Stronghold Kingdoms, describing the methodological aspects of the study such as the research site, participants, data collection sources, and analysis. Further, the chapter explains the challenges encountered while conducting the study, including entering and becoming a member of the game community, data collection and analysis in an ever-changing world, being a participant-observer and the risk of going native, and participant attrition. Finally, the chapter provides some solutions and recommendations for researchers interested in conducting studies in MMOG settings.
TopIntroduction
Logging in to the game one Fall morning, I found that all the villages around me were marked with red swords (see Figure 1). Then, a message from a friend sent a chill down my spine,
Hi Vahid. Hope you good so far. I was wondering why you have swords now – that means enemy…. Can you do something against that????
I panicked. I had turned into an enemy overnight! All I knew was that I accepted a faction invite and I was now an enemy to many whom I had befriended since I joined the game. What a world!
Figure 1. Sword-marked villages indicating belligerent terms between me and other players
This chapter describes the fieldwork involved in conducting a doctoral study in an online game setting.
My dissertation research, which was defended in September 2018, explored the process of second language socialization (SLS) in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) called Stronghold Kingdoms (SK; see http://strongholdkingdoms.com), where the situation described above unfolded. SLS is a second language acquisition (SLA) theory which explores how a second language learner gains membership, legitimacy, and language skills through participating in the target language community (Duff & Talmy, 2011). I chose to study SLS in an MMOG setting because I was (and still am) interested in playing MMOGs, and I had personal and anecdotal evidence on how non-native English speaking players (like me) could develop language skills through participating in a multiplayer gaming community. I was particularly interested in learning about 1) what the sociocultural affordances of the community, especially factions (see below), were for SLS, and 2) how the community shaped and supported the non-native English speaker’s development of linguistic skills. With these objectives, I used ethnography as an appropriate qualitative research methodology to collect detailed, emic, and holistic data on cultural behaviors (Dörnyei, 2007; Glesne, 2015). Besides, a review of literature showed that SLS had traditionally been studied through ethnographic work for similar reasons. In line with the methodology, then, I used three data sources: 1) observation, 2) artefact analysis, and 3) interview to develop a detailed, emic, and holistic picture of SLS in SK. I started the data collection process by observing the field and looking into chat/forum messages exchanged between and among the participants, a faction of 8 native English speaking (from the US and England; 6 males and 1 female) and 2 non-native English speaking (from Sweden and Egypt; 1 male and 1 female) players. This phase led to generation of codes, categories, and themes through two levels of open and axial coding (Saldaña, 2015), which were then used to discover the sociocultural affordances of the faction community. Then, I conducted an interview with one of the non-native English speakers, Middo. I had originally set out to interview the other non-native English speaker, Tikeno, as well, but she was not responsive to my messages at the time. The results showed that the sociocultural affordances of SK provided a supportive environment for SLS. Further, the results of the interview with Middo suggested that MMOGs in general and SK in particular supported language development (see Shahrokni (in press) for my article based on this study).
TopBackground
SK, the game I chose as my field, is a medieval-themed strategy game where players from around the world can join different servers/worlds using a PC, Mac, or portable android/iOS device. In August 2017, when I was still engaged in my research, the game hosted 77 worlds in 9 languages (English, German, Russian, French, Polish, Italian, Turkish, Portoguese, and Chinese). Based on the estimates at the time, SK hosted 5 million active players (Kingdoms Mobile Gameplay | Firefly Studios, 2016), which could be compared to that of a real-world country like Norway at 5,258,317 (Population - SSB, 2017). I played a UK-mapped world for about 5 years before it ended and my fellow players and I had to immigrate to a US-mapped world. Overall, my gameplay for this study spanned 3 years, exploring 4 distinct stages: 1) war against the world, 2) post-war peace and life in exile, 3) end of the world, and 4) immigration to a new world.