Click to go to Ducheneaut's PARC information page.

Nic Ducheneaut completed his PhD in 2003 at the UC Berkeley School of Information.

He works as a senior researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He primarily studies online game communities.

You can find a summary of his current projects here, and an extensive list of publications here.

He has a LinkedIn account and a Twitter feed. However, his Twitter stream is locked from general view.

Click the image to go to Moore's MySpace page.

Robert J. Moore formerly worked at Xerox PARC, and has also worked extensively as a game designer. Clicking the image will take you to his MySpace page, which seems to be his primary web-presence.

Summary

Ducheneaut and Moore present an ethnographic study of social interactions within Everquest Online Adventures for the PS2. They use participant observation to observe players at work within an online space, exploring the ways players socially interact to complete game tasks, as well as develop peer bonds within groups. Their essential thesis is that MMORPGs can highlight ways that games can be used to teach social interaction. They explore this idea by focusing on three factors:

Player self-organization

Players learn to organize themselves into groups to accomplish game-based tasks and establish community. The game’s design demands that players learn to cooperate and coordinate their actions in order to achieve goals. Players cannot play as individuals.

Instrumental interactions

Players must take on a role, learn its function, and master its tools to be useful to a group. In addition, these interactions provide the player with a certain amount of social capital that can then be spent in other ways.

Sociability

Players acclimate themselves to the social conventions of the game community. They adopt an identity and role, build reputation, and establish effective peer bonds with other players.

In-game text chat allows players to communicate more effectively, sometimes tailoring preset chat commands to relay more detailed information as players seek out social connection and to accomplish tasks.

Ducheneaut and Moore conclude that MMOs provide excellent examples of social learning that can then be used for actual teaching and pedagogy.

Discussion

The article provides a thoroughly detailed case-study that is an excellent example of ethnographic methods as they can be applied to online communities. Games provide specific social contexts around which players construct identities and relationships. They are already constructed frameworks that can establish community quickly and easily. The social nature of gameplay in MMOs provides a rich data set for researchers to explore.