My talk at DiGRA 2015

1. forced to be free,
partiallyparticipation norms in leisurely video
gaming encounters
Sebastian Deterding
PlaIT Lab, Northeastern University
DiGRA 2015, Lüneburg, May 17, 2015
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2. <1>
introduction

3. The theory:
Play entails voluntary
participation

4. Johan Huizinga
»First and foremost, all play is
a voluntary activity.«
homo ludens (1938/1950: 7)

5. Roger Caillois
man, play, and games (1958/2001: 6)
»There is also no doubt that play must
be defined as a free and voluntary
activity […]. A game which one would
be forced to play would at once cease
being play.«

6. The problem:
instrumental play

7. Goldfarming
Professional (E-)Sports
Serious Games
Gamification
Review Gaming
Analytic Gaming
instrumental play/play to order
Taylor, 2006; Yee, 2006; Malaby, 2007; Dibbell, 2008; Nardi, 2009; Deterding, 2014

8. »Sometimes, you have to play,
you have to get further –
and then, play is work.«
Deterding, 2014

9. offered Solutions
• Discount instrumental play: instrumental play is not play
(Caillois, 2001)
• Ignore play as activity and voluntariness, focus on games
as artefacts: instrumental play is still engagement with
games (Juul, 2005)
• Distinguish play as activity from playfulness as mindset
defined by voluntary engagement: instrumental play is non-
playful play (Stenros, 2015)
• Distinguish and relate framing and voluntariness:
Instrumental play is re-framed play-as-work, less socio-
materially affording of voluntariness (Deterding, 2014)

10. google “deterding modes of play ediss”

11. the question:
what about
leisurely gameplay?

12. <2>
theory

13. our guide for the morning

14. frame analysis of gameplay
• Frames are socially co-oriented and reproduced »organising
principles« for types of situations
• As social categories, they organise experience and
behaviour materially (how X is), epistemically (how we
perceive, expect, understand X), and normatively (how X
ought to be)
• Includes the avowed purpose or ethos of the situation – in
the case of leisurely gameplay, autotelic enjoyment (“fun”)
• Includes rules of exclusion who may legitimately participate
in situation in what role
Goffman 1961: 29-30; Goffman 1966: 10; Goffman, 1986; Deterding, 2014

15. From
rules of exclusion
to
participation norms

16. participation norms
• Participants: Who may enter and exit a gameplay situation
under what conditions
• Time: When a gameplay situation may take place
• Content: What game(s) to play
Deterding, 2014

17. <3>
Method

18. Method
• Purposive sampling of interviewees gaming leisurely
& instrumentally: journalism, design, research, e-
sport (n=19)
• Semi-structured interviews, 90-120 min. each
• Interviewees invited to report »typical« flow of
events, then report norm (breaches) following
conceptual framework, then compare contexts
• Transcription of all interviews
• Coding and analysis w/ MAXQDA following directed
qualitative content analysis Hsieh & Shannon 2005, Gläser & Laudel 2011

19. <4>
findings

20. “What actually plays more a role there is that, the leisure
time, or rather, the decision how one, (2s), what one now
wants to do. The feeling, I want to play on the computer
now, and nothing speaks against that, because I don’t want
to do anything else as well, then I do that” (P4/384)
“It’s a play community. Who wants to, comes.” (P5-1/25)
“You stop playing when you’ve simply lost interest
again” (P10/125)
voluntariness is a normative expectation

21. “Those are the really regular windows … after work and
after I have brought the little one to bed. … And
otherwise, if it works out time-wise on the weekend,
then it depends. Well, the, the family has priority, for
sure.” (P5/29)
“I- if it’s dark, I can somehow say to myself, it’s evening
somehow, I can call it a day, and then I can perhaps also
simply play with a cleaner conscience.” (P10/21)
adult responsibilities mediate voluntariness

22. “There is of course the thing that you play with colleagues in coop, where you absolutely
don’t want to play any longer and another person still wants to play.” (P3/579)
“So if you play together in a clan, then there are situations where things aren’t over yet,
where you just have to finish the session. There I cannot, of course I could decide
voluntarily to leave, but that would be inappropriate, if I would leave. Because then I
would let my team hang.” (P9/290)
“There are certainly a couple of unwritten rules how to behave in a raid, yes. To be
punctual.” (P18/164)
“We also do that, but it’s, it’s like this in this group, that we like to play cards together,
and the ladies suggest that. I’m actually not the type for that. (...) I wouldn’t necessarily
have to have that, but they, they suggest it again and again and then we just do
it.” (P17/692-696)
Ethos of shared enjoyment regularly leads to
involuntary play

23. “Well, well, there are such things, people attach
importance to that, well, if you depend on going in
with ten people, then you of course expect, that if
somebody can’t come, that that is given notice of
so early, that you have a chance to replace that
person somehow in a sensible fashion. That’s just
always shitty, if you learn about it only after the
raid started.” (P18/158)
setup effort & participation dependency
moderate participation norms

24. “(Skyrim) was really so extreme, that I, even when I came home at 9
pm in the evening I said to myself, <<Ok, you wanted to go to bed
at midnight, it’s not worth starting the game again for just three
hours.>> ((smiling)) ... there you then just need time, to, let me put
it that way, to achieve something, in quotation marks.” (P10/58-64)
“StarCraft are practically always matches. So there I know for sure, a
match takes between ten and twenty minutes on average, that’s
something I, that’s something you can simply time very well. There
you can say: Ok, I’ll play. So I can, when I want to, simply play my
two matches and thereby have two closed experiences, so to
speak.” (P10/68)
closure points moderate participation norms

25. “because I’m not so connected to these people [in online gaming], and
because there’s also no visual connection, it’s like, and now it’s
connection once more, it’s more non-binding to play with them. ...
basically, it absolutely *doesn’t matter* if I screw up with these people by
insulting them, or some such, because out there there are millions of
other people with whom I can play. I don’t depend on these people. But
the people with whom I play a board game, those are usually my friends,
on whom I depend.” (P1-2/177)
“Well, when, when I play online … I have a greater sense of freedom to
start and end the gaming experience at any time, when I want to. (...)
Yes, it’s, it’s simply, it’s less of a commitment, and you’re more
anonymous.” (P9/302-304)
social closeness mediates participation norms

26. “In the first place it should serve as entertainment and
not as making or spending money” (P17/580)
“Because then there’s the pressure that you have to win.
Of course, everybody who plays wants to win somehow.
Or have some successes, at least. Otherwise you
wouldn’t play, presumably. Bu::t when it’s about money,
that’s a real thing, and, that you have to work hard for.
That wouldn’t have a playful character for me
then” (P8/297-303)
muted consequence supports voluntariness

27. “When I in principle have no time limit,
that is, when I can say, I can play until I
say: <<I don’t want to anymore.>> No
appointments and no obligations, both
inside the game and outside of the game,
then I find, that’s an experience of
freedom.” (P9/308)
solitary play is more voluntary play

28. “P9: Freedom I would also say, certainly in the private context ...
Interviewer: Is that experience of freedom also present when you
play together with several people on your couch?
P9: Y::::, to a certain extent it is, yes, but there the considerateness
for the friends dominates, for the people with whom I’m sitting
there. So then it’s less the case, that I focus on the game and say:
<<I am now, now I am free and can determine this.>> Instead it’s
also more about me being the host, and being a guest of somebody
and still take regard of that.” (P9/309-311)
solitary play is more voluntary play

29. <5>
conclusions

30. Summary
• Adult responsibilities and participation norms fuelled by
ethos of shared enjoyment lead to normal moments of
involuntary leisurely gameplay
• Social closeness, setup effort, participation dependency,
closure point span moderate participation norms
• Muted consequence of leisurely gameplay supports
voluntary participation
• Absence of co-players and thus, participation norms in
solitary gameplay is socially and experientially significant

31. Voluntary participation & Play?
• Voluntariness not as essential defining feature of a Platonic
archetype “play”, but empirical feature of an empirical social
category “play”
• Is a social understanding, expectation, norm: leisurely gameplay ought
to be voluntary; deviation is therefore possible, labelled “strange”,
“inappropriate”
• Is a socio-material affordance: ethos of enjoyment; games designed
to be enjoyable; muted consequence make experience of
voluntariness likely
• Is therefore a frequent subjective experience, in turn reinforcing
understandings, expectations, norms

32. sebastian@codingconduct.cc
@dingstweets
codingconduct.cc
Thank you.