AVAST: Social Networking and Complex Economies on the High Seas
Gordon Fletcher - University of SalfordAnita Greenhill - University of Manchester
“Massively multiplayer online puzzle game. Those are the only possible
terms you can use to properly describe Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates,
one of the weirdest and most original puzzle games we've come
across in quite a while… Imagine a persistent online world [with] Lego
people in pirate regalia …”
YOHOHO! PUZZLE PIRATES
Social Networking
Fashion and Roleplaying
Puzzle Games
Economies!
Use of the situationist concept of the event to interpret and understand the social meanings of Y!PP and the relevance of
studying these environments in the context of information systems research
The situationist approach enables identification of an element of the gameplay that is usually left unacknowledged – the
mundane and repetitious aspects of social interaction in the form of labour
Situationist events
Use the situationist concept of the event to interpret and understand the social relations of Y!
PP
Consider the ways that specific events, both spectacular and mundane inter-relate with
specific artefacts
Each event is shaped by context and circumstance
Everyday life is punctuated by individual movement between and through events
Situationist events
In Y!PP, everyday life is hallmarked by undertaking neverending puzzle tasks, looking for work in shoppes or on
ships and checking the noticeboards of individual islands
Players are drawn to the spectacle of ‘other’ events to offset routine events
Spectacular events of Y!PP can range from blockades of an island, an encounter with the “Ghost Ship”, navigating to a new island, exploring a deserted island for firewood or iron
and meeting new people
Regular and planned spectacles also shape the Y!PP experience – including “free” days within games parlours
Everyday events
Crafted and heavily-managed eventsreinforce the power of the game’s designers
Also produces a sequence of events that exist between the most spectacular and the most
mundane
Irrespective of the designed intentions of any given event as a PoE Sink or a revenue generator, by
being drawn to spectacular events players ‘buy-in’ to the political and economic messages and
meanings that these events embody
Other events
Crafted and heavily-managed eventsreinforce the power of the game’s designers
Also produces a sequence of events that exist between the most spectacular and the most
mundane
Irrespective of the designed intentions of any given event as a PoE Sink or a revenue
generator, by being drawn to spectacular events players ‘buy-in’ to the political and
economic messages and meanings that these events embody
Everyday events
Mapping events
HegemonicMainstream
Social/Political Resistance the mundane
production of spectacle
(planned?) detournement
recuperation
(altered)HegemonicMainstream
managed events
in-game limitations
What’s missing
Clearer articulation of the role of artefacts in-game and in the construction
of hegemonic power relations
Further exploration of the ways in players resist the imposition of ‘game’
elements
Changing meaning of the concept of “labour”