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”