EXPERTISE AND COLLABORATION IN ONLINE Leet noobs Expertise

EXPERTISE AND COLLABORATION IN ONLINE Leet noobs: Expertise and collaboration in a World of Warcraft player group as. GAMING distributed sociomaterial practice Mark Chen University of Washington @mcdanger markchen@uw. edu This work is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Science of Learning Center program under grant SBE-0354453.

Some game play

World of Warcraft MMOG 6 million subscribers in 2006

World of Warcraft MMOG 6 million subscribers in 2006 Fantasy with races / classes

World of Warcraft MMOG 6 million subscribers in 2006 Fantasy with races / classes Complete quests, kill monsters for loot and XP

Raiding Large group joint activity Highly coordinated Specialized roles Organization and leadership Molten Core

Leadership tasks required for raiding Also see Reeves & Read, 2009

Ethnographic methods (Steinkuehler, 2004) Pool of 60 regular players, 40 per session Met 2 -3 times a week for 10 mos (11/05 -8/06), 4 -5 hrs each time Larger ethnography has over 1000 hrs of chat data ~100 hrs of video + select posts on web forums Disciplined perception (Stevens & Hall, 1998) a magic item that warlocks can give to others so thatpriests and shaman can bring they can come back to life if they are killed others back to life (resurrect) Remember, who you give soulstones to will change when we encounter Majordomo Executus, but, until then, the priest or shaman who you’ve been assigned to should have your soulstone at all times. Remember, ss target will change at Domo, but until then, your rezzer is to be ssed at all times. it’s important to give rezzers the ability to come back to life so they can rez the rest of the raid group

Theorizing the practice • Push-pull relationship of objects in a network of activity… – Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2005) – Distributed Cognition (Hutchins, 1995) – Mangle (Pickering, 1993; Steinkuehler 2006) – Assemblage (Deleuze & Guitarri, 1987; Taylor, 2006) – Arrangement (Stevens, Satwicz, & Mc. Carthy, 2009) – Object-Oriented Ontology (Bogost, 2006, 2009) – Roles and responsibilities constantly renegotiated, redistributed, and reconfigured to adapt to local settings

Analyses 1. Expertise as sociomaterial practice 2. Communication, coordination, and camaraderie 3. A new addon and its effect on raiding

Expertise in game mechanics?

various bits of info to keep track of temporary bonuses or impairments (buffs and debuffs) streaming combat text name and health of enemy threat meter tank targets my health and status enemy health and status the jumble in the middle is the actual in-game fight enemy debuffs unit frames showing health and status of raid members chat window ability buttons more ability buttons cooldown timers for temporary effects minimap and addon buttons

Expertise as sociomaterial practice Emergent through push-pull of constraints-workarounds Limited by access to the right social networks

World of Warcraft wiki

Communication, coordination, and camaraderie Regular chat channels and specialized ones by character role say whisper party raid healsting madtankin rottentranq madsheep soulburn madrogues

Communication, coordination, and camaraderie Hierarchical and interwoven 19: 30: 00. 953 : [2. madrogues] Rebecca: good. . . poison up. . . assist wei 19: 30: 02. 484 : [5. madtankin] William: where is wallace tonight? 19: 30: 07. 703 : [Raid] Maxwell: Henry peels to Marcie 19: 30: 10. 468 : [3. healsting] Drusella: *runs around like crazy people* 19: 30: 12. 656 : [3. healsting] Sven: We could. . . DPS shaman, Holy Nova priests? 19: 30: 15. 312 : [5. madtankin] Wallace: I didn't make it in time. Rawr! 19: 30: 17. 453 : To Lori: May I have a healthstone pretty please? 19: 30: 17. 687 : [Raid] Maxwell: Horace peels to Mary 19: 30: 19. 640 : [4. soulburn] Lori: Les-for this fight you will be ssing Derek. -'good' refers to the fact that no Rogues said they have not done this fight. Even so, Rebecca clarifies our role—use poisons on our weapons and focus-fire on Wei's target. -madtankin channel for the Warriors. wallace is a character who usually comes to our raids. -role assignment -Druids are getting a little silly now. . . -more suggestions on turning certain healers into damage dealers instead -Wallace is still subscribed to the madtankin channel even though he is not part of the raid. These custom chat channels exist independently from any other channels in the game. -Healthstones made by different Warlocks sometimes have different amounts of healing they can do (depending on how a player has 'specced' the character) which means they can be stored in one's inventory at the same time. In this case, I know Larry and Lori create different types of healthstones, so I've requested one from each. -role assignment -what to do with that one soulstone that Lester has available

Communication, coordination, and camaraderie Trust/performance evidenced by joviality, level of chat

Communication, coordination, and camaraderie Meltdown prevented by realignment / reiteration of group values I love our raid. I know we are all going to get burned out at times and frustrated and upset and disagree with one another. It is part of being human. We are like brothers and sisters really. Stuff like this is going to happen.

Fight continued Look at coordination and use of addons

A new addon and its effect on raiding Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS Threat and aggro KTM = no longer keeping it in our heads Yet KTM only used temporarily in Rags fight KTM used on multiple scales of time and actor networks / mangles (Latour, 2005; Pickering, 1993; Steinkuehler, 2006)

Tripartite roles: tank, healer, DPS pew! i , Ev S S , S S mage (DPS) Yeah, hit me! +300 +120 priest (healer) warrior (tank) te! a r sce rogue (DPS) Has the most threat and monster “aggro”

Threat and aggro Time 1 Player Ability Activated Threat Generated (hypothetical) Existing Threat Total Threat (hypothetical) Wendy (tank) Sunder 260 780 1040 Rand (DPS) Sinister Strike 140 560 700 Shaun (healer) L. Healing Wave 400 800 Mandy (DPS) Frostbolt 500 0 500 Time 2 Player Ability Activated Threat Generated (hypothetical) Existing Threat Total Threat (hypothetical) Wendy (tank) Sunder 260 1040 1300 Rand (DPS) Sinister Strike 140 700 840 Shaun (healer) L. Healing Wave 400 800 1200 Mandy (DPS) Frostbolt 500 1000

KTM (KLH Threat Meter)

• Knockback • Rogues getting aggro

this is a steady high dps fight, no bursting, bursting will get you aggro, in my experiance, anything over 1000 gets rags to say hi to ya unless you are feint everytime its up, and a split second after your burst. I got aggro on that one. Not sure how, was using the same technique as last time. so, I have threatmeter on. . . noticed I wasnt very high up and did a cold blood evis just fine. I strongly suggest you get the mod. . . so you can judge how good you are on aggro i hit him once. that made no sense Roger, they [the tanks] may have been out of position for just a second which is enough for anyone else to get aggro who is in melee range.

• KTM configured to help diagnose aggro problems • Enrolled in a temporary rather than designed role

Conclusions • Becoming expert depended on access to expert groups and expert practice (Collins & Evans, 2007) • Not all players could gain access • Group success depended on coordinated action and trust in others to play their roles (Hutchins, 1995) • Disruptions in the network required renegotiation of roles; failure required reconfiguration (Latour, 2005)

Take-aways • Cognitive frameworks for expertise don’t account for emergent situated practice that depend on available sociomaterial resources. • New actors to a network require a redistribution of roles and responsibilities and is situated in local practice (e. g. , KTM)

Final look at video