2023
Korkeila, Henry; Harviainen, J. Tuomas
Gaming Capital in Contemporary Role-playing Game Platforms Journal Article
In: International Journal of Role-Playing, vol. 14, pp. 91–98, 2023, ISSN: 2210-4909.
Abstract | Links | Tags: Bourdieu, Cultural capital, Gamer capital, MMORPGs, Role-playing games, Symbolic capital, Tabletop
@article{Korkeila2023b,
title = {Gaming Capital in Contemporary Role-playing Game Platforms},
author = {Henry Korkeila and J. Tuomas Harviainen},
url = {https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi14.360
https://journals.uu.se/IJRP/article/view/360},
doi = {10.33063/ijrp.vi14.360},
issn = {2210-4909},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-09-19},
urldate = {2023-09-19},
journal = {International Journal of Role-Playing},
volume = {14},
pages = {91–98},
abstract = {Gaming capital: a fifteen-year-old theory detailing how one’s gaming knowledge can be conceptualized into something tangible. In her book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games, Consalvo (2007) presented the term gaming capital to give a name and meaning to the collective understanding of both the individual player and the communities that entail the discussions about the game, genre, or the platform – including topics like knowledge, experience, and skill. Yet, there has not been much scholarly attention given to where one would situate gaming capital between cultural and symbolic capital, and where social capital would influence the transformation of knowledge to gaming capital. The discussion about gaming capital has been more about what it is, and what can be or cannot be gaming capital, but what steers gaming capital as an entity at their disposal has not been studied enough yet. The world of gaming has moved massively forwards in fifteen years, and the whole concept of what “gaming” is has subsequently changed, not only within the online multiplayer video game scene, but within analogue role-playing games too. Both mediums have their ways of accumulating and spending capital, and not everything is different in terms of gaming capital. Therefore, this study approaches the formation of gaming capital within both Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and Dungeons & Dragons (1974) through information flow and social space perspectives.},
keywords = {Bourdieu, Cultural capital, Gamer capital, MMORPGs, Role-playing games, Symbolic capital, Tabletop},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Gaming capital: a fifteen-year-old theory detailing how one’s gaming knowledge can be conceptualized into something tangible. In her book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games, Consalvo (2007) presented the term gaming capital to give a name and meaning to the collective understanding of both the individual player and the communities that entail the discussions about the game, genre, or the platform – including topics like knowledge, experience, and skill. Yet, there has not been much scholarly attention given to where one would situate gaming capital between cultural and symbolic capital, and where social capital would influence the transformation of knowledge to gaming capital. The discussion about gaming capital has been more about what it is, and what can be or cannot be gaming capital, but what steers gaming capital as an entity at their disposal has not been studied enough yet. The world of gaming has moved massively forwards in fifteen years, and the whole concept of what “gaming” is has subsequently changed, not only within the online multiplayer video game scene, but within analogue role-playing games too. Both mediums have their ways of accumulating and spending capital, and not everything is different in terms of gaming capital. Therefore, this study approaches the formation of gaming capital within both Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and Dungeons & Dragons (1974) through information flow and social space perspectives.
Korkeila, Henry
Resources, Capital, and Players Inside the Game Worlds: Bourdieusian Approach to Game Cultures PhD Thesis
2023, ISBN: 978-951-29-9269-0 .
Abstract | Links | Tags: Capital, Digital games, MMORPGs, Online
@phdthesis{nokey,
title = {Resources, Capital, and Players Inside the Game Worlds: Bourdieusian Approach to Game Cultures},
author = {Henry Korkeila},
url = {https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/174529},
isbn = {978-951-29-9269-0 },
year = {2023},
date = {2023-05-25},
publisher = {University of Turku},
abstract = {Online gaming is all the time more ubiquitous. With the World becoming increasingly digitized and inter-connected, it is no wonder that the most popular pastime, gaming, is reachable quite literally anywhere. With this popularity comes the multitude of choices to fulfil any gamer’s needs and satisfaction for interactive media as companies are trying to tap into the ever-growing market. Some play to spend time with family and friends, some play to dominate others, some play to become rich, and everything in-between. The online game worlds, especially the games in the genre of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, can house inhabitants of all backgrounds, with all types of motivations, and offer more than enough activities for the inhabitants to enjoy.
Despite the immense success of certain games that have defined the future of their respective genre, the research into the immersive and complex virtual worlds has been heavily focusing on aspects and effects external to the game and the act of gaming itself. There is a stern lack of focus on the happenings and lives of the inhabitants of the virtual worlds, apart from very few autoethnographies that attempt to go beneath the surface to explain the affordances that exists. Studies still largely focus on the players before and after they play the games where the in-game actions are rather nuance than the focus.
This dissertation shifts the focus upside-down and explores, and explains, deeply through the resources circulating in and around the online multiplayer game worlds with the players themselves being rather side-lined. Used methods include quantitative survey, scoping review, qualitative, and frequency count. This dissertation shows that there just as many ways to live inside the game worlds as there are players. Thus, the main arguments of the work are related to: 1) socializing, the numerous ways to do so, and the importance of it inside the game worlds; 2) the ways avatars and players are able to, or willing to, accumulate resources; 3) using Bourdieusian approach to resources as types of capital is feasible and offers unique insight into the happenings of game worlds; 4) the types of capital as they have more nuance to them in the domain of video games than their broad definitions might let one expect.
The results promote the view, that despite the sheer power of statistical analysis to categorize players, there can be found unique approaches to the games varying from the motivations and demographical attributes to focusing on the betterment of the game’s community through discussion forums. Every instance and every approach to gaming is just as valid as any other, which might seem like an obvious statement, but it is clear that the player-bases and sometimes even scholars forget about those playstyles that are in the margin. Further, the results increase the knowledge of how resourceful avatars can be, and what are possibly some intra-game and extra-game limiting factors on how well an entity can utilize the possible affordances. The academia has studies about the social life inside the game worlds, and studies about capital as resource around the game worlds, but they are rarely combined. Even more rare are the comprehensive studies taking a wider look on the life of the citizen of the game worlds with specific research aims or questions in mind. This dissertation gives multi-layered insight into this phenomenon with tangible examples to deliver a very precise message.
For one to understand the avatars of games, one must think and approach them as conscious entities rather than only as tools for enjoyment. There is so much more going in the virtual worlds than one mere dissertation can ever include within its pages.},
keywords = {Capital, Digital games, MMORPGs, Online},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {phdthesis}
}
Online gaming is all the time more ubiquitous. With the World becoming increasingly digitized and inter-connected, it is no wonder that the most popular pastime, gaming, is reachable quite literally anywhere. With this popularity comes the multitude of choices to fulfil any gamer’s needs and satisfaction for interactive media as companies are trying to tap into the ever-growing market. Some play to spend time with family and friends, some play to dominate others, some play to become rich, and everything in-between. The online game worlds, especially the games in the genre of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, can house inhabitants of all backgrounds, with all types of motivations, and offer more than enough activities for the inhabitants to enjoy.
Despite the immense success of certain games that have defined the future of their respective genre, the research into the immersive and complex virtual worlds has been heavily focusing on aspects and effects external to the game and the act of gaming itself. There is a stern lack of focus on the happenings and lives of the inhabitants of the virtual worlds, apart from very few autoethnographies that attempt to go beneath the surface to explain the affordances that exists. Studies still largely focus on the players before and after they play the games where the in-game actions are rather nuance than the focus.
This dissertation shifts the focus upside-down and explores, and explains, deeply through the resources circulating in and around the online multiplayer game worlds with the players themselves being rather side-lined. Used methods include quantitative survey, scoping review, qualitative, and frequency count. This dissertation shows that there just as many ways to live inside the game worlds as there are players. Thus, the main arguments of the work are related to: 1) socializing, the numerous ways to do so, and the importance of it inside the game worlds; 2) the ways avatars and players are able to, or willing to, accumulate resources; 3) using Bourdieusian approach to resources as types of capital is feasible and offers unique insight into the happenings of game worlds; 4) the types of capital as they have more nuance to them in the domain of video games than their broad definitions might let one expect.
The results promote the view, that despite the sheer power of statistical analysis to categorize players, there can be found unique approaches to the games varying from the motivations and demographical attributes to focusing on the betterment of the game’s community through discussion forums. Every instance and every approach to gaming is just as valid as any other, which might seem like an obvious statement, but it is clear that the player-bases and sometimes even scholars forget about those playstyles that are in the margin. Further, the results increase the knowledge of how resourceful avatars can be, and what are possibly some intra-game and extra-game limiting factors on how well an entity can utilize the possible affordances. The academia has studies about the social life inside the game worlds, and studies about capital as resource around the game worlds, but they are rarely combined. Even more rare are the comprehensive studies taking a wider look on the life of the citizen of the game worlds with specific research aims or questions in mind. This dissertation gives multi-layered insight into this phenomenon with tangible examples to deliver a very precise message.
For one to understand the avatars of games, one must think and approach them as conscious entities rather than only as tools for enjoyment. There is so much more going in the virtual worlds than one mere dissertation can ever include within its pages.
Despite the immense success of certain games that have defined the future of their respective genre, the research into the immersive and complex virtual worlds has been heavily focusing on aspects and effects external to the game and the act of gaming itself. There is a stern lack of focus on the happenings and lives of the inhabitants of the virtual worlds, apart from very few autoethnographies that attempt to go beneath the surface to explain the affordances that exists. Studies still largely focus on the players before and after they play the games where the in-game actions are rather nuance than the focus.
This dissertation shifts the focus upside-down and explores, and explains, deeply through the resources circulating in and around the online multiplayer game worlds with the players themselves being rather side-lined. Used methods include quantitative survey, scoping review, qualitative, and frequency count. This dissertation shows that there just as many ways to live inside the game worlds as there are players. Thus, the main arguments of the work are related to: 1) socializing, the numerous ways to do so, and the importance of it inside the game worlds; 2) the ways avatars and players are able to, or willing to, accumulate resources; 3) using Bourdieusian approach to resources as types of capital is feasible and offers unique insight into the happenings of game worlds; 4) the types of capital as they have more nuance to them in the domain of video games than their broad definitions might let one expect.
The results promote the view, that despite the sheer power of statistical analysis to categorize players, there can be found unique approaches to the games varying from the motivations and demographical attributes to focusing on the betterment of the game’s community through discussion forums. Every instance and every approach to gaming is just as valid as any other, which might seem like an obvious statement, but it is clear that the player-bases and sometimes even scholars forget about those playstyles that are in the margin. Further, the results increase the knowledge of how resourceful avatars can be, and what are possibly some intra-game and extra-game limiting factors on how well an entity can utilize the possible affordances. The academia has studies about the social life inside the game worlds, and studies about capital as resource around the game worlds, but they are rarely combined. Even more rare are the comprehensive studies taking a wider look on the life of the citizen of the game worlds with specific research aims or questions in mind. This dissertation gives multi-layered insight into this phenomenon with tangible examples to deliver a very precise message.
For one to understand the avatars of games, one must think and approach them as conscious entities rather than only as tools for enjoyment. There is so much more going in the virtual worlds than one mere dissertation can ever include within its pages.