Studying social relations in MMOG play: An illustration of using ethnography to frame “Big Data”

This paper illustrates the first part of an ultimately more inclusive understanding of the social relations manifest in the play of Massive, Multiplayer On-Line Games. This initial part is based on the premise that comparative ethnography should be used to frame automated analysis of the electronic traces of player actions. This part involves first examining the spaces that become key elements in the virtual world of playing the game, and then time elements. The interesting ways in which space and time are combined are described next. Such observations demonstrate the feasibility of interpreting actual game play in terms of three factors: What follows from the physics engine chosen to render the games´ virtual spaces, what follows from the deliberate play choices of games´ designers, what is subconsciously carried over by players from the real world. This is an example of how ethnography can be used to create an analytical framework for focused, even hypothesis-driven analysis of large data sets captured from actual game play - specifically a basis for deciding what needs to be observed out of what can be observed, and what they might mean. Only after such preliminary work does it make sense to automate for statistically valid sampling.