Role Playing Materials - Rafael Bienia

Скачать книгу

In this study, the agency on the level of a role-playing game network, is role playing. In order to make a difference according to the agency of role playing, all actors have to change their actions. I examine this process when I ask how materials, as one group of actors, make role playing as agency work in a role-playing game network.

      When all actors have to change their actions, every actor follows its own agency before the network comes into being. Therefore the agency on the level of the network emerges when all actors abandon the agencies or “that they have lined up behind them,” because every actor is a network of other actors (Sayes, 2014, p. 138). In the example above, a pencil is an actor that consists of a graphite core and wooden body.

      Agency explains the multi-sited understanding of action as an effect across multiple actors. Following actors negotiating across different role-playing game sites and forms, actors can inscribe the agency of role playing to different degrees, depending on the outcome of the negotiations between actors. “They [actors] will not only enter into a controversy over which agency is taking over but also on the ways in which it is making its influence felt” (Latour, 2005, p. 57). A “felt” influence is an influence that the analyst can trace. Again, instead of influence, I refer to this process as “making a difference.”

      The word intermediary refers to an actor that spreads agency without changing it. “An intermediary, in my vocabulary, is what transports meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs” (emphasis in original, Latour, 2005, p. 39). An intermediary of fast chess, for example, could be a wooden chess board. The wood prevents the board from changes, thus the board repeats its action of presenting a field of 64 squares. Thus, the board spreads the agency of chess playing without changing it across the network of players, pieces, and so on.

      The researcher remains uncertain whether to refer to an actor as an intermediary or mediator, because this uncertainty is the starting point of an actor-network study (Latour, 2005, p. 39). Latour suggests to “ask the actor” if the actor matters as a mediator or not. An additional question could be to think of an ex negativo case: imagine that there is no board in a game of chess or no costume in a live action role-playing game session.

      So far, I have elaborated upon actor-network theory as an infra-language that helps the researcher to question and talk about the phenomena seen during field work. The next section returns to the methodological principle of “follow the actors” to explain how I selected qualitative data about material actors, role playing agency, and role-playing game networks.

       2.3 Methodology, or Selection of Qualitative Empirical Data

      2.3.1 From participant observation to field notes. Originating in Malinowski’s first reflections (1922), participant observation developed to a method in ethnography. Participant observation is “a way to collect data in naturalistic settings by ethnographers who observe and/or take part in the common and uncommon activities of the people being studied” (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2002, p. 2). Through the extended face-to-face encounter with the actors of interest, and participating in extraordinary and mundane actions, observations gain their empirical quality, because there “is no substitute for gaining tacit and implicit knowledge of cultural behavior than living among people and sharing their lives” (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2002, p. 291). I got insights in the wider activities of role players by participating in game sessions, and in discussions before and after them. The advantage of “being native” myself in this culture was that I had already established rapport as a role player and photographer in different communities of larp and tabletop role-playing games. The disadvantage was my familiarity with these games as player and designer. I needed to alienate myself to gain the third perspective of a researcher. I achieved this by consciously changing perspectives.

      The change happened sometimes automatically during a game session, when my participant perspective moved to the perspective of researcher and to the character that I played. In this regard, becoming aware of the different perspectives of participant observation was the first step in solving the epistemological problem, how to know about role playing (see Chapter 1). Moving between participating and observing roles generated a creative tension: “Participant observation is a paradox because the ethnographers seek to understand the native’s viewpoint, but NOT ‘go native’” (emphasis in original, DeWalt & DeWalt, 2002, p. 263). As I moved to the position of observing researcher, I went alien to the role of participant and character that I was familiar with before.

      Steering three roles: Researcher, participant in a game, character in the game. With the three options, I could write about processes from several perspectives. The problem was how to control the three roles. The challenge of studying role-playing games is not only to reflect about the ethnographer role-playing field-work perspectives, but at the same time reflecting how a researcher is a participant in a role-playing game and a character in the story world at the same time.

      Participation in role playing requires the researcher not only to play her or his role as participant, but also to some degree that of an observer, and above all the role of the character within the game. The reason why switching roles has to be taken care of is because during role playing, the challenge for the researcher is to avoid disturbance, as this breaks the players’ goal to maintain the illusion of a fictional world. Players are sensitive to elements that do not belong to the game world, which requires the researcher to take the role of the complete participant. In this case, starting from an informed position is helpful for studying role-playing games.

      During my field work, participating in a role-playing game session became difficult. First, I had to role-play the character in the game. Second, I had to take different field-work perspectives. The researcher as participant role-plays the character and maintains opportunities for observation while changing field-work perspectives as necessary.

      Actor-network theory integrates the researcher as an actor in a game network and encourages examining the process of changing perspectives, because it considers the third role of a participatory observant researcher. Beside changes in role-playing practices, subjectivity is one obstacle during field work which I share with other researchers on games employing participant observation (Pearce & Artemesia, 2009; Taylor, 2006). In her study of online role playing, Copier reflects upon her researcher position by drawing on actor-network theory in general and Haraway in particular. Copier (2007) reflects herself as participant and researcher to “express situatedness in writing” (p. 30). In studying role playing, however, I found traces for three roles: researcher, participant, and character. Playing a character leaves traces for a third perspective. Observations from a character’s perspective differed from those of me being a researcher and a participant. Furthermore, I distinguished the role of the participating self who was familiar with role playing from the researcher. As a researcher I had to go alien, because I needed to look at different phenomena than those I observed from the character perspective during role playing, or those that I observed from the participant or player perspective. Taking the perspective of researcher, participant in a game, and playing a role in the role-playing game, resulted in a triple role-playing practice. Changing the perspectives during a game session allowed me to select different observations.

      To remain in control of three roles, I drew upon role playing as a practice itself. In ethnography, role playing does not refer to the meaning of the word as a recreational practice, but to playing with perspectives.

Скачать книгу