Participation cues: Coordinating activity and ... - Semantic Scholar

Language in Society 39, 331–356. doi:10.1017/S0047404510000217

Participation cues: Coordinating activity and collaboration in complex online gaming worlds ELIZABETH KEATING Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station, Austin, Texas 78712-0303 [email protected] C H I H O S U N A K AWA Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station, Austin, Texas 78712-0303 [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The development of digital communication technologies not only has an influence on human communicative practices, but also creates new spaces for human collaborative activity. In this article we discuss a technologically mediated context for interaction, computer games. Closely looking at interactions among a group of gamers, we examine how players are managing complex, shifting frameworks of participation, the virtual game world and the embodied world of talk and plans for action. Introducing the notion of PARTICIPATION CUES, we explain how interactants are able to orient to, plan, and execute collaborative actions that span quite different environments with quite different types of agency, possible acts, and consequences. Novel abilities to interact across diverse spaces have consequences for understanding how humans build coordinated action through efficient, multimodal communication mechanisms. (Computer-mediated communication, language and technology, gaming, gesture, participation, multimodality)*

INTRODUCTION

The recent rapid development of digital communication technologies has resulted in new spaces for collaborative activity. In new technologically mediated spaces, people are adapting communicative practices and in some cases inventing new ones. In this article we discuss a technologically mediated context for interaction, a “LAN (local area network) party” or temporary gathering of people who network their computers together to play multiplayer computer games. We analyze ways a group of players manage complex, shifting frameworks of © Cambridge University Press, 2010 0047-4045/10 $15.00

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participation and presence, the virtual game world, and the everyday, conventional world of talk, plans, and action. Novel abilities to interact across different participation spaces have consequences for understanding how humans build coordinated action through highly efficient, multimodal communication. The influence of emerging technologies on sociality has been recognized among anthropologists, linguists, engineers, geographers, sociologists, psychologists, and others (Duranti 2006, Goodwin & Goodwin 1996, Jones 2004, Keating 2006, Keating & Mirus 2003, LeBaron & Streeck 2000, Mondada 2003, Sarangi 2004, Suchman 1992, Wasson 2006), and has been a basis for theorizing about interaction. Following work on contextualization cues (Gumperz 1982), participation frameworks (Goffman 1961, Goodwin & Goodwin 2004, Philips 1972), focused attention (Kendon 1973, 1990, McNeill 2006), embodied action (Bourdieu 1977), and activity types (Levinson 1992), we introduce here the notion of PARTICIPATION CUES, which we feel helps explain how interactants are able to orient to, plan, and execute collaborative actions that span very different environments with very different types of agency, possible acts, and consequences. These participation cues, learned over time, establish relationships between forms of talk and body orientation on the one hand, and the production and interpretation of predictable and coherent next actions and responses on the other. We further argue that participation cues can be a productive way of revisiting or re-viewing what are called “roles and relations” in the anthropological literature, including how people cue as relevant such dynamic aspects of accountable behavior as identity, gender, and status roles, among others. Participating in cyberspace can require new habits of spatial reasoning and spatial understanding, incorporating what Fisher and others have called “spatial indexes in complex environments” or spatial transformations in web-visualization environments (Fisher et al. 1997). The phrase “time-space compression” was introduced by Harvey to describe “processes that so revolutionize the objective qualities of space and time that we are forced to alter, sometimes in quite radical ways, how we represent the world to ourselves” (Harvey 1990:240). Online worlds have been described as sites of “borderwork,” where students manage online and offline behaviors in classrooms, creating ratified and nonratified participants (Aarsand 2008). Relationships in online spaces have been acknowledged as different from face-to-face interactions in terms of speaker change and “fluidity” (Jones et al. 2006:16). We now have available networks for constant interaction, “as the home becomes multidimensional” (Castells 2001:236). Overlapping spaces can become problematic for interactants, who find that simultaneous management of multiple types of spaces (e.g. public and private), with different norms for recipient design of communication, can lead to conflicts and potentially face-threatening situations (Keating 2005). The organization of space has always been central to social life; it “structures not only the group’s representation of the world but the group itself, which orders itself in accordance with this representation” (Bourdieu 1977:163), including “routinely incorporating ‘what went before’ and 332

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anticipations of ‘what will come next’ into the present of an encounter” (Giddens 1979:84). As work on everyday interactions has shown, people use a range of semiotic resources to coordinate activities with others (see e.g. Schegloff 1984), and they orient to a range of temporal frameworks simultaneously “in building even simple, brief action” (Goodwin 2002:33); here we look particularly at how interactants orient to a range of spatial frameworks and possibilities. Aspects of person and place reference can be complicated in contiguous virtual spaces (Keating & Mirus 2003), and at times incoherent, as in the case of whether a point of the forefinger or reference means “here in ‘my’ space” or “there in ‘your’ space (which is on ‘my’ screen),” or in the case of gaming discussed here, where “our” space is in play. We find that some online participants adapt in part by reorganizing the distribution of meaning across modalities, making changes in the coordinated production of gesture, gaze, and language (Keating et al. 2008); people are innovating in order to manage unique attributes of environmental design. In the case of online gamers who bring their computers to a single location to play together—the focus of this article—orienting, manipulating, and interpreting the consequences of participating in multiple spaces includes coordinating the real body, the virtual body, and both real and onscreen representations of the self and others, as well as producing and reading cues about participation space and status. Closely looking at interactions among a group of such gamers, we examine here (i) new forms of action and participation in space and how language, gaze, and the body are used to describe and coordinate actions in and across spaces, and (ii) the concept of participation cues in keying and building expectations and relevance, and shaping understandings about participation, roles, and relationships. We first discuss some conventional concepts and then show some examples from our data. BACKGROUND

Gumperz developed the powerful notion of contextualization cues in order to account for how listeners know so much about interpreting speakers’ talk, given the limits of utterances compared to the rich amount of information listeners infer, in other words, how we understand nonlexical meaning. We build on this notion in developing the idea of participation cues. Although contextualization cues are highly underspecified in the literature on the topic and it is difficult to agree on exactly which bundle of features these forms entail or exactly how meanings are achieved through them, scholars agree that the concept is a productive one for understanding the emergent and collaborative nature of maintaining intersubjectivity and achieving shared understanding. We argue that key aspects of participation are similarly inferred in spanning technologically mediated worlds rather than communicated through the lexical content of utterances. This is a process that involves linking utterances to different types of activities and environments. Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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In looking at aspects of gamers’ participation in multiple worlds, we are indebted to scholars’ work on participation frameworks, including how action and participation are costructured, as people “build action together by participating in structured ways,” and the view of “participation as engagement in unfolding action” (Goodwin & Goodwin 2004). According to Wittgenstein 1953/2001, to know a language is to participate in the forms of life within which language is expressed and within which language expresses. Previous work on nonverbal communication has shown the important role of the body in structuring participation (Enfield 2003, Kendon 1990), how people “cooperate together to produce visual signals which maintain a space of participation to which they all have direct and exclusive [equal] access” (Kendon 1990:209). When gamers or others gaze at a common event or object in space, this can signal a type of participation or direct and exclusive access (McNeill 2006:13), such as the way gamers sit in front of a computer screen. In the case discussed here, the gamers are all gazing at different screens, which they then collectively and imaginatively join together in a variety of ways. In addition to building on previous work on participation, we are guided by work looking at the production of activities (Cole et al. 1997, Vygotsky 1978). Human activity does not consist entirely of talk, but is “somewhere in between,” meaning there is a special relationship between what is said and what is done (Levinson 1992). For our activity here we are especially interested in the role of “inferential schemata” (tied to/derived from the activity in question) (Levinson 1992:72). In games and other activities, participants regularly build “strong expectations about the functions that any utterances at a certain point in the proceedings can be fulfilling” (Levinson 1992:79). How do gamers manage a situation in which they are doing activities together in several spaces at once, especially when these spaces are quite different types of environments? Levinson uses the example of the athletic game (in a similar way to the builder and builder’s assistant in Wittgenstein 1953/2001, §7.4): For example, in a basketball game it is understood that utterances will relate only to the game, and moreover will be restricted to a limited set of functions including, for example, applause/abuse, exhortations, directions positioning players, and signals to pass the ball. Given these constraints an utterance like here! Peter or Right over here can (with appropriate prosodics) be understood best as a signal to pass the ball in the direction of the caller. The inference from the elliptical expression to the instruction or request relies on the constraints on the functions that utterances should have within that activity. (Levinson 1992:79) Unlike the basketball players, MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) players who play in LAN (local area network) environments are engaged as multiple types of participants. As social actors and avatars, they manipulate their bodies through different “phenomenal fields” (Hanks 1990) that the “real 334



world” and the software makes relevant. Activities and spatial abilities are rendered differently in human-constructed worlds of online games, resulting in interesting challenges that concern us here for coordinating collaborative activity across and within different spatial and sensory domains. Space has been considered in various ways by social scientists in investigations of behavior. This can be seen in concepts such as public space, ritual space, and personal or private space. Geographers and anthropologists often replace the term “space” with “place” to indicate the ways that environmental and built spaces (Lawrence & Low 1990) are used to signify cultural histories or to serve as objects of collective memory. Sides of the body and sides of islands are used as resources for building moral hierarchies among groups and for making the abstract concrete, as when the right side might be more valued than the left (Hertz 1960/2008). Navigational aids in the Pacific shape an understanding of human movement through space within waves and wind (Hutchins 1995). Our “surround” includes objects, borders, and terrains, which impact our collaborative activities. “Virtual space,” or “virtual reality,” is a term that emerged to describe imaginary or simulated worlds constructed with computer technology, offering new types of experiences for users, and new types of engagement, immersion, and presence. The term “cyberspace” refers to an event space or activity space that is a transformation of individual locations into an aggregate, nonlocalized, shared space. People integrate cyberspace with “real space” in ways that we are interested in studying here. The role of culture is particularly interesting, as new technologies permit complex activities among human-like representational forms. The three-dimensional space created through technology reacts to user’s manipulations in similar but different ways compared to “real space.” We believe “participation cue” is well suited to describe complex participation shifts in computer-mediated environments, where participants join together for collaborative activities from a range of locations and (back)grounds. A cue can serve as a trigger for action or for attention similar to a sensory cue, which indicates some property of a perceptive world. Inferences are made based on cues, leading to predictions that make collaboration and coordination possible. In three-dimensional space generated by computers, where software reacts to the user’s movements and manipulations in powerful, transformative ways, coordination is a complex task. As we show, rate of speech, repetition, prosody, gesture, body orientation, gaze, actors’ tools and instruments, and structures in the environment are used by gamers to convey information that is key to interpreting types of relevant participation. It has been claimed that playing computer games leads to “quite distinct cognitive pathways” (Carrington 2004), which may “yield another revolution in thinking” based in part on a different transmission of knowledge (Westby & Atencio 2002). Participation itself “assumes cognition to manage the retrieval of information and the prediction of others’ action necessary for problem-solving” (Duranti 1997a:21). Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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Gaming Although there is abundant literature on the gaming experience, much of this literature focuses on categorizing gamers into types of game-play preference and levels of expertise or effects of gaming (e.g. Bryce & Rutter 2003, Chen 2009, Duchemeaut el al. 2007, Hayes 2008, Williams et al. 2006, Yee 2006). For young adults, such as college students in the US, Japan, the UK, and elsewhere, digital games can be a significant part of everyday entertainment. In a 2009 survey of American gaming habits, for example, it was reported that 35% of all adults play games online and 78% of teens ages 12–17 play games online (Jones & Fox 2009). The majority of online gamers play at least a few times a week. Those who play massive multiplayer online games were even more likely to play frequently; nearly half of these gamers play everyday or almost everyday (Jones & Fox 2009). The well-known World of Warcraft game reported an active population of more than 11.5 million players in 2008. Multiuser games were created in 1979 by Essex University students, who extended the game Dungeon by making it accessible to players outside of Essex through dial-up access. Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) introduced the inclusion of other players in the same game space—allies or foes in a journey through the game world. With later improvements in graphics technology, MUDs were developed into games now known as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), the focus of this article. The first MMORPG in 1991 initiated the format of a graphical representation of the game environment, combined with text-based chat and statistical information. This game was developed into a system by which players could improve their character’s prowess, along with an economic system for amassing items and currency. Part of the enjoyment of the virtual world is new forms of participation, including the manipulation of properties available to enhance the body and change its relationship to space and activities. While most MMORPGs have a text-based chatting system to complement the visual aspect of the game, this mode of interaction is usually secondary to the onscreen display and gameplay. City of Heroes and its sequel, City of Villains, which we discuss below, was developed by Cryptic Studios and introduced in North America in 2004 and in Europe in 2005 (a Korean version was introduced in 2006). In the game, players create superhero characters and fight in teams in Paragon City and its surrounding locales. Novice players begin by choosing from the game’s character system an archetype and “power sets.” They design a costume, and write a biography for their character. As a hero’s security level increases, the hero gains benefits such as more health, more powers, and more slots for holding temporary “power-ups” called inspirations. Players initially move around zones by slowly jogging, sprinting, or sliding, and can then choose one of four more advanced traveling powers—teleportation, super speed, super jumping, and flight. The gaming world includes environment and activity transforming potentials such as the ability to perform an instant 336



“makeover” of a space as ice-covered, to perform “illusion control,” and to control gravity. Players manipulate phenomenological experiences such as empathy, and experience states like “dark miasma.” The difficulty level and number of villains is adjusted according to the strength and number of heroes. Games create expectations of progressive possibilities of actions partly through visual cues or “hotspots,” such as where game designers place a glowing marker (“glowie”) in front of a door through which the player is intended to travel, or where designers slightly discolor a section of wall that contains a secret passage. Virtual environments can be sparse with a “relative shortage of local landmarks,” such as buildings and signposts, and “global” visual contexts, such as a backdrop of mountains (Fisher et al. 1997:21). Game worlds permit action sequences such as “dominate,” which is explained as to “painfully tear at the mind” of a “single target foe” (http://boards.cityofheroes.com).1 Conversation during the game with gamers who are not physically present can be done by text messaging or through the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) function installed in individuals’ computers. In the case we are studying, gamers communicate almost exclusively with those who have joined with them in real space. We looked at two different LAN parties. In one, five participants sit around a table (see Figure 3). In another, the participants are in a large university classroom made up of fixed seats in rows (they use the facility at night, after classes; see Figure 1). The study and its setting After initial participant observation of gaming and observation of gamers in different settings, including a large LAN party at the University of Texas hosted by student groups on campus, we selected one of the groups of students who regularly

FIGURE 1. One type of LAN party environment. Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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play as a team and focused on their play more specifically. We particularly wanted to find a team that included at least one female player. We videotaped two different settings for a total of seven hours. In each setting there were five participants sitting together, four male and one female, plus one virtual participant. After studying the tapes, we selected examples for further analysis based on our interest—which is to understand how the players organize activities that span diverse environments and spaces—for what this can tell us about emerging social activity in virtual spaces and the impact of computer-mediated environments on activity, talk, and participation. As other scholars who pioneered the close analysis of talk-in-interaction found, any randomly selected moment of interaction provides an engrossing example of rich, creative, and complex symbolic behavior. LAN parties were no exception. We did, however, concentrate on several types of excerpts for purposes of this article. We looked at cases when the players were organizing the start of a game and when they finished a game; we looked at cases of threat to the team or individuals within the game; and we also looked at cases when the players were engaging in metalanguage about their gaming, that is, about communication or acts during gaming. In one of the contexts the players are seated around a table; in another they are seated in a large classroom area, with some players in one row of seats and other players behind them with chairs that can swivel. We analyzed the use of gestures, the body, and gaze, employing methods of conversation analysis and the analysis of talk-in-interaction.

THE ARRANGEMENT OF BODIES AND MOVEMENT IN SPACE

In computer-mediated spaces, the terms of participation can vary dramatically. Digital environments significantly alter how to participate with the body, and introduce complexities in managing onscreen and offscreen types of talk (see e.g. Jones et al. 2006). In the case of gaming, space and action on and offscreen must be managed, including how tactility or the use of a keyboard or mouse with one’s hands can “translate” into action in another space or another modality (e.g. when the mouse is rolled with the hand causing a person’s avatar to run in the screen world, or a mouse click brings into everyday presence a world that becomes relevant for action, with a new perspective or audience). New possibilities for how to participate include magical properties that reconfigure boundaries of the individual body and its capabilities, which makes it possible for bodies to behave differently in space. At one point a player in our group said to the others, “I fell down. Oh. I fell up.” Space is shared in unique ways as participants are engaged in activities concurrently occurring in both real and virtual space. Communication in real space links real-space participation with virtualspace participation, as shown in the extract (1). In line 3, David says in a loud voice “WARDEN INCOMING!” and then “HEADS UP!” in line 8 (idiomatic English for “pay attention”) to recruit players’ attention. 338


PA R T I C I PAT I O N C U E S (1) The five players sit, each with one hand on the mouse and one hand on the keyboard. They all look at their individual screens (square bracket indicates overlap; capital letters indicate loudness; italics are used for nonverbal actions; ., indicates talk produced faster than the surrounding talk).2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Green: David: David: Green: Greg: James: David: James:

There’s a lot of guys [on the wall [((Caitlin puts her hands on her chin)) [WARDEN INCOMING! [((moves mouse slightly but continuously)) [((moves mouse slightly but continuously)) [((moves mouse slightly but continuously)) OH GOD. [HEADS UP! [((Caitlin moves hands to keyboard and straightens her body)) .hold on hold on,

James’s rapidly spoken “hold on hold on” in line 10 lexically and prosodically signals that he is not already a “hero” participant (as in City of Heroes/City of Villains). Through increased speed of utterance and repetition he describes how he is participating—that he is doing something, that is, preparing to be a certain participant. Both spaces, real and virtual, shape the shifting priorities of attention and action, forms of engagement with others, and procedures for alignment. When playing together, LAN party style, the players continually inform each other about their individual points of view, avatar movements, lines of sight, and sound. A key to understanding these environments is that players adjust to the fact that communicative visual behavior includes not only “anything an individual does that is visible to another” (Kendon 1973:31), but also verbal descriptions of what individual avatars are doing that is not visible to all. Their own and others’ visual behavior that gamers and others must communicate through language includes not only “the way a person moves in space, and the spatial position he may maintain, both in relation to the features of a given site, and in relation to others present” (Kendon 1973:31), but also how this information indicates a set of new factors affecting participation in their common environment. As in Suchman’s study of a complex technical environment, words are important for making ongoing activity visible (Suchman 1992). Here they are also making aspects of their potential participation hearable, as when James says at one point: “Okay. I have a break free. Are you still- are you still stuck?” The use of language is constrained by its reliance on sequentially meaningful properties and by turn-taking constraints, in spite of the fact that many reportable simultaneous and different actions are taking place in the game. Players must decide how to convey complex actions and spatial reference plans in limited time. Similar to the control-tower employees studied by Goodwin and Goodwin (1996) and Suchman (1992), players use intonation and other prosodic contrasts. A rapid speed of talk, often with extensive repetition, characterizes gaming talk which cues team participation around avatars encountering threats in space. The repetition is reminiscent of aspectual features of some Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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languages, marking the ongoing nature of action through reduplication. In the following extract there are thirteen phrasal repetitions in ten utterances. Only one speaker does not evidence repetitions, and he is the speaker who utters the fewest words, only two. (2) Between lines 15 and 22, players’ bodies are stationary with slight finger and hand movements on keyboards and mice. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

James: Caitlin: James: Greg: David: James: David: James:

David: James: David:

I see it .I see it I see it I see it., .I hear it I hear it [I hear it., [.I see it I see it I see it., Where’s thatKeep him OFF me. I’m doin it I-I-I’m doin it I’m doin it I’m doin it [doin it [Alright [Exiting [((moves his hands from the keyboard and raises them behind his head.)) Exit exit [exit [((clicks his mouse)) [Exit exit exithhhh (.) Awesome ((raises his arms overhead))

The gamers build shifting contexts for participation and infer types of relevant next actions for themselves and other participants through describing their own and others’ moves in space and spatial positions or describing features of the site. Unlike the airport control-tower employees (Goodwin & Goodwin 1996, Suchman 1992), the game scenes have a novel and unpredictable character, and the gamers do not have preassigned professional roles. Roles emerge and must be taken up, and attributes enabling or disabling participation are lost or regained in a changing environment with changing properties of visibility and opportunities to participate. In (3) below, players constantly interpret information supplied verbally by others to plan their own actions that can influence the actions of others. One player characterizes his individual action as a team action—“we dropped one blaze of flame”—showing how actions of an individual onscreen can be related to past and possible team actions. Repetition of the information “Telus is still going after you guys” and “Run, James” indicates that this information has not been acted on as expected, leading to a counterview on which action (invisible to the other) is being taken (“I’m watching them”), followed by an action that removes the enemy participant (“I froze the guy who’s after us”). (3) (a dot between parenthesis (.) indicates a slight pause) 1 2 3 4

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David:

[We dropped one blaze of flame [((moves his cursor from left to right.)) (.) Telus is still [going after you guys Language in Society 39:3 (2010)


5 6 7 8 9 10

Caitlin: David: Caitlin: James:

[Run James .hhhh [Telus is still going after you guys [Run I’m watching them (.) I froze the guy who’s after us

Here, as in other types of activities, arrangement of bodies in space is a fundamental and integral part of social interaction (e.g. Goodwin 2007, Kendon 1990, McNeill 2006, Schegloff 1998, Sidnell 2005) and resource for signaling availability for participation. And shifts in body orientation have consequences for the organization of participation. Kendon 1990, for example, describes how in faceto-face interaction, participants show orientation to each other’s bodies mainly through their lower body, in order to make an o-shaped circle, or o-space. Gamers exhibit a body orientation of a particular type towards their computer while they participate in scenes such as in (3), entailing rapid tactile manipulation of objects, the keyboard and the mouse. Each player sits facing his or her computer screen during the game, and places his or her hands on the keyboard and mouse. Play or game-body posture has certain attributes such as the relation between the upper body and lower body, including head, arms, and hands (see Figure 2). When participating outside of the game (when the game is over or before another game starts), in contrast, their bodies have distinct lower and upper body orientations. Differences in body posture can be seen in Figure 3 below, where in the first frame the players are focused on the game space, in the second frame they

FIGURE 2. Gamer’s play position. Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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FIGURE 3. Arrangements of bodies in space.

have just finished a game, and in the third they are discussing the game they just finished. During a game, torsos hardly move in real space as the players run while sitting or spin rooms around, talk while dead, or target through others (“I’ve got the main guy targeted if you wanted to target through me”). When the torso in real space does move, it is often used to “project instability” (Schegloff 1998:544) or dual engagement. This is achieved through a kind of “torquing” (Schegloff 1998:544). In one case when a player helps another player with his computer, he uses the chair to project this instability, then speedily swivels his chair back to game position. When a player notices another gazing too long at his computer, instead of the player’s own, he asks “Should I turn it [my screen] for you [to see]?” The others laugh at this incongruity, showing that there are conventions about how to use the body to participate with others and with a screen, that players orient to others’ bodies as signals of types of focused participation, and that there is an appropriate game-body or screen-to-head relationship. When not participating together in virtual space, the players exhibit greater range of body movement. But they continue to evidence alignment to each others’ bodies and actions (see Figure 5). Figure 4 represents an example of nongaming body alignment when drinking cokes. The symbol |----|----| shows overlaps of two players simultaneously reaching for a coke can and then drinking (|----| represents a one

FIGURE 4. Nongaming player orientation to body alignment.

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FIGURE 5. Taking a sip simultaneously.

second time span). A third player (standing) is at the same time searching for his large-sized coke bottle (Figure 6). The gamers show some interpretable points of reference to aspects of participation. Extract (4) below illustrates how an important way of using the body as a cue for participation is not just with posture, but also by “looking” and “hearing.” The players in the extract are trying to find the location of a signal (both audible and visual) that will change the team’s participation status at the end of the game. The signal stands for an exit or the opportunity to simultaneously transport the team out of the current space of action. To successfully exit, the team has to

FIGURE 6. Arms extend in unison to put the coke can back on the table. Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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out-maneuver a “mob” of villains around the glowie/exit. Focused embodied participation is cued via particular sensory input, and participant knowledge is recruited by David with “I HEAR it” (line 1). James, Caitlin, and Greg respond as each shifts his or her body immediately after hearing David’s “I hear it I hear it.” Caitlin leans her torso upward and Greg turns his head to gaze towards David’s screen. (4) Between lines 5 and 24, players’ bodies are stationary, looking at the screens, with slight hand movements (parentheses without text, e.g. line 5, indicate talk we were unable to hear). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

David: James:

?: James: David: Caitlin: David: James: David: James: Greg: Caitlin: David: Greg: James: Caitlin: James: Greg: David: James: David: James:

David: James: David:

I HEAR it (.) I hear it. [((James shifts his body in his chair)) [((Caitlin leans her torso upward)) [((Greg turns his head to gaze towards David’s screen)) Did ( ) ( ) David I hear it somewhere around here. I’m going toLike loud and clear. Can you still agg3 me once? They aggroed me. Hhhhh There’s a lot of mobs in there. Okay now I can ( ) I see him. Keep him off for like ten seconds. Do you see it? I see it .I see it I see it I see it., .I hear it I hear it [I hear it., [.I see it I see it I see it., Where’s thatKeep him OFF me. I’m doin it I- I-I’m doin it I’m doin it I’m doin it [doin it [Alright [Exiting [((moves his hands from the keyboard and raises them behind his head.)) Exit exit [exit [((clicks his mouse)) [Exit exit exithhhh (.) Awesome ((David raises his arms overhead))

David’s utterance “I hear it I hear it [the glowie]” recruits the team’s focus on the space where that sound is relevant. He also recruits focus on “I” as a particular type of participant, on relating that “I” (here and there) spatially (both in the room and on the screen) to what they are collectively seeking on their individual screens, on locating the origin of the sound, and on the readiness for individual participation in a team cyberaction sequence of combat. David interprets sound in his earphones as a spatial locative; he then reproduces this for the others in different symbolic form; 344



they reinterpret the “I” as a spatial locative using their participation knowledge of his space and their space. Caitlin reports hearing “it” (the glowie), but two other players, Greg and Green, do not share her visual or aural perspective or presence. David then directs team members to engage a male enemy (“keep him off for like ten seconds”) in a maneuver. James, the only other team member to “see” him in space or to construct a specific figure-ground relation, takes the role of engaging him but only after an upgraded, angry-toned directive from David (“keep him OFF me!”). James then describes his participation: “I’m doing it I-I-I’m doing it I’m doing it I’m doing it doin it.” Vocal repetition conveys space/time/action participant relations and next actions, and links tactile actions on the keyboard with actions in virtual space. Not only is “I’m doin’ it” repeated, but later “exiting” is repeated by two players as they exit. The “exiting” uttered at the end of the sequence signals the moment of exit from Paragon City and entry into another type of participation structure and different points of view. No pronoun is used in the exiting phrase. The players then change body positions, cueing new types of participation. As each gamer must manage multiple units of participation—real space and screen space—each body can be designated by “you” or “I,” while multiple addressee/reference points underlie these concepts.4 When a player states “James, you’re so close to dying,” he combines properties of real-space James and screen-space James. Although real-space James is not dying, real-space James or his teammates can do something to reverse his dying in screen space. An integration of deictic references can be seen in an example concerning Bucks, who is the only remote player (not in the room). David says: “So we’re [remote and present players] waiting on you [rotates head, gazes, and points to present player seated beside him] and Bucks, and here [in game space] comes Bucks.” This shows a “we” for all players in virtual and real space. A “you” in real space is integrated with a “here” in virtual space. Perception of space is communicatively built and shared as interactants integrate the real and the virtual deictic correlates. Eye gaze and a head-rotation gesture as well as a point are used to make reference clear about the emergent participant structure in screen space, and to make clear a participation relationship between onscreen avatars and real persons. In one case, a stressed “HE” accompanies the speaker’s head shift to look at one of the other gamers and to key conventional space, locating a person with a gaze and head shift, linking the referent in game space with the repaired referent in real space. In (4) the players develop this integrated audiospective and visuospective. An “I” (sitting here) hears “it” (in there); another player (sitting here) keeps “him” (approaching me in there) off “me” (in there). When a player says “look at me,” no one looks at him in physical space, or notes this as problematic, showing they all understand which type of “me” participant is meant and where to look. Deixis plays a key part in establishing conventions for setting up conceptual worlds (Duranti 1997b:322, Hanks 1990, Ochs et al. 1994), as participation is a dimension of speaking that has grammatical roots (Duranti 1997a:281). Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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E L I Z A B E T H K E A T I N G A N D C H I H O S U N A K AWA GAZE AND PARTICIPATION

One of the ways players manage new participation capabilities and multiple spatial environments in which to participate with different potentials and attributes is that they use new mobilities and properties of the software.5 They use a kind of “machine gaze” to create and then share in one space what are nonreciprocal perspectives on participation in another space, building a repertoire of shared understanding of participation across spaces. The screen is necessarily a focus of gaze during game play, and the software has powerful gaze-shifting properties. Without moving their heads, eyes, or bodies, players can invoke—not only through symbols of speech but through the machine software—new gaze or sight parameters. They can rapidly switch between a first-person perspective and a third-person perspective, managing the actions of the self in relation to others in multiple ways. Gamers thus have individual and enhanced human-eye points of view on participation space to communicate and coordinate. Game space has been referred to as “layers of independently moving planes (multiple scrolling backgrounds)” (Wolf 1997:60), which are viewed from multiple angles and viewpoints controlled by the player. This capability can itself help players orient to new participant roles in unfolding events. Gamers can change the participation level of their own or others’ characters. In Figure 7, David is lying on the ground unable to move, nearly dead (his onscreen body is indicated by the white outline) due to an attack by the opponents. Though immobile, he manipulates the space with his mouse and keyboard to gain a different view than the view we would predict from the screen location of his avatar’s eyes (in Figure 7 we are seeing the screen as he sees it) in order to plan for a change in his participation status (to come back to life). Being able to manipulate virtual space is a significant part of managing participation in computer-mediated gaming spaces. Through this manipulation, the space that interactants inhabit has new affordances for contrast and choice and new sequential properties (Keating 2008).

FIGURE 7. Machine perspective and virtual-gaze shift: a player manipulates and shifts perspective in the scene that his avatar prepares to act in, as shown above (arrows signify how the room is turned).

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David moves his cursor from left to right, shifting the space, to gain additional perspectives and to orient himself to possible participation frameworks and to other participants who might be present. Another player, James, is also looking at David’s body on his own computer and says: “Okay. Let me make sure that it’s safe,” participating by looking. After two and a half seconds he says, “I think it’s safe now.” What emerges is a “progressively shared vision” (Alby & Zucchermaglio 2007:273), enhanced by the software, on a particular type of joint participation space, where certain roles are relevant. (5) (numbers in parentheses indicate time of silences) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

James:

Caitlin: David: James:

[Okay. Let me make sure that it’s safe. [((James is looking at David from behind his own computer.)) (2.5) I think it’s safe now. ( ) We’re clear- we’re clear where I am. Okay.

When David and James join together in looking (see Barber 2005, Murphy 2005 for a discussion of linking spaces in a map-making activity), they communicate key information about level and type of participation, as well as about potential other participants, to the players sitting beside them and across from them. Participants in any interaction must achieve and re-achieve a “focused gathering” in Goffman’s (1961) sense in order to participate together. Gaming provides new possibilities for shifting features of the spatial environment and shifting the environment itself. While previous scholars have shown that bodies move and align within a specific environment, here the spatial coordinates and features of the landscape are changing. THE HOP-IN: COORDINATING PARTICIPATION

To start the game the players must all materialize in the same location onscreen, called the “hop-in.” This not only involves aligning visual attention to an upcoming space of action, but also recruiting and coordinating tactile attention, and hearing recipiency status. Surprises are waiting, as actions and the participation status of villains are far from predictable. Extract (6) below is an example of coordinating the hop-in. This involves attention to knowledge about how special, enhanced actions impact what kinds of participants they are able to be, individually and as a team. (6) (= signifies latching, or no gap between utterances) 1 2 3

David:

[Alright we’re gonna try this a little bit different [I think [((puts his left hand on his left thigh and wipes it off, his right hand stays on the mouse))


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4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

[((puts his left hand on his keyboard))

James: David: David:

I’m gonna:: go ahead and (2.0) There we go. Bucks is on= =Cool an-. and in team and- and [I’m gonna bubble Bucks and [you [((turns head to Greg)) [((extends arm, points to Green)) And then:: [some guys bubble [Bucks and [you [((draws a circle by moving wrist)) [((points to his left)) [(( points to Green)) And I’m gonna [stagger everybody else in [((draws a circle twice))

Planning done in real space before the hop-in is coordinated with participation in onscreen space. This planning facilitates understanding and building mutual knowledge about participation. In Nevile’s (2004) study of airline cockpits, the pilots similarly perform an “approach briefing” to understand the terrain, the space the plane will be traveling through, and consequences to their individual performance of changes in this space. In planning a later interaction with an instrument panel, Nevile describes how the first officer breaks physical contact with the instrument panel and leans away just when he is finished with talk concerning the instrument panel. The gamers playing City of Villains also use their bodies as they plan their participation. Unlike the pilot, however, they do not have control of the sequences of collaborative activity. Rather, sequences of tool and object use emerge and are performed by multiple-instrument users. Players do not share a single view of space “ahead.” As David organizes the sequence of their change in participant type (in this case, hopping into the game space) through cues including language, gaze, and gesture, the gesture he uses that accompanies his plan to “stagger everyone else in” is three circles in the air, as if he is duplicating the small area of activity their tiny avatars will encounter in the screen. His first pointing gesture is very high, then he shifts the space and points to another person, then to the screen, and then “you” again in lower space. The pointing gesture towards “you” occurs twice (see Figure 8), in a gesture pattern where the deictics of the points cross real space and online space. This “environmentally coupled gesture” (Goodwin 2007) links, in this case, two environments together. David’s hand does not return to resting position, signifying that the points are all part of a single gestural phrase. This illustrates not only a particular sequence, but the relationship of the sequence to their entry into online space, and how individual “you” actions coordinate as collaborative actions. These very precise gestures (Kendon 2004) help to “imagine jointly” 348



FIGURE 8. Higher “you” point (first “Bucks and you,” line 11), lower “you” point (second “Bucks and you,” line 15).

(Alby & Zucchermaglio 2007:257, Enfield 2009) the sequence of actions (LeBaron & Streeck 2000; Murphy 2005), incrementally constructing a shared vision and a resource for “structuring participation” (Alby & Zucchermaglio 2007:257), including turn-taking (see Mondada 2007). What David creates is a kind of sketch of participation across worlds.

ENHANCED PARTICIPATION AND MANAGING ACROSS PARTICIPATION SPACES

Accomplishing participation in multiple spaces also involves various extraordinary properties or enhancements, which give power to an individual and which are

FIGURE 9. Image of the screen showing the chart of team members’ attributes. Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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traded before players start a mission. These properties or potentials affect their abilities to participate as onscreen selves, such as whether they can fly through space and jump hundreds of feet in the air or induce protective bubbles. Avatars are at the same time more limited participants than people in their abilities to talk and gesture, although a very skilled player can manage to cause an avatar to point while running. The following description from the game explains conventions about how to best distribute (in real space) and use (in gaming space) an array of special participant properties called inspirations. Inspiration Management (Arcas) – There is no larger crime in a team setting than walking around with a full inspiration tray. Use those inspirations and use them often. If a teammate can use it more than you can, give them the inspiration by dragging it over to him. If no one can use it, throw it out. If you can’t use it right now, but it’s taking up space, use it anyway and make room for better stuff to come. Always keep at least one open slot, you won’t receive anything from villains, as well as that life-saving inspiration from a teammate, if you have a full tray. There’s no time for full-on trading during an extreme battle. (http:// boards.cityofheroes.com) Extract (7) shows an example of organizing the distribution of these participant attributes. Green offers to share an endurance, an accuracy, and a hold, and, after a question about the specificity of the level of the accuracy, Green and David negotiate a trade. During the process, when David repeats Green’s offer, he also manipulates his keyboard to change to a different representative format, visually checking a chart of the current distribution of participation enhancements or potentials (inspirations) among the team. He moves between a 2D visualization chart of team members’ attributes (Figure 9) and the 3D space of action in the game twice. From lines 18–23, as Green is speaking, David looks at Green before offering a trade. After distributing potentials, the players organize the sequence of the hop-in. (7) (multiple sets of colons indicate a stretched sound) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

350

Green:

Greg: David:

Caitlin: Green: David: Caitlin:

I need uh:: (.) does anyone want an endurance or an accuracy [or a hold? [uh::: (1.5) [Endurance? [((checks a chart of team members’ attributes, see figure 9)) (.) [Accuracy? Uh:: never mind [What level is the accuracy? [Endurance or accuracy or any of those Caitlin got it [( ) accuracy [((David checks a chart of team members’ attributes again)) Language in Society 39:3 (2010)


16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Green: Caitlin: Green: David:

Green:

Maybe. Oh no:: it’s uh- it’s uh inspiration Oh::= =[twenty-five percent were accuracy ‘cause I don’t have to throw it away I don’t really care= [((looks away from his computer and gazes towards Green)) =I- I’ll trade it for your awaken Okay

Players can continually reshape the nature of their participation with particular space-action potentials and attributes. Extract (8) shows some of the creativity involved in integrating the multiple active-participation spaces. One player asks the others if they have noticed that pressing the space bar and leaning forward in real space makes them go faster in virtual space. He asks: “Any you guys feel like if you- ah if you press the space bar and like lean forward you go faster?” The interesting part of this question is the world-merging combination of leaning the realspace body forward (which in reality can have no impact on the avatar’s movement in virtual space) and pressing a computer key designed to make a space (computer keys do impact what happens in virtual space). While at first, three of the other players are surprised (lines 3–6)—uttering surprise sounds “whuuhhh,” “wha. hhh,” “hhhhuh huh”—one of them then offers an explanation and makes this incoherent idea—that moving the torso in real space results in a gain of elevation in game space, or causes “you” to fly forward in the game—into a coherent idea through combining language, the position of the body, the software, space, and perspective (“it works ‘cause you’re looking down and it’s going by faster”). (8) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

David: Greg: James: Caitlin: David: Green: James: David:

( ): Greg: David:

Any you guys feel like if you- ah if you press the space bar and like lean forward you go faster? [whuuhhh [((turns to David)) wha.hhh hhhhuh huh [Like, you know how space bar gives you more elevation? [((gazes towards Green)) [Yeh [((briefly looks up and gazes towards David)) uh huh I feel like if you’re leaning [forward you can get more [((Greg turns to David)) elevation and like it goes faster for some reason Maybe It works [cause you’re looking down and it’s going by faster [((turns to David)) That could be it too ( ) that’s why I asked


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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Caitlin: James: David Green: Caitlin: James: David: Caitlin: Green:

Caitlin: Green: David:

huh huh huh ( ) Then I fly like that ( ) [if it’s faster [( ) [I hav[hhhh. I have stuff (to take care of) It didn’t go that well I have ( ) I’m trying to get in there [(2.0) [((Greg moves his hands from his keyboard and places his hands on his chin)) I see David below me ((Green takes off his headset)) Flying forward, leaning forward?

David later repeats “flying forward, leaning forward” (line 35), after Caitlin relates that she sees him on her own screen “below me,” an interesting integration of sensory experience, technological tool, the body, and virtual and real space. In a similar way, Livingstone (1998:39) reports how a group of children engage in a new form of play together when restricted from internet access due to cost; they put on costumes and play “a new game called, confusingly for adult observers, ‘playing the Internet’.” In computer-mediated spaces, where the very ground and terms of participation can vary dramatically, part of the enjoyment is the new forms of participation and the manipulation of properties available to enhance the body and change its relationship to space and others. CONCLUSION

The invention of new technologies and the work of software designers who have created spectacularly different environments for human interaction have created a unique moment for studying how people organize roles and relationships and how they generate coherence across simultaneous, multifaceted fields of participation. Those developing three-dimensional game worlds continue to experiment with different configurations of space “that have not been seen in other media” (Wolf 1997:74), enabling participants to be simultaneously active and accountable participants in several spaces and environments. Gamers, for example, manage two spatial environments for participation, with different potentials and attributes, coordinating not only their individual actions, but their activity with others. Building on the notion of contextualization cues, we have proposed the notion of participation cues as useful for explaining how they achieve this. Although the exact feature set of context and contextualization cues are underspecified—due to the complexity and range of these concepts, and uncertainties about how exactly they engage repositories of mutual knowledge— 352



we have supplied some specific examples about what we believe are an important mechanism: participation cues. Aspects of participation cues discussed here include body orientation and movement in space (including distribution of enhanced attributes), deixis and deictic gestures that cross worlds, prosody (including rate of speech), repetition, gaze (human and machine-enhanced sight), and use of tools and structures in the environment. Participation cues are resources in the management of quite different types of agency, action, accountability, and consequences, and link a novel present relation within past activity types, structures, and agents. Being able to manipulate and interpret continually shifting participant roles and spatial configurations and being adaptable in the use of the modality of space is a significant part of interacting across real space and technologically mediated space, with new shared elements of social life.

APPENDIX:TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS

[ = (0.0) (.) :: . , ? WO . , () (( ))

indicates where an overlap starts indicates latching, or no gap between utterances numbers in parentheses indicate elapsed time in silence a tiny gap within or between utterances indicates prolongation of the immediately prior sound indicates a cut-off indicates a stopping fall in tone indicates a continuing intonation indicates a rising intonation capital letters indicate loud talk relative to the surrounding talk phrases in brackets are produced faster than the surrounding talk empty parentheses indicate unintelligible words parentheses contain analysts’ descriptions including non-verbal behaviors

NOTES *Thanks to Josh Iorio and David Pugh for help on gaming understanding. We would also like to express our gratitude to the gamers who allowed us to study them, our thanks to the reviewers for their warm reception of this paper and their contributions to it, and to express our appreciation to Barbara Johnstone, who provided valuable comments. 1 Retrieved July 25, 2005. 2 See appendix for transcription conventions. 3 Agg here is an abbreviation for aggro. According to the game developers, if you have the agro, or hatred, of a villain, it means you are being targeted by a villain and you currently have the highest aggro rating for that villain. This happens if a player gets close enough to a villain to be noticed by the villain. Language in Society 39:3 (2010)

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See Ochs et al. 1994 for an interesting discussion of deictics in interaction. See Duranti (1997b:352) for a discussion of the role of multimodal resources in bridging places and communities. 5

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