TY - GEN
T1 - Simulating marriage
T2 - 18th ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2015
AU - Freeman, Guo
AU - Bardzell, Jeffrey
AU - Bardzell, Shaowen
AU - Herring, Susan C.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 ACM.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/2/28
Y1 - 2015/2/28
N2 - Virtual marriage is a complex social activity in virtual worlds, yet it has received relatively little research attention. What happens when an important relationship such as marriage is transformed into gameplay? In this paper we present an empirical study of how players perceive, experience, and interpret their in-game marriages, especially with regard to representations of gender and sexuality, in an online game (Audition) where a ludological simulation of marriage is centrally embedded in gameplay. Findings reveal that marriage-As-ludic-rule-system and marriage-Assignificant-sociocultural-institution provide a double set of gameplay/social/psychosexual resources that players collaboratively learn and perform, and that this negotiation is a source of pleasure, frustration, and meaning in the game. These findings can contribute to understanding the specificity and heterogeneity of players' gender representation in virtual worlds and inform the design of mixed reality games that simulate important life events for learning.
AB - Virtual marriage is a complex social activity in virtual worlds, yet it has received relatively little research attention. What happens when an important relationship such as marriage is transformed into gameplay? In this paper we present an empirical study of how players perceive, experience, and interpret their in-game marriages, especially with regard to representations of gender and sexuality, in an online game (Audition) where a ludological simulation of marriage is centrally embedded in gameplay. Findings reveal that marriage-As-ludic-rule-system and marriage-Assignificant-sociocultural-institution provide a double set of gameplay/social/psychosexual resources that players collaboratively learn and perform, and that this negotiation is a source of pleasure, frustration, and meaning in the game. These findings can contribute to understanding the specificity and heterogeneity of players' gender representation in virtual worlds and inform the design of mixed reality games that simulate important life events for learning.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84968739519&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84968739519&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2675133.2675192
DO - 10.1145/2675133.2675192
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84968739519
T3 - CSCW 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
SP - 1191
EP - 1200
BT - CSCW 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Y2 - 14 March 2015 through 18 March 2015
ER -