{"59093":{"#nid":"59093","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Pearce Elucidates \u0022Communities of Play\u0022","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EFrom bridge clubs to sports leagues, from tabletop role-playing games to Civil War reenactments, play communities have long been part of culture.  Digital networks have brought about new varieties of adult play communities, most notably online games and virtual worlds.  It is these new communities of play that Celia Pearce defines in her book \u0022Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds (MIT Press, 2009).\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EA game researcher, designer, and Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Pearce became fascinated when observing how players in networked worlds sometimes developed a sense of community that transcended the game itself and acted in ways that didn\u0027t coincide with the intentions of the game\u0027s designers.  In \u0022Communities of Play\u0022  she set out to analyze play and community and to contextualize games and virtual worlds.   \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EPearce focuses on the Uru Diaspora\u0022\u0022a group of players whose game, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, closed.  Identifying themselves as \u0022refugees,\u0022  these players \u0022immigrated\u0022  into other online game worlds.  In There.com. they created a hybrid culture integrating aspects of their old world with their newfound home. Ostracized at first, they eventually became community leaders.  \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EUsing the Uru Diaspora as her lens, Pearce analyzes the properties of virtual worlds and looks at the ways design affects emergent behavior.  Countering the ludological definition of play as unproductive and pointing to the long history of pre-digital play practices, Pearce argues that play can be a prelude, indeed a call, to creativity.  She discusses the methodologies for studying online games, including a personal account of the \u0022sometimes messy\u0022  process of ethnography.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EPearce considers the \u0022play turn\u0022 in culture, as epitomized by such trends as cosplay, alternate reality games that take place in the real world, ritual play events such as Burning Man and DragonCon, games on \u0022non-gaming\u0022  platforms such as the iPhone, Facebook and other emerging platforms, and an overall increase in playfulness across all media. She describes the advent of a participatory global playground enabled by networked social media that, notes Pearce, \u0022is every bit as communal as the global village Marshall McLuhan saw united by television.\u0022   \n\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"From bridge clubs to sports leagues, from tabletop role-playing games to Civil War reenactments, play communities have long been part of culture.  Digital networks have brought about new varieties of adult play communities, most notably online games and virtual worlds.  It is these new communities of play that Celia Pearce defines in her book Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Book Presents Play as Prelude to Creativity"}],"uid":"27167","created_gmt":"2009-12-14 01:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:06:50","author":"Rebecca Keane","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2009-12-14T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2009-12-14T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"59094":{"id":"59094","type":"image","title":"tgh21609.jpg","body":null,"created":"1449176211","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:56:51","changed":"1475894512","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:41:52","alt":"","file":{"fid":"190846","name":"tgh21609.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tgh21609_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tgh21609_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":38032,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/tgh21609_0.jpg?itok=Y0oyVWx0"}},"59095":{"id":"59095","type":"image","title":"tsq21609.jpg","body":null,"created":"1449176211","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:56:51","changed":"1475894512","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:41:52","alt":"","file":{"fid":"190847","name":"tsq21609.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tsq21609_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tsq21609_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":38267,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/tsq21609_0.jpg?itok=qsoYJSVM"}}},"media_ids":["59094","59095"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/lcc.gatech.edu\/","title":"School of Literature, Communication, and Culture"},{"url":"http:\/\/cpandfriends.com\/","title":"Celia Pearce"}],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"}],"categories":[{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"},{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"1302","name":"book"},{"id":"3627","name":"Celia Pearce"},{"id":"10039","name":"communities of play"},{"id":"10036","name":"digital games"},{"id":"10037","name":"mit press"},{"id":"10038","name":"mmog"},{"id":"4241","name":"play"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cstrong\u003ERebecca Keane\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIvan Allen College of Liberal Arts\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.gatech.edu\/contact\/index.html?id=rkeane3\u0022\u003EContact Rebecca Keane\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404-894-1720\u003C\/strong\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["rebecca.keane@iac.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}