STAR WARS GALAXIES

[Pages:138]STAR WARS GALAXIES and The Division of Labor

Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I want to thank my mom and dad for all their support, especially while I have attended college. The older I get, the more I understand and respect what you have done for me. My college education is a gift from you that I hope I have made the most of. Thank you, also, to my little sister, Mikki, whom I love and miss every day! Without my roommate, Mike, I wouldn't have found out about Galaxies, and this paper would never have been. Domo.

Thank you, Bill, for all your advice, and especially for giving me the opportunity to spread my wings with the Global Justice Game. You're a great example to me of someone who has done something meaningful in academia. Thank you to Mark, who taught me how to write real good. And thank you to Rita, who sparked my sociological imagination and taught me that there are other people out there who see the world like I do.

Finally, a very special thank you to my G. You always make me smile. I love you more and more every day. What a wonderful surprise!

Star Wars Galaxies and the Division of Labor

A Senior Thesis by

Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia

April 2005 Boston College Department of Sociology

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION: From Salad to Star Wars..................................................................................... 2 A Note about my Audiences ....................................................................................................... 5

1: PRE-GAMEPLAY SOCIALIZATION: Creating an Avatar and Becoming the Character .............. 6 The Making of Ehmille Durkheim.............................................................................................. 9 Learning the Basics ................................................................................................................... 16

2: WHY I NAMED MY AVATAR EHMILLE DURKHEIM ............................................................... 21 Origin of Theses........................................................................................................................ 23 Theory ....................................................................................................................................... 27 Conceptualization...................................................................................................................... 37 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 40 Ethics......................................................................................................................................... 43

3: SOLO GAMEPLAY PHASE......................................................................................................... 45 Galaxies is about Helping Players............................................................................................. 46 The Hunt is On.......................................................................................................................... 50 Where Everybody Knows your Name ...................................................................................... 57 The Galactic Civil War ............................................................................................................. 60 This is Hardcore ........................................................................................................................ 66 Daddy's Got a Brand New... Turban........................................................................................ 68 Do the Carbineer Grind............................................................................................................. 72

4: GROUP GAMEPLAY PHASE...................................................................................................... 77 Joining a Guild .......................................................................................................................... 79 Committing to a Guild .............................................................................................................. 82 The Strength of Guild Bonds .................................................................................................... 88 Anomie in Galaxies:.................................................................................................................. 92 Virtual Suicide .......................................................................................................................... 92

5: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 99

APPENDIX Overview of Combat Roles..................................................................................................... 102 Server Chart ............................................................................................................................ 103 Graphical Analysis of Survey Results..................................................................................... 104 Concepts and Measurements................................................................................................... 112 Original Survey ....................................................................................................................... 114

GLOSSARY .................................................................................................................................. 125

WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................ 132

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INTRODUCTION:

From Salad to Star Wars

A little more than a year ago, in the small kitchen of my small dorm suite, I was making a rather big salad and talking to my roommate, Mike, about my plans for my senior thesis. I told him I had a great idea for testing how the layout of websites would affect the way visitors make judgments about the factuality and reliability of information on them. I wanted to set up a lab experiment with ten different websites, all containing exactly the same information, but delivered with different font families, color schemes, images, layouts, and even different domain names. I was all excited about this project until my roommate said, "It's kind of like market research, huh?"

Now, for the past four years, I've been learning from brilliant sociology professors about how society works in the hopes that I can understand it and make positive changes--I've learned about corporate hegemony from Charles Derber, about consumerism from Juliet Schor, and about social revolutions from Sarah Babb. I've even had the honor to work with William Gamson on his Global Justice Game--a sort of role playing game that teaches players how they can make social changes. After all this, I didn't want my senior research project--the culmination of my college education--to amount to market research.

"Crap, well I can't do that now," I complained to my roommate as I sliced cucumbers and placed them atop the red and green leaf lettuce already in the salad bowl. "I'll have to think of something else."

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"Ok..." Mike watched me peel some carrots, and after a few minutes began to tell me about his day. "I earned another skill in my profession tree today. I'm pretty close to mastering Ter?s K?si Artist for my new character. Just a couple more skills." Mike had been playing Star Wars Galaxies all day, every day for about a month, and his interest had spread--almost like a virus--to the other guys in the suite. I had gotten used to these daily updates on his game experience.

"That's pretty cool," I said automatically as I sliced the carrots. "My other guy has a house now, too. I finally saved up enough credits to get one." "Mhmm." "I'm gonna decorate it with the loot and other stuff I've been collecting. I've got some pretty cool figurines, and I bought a bunch of furniture off the bazaar," he added, brushing past me to fill his cup with water from the pitcher in the fridge. "There's a bazaar? What kind of stuff does it have?" "It's all stuff from other players--armor, weapons, furniture, paintings. I got a cool painting of the Millennium Falcon," he boasted, raising his eyebrows with pride. He look at my hands and added, "You're not holding the carrots right. You should always keep your nails flat up against the blade, otherwise you'll cut a finger off." I adjusted my grip and finished cutting the carrots. "So do other players make everything in the game?" "Except for stuff that's looted off of corpses, yeah. Someone made my armor and my house. My speedbike too."

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"That's really cool, so there's a whole economy, huh?" I added the carrots to the growing salad and went into the fridge for the tomatoes. "So it's more than just a bunch of people killing shit together then? You actually need to rely on other people for stuff, I guess?" It seemed this video game had some lifelike sociological aspects to it.

Mike gave a small nod. "You know, when you put the tomatoes in the fridge it kills their flavor," he informed me, matter-of-factly. "Next time leave them out. They'll be more delicious."

"Are you a chef in Galaxies, too," I joked, halving the cherry tomatoes and tossing them into the salad.

"No, but I could be! It's one of the professions." Mike smiled and left the room. Shaking the carton of raisins over the salad bowl, I pondered. What are the chances the soc department is going to let me do my thesis on a video game? But it does seem to be its own little society, complete with a player economy and everything... And if I can convince them it's a legitimate study, I can do field work and play video games at the same time! That settled it. I yelled back to Mike, who was sitting at his computer again, "I think I'm gonna do my thesis on Galaxies. I bet there's enough there for a research project." I crumbled some goat cheese over the top of the salad, and sat down to eat my dinner.

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A Note about my Audiences

I have essentially written my thesis for two audiences. First, my sociology professors are brilliant sociologists, but don't know much when it comes to computers, let alone MMOGs. Second, the Star Wars Galaxies community includes expert players who are many thousands of times more knowledgeable of the game than me, but who might not know anything about sociology. Because these two audiences are so different, I found it difficult to satisfy both. I have favored my professors for obvious reasons, and as a results, some passages have oversimplified descriptions of technology, as well as lofty academic descriptions.

I so hope that I have fairly represented the Star Wars Galaxies community, and painted a picture that players will recognize and agree with. If I have done a good job of explaining what I experienced, and have successfully balanced my writing for both audiences, my professors will walk away with an understanding of MMOGs, and players will walk away saying, "Well duh, I knew that already." Sociology is--it seems to me-- common sense, after all...

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