Kindle Price:	$21.99
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services Price set by seller.

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Celia Pearce

+ Follow

More books from this author

Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds Kindle Edition

by Celia Pearce (Author), Tom Boellstorff (Foreword), Bonnie A. Nardi (Foreword) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 12 ratings

See all formats and editions

The odyssey of a group of “refugees” from a closed-down online game and an exploration of emergent fan cultures in virtual worlds.

Play communities existed long before massively multiplayer online games; they have ranged from bridge clubs to sports leagues, from tabletop role-playing games to Civil War reenactments. With the emergence of digital networks, however, new varieties of adult play communities have appeared, most notably within online games and virtual worlds. Players in these networked worlds sometimes develop a sense of community that transcends the game itself.

In Communities of Play, game researcher and designer Celia Pearce explores emergent fan cultures in networked digital worlds—actions by players that do not coincide with the intentions of the game’s designers. Pearce looks in particular at the Uru Diaspora—a group of players whose game, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, closed. These players (primarily baby boomers) immigrated into other worlds, self-identifying as “refugees”; relocated in There.com, they created a hybrid culture integrating aspects of their old world. Ostracized at first, they became community leaders. Pearce analyzes the properties of virtual worlds and looks at the ways design affects emergent behavior. She discusses the methodologies for studying online games, including a personal account of the sometimes messy process of ethnography. Pearce considers the “play turn” in culture and the advent of a participatory global playground enabled by networked digital games every bit as communal as the global village Marshall McLuhan saw united by television. 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 to creativity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[Celia Pearce's] background as a games designer is evident in the way she respectfully engages readers in clear, vivid prose structured in an original and -- can we say it? -- entertaining way. From its thoughtful analyses of play and community to its authoritative contextualization of games and virtual worlds, this book repays study on many levels. Enjoy!

(from the foreword by Bonnie Nardi)

About the Author

Steinar Andresen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08BSZRLDN
Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press (September 30, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 30, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3431 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 342 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,915,796 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #184 in Virtual Reality
- #740 in Computer Games Programming
- #1,439 in Video & Electronic Games

Customer Reviews:
4.5 12 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Celia Pearce

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

12 global ratings

2 star

0%

1 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

Translate all reviews to English

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Alladi Venkatesh

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2014

The very best

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

This was a very, very cool case study that I thoroughly enjoyed. The arguments could have been stronger and with that it weakened the point, but overall it was an entertaining study.

Helpful

JoshMan

Bought for a class at UWB

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2013

Verified Purchase

Can be really boring in places, overall it does a pretty good job of teaching entry level anthropology, and talks a bunch about video games. Could be better, but overall not a bad read.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Ruth García Martín

muy bueno

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2013

Verified Purchase

Todo a sido perfecto. Ha llegado antes de lo previsto y en perfectas condiciones. No tengo ninguna queja, muy al contrario.