A Phenomenological Analysis of Massively Multiplayer Online Games

This dissertation conducts a phenomenological analysis of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) – networked computer applications that thousands of people play simultaneously using avatars to interact with one another and with computer-controlled entities within a game-world typically rendered in 3D. Part 1 argues that existing studies of MMOGs often utilize concepts that, while presumed to be well understood, are often problematic in ways that conflict with the actual claims of the studies in which they play a central role. Three issues in particular are highlighted. It is argued, first, that common conceptions of virtual should not influence understanding of MMOGs; second, that there are prima facie problems with how existing studies frame the subject of avatars; and, third, that there are substantive problems with accounts of avatars that involve notions of representation or embodiment. Part 2 develops an interpretation of MMOGs that both extends understanding of these games, and reflexively unsettles the traditional phenomenological perspective that orients this interpretation itself. The analysis begins by arguing that MMOGs are worlds – understood as places of meaningful, fallen, thrown, collective conduct – and introduces the idea of conjuncture to account for how Dasein and avatars function together at an existential-ontological level. In so doing, the dissertation puts pressure on the fundamental-ontological distinction between Dasein and entities other than Dasein, the idea that Dasein alone discloses world, and the notion that whatever Dasein uses in its environment only obtains a place because of the de-severing and directionality of Dasein. By interpreting the virtuality of MMOGs as the creative repetition of ontological structures of existence, the dissertation provides insight into the phenomena of virtual death and time. This in turn draws into question the idea that quantifying time blocks access to original human temporality, and that the transcendence of Dasein uniquely involves self-overcoming.Ph