Ethnography and Game Studies

I think that Boellstorff brings up some interesting points in his article about ethnography and game studies. In his article, he briefly unpacks the meaning of “participant observation” and its inherent oxymoron – “that you cannot participate and fully observe at the same time.” He states that it is within this paradox that anthropologists do their best work. He explains that participant observation implies a critical engagement that blurs the line between the researcher and the researched and that it is a method based on failure and learning from mistakes.

I think that it is very useful that he frames this method as a method based on failure. If you are going to study something that is unpredictable and complex, it helps to be unafraid of ambiguities, to be able to keep a steady pace without pausing too long in hesitation at potential bumps in the road. It has always seemed to me that games were a better metaphor for life than other types of art that are commonly thought of as imitations of life (film, music, drawings, etc.)

Games are so dependent on experience and engagement that they do not even seem to exist without participation. When a researcher takes it upon themselves to study a game, they must truly go down the rabbit hole – if they do not immerse themselves then they will not really be studying the heart of the game (which consists experience, involvement, action and reaction, emotion, and other human dimensions). They will merely be looking at superficial elements such as the graphics or the mechanics, and therefore might as well be studying a drawing or car. I think that it is important to make this distinction between games and other types of media.

I also think it is interesting how Boellstorff differentiates between three types of game studies: 1) game cultures, 2) cultures of gaming, and 3) the gaming of cultures. In Boellstorff’s description, each level of gaming study seems to broaden the scope of the game studies field. His description very much convinces me that the field of game studies in a complex, multi-level research area that deserves more attention.

I myself do not play any games and cannot claim particular awareness of the first category of gaming research, i.e. “game cultures.” I don’t think I can easily become familiar with a game culture unless I played myself (participant observation). However, I can easily relate to “cultures of gaming” and the “gaming of cultures” because these domains exist in the physical world, and I can also see them at play in my own life with respect to friends and colleagues who do play games. I think that there is an assumption that the only people who would want to study games are those who play themselves, but from Boellstorff’s explanation of the two other ways that gaming can be studied, I can see that anyone with an interest in culture (and not necessarily specific games) would be wise to consider game studies as an area for intellectual study.