Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for more information on Handbook of U.S. Latino Psychology

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
European Journal of Cultural Studies
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Humphreys, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Ruling the virtual world

Governance in massively multiplayer online games

Sal Humphreys

Queensland University of Technology, s.humphreys{at}qut.edu.au

This article explores governance and control in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). It examines areas where tactics of control are mobilized: by developers through design processes, by publishers through community management and legal practices and by players through participatory practices. As people with access to online technologies come to live more of their social lives (and work lives) in online environments, and to construct identities and communities in proprietary spaces, the terms under which they do so become increasingly important. In a context where economic value resides in intellectual property and immaterial labour, and where social networks have economic value extracted from them, the corporate practices which harness this value and the responses of participants become interesting for sociocultural and economic reasons. Using EverQuest and World of Warcraft as case studies, this article traces the flows of power between publishers, developers and players in the networked production of MMOGs.

Key Words: computer games • governance • MMOG • online games • social software • video games

European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, 149-171 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1367549407088329
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?