non/participation in eve online kelly marie bergstrom a dissertation submitted to the faculty of graduat

290 Pages·2015·7.82 MB·English

TO PLAY OR NOT TO PLAY:

NON/PARTICIPATION IN EVE ONLINE

KELLY MARIE BERGSTROM

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN EDUCATION
YORK UNIVERSITY
TORONTO, CANADA

SEPTEMBER 2015

© KELLY BERGSTROM, 2015
Abstract
This dissertation addresses a gap in the academic study of digital games whereby
investigations remain focused on current players and the experiences of former or non-
players are rarely accounted for. Using EVE Online (EVE), a massively multiplayer
online game (MMOG) known for its difficult learning curve and homogenous
community as a case study, I conducted an investigation of who does/does not play this
particular game and their stated reasons for playing or not. I argue that while EVE is
positioned in the MMOG market as a “sandbox” style game where in-game activities are
only limited by a player’s imagination, in reality only a very particular type of play (and
player) is publically acknowledged by EVE’s developer (CCP Games), the gaming
enthusiast press, and academics investigations of this game, emphasizing just how little
is known about who plays EVE beyond the stereotypical imagined player.
Drawing on literature from leisure studies to articulate a framework for exploring
barriers/constraints to gameplay and theoretically informed by feminist theories of
technology, I conducted an Internet-based survey to capture the thoughts and
experiences of current, former, and non-EVE players. A total of 981 participants
completed the survey. In my analysis of open-ended responses, I found that current
players described the game in a way that emphasized its exceptionality, relied heavily on
jargon, and assumed their reader was already familiar with EVE, its player community,
and its surrounding norms and conventions. Non-players who were familiar with the
game described their perceptions of EVE being an unwelcoming community meant they
had opted out of playing without ever downloading the trial. Former players fell into
three groupings: ex-players who had permanently quit EVE, a group who want to play
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but felt forced to take a temporary break due to external constraints (e.g. exams at
school or financial limitations), and a third group would consider returning if changes to
their personal circumstances and/or the game happened in future. Ultimately this
research complicates what it means to play or not play MMOG, opening up avenues for
future research about how access and barriers to digital game play inevitably shift over
time.

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Acknowledgements
Without Jennifer Jenson’s tireless support and expertise in navigating the most
frustrating administrative hurdles, this dissertation would not exist. No matter how far
down a bunny trail I would go, Dr. Jenson managed to get me back on track and made
sure I crossed the finish line in one piece and she played an important role in my
successes in obtaining Ontario Graduate Scholarship and Social Science and Humanities
Research Council funding to support the writing of this dissertation. Working with Dr.
Jenson has shown me how much labour goes into being a dissertation supervisor and I
hope one day I will be able to pay it forward. Thank you.
Celia Pearce and Chloë Brushwood Rose pushed me to think about my research
in new ways and remind me that there would be light at the end of this tunnel. My
supervisory committee felt like the dream team, thank you for joining me on this wild
adventure through New Eden.
Mia Consalvo, my external examiner, was in the audience at one of my very first
conference presentations about EVE Online. At that meeting of the Association of
Internet Researchers, Dr. Consalvo asked me to articulate how the study of EVE Online
can push game studies forward. Five years and 200+ pages later, here is an answer to
that question.
To all of my participants, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts
and experiences. This dissertation is as much yours as it is mine. Thank you from the
bottom of my heart.
I have been fortunate to meet so many amazing, smart, and generous people
along this journey. Many years ago Richard Smith and J. Adam Holbrook supervised my
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undergraduate honours thesis about World of Warcraft, setting me on my path to
graduate school. Richard Hawkins and Patrick Feng supervised my MA thesis about the
same MMOG, and provided space in the Innovation Lab for me to articulate my growing
interest in EVE. Fern Delamere first introduced me to leisure studies, and I am sad that
she is not here to see how influential her work has been to my own. Nick Taylor and
Suzanne de Castell, along with Jennifer Jenson, hired me to work on the VERUS project
and so much of that work helped to shape my thinking about EVE. Stephanie Fisher,
Felan Parker, Alison Harvey, Maren Hancock, and the rest of the VERUS RA team,
thank you for the amazing memories. Long live Guardian Academy.
Despite EVE having a reputation as being a cutthroat game, the community who
researches it is the most cooperative, kind, and friendly group of game scholars I know.
Marcus Carter, Darryl Woodford, Cat Goodfellow, and every author on the table of
contents for Internet Spaceships are Serious Business, I look forward to all of our future
collaborations.
There are so many people who deserve thanks and I wish I could name them all.
This will be an incomplete list, please forgive me Florence Chee, thank you for being
there whenever I needed to Skype, the silly cat pictures when I needed a laugh, and
reminding me that above all “I need dis”. Christopher Paul, Mark Chen, Todd Harper,
TL Taylor, Adrienne Shaw, Shira Chess, and so many more amazing scholars I have met
at the Association of Internet Researchers, you have all inspired me. I often describe
AoIR as my “summer camp” and every year in October it truly feels like I’m returning to
my scholarly home. I also want to thank my fellow Oxford Internet Institute attendees
for voting me “most likely to be the next Judy Wajcman” – I hope this dissertation is
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worthy of that honour. Renee, Megan, Angela, Crystal, Emily, Dennys, Jennifer, and
anyone else on the Snark Squad that I am missing, I look forward to when our paths will
cross again. Jane Griffith and Cristyne Hebert, thank you for being my library buddies
and not actually making me go on that Jim Brickman cruise. I’m so happy that we are all
crossing the finish line together. Jenn, Paul, Beth, and the rest of the jerks: thank you
for making World of Warcraft fun again.
And of course I thank my family for their constant and unwavering support.
Whether it was on the dusty Intellivision or the Sega Game Gear he somehow managed
to procure, my brother, Skylar, always let me have a turn to play. Now that you are a
father I am so happy to see that Devyn has inherited your love of games. My parents,
Dorothy and Richard, always encouraged me to further my education. You can now say
that you have TWO doctors in the family.
Finally, I must thank my husband, Richard Hydomako. Every time I wanted to
quit, he was quick to remind me that I wouldn’t let him abandon his PhD so I had to
finish my own. This dissertation is dedicated to you.

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Table of Contents
Abstract .............................................................................................. ii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................... iv
List of Tables ...................................................................................... x
List of Figures ................................................................................... xi
Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................... 1
Blind Spots and Oversights in Game Studies ....................................................... 5
Constraints on Digital Game Play ..................................................................... 7
Why do players quit? ....................................................................................... 10
Filling in the Gaps: A study about EVE Online .................................................. 12
Research Questions ......................................................................................... 12
Dissertation Overview ..................................................................................... 13
Chapter 2: Leisure and “Choice” ....................................................... 17
Non/participation in Leisure Activities .............................................................. 18
Creating a model of barriers/constraints to leisure ...................................... 20
A gap in the literature: “lack of interest” ....................................................... 23
Women and Leisure: Exploring Constraints ..................................................... 24
Stereotypical Gamers and Constraints to Play .................................................. 28
Putting Leisure Studies and Game Studies in Conversation ............................. 37
Chapter 3: EVE Online and the Myth of the Sandbox ........................ 41
A Note on the “Difficulty” of EVE Online .......................................................... 42
A Brief Introduction to EVE Online ................................................................... 43
Unique features of EVE Online ...................................................................... 44
Positioning EVE Online in the MMOG market .................................................. 47
Space Battles and Press Releases: EVE Online as described by three popular gaming
websites ............................................................................................................... 52
Characterizing EVE Online ............................................................................ 60
An outlier in the dataset ................................................................................. 63
Academic Investigations of EVE Online ............................................................ 66
Bringing the Threads Together ........................................................................... 75
Chapter 4: Theoretical Framework and Study Design ...................... 77
Making Feminist Research Choices .................................................................... 78
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Do gameworlds have politics? ........................................................................ 80
Using feminism to make the familiar strange ............................................... 86
Pre-dissertation Research ................................................................................... 91
“These women don’t speak for me” ................................................................ 94
Re-imagining the EVE Online community ..................................................... 97
Designing the Dissertation ................................................................................ 98
Survey Design ................................................................................................. 99
Participant Recruitment ................................................................................ 102
Preparing for Analysis ....................................................................................... 106
Quantitative analysis ..................................................................................... 107
Qualitative analysis of open-ended questions ............................................. 108
Summary ........................................................................................................... 109
Chapter 5: Survey Demographics .................................................... 110
A note about not discarding data ................................................................... 111
Avoiding the catchall “other” bin .................................................................. 114
Who Completed the Survey? ............................................................................. 116
Familiarity with EVE Online ......................................................................... 116
Age ................................................................................................................. 117
Gender ........................................................................................................... 121
Sexuality ........................................................................................................ 125
Ethnicity ........................................................................................................ 128
Comparing across demographics ...................................................................... 132
Current EVE Online players .......................................................................... 133
Former EVE Online players .......................................................................... 134
Non-players ................................................................................................... 134
Unfamiliar with EVE Online ......................................................................... 134
What can we learn about EVE Online from these statistics? ........................... 139
Chapter 6: Imagining EVE Online .................................................... 141
Describing EVE Online: Current and Former Players ..................................... 144
Current Players: EVE Online is for Insiders ................................................. 146
Emphasizing Jargon .................................................................................. 148
Internet Spaceships are Serious Business (and other memes) ................ 151
EVE Online is not for everyone ..................................................................... 156
Non-Player Perceptions of EVE Online ............................................................ 158
Un/familiar with EVE Online ....................................................................... 162
Non-player perceptions about goals in EVE Online ..................................... 164
Avoiding EVE Online ..................................................................................... 167
Concluding thoughts: Is CCP closing ranks? .................................................... 172
Cancelling World of Darkness ...................................................................... 174
Summary ....................................................................................................... 178
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Chapter 7: Quitting EVE Online is (Sometimes) Hard to do ............. 181
How do former players describe EVE Online? ................................................. 182
Non/endorsements ........................................................................................ 188
Summary ....................................................................................................... 192
Why do players quit EVE Online? .................................................................... 192
Rethinking the “former player” category ...................................................... 193
Temporary breaks and permanent departures ......................................... 194
Accounting for non-continuous play ......................................................... 196
Learning from former players .......................................................................... 202
Conclusion: Studying a Moving Target ........................................... 205
In Review .......................................................................................................... 205
Research questions, revisited .......................................................................... 209
Summary of Contributions ............................................................................ 214
Final Thoughts .................................................................................................. 216
Future Research ............................................................................................ 219
References ..................................................................................... 222
Appendices ..................................................................................... 261
Appendix A: Vocabulary and List of Abbreviations ........................................ 261
Appendix B: Survey Questions ....................................................................... 266
Appendix C: Ethics Certificate ........................................................................ 279

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List of Tables
Table 1: Summary of the site mandates for the three websites selected for the study. This
table also includes the number of EVE related articles and opinion pieces appearing on
each of the three selected websites between May 2013 and May 2014. ........................... 55
Table 2: Summary of topic analysis coding of the 267 EVE-related articles included in
this dataset. ........................................................................................................................ 56
Table 3: Breakdown of responses to the question "Are you familiar with the MMOG EVE
Online?" ............................................................................................................................. 117
Table 4: Summary of responses to the question "With what gender(s) do you identify?"
.......................................................................................................................................... 123
Table 5: Summary of responses to "With which sexual orientation do you most closely
identify?" .......................................................................................................................... 126
Table 6: Summary of responses to “What racial/ethnic group(s) do you use to describe
yourself?” Responses are organized in ascending order and Other, Prefer not to say, and
Did not respond are separated at the bottom of the table. This division is provided to
increase readability and allow for ease of comparison across groups. ........................... 129
Table 7: Cross comparison between gender, sexuality, and ethnicity for current EVE
Online players. ................................................................................................................. 136
Table 8: Cross comparison between gender, sexuality, and ethnicity for former EVE
Online players. ................................................................................................................. 137
Table 9: Cross comparison between gender, sexuality, and ethnicity for respondents who
indicated they were familiar with EVE Online but have not played it. .......................... 138
Table 10: Cross comparison between gender, sexuality, and ethnicity for respondents
who indicated they were not familiar with EVE Online. ................................................. 139
Table 11: Notation system used for demographic information. Categories that have been
collapsed to maintain participant anonymity are indicated in bullet points. This
information will be used throughout Chapter 6 and 7 in the following format: gender-
sexuality-ethnicity. .......................................................................................................... 144

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