Title:	YO HO HUM: DOES EVERYDAY LIFE MAKE GOOD GAMING?
Author(s):	Anita Greenhill , Gordon Fletcher
ISBN:	978-972-8924-63-8
Editors:	Miguel Baptista Nunes and Maggie McPherson (series editors: Piet Kommers, Pedro Isaías and Nian-Shing Chen)
Year:	2008
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	MMORPGs, Online Games, Labour, Situationism, Critical theory
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	19
Last Page:	26
Language:	English
Cover:
Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	This paper examines the activities and economies of YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates. YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates is an online roleplaying game that draws upon puzzle-orientated gameplay to construct a social world. This paper argues that technology (in this case YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates) can offer a social experience that mimics everyday life including its aspects of mundaneity and repetition. Very little academic research in any environment has considered the interplay and mutual interdependence of spectacular events with the routines of everyday life. It is, however, this mutual dependency that constructs the spectacle as spectacular. Discussion of organisational activities often overlooks the fact that the labour aspects of everyday life are repetitive and mundane and instead prefer to discuss environmental context and social networks. By offering roleplaying and puzzle games with the opportunities to create social bonds in roughly equal proportions YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates introduces social complexity through its economic structure and the need for a range of different interactions. Rather than acting as a disincentive to the participants, the mundaneity of free market participation in-game is, in fact, its pivotal attraction. This fully articulated economy provides a depth of sophistication that enables 'everyday' activities and social distinctions to be embedded into the environment including tasks associated with mundane labour, the shifting foibles of fashion and social hierarchies of authority and power. The lack of a ‘hack and slash’ Dungeon and Dragons culture or strategy within the game means that the economy is not simply based around the purchase of the best weapons or armour, this shift in focus has also reduced the occurrence of item farming or auction activity outside the game. Examination and interpretation of YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates offers insight, as a social laboratory, into the interplay of events, labour and power within a complex, albeit sometimes mundane, economy. Sometimes the ‘ho hum’ activities of everyday life can make for good gaming.
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