Post #12- The Gathering of Uru

Uru banners in There.com

         

       Being as we like to connect with a group, to feel ourselves engage with others of like mind or similar values, these chapters of Pearce’s about The Gathering of Uru were not terribly difficult to grasp.  And, in fact, they proved to be extremely interesting.  It was, perhaps, her chapter entitled “Identity as Place” which interested me the most, much to my surprise (as I thought the one of Avatars would strike my fancy).

Identity and Place         

       Pearce launches into a description of Uru Prologue.  This game was launched by Cyan and Ubisoft in 2003 as a beta testing site for the Uru Live based off of the Myst games.  This game had the capabilities to be played single player (Uru Prime) or multi player (Uru Prologue) and players had to wait on waiting lists to join the beta testing phase.  The game’s demographic was predominately middle aged players, many of whom had never played video games and especially MMOGs.  The reason for this?  It is possible because this game involved a generally non violent game play with puzzles to be solved.  Whatever the reason, the game developed quickly with at least 10,000 members.  However, Cyan and Ubisoft decided to close the site in what appeared to be a combination of low turnout and the “instability of the client-server architecture” (87).

                It was this cataclysmic event which caused the Diaspora of Uruvians, and from which Pearce launches this chapter.  These players, and their in-game avatars, attempted to protest this ending and gathered in game in groups—an image which, in my mind, resembles the ways in which people gather after a tragedy.  Their attempts were futile, with the site closing regardless, and, according to Pearce, this moment has been immortalized in many of their memories.  The players of Uru had lost their home.

                The members of the game dispersed into other MMOWs, such as There.com and Second Life hoping to rebuild their home after the tragedy.  They gathered in groups within these worlds, clinging together for comfort for familiarity, despite some personal misgivings about the particular world.  The Gathering of Uru, the group Pearce studied most frequently became fiercely knit, in essence waging a battle against a faction of Thereians from There.com who felt that the Uruvians were taking over their territory.  I found that particularly interesting because it seems to straddle the line between high school cliques and large scale immigration.  It also shows the deep connection these players had to their world and budding culture.  The Uruvians, in particular The Gathering of Uru, were not about to dissolve. 

                That whole event reminded me of the time when a board I was part of closed.  A small group of us transported ourselves and our characters to a different board (the closest we could find that would accommodate our characters) and attempted to keep what culture we had.  While it was a much more mild version of what happened to the Uruvians, when I read this chapter I could relate to the feelings of loss.

            

Avatars

Uru avatar

    And, before I end this blog, I want to touch on Pearce’s chapter on the “Inner Lives of Avatars.”  Because the creation of avatars and alternative personalities interests me, I found this chapter and in particular the study of Lynn’s character fascinating.  Lynn who is a deputy mayor of The Gathering of Uru is stuck in a wheelchair due to a spinal condition.  Within Uru and then There.com, she is able to transcend that state, be the person she wants to be, the person she was before her condition committed her to the chair.  She was able to be the person she wanted to be, the person she knew she was.  This entire chapter really seems to highlight this ability of avatars and these relationships between player and avatar.

                Pearce gives one more example in this chapter which illustrates a very important aspect of avatars, especially when they relate to a group.  In this particular case, a man had a female avatar and the female avatar had been integrated into the world.  The other players knew this person as a woman (even though he was not transgendered in real life) and even when they found out the player was a male, they wanted him to keep playing a female.  The other players had become attached to the woman avatar.  In this case, the group identity was more important than the individual’s identity. 

                There is a culture which springs up through the interactions with the group, a culture which manifests because of the relationships between the members of the group, their bonding, their shared history.  Having that threatened can be a traumatizing event, especially when it had already been threatened (and then made stronger) by the closing of Uru Prologue.  It’s hard to know if this group’s culture would have been so strong if it did not need to cross worlds and resettle, but it’s interesting to consider.

Questions

1)     1)  Do you think this particularly game and group (Uru and The Gathering of Uru) was the best subject for studying emergent culture?  Could it have been better to study an emergent culture that did not rise out of tragedy?

2)    2)   Can the “flow” which is characterized by Csikszentmihalyi be applied to either of our two games?

3)      3) Do you think this Dispora would have happened differently and perhaps the culture would have ended had the majority of players been of a younger age bracket?