2011 - "It's like my life but more, and better!" -- Playing with the Cathaby Shark Girls: MMORPGs, young people and Fantasy-based social play

Abstract

Digital technology has opened up a range of new on-line leisure spaces for young people. Despite their popularity, on-line games and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games in particular are still a comparatively under-researched area in the fields of both Education and more broadly Youth Studies. Drawing on a Five year ethnographic study, this paper considers the ways that young people use the virtual spaces offered by MMORPGs. This paper suggests that MMORPGs represent significant arenas within which young people act out a range of social narratives through gaming. It argues that MMORPG have become important fantasy spaces which offer young people possibilities to engage in what were formally material practices. Although this form of play is grounded in the everyday it also extends material practices and offers new and unique forms of symbolic experimentation, thus I argue that game-play narratives cannot be divorced from the everyday lives of their participants. Adapted from the source document.

Title "It's like my life but more, and better!" -- Playing with the Cathaby Shark Girls: MMORPGs, young people and Fantasy-based social play
Author Crowe, Nic 1

1 Brunel University, UK nic.crowe@brunel.ac.uk
Correspondence author Crowe, Nic 
Author e-mail address nic.crowe@brunel.ac.uk
Publication title International Journal of Adolescence and Youth

Year 2011
Publisher A B Academic Publishers, Bicester Oxon UK
ISSN 0267-3843
CODEN IJAYEP
Source type Scholarly Journals
Peer reviewed Yes
Language of publication English
Document type Journal Article
Update 2011-11-02
Accession number 201119145
ProQuest document ID 902096907
Document URL https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/902096907?accountid=7305
Last updated 2011-11-04
Database ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection