Keeping Players In Game. Mediations and Management of Heterogeneity in the Users-Producers Relationship.
Résumé
Among others ICT's areas, videogames have been the center of a particular interest for the development of co-design practices. Their communities of technophiles and creative users have provided large amounts of content, tools and even alternative softwares for better gaming experiences. The prominent role of participatory audiences in game development has also raised the issue of the displacement of authority on the game, specifically for online game worlds (Taylor, 2006). Researches have highlighted the necessity for producers to reckon with their users - especially as they provide a game service. However, few studies have yet addressed the diversity of the social identities of gamers, nor the mediation in game worlds of their controversial practices and conflicting representations. To take account of users relations to the game world is not trivial. Users diversity also lies in their unequal ability to be heard, not to mention that developers have their own heterogeneous representations of users and of their needs (Oudshoorn Pinch 2003). This communication proposes to contributes to STS studies on the users/technology relations by questioning first how this heterogeneity is expressed and managed through technical and human mediations, secondly, how these processes are related to the issue of authority on the game world, and how mediations contribute to maintain a distance between "players" and "developers". My work relies on a large and original fieldwork conducted by participating observation in the development of a French online game universe and broader investigation on the production and use of this "virtual world".