EverQuest is a multiplayer online role playing game that serves as a practical incarnation of life as a cyborg in a posthuman community. Using cultural materialsim, this thesis demonstrates how the words of EverQuest interactants - from message boards, interviews, and player in-game communications - construct the world of EverQuest and the roles of the interactants as its citizens. More specifically, this thesis will argue that the EverQuest world serves to reify the ideas of consumer capitalism that informs the "real" world, even as EverQuest itself promises an escape from that world.

This study examines the social organization of Gaiscíoch, a large online gaming community that exists within the simulated world of a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). It provides an ethnographic account of an online gaming community that is open to any player without skill or time commitment requirements, but still maintains high status within the game world. This project identifies eight elements that make this inclusive, friendly, and casual community successful in virtual worlds that tend to be dominated by communities that have a competitive, strict, and exclusive approach to online gaming (social interaction, code of values, leadership, rank system, events, community building, population size, gameplay). Lastly, this project briefly inquires about the nature of the border between the virtual and the physical and establishes that gamers can be considered pseudo-border-inhabitants that are in control of the community they place adjacent to them in the cyber world. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

One approach to studying media is uses and gratifications, a model that suggests media audiences can explain why and for what purpose they use the media. This study took a Uses and Gratifications approach to the Internet social interaction site LambdaMOO. On LambdaMOO, users log on and create an alternate persona to interact with other users. Using a set of questions, 222 selected LambdaMOO users were asked about why they use LambdaMOO, their actions as an alternate persona and their opinions on LambdaMOO. Answers from the subjects were content analyzed to find commonality against several preselected categories and sub-categories. Upon analysis, the subjects were found to use LambdaMOO for talking to other users, "building" up the site through programming and surveying the current events and political movements on the site. Also, the subjects were determined not to act different from their real life actions and preceived attitudes, although the opportunity for freedom through anonymity was everpresent. / Department of Journalism

Qu’implique concrètement le fait de s’engager dans une fiction ?La question que pose cette thèse<p>est celle des efforts, des activités ou des « travaux » que doit effectuer le joueur de jeux de rôles<p>grandeur nature quand il veut s’immerger dans un univers fictionnel. Cette activité ludique demande<p>l’adoption d’une posture d’engagement dont le trait principal est qu’elle fonctionne sur un mode<p>collaboratif. Sollicitant les cadres théoriques d’Howard Becker (approche par mondes et division du<p>travail créatif), de Jean-Marie Schaeffer (dispositifs d’immersion fictionnelle), de Laurent Thévenot et<p>de Nicolas Auray (régimes d’engagement), j’examine trois de ces efforts, essentiellement grâce à une<p>ethnographie poussée. Le premier effort consiste à accéder à l’univers en créant un personnage actif<p>et autonome ;le second revient à interagir au sein du monde fictionnel dans un double mouvement<p>qui consiste à repousser ses cadres tout en les renforçant ;le troisième implique d’imaginer des<p>modes d’organisation pour donner un cadre à l’action. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished