On justification: WoW, EQ2 and Aion forums

Philippette, Thibault [UCL] Campion, Baptiste [UCL]

Dedicated forums are a location of players' expression, where they showcase their tricks, etc, but also wher they will express their representations of the game and confront each other about it. These confrontations are based on value systems that shape players conceptions of well played. Our study, based on a corpus of over 750 messages from official forums of 3 popular MMORPGs, assesses the principles of justification raised by the players when they enter a conflict. Thanks to the Common Worlds of justification (Boltanski & Thévenot), we classified players' interventions and highlighted the types of arguments in these situations of disagreement. Results show that there are few correlations between the players' characteristics and the Common Worlds mobilized. However, the Common Worlds model appears relevant to highlight different conceptions of the gameplay: strategic conceptions are encountered in Domestic and Industrial worlds; tactical conceptions are most often noticed in the Market world. This paper also draws some methodological conclusions about this model.