Digital Ethnography – Woodford (2012) Article Critique

Interrogating Darryl Woodford’s 2012 Article on EVE Online (CCP Games, 2003).

Sarah Pink et al. (2016) note that “Ethnography is a way of practicing research.” (p. 2) and that “Digital Ethnography outlines an approach to doing ethnography in a contemporary world.” (p. 1, their emphasis). Digital ethnography “asks how digital environments, methods and methodologies are redefining ethnographic practice.” (p. 2), suggesting that standard ethnographic approaches must adapt where necessary when performing research within a digital space.

Pink et al. continue by outlining that a typical ethnographic approach may see the researcher observing and writing on a human experience, but “In digital ethnography, we are often in mediated contact with participants rather than in direct presence”. (p. 3) and that “The ways in which readers will wish to define ethnography will also depend on their own critical backgrounds and interests.” (p.3), suggesting that the definition may differ slightly between researchers.

Pink et. al break down previous definitions (O’Reilly, 2005; Delamont, 2007) and explain how these definitions are useful “because [O’Reilly’s] remains open to the relationship between ethnography and theory without insisting that a particular disciplinary theory needs to be used in dialogue with ethnographic materials.” (p. 3).

It is important for a researcher studying human behaviour within the digital realm to be able to identify when the traditional methods may not work to their advantage, and when these methods need adapting. Christine Hine (2000) notes that “It is always useful for ethnographers to consider and attempt to articulate the assumptions which they take with them into the field.” (p. 5) and they ask important questions, including: “How does the Internet affect the organization of social relationships in time and space? Is this different to the ways in which ‘real life’ is organized, and if so, how to users reconcile the two?” (p. 8).

Hine continues by stating “The first view of the Internet is that it represents a place, cyberspace, where culture is formed and reformed.” (p. 9) and later that “The internet also provides for ethnography to be differently organised in time and space.” (p. 116). The connection between the internet and formation of culture is important, especially when examining smaller communities of people who share similar interests, as Darryl Woodford (2012) does.

Woodford conducts an ethnographic study surrounding the presence (or lack thereof) of a player’s avatar (character portrait, or the playable character itself) within the massively multiplayer online game (MMO), EVE Online. (CCP Games, 2003). The article seems predicated on the fact that EVE players do not play as their avatar as they would in other MMOs like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004), but rather as the type of spaceship they have chosen to pilot.

The article fails to explore some fundamental aspects of the game which could inform their discussion in how players communicate amongst themselves. Woodford notes that “[ethnographic techniques have] to date, largely focused on environments in which the primary representation of the player is through an avatar […]” (p. 275). Woodford cites examples of other ethnographic research, noting that EVE is perhaps an exception to many of the studies due to the nature of player interaction within and outside of the game environment and the fact that the game didn’t have a character avatar “until recently” (2012, p. 276).

Citing Manninen (2003, para. 3), Woodford points out that “[e]ven multiplayer games have fundamental problems in supporting rich social activity, and, thus, players constantly seek work-arounds and external support in order to fulfil their need to socialize’”. Woodford refers to these “work-arounds” as the “meta-game” (p. 276) and explores ways in which players “play the game” without actually logging into the game to play.

One example quotes a well-known player, named The Mittani, explaining that “I almost never log on to Eve Online itself because I run a spy network. For me, Eve Online is talking to people in a Jabber client.” (The Mittani, 2011, as quoted in Smith, 2011, para. 86). The fact that a prominent figure in the community sees playing the game not as logging in, but rather as just talking to other players, is important and should have been investigated further by Woodford.

Woodford does not contextualise certain game mechanics well enough for an uninformed reader to form a full understanding.

For example, of the “security status” for a solar system, and “criminal” or “suspect” activities (Feynoir, 2023). Woodford notes that hi-sec is “an area of the environment in which player vs. player (PvP) combat is generally prohibited – with in-game enforcement action taken against attackers” (p. 278) but does not make it clear that the “enforcement” is not sanctions from the game developers for violating the end user license agreement (EULA), but rather by the non-player AI characters (NPCs) designed to act as judge, jury and executioner – game mechanics and lore; not EULA. Having made this distinction, Woodford could also have elaborated on metagaming and “suspect” game mechanics in the concept of suicide “ganking” (R’al, 2023), also known as “non-consensual PvP” (Halsky, 2023), as a form of metagaming, which Carter et al. (2012) explore.

Ganking is where players will attack other players, knowing they will have their ship destroyed for criminal activity, but hoping that they destroy their target before the retaliation, and that the value of their target is higher than the combined value of their suicide ships. It was important that Woodford made this distinction between EULA-violating and “criminal” or “suspect” activities, as to inform the subject for why people behave in the way they do when interacting with other players.

(Zaenis Desef, 2021)

Doing so may have been as simple as referring to the player-maintained EVE University website for CONCORD (Riggs, 2010; Jezs, 2023), as I have and will do so frequently in this critique, to provide the reader this valuable context. Ganking is a hotly debated subject amongst players (Afterburner, 2009; Verto, 2018; hirebrand, 2021) with a common phrase being “You consent to PvP when you click ‘undock’” (CCP Phantom, 2016). (See also Carter, 2013, on “ruthless gaming”).

Woodford would then have been able to explore the player behaviour of “gate camps”, where players “set up camp” on the outside of a station (mostly the Jita trade hub due to it being the primary trade station in the game and therefore has the highest traffic, as Woodford notes, p. 280), or in a lo-sec system on the stargate leading to a hi-sec system, to catch and destroy the spaceships of the unsuspecting players entering the low security system.

These camps consist of appropriately fitted ships and logistics ships providing bonuses and repairs to counteract the aggression from the sentry guns, which are the retaliatory response in lo-sec systems, or in the case of a Jita camp one alliance has declared war on another through a specific game mechanic, allowing aggression between those alliances in hi-sec without interference from CONCORD – something else Woodford fails to define.

During these camps, players can talk to each other in voice communication software such as Discord, Mumble, or Teamspeak (Discord Inc., 2015; Mumble VoIP Team, 2005; TeamSpeak Systems, Inc., 2001), “hanging out” where the purpose of their interaction is largely based on relaxing and enjoying the moment, rather than having a sole focus on the actions they are taking in-game.

This would have been a fascinating aspect of Woodford’s study.

Considering the title is literally Hanging out is hard to do, but alas they did not decide to participate, but rather observe, perhaps because of restrictions from ethics boards, (p. 284), though as Carter (2015, p. 316) suggests, “Without sacrificing some of the strengths of the ethnographic research method, there is little or no way to study EVE Online null-sec play as a disinterested observer.”

Without joining different groups of players and experiencing the way in which they play the game effectively renders Woodford’s study moot – the security status of the system is irrelevant if these observations cannot be made at all levels of play. A participatory approach and/or thematic analysis like Bergstrom’s (2019) would certainly have been more beneficial to this study.

Woodford notes that the trade hubs in EVE are “vastly underpopulated compared to the social hubs described by Drennan” (p. 279, citing Drennan, 2007, pp. 44-45), however, the evidence disputes this: Compared to the rest of the game’s thousands of solar systems, Jita, the primary trade hub in EVE, has dedicated server hardware (CCP Explorer, 2014) and is consistently the most active system in the whole game, (Hoffend, n.d. a) with thousands of players passing through or calling it their home.

The Jita local chat channel is often difficult to read due to the fast pace of messages scrolling, though these are mostly from players attempting to earn a kick-back reward in the referal program, or to scam others from in-game assets or money – a practice allowed in most forms within EVE (CCP Games, 2023; Salartarium, 2023), which is unusual for an MMO. Scams are something Woodford mentions, but again does not clarify the “legality” of. This is important, as scams are usually against the EULA of MMOs.

Woodford says “It is possible to buy a character with the skill points, resources and relationships to gain access to the late-game or low-security areas […]” (p. 284, my italics). Woodford suggests that low-security systems (and by extension, null-security, and j-space) are locked away from players with a low amount of skill points. This is factually incorrect, as a newly created character can, and has always been able to, visit these systems immediately. The likelihood of them being destroyed by hostile entities is high, but only because it is likely that the player lacks the experience to effectively survive these environments.

Many corporations and alliances are built around embracing new players and even teaching them how to play the game, for example those of EVE University, Pandemic Horde, and BRAVE Collective (Hoffend, n.d. b; c; d), all of which control, or live within, lo-sec or null-sec and encourage their members to join them there as soon as they have joined the corporation/alliance from wherever they are in the universe.

Woodford makes no reference to such corporations and could have benefited from such investigation to not only see how established groups interact with each other, but also how those groups interact with newer players. In missing this fundamental aspect of the game on the assumption that it was inaccessible to their study, Woodford fails to open the door to a significant percentage of players for their analysis.

Additionally, Woodford could have explored NPSI (Not Purple, Shoot It!) communities.

As their names suggest, NPSI fleets shoot anything which isn’t part of their fleet. (Fleet member’s ships will appear as a default purple colour to be easily identifiable as members of your fleet, hence the “Purple” in NPSI). These communities are formed by players throughout the game universe, regardless of which corporation or alliance they are a member of.

Members from enemy alliances (for example Pandemic Horde and Goonswarm, Hoffend, n.d. c; e) join NPSI fleets and will play in cooperation, rather than against each other. NPSI communities rely on the uses of third-party websites, such as https://www.NPSI.rocks, (NPSI.rocks, n.d.) and voice communications software as to organise their fleets.

End Game Content

Another statement from Woodford is that “’end-game’ content in Eve Online is, then, effectively gated, only accessible to those with the relevant allies, dictated by the behaviour of participants as opposed to being made available once the player reaches pre-defined game goals” (p. 282). There is no “end-game” content in EVE, but only what a player determines to be their personal end-game.

This may be to run a successful corporation or alliance, amass great wealth, train a high number of skill points, pilot a supercapital ship, achieve an impressive killboard, or all the above. Whilst having “relevant allies” does play a role in many of these goals, the key point here is that the “end-game” content is what the player decides to be end-game; there is no metaphorical flag in the sand created by the developers to mark a finishing line.

In fact, to “win at EVE” is often referred to as unsubscribing from and quitting the game (FroggyStorm, 2016). Woodford continues: “Eve’s player vs. environment (PvE) content, or ‘missions’, are designed to be performed by a single character at varying levels of difficulty […]” (p. 282). In January 2011 group based PvE was introduced into the game, called Incursions (R’al, 2021), something Woodford has missed entirely.

Woodford draws to the conclusion that:

I do not wholly agree with this conclusion. Whilst “outside channels” are used by most, it is only the leadership figures who are strategically planning in-game movements and participating in politicking. “Social interactions” is vague: could a fleet of players participating in an hour-long fight against another fleet of players not be classed as a social interaction, even if no words are spoken or typed via message between each group?

Furthermore, a player forms their identity around their name, not their avatar. This is proven by the fact that in any of the articles quoted which refer to characters or players, these people are referred to by their username, and not their avatar or preferred choice of spaceship. The avatar may be used for illustration purposes but is not always identifiable as “that character” due to the ability to change it at-will, whereas character names are not changeable once set at creation.

Third party websites, such as https://www.evewho.com and https://www.zkillboard.com (Squizz Caphinator, n.d. a; b) are frequently used by players to track a player’s corporation history and PvP activity respectively, with well-known players being tracked by their username. Some players are immortalized within the game’s vocabulary, such as that of Awox.

Awox became known as someone who would use exploits to hunt and destroy high value targets within corporations they would join, using neutral-allied characters within their control. (SerpentineLogic, 2014).

Victims assumed their actions were blue vs blue (blue is the default colour of alliance members) or green vs green (green is the default colour of corporation members), which is frowned upon and usually prohibited by alliance and corporation leadership. The term “Awoxing”, “Awoxed”, “Awoxer” is now a common phrase for killing a friendly player.

Another example would be that of Frederick Vonhole, who has caught and destroyed many extreme high-value and limited-quantity spaceships, though there is no game-specific terminology for when this happens. The most expensive ship to have been lost in recent times was player Mark Bridges’ Python, valued at 1.5 trillion “ISK” (Inter Stellar Kredits, the in-game currency) – or an estimated $8,200 USD (Squizz Caphinator, 2024), though Vonhole was not party to its destruction. Woodford fails to recognize these methods of gameplay and how these players became known by their name and actions, rather than their avatar or preferred spaceship.

“Hanging-out” is not a difficult task with players able to join one of thousands of player-run corporations or alliances (and change that choice at-will) and talk via in-game or third-party text channels, or third-party voice communications. The affectionate nickname for EVE of “Spreadsheets in space” (EVE Online Team, 2023, para 1) suggests some players happily spend more time creating and maintaining spreadsheets which help calculate the material requirements for constructing spaceships, amongst other things, than they do actually being logged into the game and playing, though throughout that entire experience they may be conversing with their fellow players and “hanging out” with them merely by their presence in the communication channels.

Conclusion

I have been highly critical of Woodford’s article and there is little within the main body of the article I agree with. It has raised several avenues for research that Woodford failes to explore. Their method is difficult to follow and felt improvisational.

Pink et. al (2016) and Hine (2000) wrote on the importance of adapting ethnographic research to suit a digital space, but when that time came for Woodford to adapt traditional approaches, they did not.

I do, however, agree that “Ultimately, through my research it readily became apparent that there is significant merit in comparing and contrasting research studies, personal ethnographies and public accounts and data in order to construct a thorough understanding of a particular environment.” (Woodford, 2012, p. 286).

A decade has passed since Woodford’s article was published – should it be returned to it is vital that every angle be explored, and the methodology strengthened. This must take the form of participatory analysis to be effective and should be conducted by someone with a broader understanding of a video game notorious for having a steep learning curve (Shailagh R, 2017). Only then will an investigation into a player’s representation of self be possible.