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Virtual worlds as contact zones: development, localization, and intergroup communication in MMORPGs

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Virtual worlds as contact zones: development, localization, and intergroup communication in MMORPGs

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Content Copyright 2019 Rhea Antonia Vichot Virtual Worlds as Contact Zones: Development, Localization, and Intergroup Communication in MMORPGs by Rhea Vichot University of Southern California A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Ph.D. in Communication Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism May 2019 ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, this project would not have been possible without the generous support of my advisor and committee chair, Henry Jenkins. He has been a mentor and inspiration for me and my career trajectory since my undergraduate education at MIT. His insight into this project and the stakes of the research were invaluable in going from a vague idea to a produced manuscript. I am eternally grateful for your stewardship of this project. I would also like to thank my other committee members: Robeson Taj Frazier and Akira Mizuta Lippit. Both contributed to shaping and pushing the manuscript further, particularly on clarifying the stakes and ramifications of the research and for that I am ever grateful. I am grateful to my colleagues in my Doctoral cohort whose friendship and camaraderie helped seed some of the early ideas for this project as well as put up with some of my more inane research ideas: Andrew Schrock, Lana Swartz, Kevin Driscoll, Ritesh Mehta, Francesca Marie Smith, Jaclyn Selby, and Nan Zhao Martin. I also wanted to thank other friends among the doctoral students at Annenberg whose conversations and research coincided with mine in interesting ways: Cynthia Wang, and Samantha Close. I would like to thank the various individuals, linkshells, Free Companies, and raid groups across all the servers I came to interact with and know during my time in Eorzea. I’m especially grateful for the friendship of the members of Maelstrom Command for their friendship in sometimes turbulent, wine-dark oceans. Till Seas Swallow All iii I want to thank my mother, Maria Magdalena Vichot, who helped pull me up at times when I was in low places emotionally. I appreciate the support and love. Finally, I want to express by deep everlasting gratitude and love to my partner, Dr. Laura May Kurzban. She sat with me as we both struggled with our respective dissertations, bouncing ideas off of each other, and cranking out pages over many, many cups of coffee in all the best coffee shops Orlando has to offer. Her emotional and moral support was invaluable and I know I would not have finished with her encouragement, inquisitiveness, and cheerleading. We did it. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................iv List of Figures ................................................................................................................. vii List of Tables ................................................................................................................. viii Abstract ...........................................................................................................................ix Introduction: Virtual Worlds as Contact Zones ................................................................ 1 Virtual Worlds and Their History .................................................................................. 3 The Definition of Virtual Worlds ................................................................................... 4 Community in the Virtual World ................................................................................... 8 Multicultural Spaces and the Contact Zone ............................................................... 11 A Multilingual Virtual World as Contact Zone: The Subject of the Study ................... 20 The Virtual Contact Zone ........................................................................................... 21 Player Communication in Ludic Spaces Through Game Mechanics ......................... 23 Structure of the Dissertation ...................................................................................... 25 Chapter One: The History of, Current Design in, Cultural Context around, and Methods for Researching Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn ................................................... 29 History of the Development of Final Fantasy XIV ...................................................... 32 Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 and its Failure ..................................................................... 32 Redesign and Deployment of Final Fantasy XIV .................................................... 37 Current In-Game and Communication Structures of Final Fantasy XIV..................... 40 The Architecture of Virtual Worlds and the Reemergence of Place in the Digital ...... 42 The Architecture and Structure of Final Fantasy XIV ................................................. 45 A Methodology of Contact Zone-based Virtual Worlds Research .............................. 47 Content Analysis of Paratext ..................................................................................... 48 Rhetorical Methods and Their Role in Cultural Research .......................................... 51 Ethnographic approaches to Virtual World Study ...................................................... 53 Chapter Two: The Developer as Interlocutor in the Contact Zone ............................... 65 The Developer's Role ................................................................................................ 68 Dramatism, Identification, and the Guilt-Redemption Cycle ....................................... 70 The Developer as Interlocutor and Shifting Contexts for Dialogue ............................ 73 v Letters From The Producer: Personal Digital Address by the Developer ................... 75 Letters From the Producer LIVE and Streaming Address .......................................... 82 Live Events and Dialogue .......................................................................................... 85 Communication and Contact within the Virtual Contact Zone: In-Game Appearances the use of Guilt-Redemption and Re-integration in the Virtual World......................... 90 The Developer's Role in Dramatistic Acts .................................................................. 94 The Developer as Gamer: Addressing the "Fanboy Auteur" in FFXIV ...................... 96 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 101 Chapter Three: Localization, Lore, and the Relationship between Players and the Producer on the Text of the Virtual World ................................................................... 104 Translation, Localization, and Audience .................................................................. 105 Challenges in the Localization of Videogames and MMORPGs .............................. 108 Localization as an Aspect of the Contact Zone ........................................................ 116 Lore and the Construction of Narrative in Games .................................................... 117 Lore and Localization in FFXIV ................................................................................ 120 Community Perception of Localization and Lore ..................................................... 124 Community Attempts at Localization: The Lore in Spanish Project ......................... 130 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 133 Chapter Four: Communication Between Players In the Virtual Contact Zone: Paratextual Platforms and Within the Virtual World ........................................................................ 145 Paratext and its Use in Media .................................................................................. 146 Paratext in Game Studies ........................................................................................ 148 Applications of Paratext: Sources of Paratext on Final Fantasy XIV........................ 150 Player Perception of Differing Playerbases in Paratexutal Communities ................. 154 Anthropological Themes .......................................................................................... 155 Comparison Themes ............................................................................................... 161 Educational Themes ................................................................................................ 165 Communication Between Players Within the Virtual World: The Role of Game Design in Constructing the Contact Zone ............................................................................ 168 Designed forms of Communication .......................................................................... 169 Semiotics of Gameplay: Game Time and Player Interactions .................................. 171 Case Study: Tsukuyomi EX, Fight Macros, and Player-Created forms of Communication ........................................................................................................ 176 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 184 vi Conclusion: Future Directions for Virtual Contact Zone in a "Games as a Service" Model of Game Design ................................................................................................ 187 The Emergent Landscape of Online Games ............................................................ 191 The Virtual Contact Zone Around Final Fantasy XIV ............................................... 193 Limitations of the Study ........................................................................................... 196 The Virtual Contact Zone in Online Games ............................................................. 198 Fractures in the Virtual Contact Zone: Linkages and Breaks in the Social Space ... 200 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................... 206 References .................................................................................................................. 208 vii List of Figures Figure 1: Comparison of Final Fantasy XIV in the four client languages ....................... 64 Figure 2: The Producer Letter LIVE on NicoNico Douga and Twitch.tv. ...................... 103 Figure 3: Player-created Macros for "Tsukuyomi EX" in English and Japanese ......... 186 viii List of Tables Table 1: Comparison of Japanese, Literal English and localized English in the quest “黙約の塔へ”/”The Rising Chorus” .......................................................................... 135 Table 2: Japanese, English, and English localization of the quest " 風霜にわかに”/ “When the Cold Sets In”: ............................................................................................. 139 Table 3: Dialogue for “ただ盟友のため” / “A Knight’s Calling” / “Um Ishgards willen” in Japanese, English, and German: ................................................................................ 142 ix Abstract This dissertation interrogates the structure and communication of members within and around online communities based on virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are conceived using the model of the contact zone (Pratt, 1991) as the basis for examining communication between the developers and users of virtual world environments. An MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV, is used as a case study. The dissertation examines the role of the development team as they communicate with players the changes and additions to virtual worlds using various platforms. The role of lore and localization of narrative material is considered as to how it helps to establish the contact zone and as a mode of communication between developers and players and among players. Finally, communication between players is examined within the virtual world and over paratextual platforms, using thematic analysis and practices on community generated content using game mechanics as a mode of communication among players which transcend language barriers. The dissertation conceives of a virtual contact zone that transposes contact zones to look at online games and virtual worlds and also expands the conception of the contact zone across various digital spaces to expand the notion of social spaces and how issues of nationality, language, and economic class play a role in participation in online communities. 1 Introduction: Virtual Worlds as Contact Zones Some time back, I was caught in something of an awkward moment playing a video game. Through an avatar of a small humanoid, I was helping to defeat monsters in a dungeon in a virtual world along with three other players. Part of the way through, one of the players disappears. We determine they have disconnected from the server for any number of reasons. After all, these specific game servers, particularly in the Elemental Data Center Group, are busy late at night in California, since that's when Japanese players and other in the same time zone, begin to log in for the evening. We stand around hopefully waiting for their return since it's polite to wait around five to ten minutes before we look for a replacement. While the run was pretty quiet other than introductions of よろしく (yoroshiku, Pleased to meet you) and some small questions on boss strategy, the healer decided to remark, "俺は外国人です" (ore wa gaikokujin desu, I'm a foreigner). Another player replied, "俺も" (ore mo, me too). Finally, I replied to the group,"... 私も" (…watashi mo, ... me too). There was an awkward pause before we, through our character avatars, began laughing. It turned out we were from Singapore, Australia, and America, respectively. We were at present playing on servers that assumed Japanese would be the main language and we had conformed to these expectations. Even after the disconnected player returned, we didn't say much other than the customary おつかれさま～ (thanks for the hard work) tinged with a small ｗ (lol). This encounter illustrated to me a few key facets of the virtual world. For one, assumptions in language and behavior were determined as much by the assumed 2 cultural and linguistic norms of the virtual space as my own "common sense" and background as an American English-speaker. Second, it highlighted to me that virtual worlds, if not deliberately delineated by region, would attract players from various locations despite (or sometimes because) of the server's assumed language and region in the world and that the reasons for such a decision can be based on social ties, a desire to avoid or practice other languages, a desire for a virtual emigre or expatriate identity, or technical and gameplay considerations. Third, it highlighted how much of the community built around the game took place along online platforms not explicitly tied to the in-game virtual world. And finally, it highlighted both the aspirations and limitations of the Japanese developer as it attempts to create an international game that is meant to be open to players from several regions and maintain coherency along its game servers and open dialogue with its playerbase. The primary research question that this dissertation undertakes is how differences in culture, language, and geography affect a virtual world's community. These questions require us to define and understand several factors: What do we mean by virtual worlds? How do we define them? What is their boundary on a multi-platform Internet? What is the role of geography, language, and culture online? And by what means can we theorize the ways individuals interact with one another in a virtual world given these differences? The following chapters of the work examine, through various levels of analysis, these issues in order to understand the way virtual world environments can be a setting for cross-cultural communication and interaction. 3 Virtual Worlds and Their History Since the creation of MUD1 in 1978, virtual worlds have been an object that has garnered the curiosity of academics, designers, and the popular press. As the technical capabilities of such spaces have grown, so has the body of literature on these spaces. Early literature focused on virtual worlds and communities ranged from attempts at constructing player typologies (Bartle 1996), to describing emergent behavior within these spaces (Morningstar and Farmer 1991), to the discussion of the individuals and communities which form in these virtual spaces (Rheingold 1993; 1999). With the emergence of graphical 3-D virtual worlds from the late 1990s onwards, there have been numerous texts, building an entire sub-discipline within game studies, which sought to look at the communities that arise from these designed spaces from a variety of viewpoints (Taylor 2003; Boellstorff 2008; Pearce 2011). What these works have told us is that virtual spaces, contrary to the view that they are isolated from the outside world and lack the same level of human connection as the "real world", can be spaces where relationships and social support take place and collaborative work is possible. As we move towards a space of social media and continuous connectivity, these findings may not necessarily seem as revelatory as they once did. However, virtual worlds, and the communities that form in these spaces, are still sites of opportunity for cultural researchers who are interested not only in the role that these virtual worlds play in community formation and subcultural creation, but also in thinking about what roles technology, political economy, and national identity play in these virtual spaces. All too often, the research on virtual worlds centers primarily on Anglophonic online communities or, when research is done on internet communities in other national, 4 linguistic, or diasporic contexts, they are examined in isolation from the cross-cultural networks enabled by the affordances of virtual communication. There is a space where research on virtual worlds and communities can be expanded to look at the intersections of offline national and cultural background and social behaviors in a virtual setting. This dissertation explores virtual worlds which span across national and linguistic barriers. How are these spaces designed for interactions amongst multiple participants simultaneously and what role do technical and economic limitations play in these design choices? What methods do community members employ to make sense of the space and other individuals around them? How do texts written by producers/developers and paratexts constructed by journalists, players, and other members of the community utilized to frame the community? What role do gatekeepers and translators play in maintaining intelligible communication among members and what kinds of perceptions develop between groups who cannot easily communicate with each other? Finally, what happens to linguistic minorities in a mono or bi-lingual instantiation of that virtual world? The Definition of Virtual Worlds A principal task in outlining the scope of the research to be done is defining what a virtual world is and what qualities make virtual worlds distinctive from other digital platforms. In its most basic form, a virtual world can be defined as a computer-based simulated environment created through text, graphics, sound or some mix of the above (Bartle 2003). Mark Bell (2008) describes a virtual world as a "synchronous, persistent network of people, represented as avatars, facilitated by networked computers." The distinguishing feature of a virtual world is the creation of space that is persistent, 5 synchronous, and generates a sense of presence. That is not to say that other online platforms are neither persistent nor synchronous. However, the representation of space and the simulation of traveling through space, particularly for many users at the same time, distinguish virtual worlds from other platforms. Presently, virtual worlds utilize graphical interfaces (either 2-D or 3-D) and avatars are depicted visually as figures that move through space via traditional computing input/output devices. Virtual worlds can be utilized for games, entertainment, creation and animation of objects, education, and socializing, though the most common form of virtual world, at least commercially, is Massively Multiplayer Online Games or MMOGs for short. The key elements of a virtual world, which separate it from other computer-networked spaces, are the creation and simulation of space, the persistence in its makeup, the creation of presence, the usage of avatars, the synchronous communication across a large number of users, and the emergent behavior that arises from a large user base. Whether we refer to older text-based systems, current graphical interfaces, or experimental systems which rely on more complex input, output and feedback hardware, one of the main qualities that distinguish virtual worlds from other forms of digital platforms is the representation and simulation of space. That is, virtual worlds create a sense of an environment that, while not necessarily representing a realistic sense of movement, gravity, etc., can give a user a sense of orientation and the ability to navigate within the world. The second quality of virtual worlds is persistence, the quality that a virtual world simulates the appearance of a stable space that continues to exist even if users are not presently connected to the virtual world. That is, if a virtual world includes a 6 representation of a large mountain, for example, it will remain there, in its present size and configuration in the virtual space between logins by users. Persistence can also refer to the ability of players to shape a virtual space and to have those changes be maintained by the virtual world. While persistence can exist in any number of other sorts of digital spaces, such as single-player video games, persistence is an important quality of virtual worlds because it demonstrates that a world is not only present and navigable, but intelligible to users even if not presently connected to the world. The final and key difference between virtual worlds and other kinds of platforms in how the emphasis on the creation and movement through space creates a sense of presence. Presence (sometimes theorized as spatial presence or telepresence) has been theorized somewhat differently over the years, but in short, it is the cognitive sensation of space that users experience while interacting with mediated systems. While originally theorized by early Human-Computer Interaction researchers, such as Minsky (1980), who defined telepresence as "the manipulation of objects in the real world through remote access technology" within the context of human-manipulated robotics. More recent definitions of telepresence focus primarily on perception and cognition wholly within virtual space. One version of presence is defined by Lee (2004), based on a meta-analysis of various studies, as "a psychological state in which virtual (para-authentic or artificial) objects are experienced as actual objects in either sensory or nonsensory ways," (p. 37). This gets at a very general idea of presence as a psychological and cognitive phenomenon that occurs when experiencing virtual worlds. However, a more concrete definition which helps illustrate the difference between platforms and virtual worlds come from Schubert (2009) who defines presence as "a 7 feedback of unconscious processes of spatial perception that try to locate the human body in relation to its environment, and to determine possible interactions with it," (p. 170). This definition is useful because it highlights that online platforms which designed to simulate space and movement through space (whether through a text-based or visual interface) have the potential of creating more of this sense of presence that other types of online platforms. Bell (2008) makes the point that a key aspect that defines virtual worlds is the use of the avatar as a representation of the user. In virtual worlds, the avatar (whether represented through text description, as on older virtual worlds or more commonly graphical representation) acts as a "puppet" of sorts to the user and actions that the user performs in the virtual world are done through the avatar. This includes actions such as native voice communication since these actions are performed through the avatar. While there are spaces that are persistent and can create the effect of presence, what distinguishes a virtual world from a virtual environment is the presence of multiple users simultaneously inhabiting the virtual world and the ability for users to communicate with one another synchronously. Users populate virtual worlds and give the spaces life as these users move through the spaces and interact with the world and with other users. Through these two elements of virtual worlds, people can communicate and collaborate with each other either in an ad-hoc fashion or, as will be elaborated further in the next section, within more persistent social groups and communities. 8 Finally, these interactions between users create the basis of emergent behavior in virtual worlds. Emergence can be characterized as the emergence of complex structures, patterns, and behavior that arise from the process of self-organization within complex systems (Goldstein 1999). Emergence in itself is a property that appears in many systems, from physical and natural systems in nature to complex social systems. In virtual worlds the presence of emergence is notable, however, because the nature of virtual worlds, in particular its persistent space and the ability to host many users who can interact and communicate synchronously, provide a space for users to develop practices and systems that the designers of the virtual world may not have foreseen (Morningstar & Farmer 1991). This notion of emergent behavior begins to approach the second main vector of the research space: that of virtual community. While the virtual world and its affordances provide the thrust of activity for users, it is in the virtual community that users become attached to and affiliated through the social connections made therein. Community in the Virtual World Community can be understood as a collection of individuals with shared interests, location, social values, practices, and/or identities. In sociology, we can trace the theorization of community to 19th-century sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1887) who coined the term ("gemeinschaft") as a means of classifying groups of individuals which a shared social identity that was closer than that of society ("gesselschaft"). Tönnies describes this difference as community sharing a "unity of will," (p.22). While Tönnies included groupings such as family as a form of community, he also argued that community could form as a result of shared beliefs or place. This conception of the 9 community as separate from society and the public sphere is seminal for the literature on community. Much of the work on issues such as social capital (Bourdieu 1986), social ties (Putnam 2000), and of course on the role of technology as a medium for communities relies on this foundational definition of community. In the most general sense, a virtual community is a network of individuals, oftentimes who are separated by geographic distance who communicate, collaborate, and socialize about common interest through the use of networked communication. The term virtual community was first utilized by Rheingold (1993) to describe the user base of the text-based community, the WELL as similar to traditional notions of community, differing in that the motivation for coming together around a common interest or common goal, rather than sharing a common geography. Virtual communities may be long-lasting or coming together for a brief amount of time in order to collaborate on a specific task and then disband. The virtual community as a concept has been applied to discuss various types of digital platform where synchronous and asynchronous communication among groups of individuals occur, from text-based chat platforms, such as MUDs and MOOs, to web-based forums, to social media platforms, and to virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are a unique type of platform because they not only offer the ability for users to communicate with each other (both synchronously and asynchronously) but also allow users to experience the presence of space and offers the affordance of interaction within that space via avatars and spatial movement. This adds a presence in the virtual world as well as facilitates forms of communication and exchange that are not present on other digital platforms, such as the conveying of body language. This 10 additional presence and the affordances of space, creation, and collaboration with the space are all design features which MMOG developers take into account as generative space for emergent behavior as well as community formation. Much of the research on virtual communities has focused on communities where English was the exclusive or, at the very least, the primary language for communication. There has been an emerging interest in non-Anglophonic online spaces which has been useful, though much of the work, with some exceptions (Nardi 2010; Nakamura 2009; Wu et al. 2007) have not focused on virtual worlds. There has been some work on educational communities in virtual worlds that suggest that there is some movement towards enhanced intercultural literacy when participants are challenged to learn multiple languages or consider other cultural perspectives (Diehl & Prins 2008). However, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to understanding the role of cross-cultural communication within the context of a virtual world. One should note that much of the reason for this stems from the fact that many (though there are significant exceptions such as Second Life and Eve Online, for example) virtual worlds and MMOGs in particular tend to design their virtual worlds so that users are segregated by region and, thus much of the intercultural interaction exists either with comparatively close cultures (in the European context) or through adversarial relationships of labor versus play, in the case of MMOG players from the West and (at least by those players' reckoning) Chinese workers who use the game as a means to make money via real money trading of virtual currency. Thus, in order to properly conceptualize how a multicultural virtual world operates, we can turn to models where analogous spaces where different cultures meet for similar, if not always exactly the same reasons. The 11 theoretical grounding which I employ in my analysis of multicultural virtual worlds is that of the contact zone. Multicultural Spaces and the Contact Zone The concept of contact zones was coined by Pratt (1991) in order to describe social spaces "where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today." (1991 p. 34). In particular, what distinguishes this conception of intercultural communication from others is the acknowledgment that the mixing of two or more culture, in turn, creates hybridized spaces of intercultural intelligibility. Rather than a flow from one culture to the other, such as in a networked model, the contact zone is a more contested and contestable space where these differences and the attempts to create common understandings are played out in a concrete, material form. Pratt distinguishes contact zones from the notion of community by arguing that a community is a space of idealized unity, which suppresses those at the margins. The contact zone, on the other hand, represents the realities of contact between multiple cultures along different levels of influence and power in the same shared space and offers marginalized voices a space where they can be heard. In addition, Pratt also argues that the contact zones engenders a contact 'perspective' among its inhabitants which emphasizes how subjects are constituted by their relations to one another. These relations are not treated necessarily along strict delineations of colonizers/colonized or travelers/inhabitants or other dichotomies of separation, but of copresence and interlocked understandings within the overarching environment of oftentimes 12 asymmetrical relations of power. Pratt argues that this dismantling of barriers of separation allows for greater interaction among "subjects" and a greater interplay between dominant and marginalized voices, allowing for the reshaping of both. The usage of contact zones in disciplines such as English (Selfe and Selfe, 1994; Miller, 1994), Anthropology and Museum Studies (Schroch, 2013; Yeon & Willis, 2005; Clifford, 1997), new media studies (Farnsworth and Austrin, 2010), and education ( suggest a potential for applying these concepts to virtual world studies. Other recent work has seen the concept applied to Visual Studies (Lockemann, 2014) and historiography (Long, 2011). Clifford, in particular, expands the notion of the contact zone to the idea of space as consisting of social relations. The museum, when theorized as a contact zone (or rather a collection of several contact zones), changes from a collector and curator of artifacts to an institution in several sets of exchanges between themselves as a center of gathering artifacts and to the cultures those artifacts originate from a relative periphery or frontier. Objects in the museum, "however fairly or freely bought and sold, could never be entirely possessed by the museum. They were sites of an historical negotiation, occasions for an ongoing contact" (p.194). What is most important to the understanding of the contact zone is Clifford noting that geographical distances aren't a deciding factor for whether or not a specific set of relations constitutes a contact zone. For Clifford "The distances at issue here are more social than geographic" (1997, p.204). There have been several critiques of the contact zone. Harris (1995) argues that the contact zone, within the context of the classroom and the academy, fails to provide an adequate model for how public discourse encourages the expression and negotiation 13 of cultural differences. This failure both stems from neglecting the more combative elements of Pratt's definition as well as Pratt's lack of detailing how the contact zone can be deployed in order to create the more open interplay of dominant and marginalized voices she argues the contact zone makes possible, Harris notes: Pratt's phrasings evoke images of war and oppression, of "grappling and clashing" in contexts of "colonialism, slavery or their aftermaths." And yet many students whom I have asked to read and write about Pratt's article have chosen instead to view the contact zone as a kind of multicultural bazaar, where they are not so much brought into conflict with opposing views as placed in a kind of harmless connection with a series of exotic others. While I think this is a misreading of Pratt, it is one encouraged by her examples. Taken either way, as hinting at conflict or at connection, what is missing from such descriptions of the contact zone is a sense of how competing perspectives can be made to intersect with and inform each other (p. 33). Similarly, Boast (2011) argues that the contact zone, in the context of museum programs and curatorship, that museums have adopted the ideas of collaboration between cultural objects and information, but have retained an inherently neocolonial grip on their institutional status and resources. He argues, "It is not so much that the contact zone is inherently asymmetric but that the contact zone is a site in and for the center. This is easily subverted. ...it is that the new museum, the museum as contact zone, is and continues to be used instrumentally as a means of masking far more fundamental asymmetries, appropriations, and biases." These critiques focus mainly on the application of Pratt's points on the nature of the contact zone and how, for institutional reasons, the contact zone may be difficult to be completely constructed. 14 That said, a virtual world environment offers technical and design decisions that can at least take into account both the notions of actual conflict as well as lay bare the inequalities of power among participants in the virtual world, which the next chapter lays out in further detail. There is a relationship between the contact zone and Appadurai (1996)'s notion of "scapes" in that they reflect where individuals move through and/or come together in the same space, whether it is through colonialism or the movement of global capital, are bound by inherently unequal structures, yet must utilize the resources available in order to exist. This is especially present in the diasporic and post-colonial settings where Appadurai places focus on in his work as both models share the concern of how to look at cultural flows and encounters where unequal arrangements of influence and power exist. Unlike Pratt's focus on the space where those encounters occur, Appadurai concentrates on the flows of material elements (people, capital, media, technology, etc.) that make up these globalized spaces, such as the Indian diaspora in the U.K or post- colonial Indian culture and it's complicated relationship to cultural artifacts of its former colonizers, in order to note the ways in which different aspects of the mixing cultures may flow from space to space. In theorizing new modes to analyze cross-cultural communication and global flows of culture, Condry (2011) argues that Anthropology can play a greater role in understanding these spaces, particularly within Area Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies. In particular, through looking at various cases in Japanese popular culture and their impact internationally, contact (both literal and metaphorical) is theorized as a foundation for understanding these global cultural encounters among 15 people. While not drawing specifically on Pratt's notion of contact, which is focused on the relations between peoples and how subjects are constituted by those relations, Condry's understanding of contact is more literal, though it also emphasizes relations as constitutive. As Condry notes, “… the touch of encounter happens in specific times and spaces, and the diverse possible interpretations of cultural context must be considered in analyzing the processes of contact and influence,” (p. 13). Contact is important because it establishes a material understanding of the culture that is being studied and hedges researchers against being drawn into potentially misleading narratives that exist in previous literature. In relation to virtual worlds and digital platforms more specifically, we can regard these spaces as potential contact zones, along with the potential imbalance of power between players. Selfe and Selfe (1994), in describing online spaces for English education, note that "computers, like other complex technologies, are articulated in many ways with a range of existing cultural forces and with a variety of projects in our educational system, projects that run the gamut from liberatory to oppressive," (482). Farnsworth and Austrin (2010) also propose the contact zone as a model for media anthropology, noting that the contact zone allows researchers interested in media ethnography to highlight the ways in which ethnographic practice has changed and continues to change in the wake of new media, acknowledges that these media technologies and the sites, practices, and objects of study are shifting constantly, and that the lines between academic and commercial domains of research within new media spaces are blurring and, with it, another shift in power dynamics. Similarly, Rees (2007) argues, thinking of the space of media anthropology as a contact zone changes the 16 dynamic between fieldwork sites, practices, and objects and shifts perspectives as to what constitutes ethnographic method. What these studies suggest is that the contact zone applied to virtual worlds can be useful in understanding the relationships of users within the virtual world and their relationship with one another. However, as Rees notes, just as in an ethnographic study of other spaces, the role of the researcher as participant and member of that space must also be taken into account, especially given the emphasis the contact zone places on understanding fundamental inequalities that exist among members of the zone. Therefore the relationship between the object of study, the scope of the questions, and the role of the researcher as a participant in the virtual world must be considered. The contact zone provides a framework for the researcher to not only look at the relationships between individuals and communities in the contact zone but also a framework for the researcher to negotiate their place as a participant within the space. Utilizing the contact zone as a framework for talking about communication and interaction in virtual worlds gives us the opportunity to place the virtual world and its inhabitants within a broader social context, where users, even inside the space, are bound up in inherently heterogeneous collections of power relations, networks of social capital, and resources, all of which act on one another and particularly visible when attempts at collaboration and/or incidents of conflict occur. This is also a somewhat broader perspective than other frameworks for virtual world behavior. In particular, this approach serves not only as a compliment to but also as a contrast to Pearce's theorization of play communities (2010). Pearce defines a community of play as a community of individuals who come together around an activity that is seen as play and 17 form a network of relations that center around the act of play, sometimes to the extent where individuals are playing more for the social interaction and community than for the ludic aspects themselves. Her stance on the role of play and social interaction is that the framework of play that grounds virtual worlds, such as those of Uru and the communities formed there which created virtual diasporas on Second Life and There.com, allows for individuals to meet that would otherwise not, because of real- world social roles. “Players befriend individuals they might not otherwise have occasion to interact with. Intimacies form around shared imagination and facets of identity that are foregrounded through play. Because play is ultimately a form of expression, whether experienced in a structured game world or an open-ended metaverse, it opens up avenues for personal and social development that provide alternatives to real-life roles,” (p. 22). Pearce defines play broadly, drawing on anthropological definitions of play. She draws on Huizinga’s (1949) definition of play: “a free activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being ‘not serious’, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means (p. 13).” This definition encompasses a number of non-work activities, such as military reenactment, science fiction fandom, and rituals as well as play as it occurs in more understood forms, in particular, users of virtual worlds such as MMOGs. Pearce also draws upon the work of Bernie DeKoven (1978) and the New Games movement in her formulation of communities of play in order to highlight both the importance of the social aspects of play as well as the importance of design on these social functions. While her 18 focus on play as a space separated from regular life and, thus, a space where alternative social formations and identities can be developed is useful, the model has two aspects to it which I feel need addressing. One is that her use of play is too broad incorporating activities traditionally circumscribed to fandom or participatory culture models or fandom of popular media, such as cosplay, Civil War reenactments, and gatherings such as Burning Man. While these activities are playful and indeed can inscribe social spaces apart from more traditional spaces, there are aspects of labor, mentorship, and practice that encompass these activities which are elided when they are regulated to "play", even a fairly open-ended definition of play which is utilized by Pearce. In addition, there is utility in creating and using an anthropological definition of play. In particular, this usage offers a historical linkage between virtual communities and other communities centered around play. However, the fact remains that virtual worlds, in reducing geographic limitations from communication and creating a sense of presence for those interacting with virtual worlds, create a very different environment for play activities and communities of play. This is particularly the case once we begin to reconsider geographic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds within the context of social interaction in virtual worlds. Pearce pivots away from the model of communities of practice (Wenger 1999; Lave 1991). A community of practice is a formulation for communities built around a shared craft or profession, such as workers in a break room or social relationships built around conversation while engaged in work. The framework has also been expanded to describe communities which revolve around shared interests as well as virtual communities of practice. In her formulation of communities of play, Pearce highlights 19 play practices as different from more traditional notions of communities of practice which are defined as work-based communities. In doing so, Pearce ends up eliding the practices within play, such as production of art or material goods, mentorship, and project management skills, which involve labor or at the very least skills which can be learned by members of the community and utilized outside of the community. Finally, the model of communities of play, like others, captures interactions which only take place either within the community or the community as a whole as an agent within the specific virtual space they inhabit (even if that space changes over time). This has the effect of unintentionally homogenizing the community both in terms of the backgrounds and demographics of its participants as well as in its relations between individual members, individuals and a community, or communities within the same virtual space, which can include the owners and/or developers of the space as a community in their own right. Pearce’s model is not irrecoverably flawed. There is much that is useful in understanding the motivations for players in virtual worlds and how closely communities of these players can form and communicate. However, the lens of the contact zone brings with it an ability to see a more holistic relationship of communication within the space of the virtual world. In particular, the contact zone model is one that is fruitful for examining spaces designed to be inhabited by individuals from a wide variety of national and linguistic backgrounds simultaneously. 20 A Multilingual Virtual World as Contact Zone: The Subject of the Study One way to approach the stumbling block of virtual worlds either segregating users by geographical region or by opening its space to users internationally is to locate a comparable virtual world that, from the ground design up, was meant to incorporate players from multiple regions and cultures in the same space. Eve Online, for example, began as a primarily Western MMOG before expanding to China and, later, Japan. Ideally, such a virtual world would be set up to utilize most languages in its interface and service all regions at the same time, but given the resources required to design large- scale commercial virtual worlds, it is more useful to look at potential sites where there is at least a focus on synchronous multilingual and multicultural support. The object of study chosen then is an MMOG known as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. While the subsequent chapter will go into more detail over the commercial, technical, and social context for its existence, it is worth noting that this site was chosen because it is developed by an international team of designers and, in its initial release, aimed at markets in Japan, North America, and Europe with game client language support for Japanese, English, French, and German. All of the content is updated simultaneously and, while it employs a structure of distributing players across servers which are grouped regionally, any player from any geographical location can play on any server, whatever its geographical location. As a result, the MMOG has created unique spaced of multicultural and multilingual mixing that appear to offer the opportunity for a researcher to dig at the concept of the contact zone as applied to a virtual world. 21 The research problems the dissertation aims to address are grouped into roughly three areas: constitution of players within the contact zone, attitudes and perceptions around players from different backgrounds, and communication, collaboration, and conflict between participants. In other words, how are individuals constituted as participants in the virtual world, given their relationship as individuals from varied cultural backgrounds and the technical affordances and limitations of the virtual world they reside in as a contact zone? How do the developers and producers of the game instantiate themselves as members of the virtual world, despite the explicit power over the creation and maintenance of the world? In what ways do developers attempt to build an international game and, conversely, how do limitations on both a technical, economic, and cultural level create a space where geographic and cultural distinctions emerge? How is player behavior characterized by the community at large, both within the virtual space and paratextually on message boards and forums? How are these attitudes related to issues of linguistic capability, cultural background, and willingness to and proficiency (or lack thereof) in communication? How do players on an individual level handle collaboration, conflict, and larger social relationships within the virtual world when issues of language and culture come into play? How does it become reflected in the world and what role does the technical affordance of the virtual world play in highlighting or eliding these differences, if any? The Virtual Contact Zone While Pratt uses the contact zone to describe spaces of colonial resistance and autoethnographic writing within the colonial space, this is but one of three spaces she applies the term in her work. Another space is in the classroom, particularly the English 22 Literature classroom at the University in the wake of the diversification of both the classroom and the works beyond the ‘Western canon'. The contact zone here is used to talk about the way that education shifts as students from their own various backgrounds bring their own history and interpretation of works and teachers within the classroom "had to work on the knowledge that whatever one said was going to be systematically received in radically heterogeneous ways that were neither able nor entitled to prescribe" (1991, p. 39). Pratt also uses the contact zone is through the medium of baseball cards. At the beginning of her piece, she explains how baseball cards were a tool of education for her child, using them to gain skills in literacy, mathematics, history, economics, and social dynamics in ways that traditional spaces of education could not. This transplantation of the contact zone across different contexts, particularly the concept of baseball cards and interest in baseball fandom, presents opportunities for both transplantation and expansion of the concepts presented by Pratt on other contexts. This is precisely what has been done in other fields as mentioned above. This dissertation posits the idea of a 'virtual contact zone'. The virtual contact zone utilizes Pratt's model and applies it to the context of game studies and virtual world studies to look at how virtual worlds and online games are situated within a larger social space that encompasses many members from various backgrounds. The differences in background can be reflected by nationality, language, or technical expertise and access. Like Pratt's model, the virtual zone does operate within a context of asymmetrical power structures. It is most apparent between those who build and operate the virtual world and the users who buy into and interact with the virtual world. There are also differing shifts of power between players, sometimes along lines of 23 national identity or language particularly when communicating with the aforementioned creators of the virtual world. The virtual contact zone builds on the literature that uses the contact zone in two way. One the virtual contact zone extends previous work looking at the contact zone to examine and model virtual and distance learning environments to look at activities and communication in other kinds of virtual environments. The virtual contact zone also expands, the ideas of space within the contact zone to be a multi-sited space within, mostly digital, paratextual spaces that are informed by the virtual world. It is important here to note that the virtual contact zone, in acknowledged the presence of differentials of power between its members, much like Pratt's model in colonial spaces. That being said, for one the stakes in those power relations in the virtual contact zone are far less severe than in the contact zone of the colony. The conception of a virtual contact zone is not meant to suggest that virtual worlds have contexts which are similar to the contexts of colonial life, especially for those who are subject to its effects. For another, the members of the contact zone with powers are the creators of the virtual world and the players many times, literally, buy into the virtual world. The virtual contact zone asks us to consider what are the relations between subjects when the subjects with more power are the creators of a space and those with less power are voluntarily making their way in that space with other users of the virtual world. Player Communication in Ludic Spaces Through Game Mechanics One aspect of the dissertation that will be looked at across the whole of the text is the issue of language and communication within the virtual contact zone. The model of a contact zone assumes a mix of various modes of language, literacy, and 24 communication strategies among its members and this is similarly true of the virtual contact zone. In many cases the breaks in communication fall in linguistic lines, the Japanese Developer needing translation in English, French, and German before being able to send out new information. These breaks can happen nationally as well, such as when English speaking players in Australia and New Zealand play on Japanese servers because their closer geographic distance provides better gameplay than the European servers they are technically grouped with. Chapter Three of the dissertation focuses on the issue of localization and lore and how the members of the virtual contact zone navigate the use of language both in how players utilize language and lore in virtual worlds but also when players push back against the Developer over localization decisions. Chapter Four of the dissertation goes a step further looking at communication between players in the virtual world. While there is a linguistic component in designed systems of communication, such as text chat, the chapter makes that case that game mechanics themselves are also a means of communication between players. This argument stems largely from the work of Lindley (2005) who uses the notion of "ludic spaces" to describe the elements of "simulation,, and narrative or story construction" which make up a game. Lindley looks at ludic spaces and how, divided through time, players experience the narratives of the game. Lindley divides ludic spaces into four levels of temporal structure. The discourse level is where "verbal, textual and cinematic narrative systems with the level of narration"). The performance level is where "the player is not simply an active viewer, but an active participant within the ludic world"). Within the simulation level, "the authored logic and parameters of a game system together with the specific interactive choices of the player determine an 25 (implied) diegetic (i.e. represented) world." Finally, the generative substrate is "the system of functions, rules, and constraints constituting a space of possible worlds of experience created by the designers of the game." The dissertation is interested in player communication on the performance level of the ludic space. Here is where players are interacting with the virtual world and, in elements of the virtual world where collaboration is key to performing tasks, players understanding of and implementation of game mechanics offer a mode of communication beyond the linguistic and visual semiotic symbol. Chapter Four will look further at how game mechanics play out as a mode of communication within the virtual contact zone. Structure of the Dissertation The dissertation is structured around an examination of the virtual contact zone from various focal lenses. In particular, the dissertation is interested in three perspectives: the role of the developer as interlocutor and largest sphere of power in the contact zone, the way paratext extends the contact zone outside of specific instances of the world and thus beyond the technical limits imposed by the developer, and the day to day struggles and communication within the instance of the contact zone where cultural, linguistic, and geographical barriers exist. This structure is utilized in order to address some of the critiques of the contact zone by focusing on the role of power by the developer in dictating the terms of the world compared to players' own limited agency. It is also an attempt to more explicitly define the bounds of the contact zone given the affordances that paratextual information sources offer in extending the experience of interacting with the virtual world outside the bounds of a specific server or platform. 26 Finally, the in-depth looks allow the dissertation to talk about not only the day to day interactions of the virtual contact zone, but address issues of language, conflict resolution, and the role of game mechanics as a means of communication. Chapter One presents a historical, technical, and game design context for the virtual world of Final Fantasy XIV. The historical details, such as the failed initial launch of the game, provide context for the developer's role in the creation of the second version of the game and how it manages its relationship with players. The technical details expand on how the game is structured on an architectural level and how these affordances both allow players to and constrain players from transcending physical geographical boundaries. The game design and structure of the game allows us to understand how players interact with one another within the virtual world, the level of persistence they have, and what means of communication and interaction exist. This chapter also discusses the methodological decisions employed in the study and how the combination of rhetorical, analytic, and ethnographic techniques complement one another and allow researchers to understand both the structure of the community around the virtual world. Chapter Two is focused on the Developer, a stand-in and representative for the development team and their relation as a communicator in the virtual contact zone. The Chapter is an analysis of the Developer's role as a member of the virtual contact zone. In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, the Developer effaces their role as a dominant power, by rhetorically positioning themselves as a party that has erred, given the context of the failed first attempt at the game. This positionality is enhanced by rhetorical gestures towards player feedback and involvement which allows the audience (players) to 27 identify with the developers. These modes of identification and transcendence of guilt are somewhat undercut by some rhetorical events. Chapter Three looks at how Lore and World Building play a role in constructing the virtual contact zone for the player community. In addition, the chapter looks at how language and localization play a role in player communication between the Developer and the player community. Chapter Three looks at how the Developer uses localization to build rapport with the community, how the localization process for Final Fantasy XIV is tied to the development of narrative elements, and how the Developer communicates with the player community when there are disputes over choices in how localization occurs with narrative elements in the game. Chapter Four looks at the how players communicate between each other within the virtual contact zone. In particular, the chapters look at paratextual platforms of discussion among players and how discussions of other player communities, separated by language/region (North America, Japan, and Europe), in order to understand the differences between each player community. In doing so players also acknowledge commonalities between player groups, particularly when criticism of the Developer emerges. These discussions are often framed as information-seeking, and players ask and offer information, oftentimes providing personal perspectives about other player communities. The chapter then looks at how the virtual contact zone manifests within the virtual world. In-game affordances related to communication, movement, and gameplay are looked at to understand what sorts of player agency exist within the game. Finally, the chapter looks at how players utilize not only designed elements of communication, such as chat and translation systems but also looks at how players 28 incorporate game mechanics as means of communication, even when linguistic barriers are present. In looking at these various elements of the virtual world, the dissertation argues that using the model of the virtual contact zone offers a more nuanced sense of how virtual worlds operate, particularly in a context where games are becoming increasingly global, reliant on social media and other paratextual platforms for community building, and have an increased relationship between players and developers. The virtual contact zone model as a principal theoretical lens allows for a better understanding of the role of community and communication among members with very different levels of power and agency within the community. In combination, the virtual world operates as a lively, contestable space for players and developers, all of which vie for agency and a voice within the virtual world. 29 Chapter One: The History of, Current Design in, Cultural Context around, and Methods for Researching Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Virtual worlds function as a site of communication, socialization, and play. For users/players of virtual worlds, virtual worlds need to be situated within narrative and ludic contexts. Users oftentimes rely on an intertextual understanding of virtual worlds, borrowing from conventions of fiction (such as expecting fantasy-themed worlds to have magic as both a narrative element and thing players can do, for example). This intertextuality also extends to interaction with the virtual world, as players utilize the knowledge and understanding of game design conventions in other 3-D video games to make assumptions about how navigation, cameras, and inputs function in the virtual world. These contexts help make the virtual world intelligible and allow for users/players to more quickly comprehend how the world is created and how to interact within it as well as understand the nuances that make the virtual world. Virtual worlds research must also understand the context of the virtual world and its creation. There are several components to looking at the context for virtual worlds research. The researcher should consider the technical structure and design in order to address issues of connectivity and how the real world structures of internet traffic affect the world. In addition, they must also consider elements of game design, in particular, game mechanics, modes of communication, and other systems that affect how participants interact with the virtual world. Researchers must understand the main points of the narrative elements within the virtual world that are meant to serve both ludic and narrative focus for users, and which may be informed technical and design constraints and goals. The researcher should look at the history and development of the 30 virtual community of users and how the virtual world changes over time in relation to this community and its feedback in order to look at the effects of this relationship between developer and user on a games' development and changes over time. Finally, the researcher should take into account that most virtual worlds, such as Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Online Games, Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas, and nascent "live service" games, are part of larger economic vehicles for the companies that develop, publish, and maintain these worlds. These elements: connectivity, interaction, narrative elements, the relation between developer and playerbase, and economic considerations are linked together as being related to the vital elements. While these considerations do not explicitly mention game design or game systems, it is important to note here that these contextual factors in virtual worlds play a large role in the design of virtual worlds. These contextual elements offer either constraints to design (such as what can be implemented technically or what is feasible given the staff and budget for content development) or as directions to take when balancing systems or adding features. In non-persistent online games, these systems play a large role as the interaction with players in the virtual world is more tightly linked to explicitly ludic goals and objectives. Because of the focus on small team competition, a MOBA like League of Legends, for example, relies on balancing and re-balancing the various Champions (the characters that a player can select and control every match) in order to ensure that players have the same level playing field in any given match in any given map available for play. In persistent virtual worlds, such as MMORPGs, systems such as the character classes, experience tables, in-game economies, crafting systems, 31 etc. are primary ways players act on and within the virtual world. However, it is also important to note these systems are designed within these contexts outlined above. These contexts become the factors that generate communication and conflict within the virtual contact zone of players and the developer. Thus, in selecting a site for study, it was important to look for a virtual world where there is visible tension with regards to the contextual elements of technology, interaction design, narrative, economics, and communication among all members of the virtual world (including its designers). Final Fantasy XIV offers a good test case for several reasons. One, the technical and game design elements, specifically its fundamental design goal of being an international game and using non-region locked server architecture, offers an open platform for players globally and fosters multilingual spaces online. Second, Final Fantasy XIV has had a difficult history in its early implementation which inadvertently created a situation where communication between developer and player increased dramatically as the development team, for economic and branding reasons, situated themselves as not only the team which controls and shapes the game but also as partners with equal investment in it. This chapter provides context for the use of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (FFXIV) as a site of inquiry. The first part of the chapter focuses on the history of the game's development, initial failure, financial consequences, and redevelopment and relaunch. The second part offers context for the current status of game development, with a particular focus on the media and communication strategy between the development team and the playerbase that emerged as a result of the initial poor launch of the game. Finally, the chapter will look at the current technical and design elements 32 of FFXIV and how they contribute to the formation of and communication between all of the stakeholders within the virtual world and beyond, through paratextual platforms. These three sections help inform the specific technical, interaction design, narrative, communicative, and economic context for FFXIV's development and current design, which can help inform the understanding of and development of virtual worlds more generally. Aside from the contexts of the design and implementation of FFXIV, the chapter will also touch upon relevant methodological literature with regards to different approaches to understanding how the site of study creates a "virtual contact zone". In particular, the focus will look at the literature on paratextual analysis, rhetorical criticism, virtual ethnography, and thematic analysis. These methods will be implemented throughout the dissertation as ways to understand the contexts for development and how the virtual contact zone is constructed and how communication flows occur within the contact zone. History of the Development of Final Fantasy XIV Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 and its Failure Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV) is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) developed and published by Square-Enix, a Japanese game publisher and developer and a major player in the global games industry. It is the second such MMORPG produced by Square-Enix with the Final Fantasy brand name, a follow-up to Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) and part of the mainline series of Final Fantasy Games, which had become a household name in Japan and abroad since the late 1980s. The Final 33 Fantasy series, as a whole, are typically single-player console based Japanese Role- playing Games (JRPGs). However, the eleventh installment of the series was designed as an MMORPG. Final Fantasy XI was released in late 2003 and, over its lifespan, has garnered a significant critical and commercial success. Rumors of a second Final Fantasy MMORPG began surfacing as early as 2005, but it wasn't until a major trade convention, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, in 2009 that Final Fantasy XIV was announced. Much of the team which created Final Fantasy XI was part of the game's design and many of the thematic elements of that game would transfer over. Final Fantasy XIV launched on September 30th, 2010 after a lengthy and problematic series of closed and open beta tests. These issues resulted in poor reviews on gaming news websites and other blogs. The original Final Fantasy XIV drew many complaints by players and reviewers immediately upon release. In terms of technical issues and design, players were stymied both by the high technical requirements needed to play the game as well as the lack of multiple data centers, making latency a noticeable issue for non-Japanese players. Players were also dissatisfied with the design in certain systems needed to interact with the world, such as the game's economy, which eschewed centralized markets in favor of a decentralized "retainer" system which players found cumbersome to find, purchase, and sell items to others. Players also criticized the world design of the game impeding traversal. Players noted geographical features were, in some cases, seemingly repeated on the map in order to make finding one's way needlessly confusing, particularly in an instance where it occurred just outside one of the three areas where new players could begin the game. Another system was implemented which drew criticism was an XP "fatigue" system, 34 which limited the rate players could advance in the game. While the game had a strong narrative in its main quests, player critiqued the flimsy rationales for the grindy systems in place to gain experience, usually amounting to small collection quests nearby hubs in the game world. On top of these issues, players were stymied by the lack of communication by the developer, as many had expressed concern and criticism about the game during its open beta period before the release. In particular, players were concerned about the game going live without having made any significant changes from the public beta. While the narrative elements created for the game were met with middling to positive reception, these technical, design, and communicative missteps resulted in poor reviews and poorer reception of the game and by November of 2010, the game was economically failing as well, with players leaving the game and the nascent community unraveling. While players and the community around FFXIV were roundly condemning the design decisions and lack of transparency by the development team, Square-Enix, the publisher of FFXIV, was worried about not just the success of FFXIV, but of the venerable Final Fantasy brand in general. The failing of FFXIV occurred shortly after the release and similarly weak sales of Final Fantasy XIII, a single-player game in the mainline Final Fantasy series which had garnered criticism for its own design missteps. The failure of FFXIV, which had been touted as a follow-up to the very successful Final Fantasy XI, an MMORPG that had only been second to World of Warcraft in subscriber numbers and in Japan was the reigning game of the genre, represented a crisis that had to be addressed. 35 Yoicihi Wada, then the President and CEO of publisher Square-Enix, publically posted what amounted to an apology letter to players on December 9th, 2010. In the letter, Wada notes: While more than two months have passed since the official launch of FINAL FANTASY XIV service, we deeply regret that the game has yet to achieve the level of enjoyability that FINAL FANTASY fans have come to expect from the franchise, and for this we offer our sincerest of apologies. After thorough deliberation on how to meet those expectations, it was decided that the most viable step was to approach improvements under new leadership and with a restructured team. (Wada 2010) This failed release of 1.0 was a significant financial loss for Square-Enix, the developer and publisher of the game. The failed launch was one of the larger factors for the company’s economic losses during 2011, which was upwards of 12 billion yen (approx. 120 million dollars). Yoichi Wada went on record in September of 2011 saying the failure of 1.0, along with lackluster reception of Final Fantasy XIII, had "greatly damaged the Final Fantasy brand" and that the company would be continuing "with our reform work, which basically amounts to fully redoing the game, and hope to revive the FFXIV that should have been released." (Sponichi, 2011). In June of 2013, before the release of A Realm Reborn, Wada stepped down as CEO and President of Square- Enix. In addition to structural changes, Square-Enix suspended subscription payments for the game, making the game effectively free to play. From January 2011 through November of 2012, the 1.0 version of FFXIV was updated and many improvements were made to the game for the small group of players who remained playing the game. During this period a new development team, led by now current lead producer Naoki 36 Yoshida, set out to provide updates to the game. While the development team was attempting to address the design issues with the original game (now dubbed 1.0 or 1.x), the decision was made by Yoshida and the rest of the development team to reboot the original FFXIV. In talks with both design and lore teams within the development group, a plan was drafted for the game to be taken down for a year and relaunch with a new version, alternately referred to as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Final Fantasy XIV "New" Eorzea (新エオルゼア) in Japanese, and briefly as FFXIV 2.0. In order to transition players from the 1.x version of the game, a weeks-long in-game event transpired throughout late 2012. In the event, players dealt with large scale persistent events that led up to a cataclysmic event (the moon hitting the planet) in the game world. This in-game event provided a sense of closure to the remaining players FFXIV 1.0. After the final event in November of 2012, known in-game as The Calamity, FFXIV 1.0 ended and the servers shut down. In concordance with the end of 1.0, Square-Enix announced the game would be relaunched within the year. The failure of FFXIV 1.0, both as a game and a product, made an indelible mark on players, developers, and the publisher of the title. With the decision to reboot the game, the development team had to account for this failure in its attempts to rehabilitate not just the disillusioned playerbase, but the identity of one of the publisher’s most recognizable brands. Foremost on their minds was establishing goodwill and credibility between themselves and the playerbase as well as designing a game that circumvented the design issues that 1.x had presented. In many ways, the development of FFXIV 2.0 hinged on communicating to players and ensuring them that mistakes would not be repeated. 37 Redesign and Deployment of Final Fantasy XIV While the development team worked on the redesign of the game, they didn’t remain out of contact with players. In fact, there was a concerted effort to regularly communicate the development team's progress on a regular basis. During the period between 1.0's shutdown and the reemergence of 2.0, the production team kept in contact with players on a semi-regular basis through three forms. One was by keeping the original forums active while building a new forum for the relaunched title. Another was by releasing approximately monthly statements to players, and by streaming video announcements of content, branded as Producer Live Letters, which included answering questions by players as well as demonstrating the new game through tech demos. These videos were streamed through YouTube and NicoNico Douga in order to make them accessible to both Japanese and International players. One main method that developers utilized to keep players informed of changes to FFXIV was the use of official messages and press releases aimed at players. These messages were typically titled as Letters from the Producer. This form of address began in January of 2011, just after Naoki Yoshida took over as Lead Producer for the game in late 2010. Yoshida and Square-Enix used these letters to orient players on improvements to the FFXIV version 1.0 and its features. When the decision had been reached to reboot the game, these letters were utilized for updating players on the upcoming overhaul of the game, informing players on how key features such as game mechanics, world and character design, classes and job systems, and the in-game economy would function. From 2011 until the launch of 2.0, fifty such messages were published at a rate of about twice a month. Currently, these Letters from the Producer 38 continue, serving to inform players on current issues and upcoming features and as a means of instilling good public relations between developer and player. A second means of preserving continuity between 1.0 and 2.0 was the maintenance of official forums and character data. These official forums served as a platform for developers to interact with players. This was done by publishing letters from the producer, having members of the development, localization, and forum community team be involved in threads which discussed current and future content, and allowing players to post as characters from 1.0, in keeping with the technical decisions to maintain character and server data through the reboot of the game. Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 went into beta in June of 2013 and launched commercially on August 27th, 2013. As of February of 2015, the game has a subscription base has been reported to consist of about 4 million subscribers. During the development of FFXIV 2.0, several decisions were made to preserve continuity for players who had purchased and/or played FFXIV 1.x. One, character data from 1.0 was saved to allow players to be able to continue with the game with their original characters. It was also used to reinforce to the playerbase that 2.0 would be a reboot and a continuation of the original game. Players were assured through email, live letters, and other communication channels that they could maintain their characters if they came back to the game from 1.0. Second, players who had purchased a copy of the original game would have access to 2.0 for free in hopes that players would give the new game a chance and, rhetorically, as a conciliatory gesture to players. Third, the servers from 1.0 were designated as "Legacy servers" to separate them out from any new servers that would need to be added in 2.0. This was done primarily because of 39 issues of in-game economy and the need to make sure that players who did invest time in 1.0 did not have a significant advantage over new players. Fourth, issues of economy and item management were addressed on a design level. For instance, the in-game currency was devalued in order to keep the internal economy from spiking. Additionally, many special items that had boosted players' statistics either became unusable or any helpful bonuses were removed. Finally, the developers produced a 10-minute long video which detailed the in-game story events of 1.0 in order to both explain to players which had left what had happened in the game as well as advertise and promote the reboot. All of these measures were put into place to ensure both a sense of continuity, but also to allow for a renewal of trust between the development team and players. These measures were a concerted effort to make amends for the failure that was Final Fantasy XIV 1.0. The development team attempted to not only retain the players who stuck with the failed game but also to bring back players who had left. This attempt at rebuilding the game and the community is, in essence, the foundation from which the developer framed their relationship with players. As the next chapters will show, this relationship with players is less top-down and more reciprocal between players and developers. It is worth noting here that the development team and publisher do have a large amount of power in terms of how the virtual world is created and how it changes. Ultimately, the development team literally creates and manages the world the players interact in and any communication and relationships around the virtual world ultimately take that power that development team holds into account. However, the circumstances of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0's release and the subsequent efforts to rebuild the game and 40 its player community forced development team and publisher to shift strategies towards becoming more transparent in their process, open to player feedback, and willing to act as less an arbiter of what the virtual world will be and more of one stakeholder in a larger community of people invested in the virtual world. This interlocutory role is discussed in more detail in Chapter Two. Current In-Game and Communication Structures of Final Fantasy XIV FFXIV operates like many current MMORPGs. Players take on an avatar that can play any number of fantasy classes (called "Jobs" in-game) such as Warrior, White Mage, or Ninja. In addition, players can undertake crafting classes (such as "Weaver" or "Culinarian") to make in-game items or gathering classes (such as "Miner" or "Fisher") to acquire items that can be sold or used to make items to be sold with the crafting jobs. Players can pursue solo content, but more often than not pursue content that requires groups of either four or eight players working together, such as dungeons or large-scale boss fights (either as "trials" or, in sets of four known as "raids"). Group content is rewarded with experience (usually greater than one can acquire solo), in-game money, items to improve characters like armor or weapons, and other types of currency players can trade for unique items to improve their character. Players interact with the environment by moving their character within a 3-D environment using a keyboard/mouse or game controller. Players can text-chat with players using a keyboard across various "channels" of communication. Actions, in-game are accomplished through the use of hot bars, rows of icons that are associated with player abilities that can be clicked or set to correspond to keyboard or controller button presses to perform them. Players can place both general actions and Job-specific 41 actions that can be placed on a hot bar. Actions can happen instantaneously, such as weapon abilities or using potions, occur after a timer finishes, such as casting a fire or a cure spell, or occur instantly but persist for a long period of time, such as poison magic on enemies or a "Regen" spell from an ally. All actions are subject to, at minimum, a global cool-down (usually between 2 and 2.5 seconds) that limits the frequency they can activate actions, though many abilities have longer cooldown before they can be used again, such as the Paladin Skill "Hallowed Ground", which grants the player who uses it immunity from all damage for 10 seconds on use, then has to wait seven minutes in order to use it again. The game officially supports four different "client languages", which determines what language menu options, item and ability names, and related features are in. The languages supported (Japanese, English, French, and German) can be set and changed between play sessions regardless where players are located. As an example Figure 1 below shows the difference between English and Japanese versions of the client software. While each of these four supported languages is equivalent in terms of content, there are some slight changes due to the localization done for each of these languages. Chapter Three goes into further detail about the role of localization as a means of communication between developer and player while Chapter Four includes discussion among players over player communities separated primarily by language along with supported region (North America, Japan, or Europe). While not directly related to the game's design itself, it is worth noting the owned and social media platforms created and maintained by the development team and publisher for the game. Square-Enix maintains an official web page for players, The 42 Lodestone, that allows players to communicate with each other and with community management team members on forums, write personal blogs for their characters, read news and updates by the development team, and look up information on in-game actions, items, and other players across all servers and regions. FFXIV also maintains a social media presence, in particular on video platforms such as YouTube, Twitch.tv, and NicoNico Douga. Chapter two will look more closely at these paratextual media platforms and how they are used by the Development Team to communicate with the playerbase as part of a larger strategy of communication. While FFXIV 2.0's release was limited to the languages and regions specified above and while these regions and servers are maintained by Square-Enix directly, it is also worth noting that the game has expanded to other regions and languages. A Chinese version was released in August of 2014 and a Korean version was released in August of 2015. These versions are localized and managed by companies external to Square-Enix and have a delay in content releases compared to the main playerbase. Japanese, European, or North American versions of the game cannot interact with Chinese or Korean servers and vice versa. That said, items which have been created for these servers, usually player clothing or other cosmetic items have migrated from those servers onto the main server, often through player demand on official and unofficial forums. The Architecture of Virtual Worlds and the Reemergence of Place in the Digital Oftentimes, technical aspects of virtual world research go unremarked upon in favor of focusing on elements of design or of community formation. While these aspects 43 are important to consider, it is also important to think on the role of architecture and platform as an element that constructs how the virtual world operates by both creating affordances for players and end-users but also demarcating the limits of the technology that maintains the virtual world. "Architecture" here is utilized in two senses. One is meant to capture the literal technology that powers an online system, which ranges from data, authentication, and test servers, database input/output systems, firewalls, and other security and encryption systems. Architecture is also meant, borrowing from Satoshi Hamano (2008) and, earlier on Lawrence Lessig (1999), to describe the set of tools and affordances that a given online technology is built to support. Architecture controls users' actions but, since users operate different technologies in tandem, the Internet exists as an ecology of architectures operating simultaneously. While it's important to keep architecture in mind when analyzing how players utilized paratextual texts, it is also important to understand the technical makeup of the virtual world and how it enables actions and limitations to players. Much of the early work on digital communities, such as the work of Howard Rheingold (1993) on the WELL, a text-based online community, or Pavel Curtis's work on LambdaMOO (1992) and virtual worlds fell under cyber-utopianist rhetorics of the Internet as a fundamentally emancipatory technology that would break down geographic and political barriers to offer users a more equal and meritocratic voice politically and socially. However, as the growth in internet usage as well as in the size, the number of simultaneous users, and affordances of virtual worlds have increased, this particular rhetoric has changed. This is not to say that this is a teleological shift from harmonious 44 interaction to discord, as LambdaMOO was a site of study for anti-social behavior (Dibbel, 1998), but the rise of virtual worlds also coincided with the rise of behaviors such as griefing and trolling such as on Second Life or Habbo Hotel (Bakioglu 2009). While the discussion on the productivity of ethics of these behaviors is beyond the scope of this chapter, they are worth noting because of their emergent nature and the ways in which architecture allows for these array of practices and emergent behaviors. Design can, of course, limit what is technically possible through architecture, but the role of the virtual world as a technological space with its own architecture supporting it is worth keeping in mind. The other reason why architecture is important is in how it gives users a reference back to the physical world. While digital technologies allow users to bridge relatively large geographical distances, distances do not go away. As networks become more globalized, ironically, geographical distance begins to emerge again as a limiting factor. While for many communication platforms, latency (the time it takes for a node on a network to ping a server and have the request received and pinged back) is a non- issue because of relatively close location to servers, distributed server allocation via cloud computing, streaming/buffering of data to account for latency, for virtual worlds, this latency can prove inconvenient at best and disabling at worst. While certain technical workarounds exist, such as virtual private network services that at a cost can route data more efficiently, it is important to acknowledge that geography and place, for technical reasons along with the usual discussion of cultural and linguistic differences, does indeed have an impact on the virtual world and its users. 45 An example of how another virtual world MMOGs deal with the issue of architecture, latency, and gameplay is the game EVE Online. EVE Online is unique among large MMOGs in that instead of creating many copies of the same game world to spread out users into more manageable sizes, the game instead is one very large game world where all players coexist. Since the theme of the game is space exploration, one of the main forms of gameplay is space combat, usually via large groups (known as corporations) conducting spaceship battles that can have up to thousands of players in the same area of space trying to perform actions. In order to manage the server load and equalize the varying latency of players from across the globe, the game utilizes "Time Dilation" (CCP Veritas 2011). In-game time is slowed down to as little as 5% of real-time (so 20 seconds of real time is equal to 1 second of server time) in order for the servers to record and queue player actions without latency affecting which players actions are resolved first or the server missing a player input because of the increased server load. Thus by affecting in-game time, the developers of EVE Online alter how time operates in the virtual world in order to create a level playing field for the international playerbase and equalize discrepancies in ping and latency as much as possible. The Architecture and Structure of Final Fantasy XIV As with many other commercial MMOGs, FFXIV runs as a series of servers which contain identical copies of the game world. Having multiple servers which house identical copies of the game world rather than one large game world supported by dozens of servers (such as in MMOGs such as Eve Online) allow the developers to balance player populations and manage game design elements such as in-game 46 economies. Multiple servers also allow the developers to manage the technical problems that emerge with thousands of simultaneous connections from players at the client end to the servers itself over extended periods of gameplay. Another advantage is that these servers can be spread out geographically to solve the technical problems that emerge with internet connectivity at great distances. The game servers are housed in one of two locations, one in Tokyo (and designated as Japanese or JP servers), one in Montreal (designated as the North America or NA servers), and one near Frankfurt (designated as the European servers). Furthermore, clusters of servers, known as data centers are grouped together for the purposes of allowing players to play game content without having to find a group within their server. The Japanese servers house three such data centers, North America two, and Europe one data center. While this geographical and technical separation of servers suggests a separation of playerbases, there are no explicit limitations to which server or data center a player can use. Players, however, may self-select on a variety of issues such as server population, proportion of same-language speakers throughout the server and/or data center, server reputation (which gets created through paratextual channels such as forums or hearsay), or physical location and its effect on the latency of online data transmission. This last concern is the reason why FFXIV’s server architecture is constructed as such and where place re-enters the virtual world. Traditionally, rhetoric on virtual communities and virtual worlds are one in which geographical barriers are broken down and people can come together. Virtual worlds, through avatars existing and interacting 47 in the same virtual space, embody this ideal quite clearly. That said, technological limitations of online communication, such as latency and ping, become markers of place and one's geographic distance from the physical server becomes expressed in the virtual world, not in terms of space, but of time. The farther the distance, the more likely interference such as packet loss, higher server ping, and latency of communication between client and server are and the harder it becomes to perform actions smoothly and reliably over time. Geography becomes a limitation because of the limits of internet technology. While, as noted above, other virtual worlds may alter time to deal with this, FFXIV relies on spreading out their server architecture. Thus, FFXIV utilizes these geographically located data centers, not as a means of explicitly segregating players, as other games might, but as a means of hedging against those technical limitations that may affect the play experience or, in extreme cases, advantage players who live very close to the servers in question. That said, as noted elsewhere in the chapter, players can and do often choose to play on servers that are not technically the closest geographically for other reasons. These players many times will utilize outside technology, such as services with can more efficiently route data from the client to the server for a monthly fee, to minimize the input latency, ping, and other technical limitations that stem from geographic distance. A Methodology of Contact Zone-based Virtual Worlds Research There have been a variety of methods developed in order to undertake research in virtual world environments. While quantitative approaches (Williams, Yee 2006) have been utilized to look at player behavior, most virtual worlds research has focused 48 primarily on qualitative and interpretive approaches which stem from the Interpretive tradition introduced by scholars in Anthropology such as Geertz (1973). In addition, much of the research has relied on case study approaches (Yin 2009; Willig 2008; Stake 2005) usually limiting to either the single case of one virtual world platform or in certain cases (Pearce 2009), a small set of virtual worlds. This study follows along similar lines, and the section below discusses the role and means by which the study utilizes three separate, but interrelated approaches in analyzing the case study of FFXIV. In particular, the dissertation utilized thematic content analysis of player forums and other paratextual spaces, rhetorical criticism to understand communication by the developers and producers of the game, and ethnographic analysis of player activity within the virtual world. This multi-method interpretive approach is sought in order to capitalize on the various platforms and affordances that make up the overall community of FFXIV players. Interpretive approaches allow researchers to look at the multiple realities represented in the various forms of discourse developed within the space of the virtual world. Content Analysis of Paratext An entry point into understanding the form and sites of communication for players in a virtual world, aside from interactions and communication within the virtual world itself, is through looking at the paratextual elements of that community. While paratext has its roots in semiotic analysis of literature, based on Genette's (1987) seminal work on literary paratext, more recent research has expanded the notion of paratext, as the notion of "text" itself has widened to include other forms of media, including that of 49 games. Paratext, as its core, refers to elements that are not explicitly within the text itself. For Genette, the means elements of a book such as epigraphs, table of contents, prefaces, index, and other ancillary texts that surround a work internally (which is referred to as peritext) as well as textual elements that relate to a text from outside, such as interviews with an author, book reviews, and commentary about a work (which Genette refers to as epitext). These paratextual elements work to contextualize and widen a text's threshold with the world outside itself (reality or other texts if we adopt an intertextual interpretive model of literary analysis). Ellen McCracken (2013) analyzed the role of traditional literary paratextual elements as they occur in ebooks and other digital print formats. In particular, McCracken notes that in a digital medium, "A wider array of paratexts is made possible by these additional modes of motion involved in the new technology of reading. Concomitantly, paratexts can no longer be studied as singular fixed objects. They exist temporally and spatially within particular dynamic viewing practices," (p. 106). In this case just as the nature of the text shifts with a shift in medium, paratexts shift as the affordances of the medium change. Digital texts operate temporally and spatially because the affordances of digital text allow readers to move inwards towards the text (through manipulation of the font, size, color and ancillary notes in the text and other peritextual elements) and outside of the text (through epitextual elements such as reader reviews, forum comments on books, blogs, twitter feeds, etc.). Johnathan Gray (2010) utilized the paratextual model to argue that ancillary products related to television shows (such as advertising promos, spoilers, and plot summaries, among other) were themselves paratextual as they helped to create and 50 maintain interest in television programs. These paratexts are either directly appended to a text, such as in the case with promotional footage or advertising for the show, or exist in a more peripheral form, such as action figures or Alternative Reality Games (ARGs) which allow individuals to inhabit the universe of the text without necessarily handling the text itself. In either case, paratext exists for non-literary media texts in the form of these ancillary media, among other platforms. Mia Consalvo (2007; 2017) utilizes paratext to analyze nascent video game communities, defining and broadening the scope of paratext to include not only the magazine industry that flourished around video games during the 1980s and 1990s, but also unofficial forums, chatrooms, FAQs, and other communication between players about the game itself. These paratextual elements, Consalvo argues, not only aided in the development of video game culture, but also allowed players to more directly engage with the text itself, by having a space to discuss gameplay elements such as how to overcome a challenge through skillful play, strategy or, sometimes, cheat codes. Chapter Four discusses how FFXIV, like other virtual worlds and similar games with large online gameplay, utilize paratextual online platforms. These paratextual platforms range from officially supported and maintained spaces such as The Lodestone to unofficial spaces such as individual forums on Reddit (subreddits) and 2channel, resource web pages and apps, and streaming video content by players. These platforms help create and maintain the larger community of players and allow them to communicate about the game in various respects, from strategizing elements of gameplay (best gear and weapons, how to defeat trials and raids, how to find groups to play with in-game, etc.), noting differences in how play styles differ across servers and 51 regions, and share gameplay experiences, transformative works such as fan-art, and socialize more generally across the entire playerbase. These paratextual elements of FFXIV also allow players, irrespective of which particular server their character resides in, to negotiate and create a unified language of gameplay that transfers back into the virtual world. The particular form of analysis of these paratexts is thematic analysis. Thematic analysis is a set of methods that seek to look at qualitative research material and draw forth themes which emerge from the samples of qualitative data (Guest et al., 2012). While there are difficulties in terms of reliability of the codes produced, because of the interpretive work needed on the part of the researcher(s), thematic analysis provides "the most useful [analysis] in capturing the complexities of meaning within a textual data set," (Guest et al., 2012). With regards to the dissertation, thematic analysis was conducted on discussion posts on /r/ffxiv in order to tease out themes that emerge in the discussion of the player community, particularly player communities separated by the main three regions of play: Japan, North America, and Europe. Rhetorical Methods and Their Role in Cultural Research Paratextual analysis can give insight into player attitudes about their place within the virtual world, their perceptions of others in the virtual world, and their own accounts of happenings or other events in the world. However, this form of analysis limits understanding the role that the developer of the virtual world plays as a member of the larger contact zone. Rhetorical Methods can be used as a means bridging this gap, 52 through the identification of communication strategies employed in order to negotiate differences among players and between players and the developer. The development team communicates through various means. One is through owned media channels, such as the official website for the game as well as through the official forum, often with members of the development team in charge of community relations and management on those forums. More commonly, communication between the development team and players happens through social media platforms. Official accounts for the game exist on traditional social media platforms such and Facebook and Twitter, but more importantly, the development team relies on video platforms to communicate with players through produced video content and live broadcasts. In addition to owned media and social media, the development team interacts with players directly within in the virtual world through appearances with players, but more broadly through the design, changes, and additions to the virtual world itself. The choices made in the design of the virtual world act as a means of communication between development team and players through the systems created for players to interact with that, in aggregate, embody a procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2010) or through narrative means where the goals of the development team are articulated through elements of lore, quest dialog, and non-player characters. Given these different means that the developer has to communicate with the player, both direct and indirect, it makes sense to take the rhetorical positioning of the development team into account in understanding the composition of and flows of communication within the virtual contact zone. This is in addition to looking at the modes in which players communicate with each other, both in the virtual world and 53 through paratextual platforms like the official forums, unofficial message boards, and social media platforms. The dissertation looks at three specific rhetorical acts by the developer aimed at communicating their role within the community of the game, utilizing three different approaches for communication: through speech acts, written communication, and design elements. Because of the history of the game's development and the nature of the relationship between the development team and the community of players, the dissertation aims to look at these events through a Dramatistic analysis (Overington 1977; Burke 1969; Burke 1968) to understand the role of the Developer as managing a dual identity of owner/arbiter of the virtual world and as a participant within it. Dramatism is an especially apt approach because of its focus on hierarchies of power within a communication act. Dramatism also utilizes concepts of guilt, victimage, and redemption, which is apt given the historical context described above. Finally, as opposed to traditional Neo-Aristotelian models of rhetoric which sees rhetoric as a primarily persuasive act, Dramatism emphasizes identification and/or homophily between rhetor and audience. This rhetorical approach takes into account the role of the self, social relationships, and the nature in which humans can bridge divisions while still maintaining their individuality. Ethnographic approaches to Virtual World Study Much of the research on virtual worlds utilizes ethnographic approaches in understanding the nature of virtual world's communication and community. Doing so provides a methodological linkage to disciplines whose focus has been on analyzing communities. Second, it provides nuanced qualitative data which take the day to day 54 loved experiences as the basis for producing data through participant-observation and field techniques. Third, it relies on the interactions between researcher and researched and through these relationships being built. Finally, it offers ways to reflect on the researcher's position and role in the research and responsibility to the community they get their data from, even more important because of the nature of the relationships developed between researchers and research participants. The underlying epistemology of the virtual ethnography performed in the research owes much to the work of the Interpretive Turn in Anthropology, credited to Geertz (1988; 1973) among others. The Interpretive turn emerged as a reaction to Structuralist models of Anthropology (such as that made famous by Claude Lévi- Strauss) as well as the emerging post-colonialization during and following the Vietnam War. The major epistemological conceit of Interpretive Anthropology is that the anthropologist should interpret a culture by understanding how the people within that culture are interpreting themselves and their own experiences. Geertz suggests that any culture is a complex assemblage of texts that constitute a web of meanings which are understood by the actors themselves and which, subsequently, are interpreted by anthropologists. This interpretation plays out similarly to literary analysis of texts, in particular incorporating the contexts that make meaning possible for those involved into the acts of interpretation and analysis (Panourgiá 2012). This epistemological conceit premises that the anthropologist should be incorporated into the ethnographic account rather than observed from afar in a supposedly 'objective' standpoint. Interpretive Anthropology, in certain respects, claimed a linkage back towards the ethnographic practice of Franz Boas rather than somewhat later, more objectively positioned 55 anthropologists such as Malinowski. Hence, unlike Malinowski's more detached position, such as his description of the sexual act among the "savages," Geertz proposed a more Boasian deep participation in the cultural act, such as being raided by the police during a Balinese cockfight (1973). The work of George Marcus is similarly influential in the development of online ethnography. With the increasingly globalized landscape of cultures from the 1980s onward, traditional study of "culture" in the Malinowskian sense was incomplete as cultures became embedded in globalized systems. Marcus proposal and description of multi-sited ethnography (1995; Marcus and Clifford 1986) offers a lens to understand the relationship between sites as locations and what Marcus refers to as the "world system" whose contexts may include "political economies of colonialism, market regimes, state formation, and nation building," (1995, p. 97). Marcus proposes an ethnography which follows elements of the culture, such as "connections, associations, and putative relationships" in order to get a more complete picture as to the landscape of the culture of study. Marcus also recognized this method is potentially useful in related disciplines, such as Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies. Early work on online ethnography stemmed from the challenges of understanding communities of users in pre-web and so-called Web 1.0 online platforms. Studies of pre-web online communities such as in the WELL (Rheingold 1993) focused on showing the continuity between online and off-line selves and making the case that online communities were communities. Later scholarship in Web-based online communities, such as early work in Online Cultural Anthropology looked at the web as a means of 56 connecting diasporic community (Miller & Slater 1999) or web-based communities and the people who contribute to them (Hine 2000). Much of the work of these early studies were focused on the justification for online communities as sites useful to study, though their focus was on connecting the virtual community to the real one and showing a linkage of the two as a means of justification. In a different context, the ethnographies of MMOGs and other virtual worlds that have emerged over the past decade have mostly focused on the study on virtual communities in their own environment. This has not meant fully abandoning the idea that group membership or activity offline has an impact online and vice-versa, but that there is an understanding that these communities are worthy of study in and of themselves. Notable work in the field that has influenced the dissertation include T.L. Taylor's work on Everquest players and their motivations for play (2005), Mia Consalvo's work on paratext in regard to video game communities in the 80s and 90s as well as the online community of Final Fantasy XI players (2009), Tom Boellstorff's work on Second Life and its community of users (2011), and Celia Pearce's work on online diasporas of players from now-defunct MMOG Myst:Uru to the virtual worlds of Second Life and There.com (2012). As described in the Introduction, much of the work seeks to build on the reintroduction of geography and nationality into virtual spaces. Whereas Pearce's case study shows how virtual worlds can act as communities similar to diasporic communities, particularly once the original virtual world ceases to exist, this study seeks to look at the role of nationality and language in forming a user community in a virtual world. The dissertation seeks to build on this literature in looking at the virtual community through the lens of the contact zone. 57 Here it is worth noting that the form that ethnographic analysis takes within the dissertation is largely autoethnographic. Autoethnography as a research method, while not without its critics, is useful for discussion of the role of player communication within the virtual world. Autoethnography as a method emerges from works beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s which built upon the narrative turn in Anthropology discussed earlier as well as the ever-increasing focus on self-reflexivity in regards to the researcher's positionality in the ethnographic work. Early autoethnographies, such as those by Ellis (1995), Kohn (1994) and Shelton (1994; 1995) emerge from the growth in form and genre for ethnographic works that stem from the earlier narrative turn, one which Denzin ascribed as having emerged as a "sixth moment" of inquiry following the work of Clifford and Marcus's Writing Culture (1986) (Denzin, 1997 p. xxi) a larger narrative turn in anthropology and the social sciences. This led to many forms experimental forms of ethnographic narrative such as poetry, short stories, novels, performed pieces and plays, and dance (Denzin, 1997, p. xxvii). Scholars such as Ruth Behar (1997), N.K. Denzin (1997), and Ellis & Bochner (2000) outline some of the theoretical grounding for autoethnography. Behar describes the process of autoethnography in terms of vulnerability, and the importance with which the researcher must approach research and writing, particularly as the researcher aims to level the distance between themselves and the subjects of the research (pp. 28-32). Denzin emphasizes the importance of self-reflexivity as "no longer a luxury... the writer can no longer presume to be able to present an objective, noncontested account of the others experiences," (p. xiii). Ellis et. al (2011) note the relationship between autoethnography and biography, noting that the ethnographer disrupts the dichotomy 58 between science and art which autoethnographic works are criticized as coming as one of the other (p. 283). Mariza Méndez (2013) summarizes the strengths and limitations of the autoethnographic methods. Autoethnographic methods give readers a fairly data rich perspective from which to understand the particular cultural phenomenon being investigated. In addition, the personal perspective (whether written in first or third person) breaks down the usual stance of contrived objectivity and offers a way to empathize with the narratives presented (p. 282). There is, in certain contexts, an emancipatory value to autoethnographic texts as the narratives are not composed second-hand and these texts allow their writers to express their experienced truth. One limitation of the personal narrative as an ethnographic text is the limitation in scope and perhaps limited generalizability in these texts. That said, Bochner and Ellis (1996) feel this limitation is at least partially not valid because the subject themselves are embedded and enmeshed in culture thus autoethnographic texts cannot be free from those connections to culture. Other critiques of autoethnographic approaches tend to be more in regards to the nature of the texts, either that the form of the text is insufficiently scientifically rigorous or insufficiently artistic or evocative as autobiography. A key response to the critique of autoethnography as not rigorous or objective enough comes from Denzin and Lincoln who argue that "Objective reality can never be captured. We can know a thing only through its representations," (2000, p. 5). The interactions that emerge between the self and experience are productive in understanding a particular cultural phenomenon. 59 The dissertation utilizes some of the forms of autoethnography, in particular in drawing on personal experience. However, it is used in a supplementary fashion along with more traditional forms of online ethnography and the other methods described in detail above. The accounts written about that are relevant to the study will be written in the third person and in a form to be consistent with the writing style of the genre of the dissertation. In some ways, not challenging the form of the text is antithetical to the spirit of autoethnography, but I am grounding my own personal observations and narratives as they are used in the text. This dissertation utilizes two main platforms for conducting virtual ethnographic research. The first is unofficial forums, such as the subreddit /r/ffxiv, the /ffo/ forum on 2channel (5channel as of October of 2017, though the dissertation with use 2channel when talking about the site), and FF14速報 (FF14 sokuhō, FF14 Breaking News). These platforms rely on anonymous or pseudonymous users posting threads or commenting on posts related to FFXIV. The second platform for research was within Final Fantasy XIV itself. Participation ran from August 2013 to August of 2017. Much of my time on the platform was split among three servers: Gungnir, a mostly Japanese- speaking server; Balmung, a mostly English speaking server with small communities of Japanese, Spanish, and French speakers; and Tonberry, a server where Japanese and English speaking population are roughly evenly mixed. My experience as a player in Final Fantasy XIV informs my understanding of the role in which the contact zone forms. In these spaces I am identified with my character either directly, as in the Official forums on The Lodestone which links directly to my character page, blog, etc., or indirectly, such as the FFXIV subreddit where my 60 character name and server is highlighted next to my Reddit username on the subreddit, a common technique for users to tell others who they are in game and where they play. I coordinated with several groups (both ad-hoc and organized) for various gameplay and social activities, ranging from role-playing, instanced content such as dungeons and quests, trials and raids. Many of these groups, particularly long term organized groups I have been a member of are familiar with my work as a researcher looking into the game, though in day to day interactions, that role goes by unaddressed as I am part of the community and my own work is more focused on somewhat higher level interactions between players or interactions between players in ad-hoc settings where language barriers and cultural norms present more obvious problems than in organized groups, working to accomplish goals or learn how to clear content, such as in T.L. Taylor's work on Everquest (2006) or Mark Chen's look at his time in a large raid group on World of Warcraft (2008). Conversations that were had in the virtual world were not recorded, only notes were taken on impressions of encounters or happenings that occurred, particularly in "instanced" events, where players wishing to participate are randomly matched to perform a task in the game. Public forums such as the Official forums, /r/ffxiv and 2channel's /ffo/ were looked at for discussion topics related to communication and conflict within the game and for discussion that centered on players from other regions or playing in mixed-language servers. In particular, this work looked at communication and gameplay norms across these different servers and, later, data centers and how the community approaches gameplay. The issue of ethics in virtual ethnography has rightly been given scholarly attention in recent years. In particular, the issue of researcher transparency and 61 individual safety and privacy within virtual worlds have been important. For one, concerns about lurking ethnographers surreptitiously violating privacy by scraping data is a significant, but as Hine (2008) argues, largely baseless concern. Hine argues that lurking ethnographers are apt not to learn much about the community and, as with traditional ethnography, “[t]rying out what it is like to be a participating member can be a route into a complex set of communicative practices which deploy multiple media in flexible and creative fashion,” (p.263). McKee and Porter (2009) also discuss, importantly, how virtual world researchers have to not merely establish rapport with the players on a social level, but they must also show facility with the virtual world, usually by showing they understand the mechanics and gameplay in the virtual world. Constance Steinkuehler notes, in an interview with McKee and Porter (2009), first that: [i]n games, as in a lot of these communities, you really don’t understand them unless you’re participating. So I spent a good long time investing significant time in trying to understand gaming culture, trying to become part of that culture (p. 16). The long period of time in the virtual world was useful for research in order to not only understand the virtual world and its mechanics but also see shifts in the relationship between players and the developer and the virtual contact zone as FFXIV 2.0 matured over time and across its two expansions. Thus, the researcher ends up wearing several hats and the points where the researcher is explicitly a researcher in the virtual world is not clear cut and the moments where the researcher is explicitly embodying the role of researcher and when they are participating as a member is constantly shifting. Again, Steinkuehler notes in McKee and Porter (2009): 62 There were lots of things I did in game that would have been considered scandalous by a non-digital native. When I was in-game playing, I was playing just like anyone else. I had play preferences—there were people I told to fuck off when I felt like telling them to fuck off. And I think as a researcher, straight researcher, I would never tell someone to fuck off, but there were lots of time in game when I did it. Not self-monitoring too much while in game also built me a lot of trust. When I'm in there playing, doing player-versus-player game play and playing just as the hard as the rest of them, I think that people started to realize that she's not just here to observe. But when was in each role—that's really tough to say. (p.25). In my own work, while I can’t say I needed to establish credibility in quite so direct a manner, there were points that as a participant, I had to establish expertise and ability with mechanical and narrative elements of the virtual world and became integrated as “gamer/resident”, “researcher, off-line, and “real life” person (McKee and Porter 2009, p. 25), analyzing and trying to understand the virtual world through these lenses. In addition, approaching this study with the literature on autoethnography in mind, it was worth examining my role as a member of this contact zone as much as a researcher aiming to conceive of how FFXIV serves as a case study in expanding the contact zone to virtual worlds. It is fair to say that, while I have my own criticisms and concerns about the development and maintenance of contact between players and development team, I do come into writing the dissertation as a fan and member of this virtual contact zone as much as I am coming into it as a researcher in digital media and online communities. The following chapters will focus on looking at the virtual community of Final Fantasy XIV through the methodological lenses described above. By looking at these aspects of the virtual community through these methodological lenses, we can more concretely understand how the contextual elements outlined at the start: the technical structures and limitations, game design and player interaction with the virtual world, 63 narrative and its role in grounding game design and the virtual world, the communication and contact between developer and player and between players, and the game's existence as commercial product, play a role in constructing a virtual contact zone and its implications on how games are experienced by their players. 64 Figure 1 A side-by-side comparison of the game in the four client languages. From top left, clockwise: Japanese, English, French 65 Chapter Two: The Developer as Interlocutor in the Contact Zone Game Studies research has looked at the complicated relationship developers, particularly in online games and other virtual worlds, have between themselves and players. Classic pieces such as Morningstar and Farmer (1991) highlight the role that community plays in content development, such as when developer expectations were in conflict with the player communities abilities or when player wants and needs are not in sync with the developers' plans for content creation. T.L. Taylor (2009) acknowledges the tensions developers have between "acknowledgement... that the production of vibrant player culture is crucial to the success of a game" and "the kinds of controls designers often feel obliged to enact," (p. 124). The developer (or really, development team) is largely understood from these tensions among technical, economic, or design problems that need to be addressed, particularly in their role with players. With the emergence of virtual world games, esports titles, and "games as a service" models for video game design and revenue, these tensions between developers and players only increase. The developer as an entity in the creation of online games has vested interests in creating virtual worlds and game systems which are compelling and "sticky", where players will log in and play for a significant period of time each session and play many sessions over as long a span of weeks, months, or years that they play the game. The model of the virtual contact zone positions the development team, here known as the Developer, as a part of the various social and communicative relationships present in and around the virtual world. The Developer is a member of 66 these relations with asymmetric power compared to users, as they literally control the creation and maintenance of the virtual world. That said, the Developer is also dependent on players to grow and maintain the community and have a stake in maintaining that community. Within the scope of the virtual contact zone, this means that the Developer acts as an interlocutor, communicating as transparently as possible about design decisions and process as well as offering opportunities to solicit feedback and speak to players about the game. Here it is important to unpack what is meant by 'Developer'. Here the term is used in two ways. One is as a synecdoche for the entire development team and the complex organization of skilled personnel needed for development. With the exception of a few developers who are well-known among video game fans, such as Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, or Raph Koster, to name a few, most game developers and producers typically situate themselves as part of an organization, typically a development team or a studio. Game development, particularly at the more commercial side of the art and with online and virtual world games, is a highly collaborative process and many individual designers, writers, programmers, and artists are responsible for the creation of games, even those credited as from a well-known designer. In addition, online games typically have a period of "maintenance development" that go beyond the initial design process. In virtual world games, such as MMORPGs, this can take the form of "patch content", free content that adds small amounts of new content for players to complete, bug fixes, and other small changes. MMORPGs may also have expansions, large amounts of content developed similarly to standalone games and are purchased additions to the base game. Esports games, such as League of Legends or 67 Overwatch, receive their own maintenance development, usually focused on adding new characters players can play as and balancing existing content to create level competition. The second form in which Developer is used is to identify a person who has been positioned as the face of the development team. Within the development team, they may be the credited "designer" of the game, such as Raph Koster on Star Wars Galaxies (credited as Creative director and Creative consultant on the expansion content), or they may have a more management-oriented position such as Shigeru Miyamoto in Super Mario Odyssey (credited as Executive Producer) or Jeff Kaplan on Overwatch (credited as Game Director and Vice President). Final Fantasy XIV frames the interaction between the development team and player community through the use of its Director, Naoki Yoshida, as the Developer of FFXIV. Yoshida acts then as a representative for the development team at large and also as the main person speaking to the player community through various forms which will be examined below. This chapter makes two arguments about the construction and function of the contact zone. One, the developer, and by extension the development team (to be described as the Developer), acts as both a participant in and the dominant force within the space of the contact zone. Two, the Developer acts as an interlocutor, the term used here in order to highlight the discursive role since much of the interaction within the contact zone is not done directly between players and the Developer within the virtual world, but through paratextual platforms, real-world interaction, and through the changing design and topography of the virtual world. 68 The Developer's Role While game development, particularly for MMOs, is very much a team effort, for Final Fantasy XIV, the strategy was taken for the game's Lead Producer, Naoki Yoshida, to take a prominent role in interacting with players regarding decisions made by the development team. While large-scale game design operates with teams in the hundreds and leads from every element from game design, story, art, user interface, music, artificial intelligence, and localization, Yoshida operates as the lead in charge of all these elements and the person ultimately responsible to the game's publisher. However, outside those internal duties as Lead Producer, Yoshida has also taken a lead role in publicizing the game to the press through interviews, press junkets, and trade conventions such as the Game Developers Conference and the Electronic Entertainment Expo. He has given dozens to interviews to trade and general interest magazines, blogs, and other gaming news sources. Finally, as a result of the game's rocky beginning and the direction taken with rebooting the game and his work with the press, Yoshida has also emerged as the face of the game to the playerbase. Much of this work is spent addressing player feedback through written messages on the official forums (called "Letters from the Producer"). Yoshida also streams video through multiple video services, referred to as "Producer Letter: Live". And finally, he is one of the main guests for public events like fan conventions, such as PAX East, the NicoNico Chökaigi, and the series of Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festivals held in 2014, 2016, and 2018 in Las Vegas, London, and Tokyo. This multi-faceted role becomes more complicated than merely public relations or promotion for two reasons. First, Yoshida becomes a focal point for players in the power 69 relationship between players and the developer. Yoshida frames himself as the face of the game who has the final say in how the game is run. This relationship, of course, is not an equal one. In a virtual world, the developer owns and maintains the world the players interact with. Drawing on the model of the contact zone, virtual world game developers are not merely colonizers of a landscape, they are the creators of the land that players dwell on as well. Decisions made by the developer are simply done as a matter of course. As the game develops over time, what elements of the virtual world players can experience and interact with may change. These changes may be additive, such as new regions or new things to do, but they can also be subtractive as in a player may find themselves with weaker abilities or changed to perform in a different manner. On the one hand, players are left with little recourse and have to accept these changes. Of course, players can simply stop playing and contributing economically to the game and it is through this that the relationship between player and developer becomes complicated. While the development team, led by the Producer, shares a lot of power in the world's design and it's maintenance, they must also ensure that what changes and developments in the virtual world are those that appeal to players and encourage them to keep playing and economically contributing to the game. Because of the history of the game's development, particularly the disastrous launch of the first version, Yoshida as Lead Producer has emerged as a liaison between players and development team, framing his position as in dialogue with players and as an equally invested member of the community himself. 70 The overall effect of having a person who acts as both spokesman and lead producer is a creation of a person who can act as an interlocutor within the virtual contact zone, someone who can be involved in exchanges between players and the game while at the same time being representative for the institution with most power in the relationship between players and developers. This framing places the developer as both a member of the virtual contact zone and the creator of the space simultaneously. Dramatism, Identification, and the Guilt-Redemption Cycle Given the context of Yoshida's promotion to Producer of Final Fantasy XIV following the failed launch of 1.0, one of the main goals was to reestablish goodwill between developer and players. As such, it is useful to look at these events through a dramatistic rhetorical analysis. Dramatistic Analysis is a series of rhetorical techniques adapted from Kenneth Burke (1969). Dramatism utilizes drama as a metaphor for human action. For Burke, drama is symbolic interaction, implicating all human behavior (Overington, 1977). For Burke, humans see and interpret behaviors through the lens of drama. Drama has recognizable genres, which reflect that humans interact in sets of discourse which are formed to be understandable to audiences. The fact these discourses are enacted to audiences means that rhetoric plays a crucial role in these interactions. Dramatism has three main theoretical assumptions. The first is that humans act through symbolic action. That is humans reason and communicate through symbols, language being chief among those. For Burke, humans are the symbol-using animals and it is through symbolic action that human behavior differs from other animals. The 71 second assumption is that language shapes those that utilize it as much as language users shape language. In other words, discourse shapes our thoughts and opinions since humans communicate and reason through symbols. The third major assumption of Dramatism is that humans have agency in their actions. Agency is important because human thus have the ability to act out their choices through symbolic action. Dramatistic analysis relies on three key components for analyzing a rhetorical situation: Identification, the Dramatic Situation, and the process of Guilt-Redemption Cycle. Identification refers to how individuals make themselves understandable to audiences. For Burke, Identification occurs when two individuals' substances (their general nature) overlap, or in other words, there is common ground between two individuals through shared characteristics, abilities, experiences, attitudes, and personality, etc. The more these substances overlap, the more identification there is between those individuals. Identification can flow between individuals as well, not merely between speaker and audience. Since no one individual's substance can overlap with another's fully, identification rests on the interplay between unity and division among individuals. The Dramatistic situation (or Dramatistic Pentad) refers to the set of related elements which describes a given situation. It's a tool used to understand a given situation's complexity with regards to the relationships between actors and symbols. The elements of the Pentad are the Act (what was done), the Scene (where it was done), the Agent (who does it), Agency (how did the speaker do it and what methods were used), and the Purpose (why it happened). For Dramatistic Analysis, the main goal is to look at the relationship between these elements more so than to describe each 72 individual element. For Burke, the most important of these relationships is that between the Scene and Act and Scene and Agent since "the basic unit of action would be defined as 'the human body in conscious or purposive motion'" (Overington, 1977). Burke (1969) also describes Attitude as a sixth component, referring to the preparation of the act itself, though most contemporary dramatistic analyses only utilize the first five components. While the Pentad is a tool to describe a situation, for Burke, the Guilt-Redemption Cycle provides the driving action to a rhetorical situation as the process of guilt and redemption since, for Burke, they represent the plot of all human drama where guilt and the desire to purge oneself of guilt through public speaking is the main motivation. The cycle follows the pattern of feeling guilt and then the attempt to reduce through a several step process: order or hierarchy, the negative, victimage, and redemption. Order refers to the process by which social relationships form orders or hierarchies. These hierarchies create senses of superiority, inferiority, and equality. Guilt can be felt as stemming from our place within these hierarchies. The negative comes when people seek to negate their place within the social order and is a function of human agency and choice to seek to disrupt the current hierarchies in the search for something better. Victimage refers to strategies for relieving guilt through scapegoating (blaming others) or through mortification (blaming oneself). From victimage, a speaker can relieve guilt through confessing their guilt and asking for forgiveness from the audience. From this process the speaker achieves transcendence and a new order is achieved. 73 The Developer as Interlocutor and Shifting Contexts for Dialogue With the dramatistic mode in mind, I'd like to come back to the discussion of the developer and the role they play within the communication between players and the game. I use the term 'interlocutor' in order to capture the multifaceted role the developer plays. While an interlocutor is someone who takes part in an ongoing conversation or dialogue, I also utilize the term because of its secondary meaning. Historically, an interlocutor was a specific role in minstrel shows who acted as both emcee and conversant with "end men" on stage. While the racist roots of this term are deeply problematic, the nature of a person who is both the point of contact for the audience as well as with fellow performers is an apt analog for this development role. In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, Naoki Yoshida acts as such an interlocutor for the game acting as a representative of the development team for players in the contact zone. That is not to say that other development team members do not communicate with the community. The development team relies on regional community management team across the supported regions to speak with players on a more regular basis. Within the game, Game Masters offer support for inter-player conflict or issues with the game. And several members of the Development team have written articles for the official site, The Lodestone, appeared in Live Letters, and maintain an active social media presence, such as Sound Director Masayoshi Soken, Global Community Producer Toshio 'Foxclon' Muromachi, and English Localization Lead Michael Christopher 'Koji' Fox. That being said, but for the grand majority of communication between players and Developer, Producer Naoki Yoshida serves in the role of Developer. The ways in which the 74 developer interacts with and acts as interlocutor comes across primarily through four formats of public address. The first are written announcements and letters, known as "Letters From the Producer". Since taking over as Producer and Lead Director of the development team, Naoki Yoshida has written sixty such messages to players at semi-regular intervals, as often as once a month in from 2011 through 2013, corresponding with his introduction in late 2010 through the release of FFXIV 2.0 in August of 2013. More informally, Yoshida has addressed concerns through the official forums commenting on recent changes or player feedback on issues in a formal capacity outside the moniker of a Letter From the Producer. Since 2013, the Letters have been supplanted by video streams, known as "Letter from the Producer Live!" or "live letters", colloquially. These streamed events typically feature Yoshida and other members of the development team ranging from game designers, lore and story teams, localization team members, and often community management team members. In fact, the most common guest is the Japanese Community Lead Toshio Murouchi (known by players as Foxclon). Secondary to these appearances, Yoshida has appeared in game servers to players on occasion, answering questions and running content. Third, there are also live appearances and keynotes where has addressed fans ranging from events hosted by the developer, such as the aforementioned streamed Letters from the Producers held at small events, to international fan "festivals", to independent trade and fan conventions such as the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). 75 Finally, Yoshida has made appearances within the game world. This has taken two forms. One is when he and other development teams have appeared unannounced within a specific game server, speaking with players in a synchronous manner. Second, Yoshida has found ways to make narrative reference to the relationship between player and developer, using mechanics such as quests to create a dialogue with players. These forms of outreach frame the developer as being an equally invested party in the game along with its players. This is done through a mix of rhetorical modes that allow the developer to communicate to the players in three modes. One mode is by framing their communication as personal, using modes of address and media which grant an effect of directness and open communication. Second, by demonstrating an understanding of present player concerns and showing that they have a facility with the game not only as a system designed by them but also as fellow players. Third, the developer demonstrates that they are thinking about the long-term future of the game and its world and, thus, showing their investment in the worlds' future. The following examples of texts demonstrate these qualities and show the ways in which the developer is invested in creating a shared communicative space with players. These texts demonstrate, across three different media over three distinct moments in the game's production, the sense of mortification expressed by the developer and his desire to become in accord with the game's community. Letters From The Producer: Personal Digital Address by the Developer The "Letters from the Producer" were a series of sixty forum posts addressed to players. These posts were organized in a separate thread on the in-game forums with comments made unavailable. The majority of these posts were published throughout 76 the turnaround of FFXIV 1.0 (49 posts from December of 2010 through August 2013). An additional eleven Letters were published just after the release of FFXIV 2.0 in 2013 through 2015 when the letters became supplanted by the live streams that will be discussed shortly. These Letters serve three key functions of communication, particularly throughout their context during the revitalization of FFXIV. First, these letters were used to establish Naoki Yoshida as both the new Producer of Final Fantasy XIV as well as establishing him as the face of the Development Team. Second, these letters were used, especially throughout 2011 as a means of creating rapport with the playerbase. Finally, these letters were used to establish a dialogue with frustrated players, emphasizing they were listening, open to feedback, and announcing changes for the game and, during the development of 2.0, what features the new game would have. Before the development team formalized communication with players in this manner, players were communicated by various staff, including Square-Enix CEO Yoichi Wada. In a message, titled "An Important Announcement for Final Fantasy XIV Fans", Wada apologized to players and acknowledged the game had "yet to achieve the level of enjoyability that FINAL FANTASY fans have come to expect from the franchise, and for this we offer our sincerest of apologies." Wada also announced that the game would not ask players to pay the planned subscription fee for the time being and canceled a planned port to the PlayStation 3 console. In addition, Wada announced, "that the most viable step was to approach improvements under new leadership and with a restructured team." 77 Appended to Wada's message, incoming Producer Naoki Yoshida introduced himself to players. “I would like to take this opportunity to greet all of you—those currently playing FINAL FANTASY XIV, those who have taken a respite from playing... and offer a brief word by way of an introduction. No doubt there are very few, if any, among you who have ever heard the name Naoki Yoshida. To be sure, I have never been in the fore on any of the titles I have worked on in the past... I am aware that a great many people will think the responsibility of leading FINAL FANTASY XIV is far too large a task for someone so unknown... But working together with me are the very talented and very capable development and management teams, whose dedication and motivation are unwavering. I would like to ask you to please put to rest uncertainties that you may have... Everything we do will be for our players and customers." This message was further appended briefly by outgoing Producer Hiromichi Tanaka, who was largely blamed for the failure of 1.0. Tanaka noted, "First of all, I would like to apologize for our inability to fully satisfy our users with the initial release of FINAL FANTASY XIV. I take full responsibility for the game's current situation, and have therefore made the decision to step down from my role as producer... Though no longer producer, I will be continuing to support the development team in other capacities, and personally hope that you will continue your adventures in the realm of Eorzea." As Yoshida settled into the role we see the key functions of the Letters take shape. His first post in this format was focused on introducing himself and the staff. Yoshida acknowledges the playerbase by noting the discussion over what nickname to call him, noting, "Well, after a brief spell of users on Japan's most frequented forum referring to me as "The Duck," I'm happy to say things have settled down and it seems that "Yoshi-P" is the current nickname of choice," (December 2010). Given the time of 78 year, Yoshida's next Letter celebrated the New Year, which is an important Japanese Holiday, to restate the goals of the change in production staff as well as address the full playerbase. "As part of the new direction promised, we here on the development and management teams have adopted four new keywords for FINAL FANTASY XIV: fun, live, reboot, and rebuild. Forgive our translators if these buzzwords seem a bit cryptic or cliché, but I am using English words as-is in the Japanese, and insisted they use the same words for a global resonance." The Letters From the Producer during the support and patching of 1.0 focused primarily on conveying to players that the development team had taken feedback into account and was paramount demonstrating several attitudes and behaviors. One was to show they knew the game at launch was unacceptable for players. The second was that the development team was listening to players and their concerns. The third was to show a focused determination to fix the 1.0 game as best as possible. Finally, these letters aimed to announce to players that they were going to revamp the game completely and show players what the new FFXIV would look like. The key themes that the letters, especially from the period between when the new development team began work on patching the 1.0 game through the development of 2.0 were: apologia, creating a sense of personal exchange between developer and player, and having detailed data, either collecting player feedback early on, or detailing an extensive schedule of upcoming features and their implementation. As an example of letters during this period, the letter released March 3, 2011, starts with a personal exchange that also details the work he personally as Producer has been up to leading up to the key information in the letter: 79 "Well, my stint in London has drawn to a close, and I'm now making my way to L.A. At the London office, I had the chance to speak with a few people from FFXIV's French and German fan sites, and enjoyed what I felt were some very meaningful exchanges... Japan to England to America in the span of a week. It's all got me feeling a bit...off. Maybe it's because I'm not the type of person who sleeps much to begin with, but I'm not really feeling the jet lag, per se. I'm just worried that if I stop to take a break or slow down, it'll hit me all at once. If anyone out there knows a cure for this nonsense, let me know. As I mentioned before, I left the results and analysis of the second Players' Poll out of my last letter to try and keep it short, so that's seems as good a place as any to start. I'm writing this at 30,000 feet again, so I may not be calm, cool, and collected. But my interpretations of the poll data were all made while I still had two feet on the ground, so they should be solid (Seriously, I really hate planes.)." Here we see Yoshida trying to develop a personal exchange between player and Developer as well as offer a sense of apology for any delays in communication or even for any confusion in his post before he goes into detailed information on player feedback poll results. In a somewhat later letter, dated August 15th, 2011, Yoshida begins again with a slight apologia, referencing the aftermath of the 3/11 tsunami, as well as some personal news noting "With energy conservation measures in place, the team is getting a full taste of the summer heat here in the office... Before I dive in here, I’d like to apologize for being later than I intended with another letter. I was planning to send it out early last week, but ended up being out of commission for three days with a high fever. Ah, the woes of aging..." The letter then goes into charts, divided by systems such as "Quests", "Battle System" and "New Content" with columns for planned patch implementation, what the planned changes or additions are, what the team is currently working on towards the feature, and any notes regarding those changes. For example, a feature, "Opening tutorial adjustments", the current tasks involve "Implementation of 80 simplified opening tutorials for the three city-states (moved from future tasks)" with the note that "Simplified tutorials will be implemented for the introductory quests designed for new characters. We also intend to provide players with more early-game guidance in future patches," (Yoshida August 15, 2011). The Letters from the Producer post-2.0 launch took a slightly different approach, especially as the new iteration of the game proved to be a success. There is less focus on apologia and direct personal exchange in these letters and they became more focused on upcoming content. The end result is an overall more distant relationship between developer and player, though that is compared to the tone of the previous letters. A few examples of the shift include a letter from August 2013, just after the launch of 2.0 and a live launch event, which will be discussed later in this chapter. Here Yoshida expresses both surprise and gratitude for the success of 2.0, noting: "My first letter included the list of the improvements we had planned for Version 1.0. This list was a product of your valuable feedback in the inaugural players’ poll... Since the relaunch project was set in motion, we have received overwhelming support from countless players and FINAL FANTASY fans across the world... Today marks the beginning of official service for FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn. Our goal is to continue service for at least ten years─and of course aiming beyond that─with a host of updates and large-scale expansions along the way, never forgetting the dedication of our fans is what brought us this far... we will challenge ourselves to innovate, providing our players with a game truly befitting the FINAL FANTASY title," (August 27) Near the end of the series of Letters, Yoshida relies less on personal exchange and uses little to no apologia. He still acknowledges the playerbase and uses linguistic elements of gratitude, but the content and tone read less like the incorporation of feedback and more detailing upcoming features. In addition, he notes the frequency and use of the streaming "live letters", supplanting the written Letters from the Producer. In a 81 letter from June of 2015, Yoshida discusses the release of the first expansion of the game, also known as 3.0. He notes: "Hello again to all of you FFXIVers out there! Yoshi-P here. It's been ages since I've written one of these letters─hopefully the frequent LIVE letters over the past few months make up for it! But today is a very special day, and I couldn't let it slip by without penning a letter for such a momentous occasion. The journey has been long, but today, June 23, 2015 marks the official release of our very first expansion—Heavensward!" (June 23, 2015). These shifts also help talk about one last point regarding the written forms of address. Framing the relationship between Developer and player only goes so far. Players understand that they are in an economic relationship where the developers are the recipients and the developers, not the players, ultimately hold the ability to change aspects of the virtual world and this is where power imbalances end up, despite elements of player-created persistence. That said the formal textual forms of address, especially early on in the redevelopment of the game, the Developer takes great pains in this form of address to locate themselves within the contact zone created by the game. These written forms of address help situate the Producer as an interlocutor for the development team and as part of the contact zone. Outside the scope of the Letters from the Producer, Yoshida has used textual forms of address to reach players in a quicker, more direct way than other methods of communication allowed. These have been in cases when recent changes or announcements have prompted large amounts of player feedback in a short period of time. One example of this was a change in how player housing would be purchasable. In a post written in October of 2017, Yoshida addresses player concerns about housing. 82 It's worth noting here the use of identification, mortification, and attempts at creating a solution for players to bring about catharsis regarding the issue. Yoshida notes: "...though we are pleased to see so many players enjoying this area, we also received a great deal of feedback regarding this newest addition to housing. While a great number of you were interested in either purchasing or relocating to a plot in Shirogane, we failed to prepare sufficient plots for players, and for that I deeply apologize. This problem was only made worse by the increased stress on the servers from players rushing to log in after the end of maintenance. As a result, the system implemented to prevent players from abusing the relocation feature failed to function properly, preventing some players from relocating altogether. Although this issue will be addressed in today's hotfix, we understand this does not address the underlying issue.... We've also received considerable feedback as to how they should be added, and we will be making an announcement outlining the number of new wards and how they will be sold after reviewing said feedback,"( Yoshida Oct 12, 2007). Thus textual modes of address are still important to communicate feedback and dialogue between the developer and the community at large. However, it is worth noting that the more official form of this mode of address, The Letter from the Producer, while used extensively during the period of 1.0 through the development and release of 2.0, by late 2015, this formalized mode of address was supplanted a second mode of addressing the community, which also began during this early period of the game's redevelopment, the Letter from the Producer LIVE, a streamed broadcast version of the written letters as before. Letters From the Producer LIVE and Streaming Address The Producer Letter LIVE takes this form of personal address a bit further by shifting media from text to video, very consciously trying to emulate the detailed, yet personable tone of the letters to a video format. The "Live Letters", as they are 83 informally called, began streaming in October of 2011, during the transition from patching and supporting the 1.0 version of FFXIV to the commencement of development of 2.0. There have been 45 broadcasts since then. This form of direct address has been successful enough that, despite the increased costs to produce and stream content to players compared to the Letters From the Producer, the "Live Letter", as they are informally called, supplanted the Letters from the Producer by the end of 2015. The Live Letters began streaming in 2013 In this form of address, Producer Naoki Yoshida and, usually, Japanese community Manager Toshio "Foxclon" Murouchi directly address players and their concerns as well as announce upcoming additions and changes to the game. These streams are typically anywhere from two to three hours in length and incorporate three types of content. The first is answering selected player questions, which are solicited on the game's official forums, in a Q and A style setup. Second is announcing and showing upcoming content, utilizing slides and live demonstrations of upcoming game content on a developer version of the game. Third, there is usually time devoted to interviewing someone on the development team such as a scenario writer, encounter designer, or other person involved with creating content for the game. The Live Letters are most often streamed from the Shinjuku offices of Square- Enix in Tokyo. They have also been an opportunity to "tour" the game throughout Japan in events called "F.A.T.E in Japan". These streams usually involve a staged set similar to the one used in the usual broadcasts but in front of a live audience. The use of these streaming live letters as a way to tour the game throughout Japan in some ways 84 parallels the use of live events both in Japan and globally to create a different, more direct, and intimate form of dialogue and embeddedness in the contact zone. Live Letters have also been streamed from overseas locations because of press and trade event scheduling. The Live Letters are streamed on three different online video platforms: YouTube, Twitch, and NicoNico Douga. Figure 2 shows an example of a Live Letter, streamed simultaneously from NicoNico Douga and Twitch.tv. The last two are notable for their focus on gaming culture and otaku culture, respectively. Both platforms also allow viewers to comment in real time. Twitch also allows users to "host" streams, which is an affordance that is utilized by fan translators. Hosting streams lets users broadcast another twitch channel's stream to others. While many folks use this to promote other channels or to watch a popular broadcast with a small group of people to chat with, fan translators will host the Live Letter stream in order to provide close to real- time translation of the Live Letters. Concern about the live streams and their directness is the issue of time. While they are archived and can be viewed time-shifted, part of the appeal of the live latter to players is the liveness inherent in streaming media. Since Live Letters are usually broadcast in the evening Japanese Standard Time, this usually means players in North America and Europe are watching the streams ranging from 2:30 in the morning in places like California to almost noon in Germany. This has a small effect on how information is propagated to fans, though the effort of the developer to have key information available in multiple languages, the archiving of streams, and the efforts of fan translators, have helped minimize the lag time between when information is shared and when the playerbase, regardless of region, learn about the changes. 85 The geographically localized nature of where these broadcasts occur raises a final aspect of the live letters that needs to be addressed, that is the use of language and its translation. While the next chapter will go into more detail as the process of translation and localization of the virtual contact zone, it is worth noting here that these Live Letters get translated in a few forms, some synchronous/semi-synchronous, others in an asynchronous manner. While a few of the Live Letters have been conducted with a live English translator, such as those which were held during live events such as the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles or Gamescom in Germany, the majority of the Live Letters are conducted only in Japanese. However, in all cases, the slides used in the Live Letters are in primarily Japanese, though each bullet point or text and title are given smaller English Language summaries. Second, after the Live Letter, an official translation of the key elements, such as questions and answers, key upcoming features, and in the case of interviews, the questions asked to and answers provided by the interview subject. These follow-up posts take anywhere from a day to a week after the stream to be uploaded to official forums. Finally, fan translators have set up informal systems using streaming platforms such as twitch (with the Live Letters use) and synchronous social media platforms, such as Discord, to do close to real-time translation of the Live Letter as it happens and many player-run forums, use these preliminary fan translations to begin to speculate about in-game content or try to understand what the developer intentions are and how to make sense of them as a community. Live Events and Dialogue 86 While the Live Letters have been used to stage live events, primarily in Japan where transportation infrastructure makes intra-country travel easy for the development team, there have been a series of other live events where The Developer has made appearances. These live appearances serve as means for the Developer to speak with players in as personal a setting as possible. One set of events are the Final Fantasy Fan Festivals, held every two years by the Developer in Japan, The United States, and Europe. These appearances also include more traditional press and trade show appearances, with their attendant interviews and other media attention. These appearances, while serving traditional public relations functions, also serve to strengthen the contact zone by using these events as paratexts that allow the Developer to communicate with players about the virtual world in a different context from other forms of address. This is also strengthened by the fact that many of these appearances aim to communicate that the Developer's commitment to and passion for the virtual world is on part with players. These communications, like all relations within the virtual contact zone, are necessarily enmeshed with the power relations between Developer and playerbase. The Developer has the control over the forms of address, though because of the logistics of love events, the Developer's ability to reach out to all players simultaneously, such as in a Live Letter or Forum Post, is limited to audiences physically present. That said, these events have resonated with players able to attend them or watch them streaming, which has been the case for live events such as the Fan Festival (usually for a small fee) or the NicoNico Chōkaigi, which was available to view on NicoNico Douga. 87 The Developer has also used trade shows to communicate with players as well as promote the game and upcoming content. Live Letters streamed from E3. Presentations from PAX. These appearances are necessarily made more for media than players, though the use of social media has helped to turn these otherwise obligatory events into moments of shared engagement with players. They have even used such events to hold in-game appearances, which is the last category of forms of communication used by the Developer to create a dialogue with players. Live Events are used by the Developer to create a more direct connection between themselves and the community at large. These events range from press events to fan-run festivals, as well as appearances in trade shows and conventions. Typically these events are used as opportunities to both reiterate the ideas that keep the community together as well as preview upcoming changes and events within the game. One rhetorical example which most visibly demonstrates both the direct communication between developer and player as well as rhetorically positions itself as reaffirming the community as well as giving the community a sense of looking ahead is the Launch Event for Final Fantasy XIV 2.0. The Launch Event, which took place in August of 2013, to coincide with the launch of FFXIV 2.0 was a large event open to the public in Tokyo, as well as live- streamed in a manner similar to the Live Letters. At the end of the event, which demonstrated the new game to press and fans, there was a keynote speech by Producer Naoki Yoshida and it helps demonstrate the way that live address has been used to deepen the relationship between Developer and Player as well as situate the Developer as part of the contact zone. 88 Early on in the keynote, Yoshida opens by apologizing about technical issues which impacted playtime during the early access period prior to the official launch. His apologies were also tied into the growing pains common to virtual world development, but notably, he explicitly apologized for the loss of time and, coupled with apologetic body language, conveyed the team's ongoing contrition about the state of the game, especially since the future of the game was being placed on 2.0. Yoshida also takes the time to incorporate the developer as part of the community, stating "Our long journey is just starting, so I'm hoping we can recover over time." This was then followed with an attempt to continue the keynote, but there was a pause and Yoshida became choked up. The live audience began cheering Yoshida (crying out "you can do it" "It's okay, Yoshi-P!", etc). This ended up motivating Yoshida to tear up for a moment (which prompted applause) before continuing. Yoshida then speaks briefly about how he ended up in the role of producer and his thoughts in shifting from supporting and patching 10 to developing the new game. He talks about this decision with the development team, stating "When I gathered the staff to tell them we were going to rebuild the game, two days before we told the public on December 1st [2011]... honestly the dev team's feeling was just the same as everyone else." Yoshida then talks about the organization and development of the game. Notable here is the use of game terminology. "It is really hard to build an MMORPG. It normally takes 4-5 years, but we wanted to get this out as early as possible... we had to plan without rushing... operating a business, your role is Tank. I tried to be a tank and got it to where it is now... I'm not the one who made [2.0], it was thanks to all the players around the world and the core development staff." 89 In the last part of the keynote speech, Yoshida brings the discussion of development to a personal level and the relationship between developer and player. Yoshida first speaks of himself and the team, saying "I wasn't going to cry since today marks a day in which we take our first step for Final Fantasy XIV... I really believe that we don't really have any time to take a break. The dev team and myself are already working on future patches and expansions." Regarding the community of players, there are efforts to incorporate those who have been playing since 2010 as well as those who left during the period between 1.0 and 2.0. Yoshida then, in a sense, creates a covenant to players regarding 2.0 and the development team's commitment to the game. "For those players who played the previous [FFXIV], we had times where members left in the middle and things have been said by [people outside the community], I'm also an MMORPG player, I understand how hard that is. For us it was a short 2.5-3 year period, but we asked the players to wait and support us this time... for an MMORPG, there is no such thing as "complete". We will continue to keep on going with everyone. This [FFXIV] is a [FFXIV] which was built with everyone." The keynote concludes with Yoshida and the development team members present bowing on stage to the audience in gratitude. It's worth noting here that this is not an uncommon gesture in the Japanese corporate context, though the body language here suggests hopefulness and gratitude for the support of the player community. While these live events offer some players a chance for a very intimate real-world exchange and sense of the developer's place and investment in the contact zone, there are two main downsides to these forms of address: the ability for the average member 90 of the contact zone to have the access to attend a live event, especially outside of Japan, and the fact that these interactions do not take place within the virtual contact zone itself, but are, in a sense, paratextual forms of the virtual contact zone. The last form of address, however, is a way for members of the contact zone to be addressed by the Developer within the space of the virtual world itself. Communication and Contact within the Virtual Contact Zone: In-Game Appearances the use of Guilt-Redemption and Re-integration in the Virtual World While the Letters from the Producer and the Keynote represented forms of address that were purely textual or oral, respectively, the developer has another form with which they can communicate with players: the ludological. As the developer, they can create interactive experiences which can communicate the messages they wish to impart to players through gameplay. One example of this that relates to the theme of guilt and redemption over the fate of the original FFXIV come through in an in0-game event which took place in August of 2015 called the Rising. The Rising is an in-game event which takes place every August as a means of celebrating the anniversary of FFXIV Version 2.0's launch in 2013. It is an event which serves both as a narrative and gameplay experience since the anniversary of the game's launch is also the anniversary of the in-game event which ended FFXIV 1.0. The Rising events have given players new animations and items as well as celebrate the anniversary of the game's relaunch. Narratively, it serves as a celebration and remembrance of the in-game apocalyptic event (known as The Calamity) that ended the first version of the game, since, in the game world, the A Realm Reborn starts five years since The Calamity. This event gives the developer a chance to not only thank players 91 for continuing their support of the game but to provide an opportunity for the developer to, using the game world and its internal narrative, to further rhetorically enact mortification. The Rising event of 2015 was especially focused on conveying the narrative of the game's development from the developer's perspective and, in particular, expressing guilt for the terribly performing 1.0 version of FFXIV. This the event focuses on speaking to the players both within the in-game narrative and meta-narratively, through its gameplay and storytelling. The event is framed in the form of a quest where a player is asked to speak to an NPC and perform tasks ranging from going to speak with other NPCs, delivering goods, or fighting monsters. Most of the gameplay centers on the activation and completion of quests so this a typical format for gameplay for FFXIV in particular and MMORPGs in general. The Rising event begins by players speaking to an NPC named Nonora. Nonora is leading the celebrations for the Anniversary of the Calamity, known as the Rising, an event within the fiction of the game world that is meant to be both somber reflection of the events of years past and a celebration of life continuing on in the face of tragedy. She asks the player on behalf of the Adventurer's Guild to seek out strange monsters, referred to as 'mechanical bugs', which are appearing and terrorizing the countryside. The player then travels to a place in the game and participates in a public quest (a recurring event where any player in the vicinity can participate cooperatively). Once they are defeated, the player returns to Nonora where another character, the Wandering Minstrel, appears and speaks to the player. The Wandering Minstrel then plays a song for them and they are transported to a place known as the 18th Floor. There the player is taken from the in-game world and 92 into a space where they meet NPCs named and modeled after members of the development team. Players can speak to these NPCs who state a bit about what their role in the game's development they're responsible for and offer thanks to the player for their continued participation in the game. The avatars are modeled using in-game assets and the room adheres to the aesthetics that are found within the in-game universe. The player is then led to a room where an avatar for the game's producer, Naoki Yoshida speaks to them. After thanking them for playing the game, whisks the player back into the in-game world, where both the Wandering Minstrel and Nonora bid the player farewell. The 18th floor acts as a nod to a narrative convention in games, in particular, a type of easter egg known as a developer's room. In many games, it is common for a secret area referred to informally as the developer's room to be available for players to find and interact with. In addition, it acts as a space for the development team to reside in the game and interact with the player on a meta-narrative level rather than through the game design elements and narrative content created for the game. This event offers the developer an opportunity to continue the rhetorical positioning which appears in other formats like the Letters From the Producer. What is unique about the in-game event is the way in which the developer can use their power over the virtual world in order to make the case that they are equally invested members of the world and its community. This happens in three specific functions. The first is the use of ludic elements such as the quest, combat, and NPC interaction in order to make the experience by players interactive and, hopefully, more impactful for players. Second, the event relies 93 on the player negotiating inter-textual elements. One narrative thread is the in-game lore of Eorzea, the five races, the magically enhanced pre-industrial technology-based setting, etc. The other thread is the knowledge that the world is virtual, a role-playing game based on servers around the globe that are developed by a mostly Japanese team based in Tokyo. The event is framed as a call to adventure for a player's character from an in-game narrative. The narrative threat is framed as a play on computer bugs, which are consuming the virtual landscape in a manner that is reminiscent of computer glitches corrupting data files. Finally, in support of these multiple narrative threads, the developer appears in three guises. First, he appears as the Wandering Minstrel, a recurring character within the fiction of the universe who is meant to look similar to Producer Naoki Yoshida. Second, as the character of Nonora, who is modeled after the character that Yoshida plays that game as. Finally, Yoshida himself, along with certain members of the development team, are recreated in the game as themselves. All of these elements help to reinforce the idea that Developer and Player are invested equally in the production and reinforcement of the virtual contact zone. This is made explicit in the words of the digital Naoki Yoshida at the end of the event. Here he states, using both the language and tone of the in-game lore "As I'm sure you know, our beloved star once faced a ruinous fate... born of arrogance and pride and vanity; a fate we brought upon ourselves... We shall never again make the mistake that Hydaelyn is ours alone: it is the culmination of the history we have made together, and the future we have yet to share (emphasis added)," (Yoshida 2015). This form of virtual address yet again shares some of the same qualities as the previous three. Using control of the virtual world, the Developer has used the 94 affordances of game mechanics and player familiarity with the lore of the world to make the points that the Developer is listening to the playerbase and it is the mix of both players and development team that create the virtual world. In this sense, these forms of address strongly suggest the formation of a virtual contact zone. The Developer's Role in Dramatistic Acts These modes of addressed above all perform several functions. On the most superficial level, they provide a mode of communication between developer and playerbase, giving the community at large information about the virtual world and current and upcoming changes. As described in the specific examples above, however, the Developer uses these modes of address for different, yet related rhetorical functions in order to create a more integrated community and, in doing so, help establish the virtual contact zone. This is done through the use of Dramatistic Acts in the various modes of address. In textual modes of address, such as the Letter From the Producer, the Developer creates identification between the development team and playerbase. Through symbolic actions, such as apologia, the Developer does the work of negation of the previous order, most explicitly in evoking and rebuking the previous relationship between the development team and 1.0 and the playerbase, mortification by taking on the blame and the work of fixing the game. It is worth noting that it is not until the release and positive reaction to 2.0 that attempts as purification are made in these texts and that is partially why the later letters have a more distanced tone, as the guilt- redemption cycle that was part of this form of address in its context had become resolved. 95 With the streams, we see some similarities in terms of symbolic action. As with the written letters, this form of address was used to establish Identification with playerbase and to take on guilt for failures of past. Post the launch or 2.0, the Dramatic Acts used in the streams have been about reinforcing identification and signaling recommitment to dialogue with playerbase, using formats like the Q&A and referring to the discussion online as a way of continuing that communication between members of the contact zone. This has also been a space to address, along with the more informal text posts discussed earlier in the chapter, smaller events which have required action on the developer's part to address with playerbase. Live events such as the Launch Event in 2013 were very distinctly about purification. It was the culmination of the initial dialogue between Developer and playerbase established in the textual and streaming forms of address and builds up to the moment of mortification and catharsis, signaling purification at the success of 2.0. Subsequent live events have functioned, much like the streams, as a means of reinforcing identification and the instantiation of the contact zone. As noted in the Launch event and acknowledged in continuing forms of address, online games are continuous development and thus require continuous communication and collaboration between developer resources and effort, and player engagement and feedback. In game events like "The Rising" further continue this Dramatistic act by reminding (or for newer players) telling the story of how the covenant between Developer and Player was made and, through the use of game mechanics and in-game lore create a sense of memorial and restate the commitment to the game for older players and communicating those same values to newer players. In creating within the 96 virtual world content that ludically and narratively enacts these dramatic situations. The Developer shows that they are committed as an equal partner in maintaining the social order and, by extension, the virtual contact zone intact. The Developer as Gamer: Addressing the "Fanboy Auteur" in FFXIV As mentioned in Chapter One, Square-Enix replaced Producer Nobuaki Komoto in 2010 following the disastrous release of FFXIV 1.0 with Naoki Yoshida. In his press- release to fans, CEO Yoichi Wada selected Yoshida for reasons in line with corporate and managerial concerns, stating, "Taking over the role of producer and director is Naoki Yoshida, a passionate individual for whom customer satisfaction has always taken top priority. Not only is he one of our Group's most accomplished and experienced members, Naoki Yoshida is also a charismatic leader possessing the skill to bring together and effectively helm a team which encompasses a wide range of responsibilities," (2010). Prior to being selected to be the Director of FFXIV by Wada, Yoshida was the Director of the Dragon Quest: Monster Battle Road series of arcade games and a designer during the pre-production of Dragon Quest X. His other development work in the past was with action-puzzle games, such as the Bomberman series for HudsonSoft. In terms of the industry, he had experience in development, design, and management roles within the industry. At the same time, in his welcome letter to the community as well as in interviews conducted after taking the position of Producer, Yoshida echoed these commitments to improving and rebuilding the game but also spoke of his history as player of MMOGs. In a 2011 press interview, Yoshida notes his lineage as an MMOG player stating: 97 The first game I played was Diablo 1. I then moved on to Ultima Online, Everquest, then Dark Age of Camelot - that was the longest one I've played, actually - also I've tried out World of Warcraft. Recently I've been trying out RIFT. As well as that, I play a lot of free-to-play Asian games as well. I just love online games. (Donaldson, 2011). These framings for the Developer of online games does raise questions in regards to the relationship between Developer and player that are analogous to the relationships between the directors, showrunners, writers, and other figures of production in other media and their fans. In discussing transmedia entertainment franchises, Suzanne Scott uses the term "fanboy auteurs" to describe showrunners who have and or use their cultural cache of fandom to break the traditional barriers between producers of content and their audiences (2012). There are economic advantages to this in that it is useful to have someone who can manage and represent the transmedia texts and their various forms and productions. For fans, there is a more complicated relationship with the fanboy auteur. On the one hand, the identification with audiences and fans gives these creators an affective appeal. On the other, as Scott argues, there is genuine concern that these auteurs could disenfranchise audiences and limit the possibility space of fandom to interpret and transform these media properties in broad directions. This is partially because fanboy auteurs have the "power to demarcate primary and secondary texts," and their affective value to fans as being "one of us" often leads to many fans replicating and reinforcing values on transmedia texts, even as other fans may push back on a creator or showrunner's explanations and interpretations of transmedia texts. There is also a concern that, given that many of the stewards of franchises and transmedia texts are explicitly fanboys that their guidance of media texts 98 will move towards masculine fan interests. Scott calls for a look at how "the fanboy auteur's identity is produced, exploited, and received," (p, 51). Jenkins adds to Scott's arguments about the fanboy auteur (2012), arguing that for transmedia works and franchises, there needs to be a common ground from which fans can interpret and transform the work in various directions. It is still fans who are "both the guarantors of continuity and the generators of multiplicity," (p. 56) in that fans will still value alternative interpretation and transformation of texts regardless of the author and their level of control over transmedia texts. The fanboy auteur, as much as they have the potential to paternalistically control the direction and shape of texts, has in many cases helped highlight the various people who are responsible for the creation of the various texts within a franchise and have helped to uplift other creators working with that property. Jenkins also addresses Scott's concerns about the gendered relationship between fanboy and text by noting that there are a growing number of women who occupy the role of fan auteur and that these imbalances are part of larger structural inequalities in entertainment. It is fair to say, in the case of FFXIV, that the selection of Naoki Yoshida as Producer of FFXIV and to take on the role of Developer within the community was fueled by a corporate culture which values seniority, managerial skills, and which for a variety of other institutional reasons, favors men in these roles. Yoshida also, in many respects, fills in this role as fanboy auteur within the space of online games. The Developer has attempted to address some of the concerns raised by Scott in how he controls authorship and the text of Final Fantasy XIV. Yoshida using his platforms to highlight members of the development team, especially after the content they created 99 was met with praise from the player community. This helps by showing the playerbase the amount of collaboration needed to produce work as well as highlight the creative skills of these members who would be less visible to the community at large. As addressed above, the Live Letters are often used to highlight other team members and give them a platform to talk about their works. One example of a development team member being featured by Yoshida is Natsuko Ishikawa. Ishikawa is a scenario writer who began in 2.0 writing questlines for raids and the main scenario. She created several quests including those tied to the then new Dark Knight Job in the first expansion, Heavensward, in 2015 and has progressed to be the Lead Scenario Writer for the second expansion, Stormblood, released in 2017. With the positive reception of the 2.0 raid quests and, later, with the Dark Knight Job quests, Yoshida has featured Ishikawa in Producer Live Letters as a guest, and she has done interviews at fan and press events, such as PAX East in 2018 (anwyll, 2018). The other factor that complicates these concerns over authorial and interpretive control has to do with the medium in question. Games in general and online games in particular already build in a certain degree of player agency within a space. Players focus on different aspects of the games depending on the motivation for play. While paratextual narrative texts exist, such as Lore Encyclopedias, short stories written by the development team, and lyrics for important boss fight music, the majority of the narrative in within the game itself. This creates a common ground for players interested in continuity and multiplicity of narrative around the game. Players motivated by finding and putting together narrative threads must play the game and overcome the gameplay challenges in them to collect the various narrative threads written into the game. Only 100 then can they begin pulling these narratives together in a coherent continuity, turning the fan activity of stitching narrative threads together in a transmedia text into a meta- game after the gameplay challenges have been overcome. In addition, the virtual world provides spaces for transformative narratives via the activity of roleplay within the virtual world using chat and emote gesture systems designed in the game. Outside of the virtual world, players will use the common ground of the world of FFXIV and its lore to create transformative works that do things like take flesh out the story of their player character or create art that places well-known characters from the game into different contexts, such as "Modern AUs (alternate universes)" or the far future of the game world. Beyond the questions of authorship and interpretation and transformation of narrative elements, the interactivity inherent to games brings with it necessarily more agency on the part of players. Emergent gameplay and novel strategies that the development team did not account for in design are not uncommon to see. Many times the push and pull between designer and playerbase is in judging what player strategies and behaviors are "balanced", i.e. within the intended scope of how players can solve problems within the scope of the tools they have available and which are imbalanced, taking advantage of a system or mechanic that "unfairly" disadvantages players. It is worth noting here that, for one, these value judgements ultimately rest of the Developer, though players may offer pushback if a change removing a strategy is seen as unfair on the part of the Developer and, for another, these judgements become more fraught in online competitive games where the question of balance and intended play become more fraught as players are constantly working on developing novel strategies to win 101 matches, prompting the Developer to see if there is an imbalance in wins with these player-created strategies and developing ways to re-balance the game to keep competition as even as possible. These contentions on a gameplay and interaction level complicate the relationship between Developer and playerbase further. In the case of FFXIV, Yoshida's framing as a fanboy auteur for the game has helped to break the division between game production and playerbase, which aligned well with the shift in corporate strategy following the failure of FFXIV 1.0. While not without moments of controversy and pushback by fans, it is Yoshida's framing of his role as Developer as incorporating his fandom of online games, his management expertise, and his willingness to take responsibility for the game's failures and share the successes with the various members of the development team that have overall seen the Developer's Role within the virtual contact zone as closer to players than had been seen during 1.0. Conclusion These example cases for these types of address exemplify ways in which the developer has highlighted the dramatistic relationship between themselves and players in order to establish accord in ways that are analogous to the conditions present in the contact zone. Of course, one aspect of the Developer as an interlocutor that has gone largely unaddressed is the role that language plays in communication. As noted in the previous chapter, the developer and development team consists mostly of native Japanese speakers, who operate out of offices in Tokyo. With this developer, as with many other development teams, the issue of language and localization plays a large role in how playerbases globally engage with the virtual world. The Next chapter will focus on the role of localization and language as a means of building the contact zone 102 through lore as well as in scaffolding player's abilities to communicate with one another. The chapter will also address efforts by players themselves to localize and translate lore in ways that the Developer has not been able to do so. 103 Figure 2 The Producer Letter LIVE as viewable on NicoNico Douga and Twitch.tv. 104 Chapter Three: Localization, Lore, and the Relationship between Players and the Producer on the Text of the Virtual World Two aspects of the virtual contact zone with the context of games that has not been touched upon so far are the roles of language and text in the virtual world. Language impacts two aspects of the virtual contact zone. For one, players communicate using whatever languages they are proficient in, using whatever affordances are available in the interface and in paratextual elements, both of which will be described in more detail in the next chapter. For another, the world itself is awash in language. That text manifests itself in gameplay elements from user abilities and item names to more narrative elements such as character names, dialogue, and written story and worldbuilding elements. These textual and narrative components, called "lore", play an important role in contextualizing virtual spaces. Lore helps build the virtual world beyond the actual mechanics and interactions within a virtual space. Lore gives users a sense of not just place, but of geography, not time, but of history, and not context for players, but their place within the story of the virtual world. Lore offers players motivation for playing in addition to traditional gameplay motivators such as exploration, achieving, socializing, and defeating enemies or other players (Yee 2006, Bartle 1996) to interact with the world. This chapter looks at the role of localization as a means of contextualizing the virtual world and the virtual contact zone. Final Fantasy XIV is an interesting case study to look at localization because of the tight connection between lore and localization in its production, the role that localization has had on interest in lore, debates between 105 players and the developer surrounding how localization is performed, and how lore is translated to players beyond the scope and reach of the developer. Second, this chapter argues that localization, beyond mere translation, helps to shape the world and hybridize the virtual contact zone with elements of game story, terminology, and other linguistic elements no longer bound to one language (and thus one national or regional identity), but to all participants in the virtual contact zone. Finally, this chapter looks at various examples to show how localization plays a role in creating the virtual contact zone as users compare or create localizations to generate that shared meaning. Translation, Localization, and Audience While language use and translation have been of importance to literary studies for a long time, as popular media has become more global over the last two decades, more attention over the translation and localization of media has emerged. In particular, it is worth looking at the role of translation, the discussion of different translation strategies have emerged, as well as how "translation" has given way to "localization" as the prevailing mode of activity in conveying and presenting media from one culture and language to another. Further complicating the issue is the question of audience and who exactly is the media being localized for and why. While translation as a practice is the key activity in adapting works to other languages, localization has become the defacto term for adapting popular media forms since the translation is not of the text itself, but paratextual elements such as advertising elements. Localization also includes taking the target language and culture into account throughout the process rather than simply translating the text to as close to a literal meaning as possible. Translation of linguistic elements has its own set of challenges, 106 such as balancing maintaining the literal meaning of the original text, translating idiomatic expressions and turns of phrases, jokes, puns, or other non-literal narrative devices in ways that are legible as such to the reader. Localization has to not only keep these considerations in mind when in the process of translation but also consider non- linguistic cultural elements when adapting media to target audiences. Translation studies has shifted in response to both academic literature on the postcolonial as well as a growing interest in the role of power dynamics inscribed within media, ultimately questioning the orthodoxy of "transparent" translations (those comfortable to Anglo-American English native speakers) into English, which comes at the cost of marginalizing the elements which are uniquely that of its original culture. Venuti (2008) describes how literary works, such as Albert Camus, Milan Kundera, Anna Maria Moix, and Ismail Kadere, while from very different nationalities, languages, and literary cultures are reviewed and discussed based on the same standard of "fluency" in translation, based on a common set of standards of English (p. 3-4). This perception of translation as transparent also has a side effect of creating the perception that the author thoughts are fully realized in the text and the translator acts, with a minimal ego to make clear that meaning in the new language. Venuti points out that this model of translation is a fallacy as translators are influenced by time, market interest, and context in creating translations. The perception of transparent translations also does not account for cases where translators work in close conjunction with an author or when the author of a work is also translating the work. Venuti discusses two strategies for translation, "foreignzation" and "domestication". In "foreignization" the aim is to preserve the cultural difference between 107 the source content and the target language/ culture. This is especially important if the subject of the text or the appeal to audiences are in its foreignness. "Domestication" strategies, in contrast, attempt to more fully convert elements of the original work into formats more culturally accessible to the target language and culture. While both strategies are valid, more recent scholarship has called into questions some of the underlying assumptions in localization. Namely, what is meant by the target audience of localization and how one can define such an audience? Game localization has historically employed both strategies to varying degrees, dependent on several factors of the game in question which will be elaborated on further below. Another question that translation studies has looked at is the question of audience. In the case of television localization, Andrea Esser (2016) argues that usually, localization visualizes the audience as a national audience. This visualization of the audience occurs is in spite of the fact that the texts being localized in reality shows such as Top Model and narrative series such as Betty La Fea, have a narrower audience than the imagined nationalized audience and that fans of the format or the show may cross over and watch foreign-localized versions of the same show. Esser then urges a push to look at audience in localization not just at a national or geographic unit, but to consider the specific audience within that localized territory and use that in finding language and cultural translations that resonate with the intended audience, where "familiarity is not space-based and/or where close familiarity and especially nationality are not the explanation for the appeal of a program," (p. 31). Games Localization oftentimes, compared to television localization, paints a broader stroke in its conception of the audience, typically considering "regions" rather than individual 108 nations. Thus, where a program like Top Model may get localized versions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, a game typically gets one English localization that may default to American English or British English. Challenges in the Localization of Videogames and MMORPGs In the age of global entertainment, production companies struggle with the problems of linguistic and cultural translation of media. In the video game industry, in particular, localization has been an ongoing practice since the 1980s as Japanese games became popularized in North America and Europe. There are several challenges video game localization has to overcome in order to adapt titles across regions. Game localization in Translation Studies has typically been recognized as a hybrid between Audio-visual translation and software localization (O'Hagan and Mangiron 2013). On the one hand, localizing text and audio take up a bulk of the work since those need to be translated and then localized for the target country and language. With voice work, in particular, localization teams aim at providing analogs to accents, speaking and writing styles, and matching genre conventions in the target language. On the other hand, elements such as interfaces and inputs have to localized as well. Games which are aimed at a global market (and budgeted accordingly) are localized by the developer or by a subsidiary publisher in the target country or region. Game localization shares the challenges of other media translation and localization, by needing to adapt narrative, dialogue, informational text, etc. Game localization also has to deal with some of the issues of software internationalization, that is, the process of making the actual mechanics and interface accessible to an audience of end-users. Videogame localization poses several challenges for developers such as translation of 109 the text, translation non-verbal cues and animation, and translating software elements such as interfaces and input schema. Video game text translation has its own set of challenges, as described above, with its balance of maintaining the literal meaning of the original text with making non- literal narrative devices culturally legible. Games have utilized both "domestication" and "foreignization" strategies in localization, with neither approach seeming to be better, at least from an economic and developer standpoint. For example, the rhythm game such as Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, from 2005 was domesticated to American audiences as Elite Beat Agents in 2006. Aside from changing the songs used from popular Japanese pop songs to English-language pop, the publisher changed the main characters from a culturally legible group, the ouendan (応援団, literally 'cheering/support squad') to an Americanized "Men in Black" style federal agent in black suits and sunglasses (Mandiberg 2012; Stern 2007). Similarly, many versions of Tetris, while the game itself is an abstract puzzle game with no narrative elements, utilize Russian imagery and music, most famously the use of a chiptune version of Korobeiniki, an 1861 Russian poem turned folk song (Shaver 2017), in order to highlight the game's Russian origins and creator Alexey Pajitnov. In addition, while localization teams have tried to exercise caution when translating cultural elements, there have been instances in the past where North American localizers attempted to "Americanize" foreign elements to a degree where character names and even appearances have been altered. In perhaps one of the most extreme examples of this over-localization, the 1996 PlayStation Game Shin Megami Tensei: Persona changed the Japanese high school setting and characters into an American high school, giving the characters anglicized names, and even changing 110 the race of one of the characters to a young black man. Localization teams working on Japanese games are more likely these days to preserve Japanese elements, only localizing certain elements that require extensive knowledge of Japanese pop culture that the average North American player may not know. A recent example of this was the 2016 game Danganronpa V3 where a joke originally about the Tokyo Giants and Hanshin Tigers baseball teams was changed by its localization team into a joke about the New England Patriots and the New York Giants, American football teams (Schrier 2017). Localization adds upon these challenges beyond translation by reconsidering non- linguistic cues. Localization teams need to be sensitive to cultural norms of visual communication, especially in terms of imagery or actions that players can perform or interact with. Character actions, such as body language of avatars, may be inappropriate or even offensive in the target language's culture and may need to be changed on a technical level to remodel and reanimate sequences (DiMarco 2007). One example of this was with the recent version of Mario Kart (Dayus 2017). A character' performed a physical gesture, in this case, "raising a clenched fist while the other arm holds the raised bicep", which was meant as a playful competitive gesture. However, because of concerns that the gesture could be interpreted as a similar vulgar gesture in certain European countries, Italy in particular, the emote was changed. For all video games being adapted to China, certain enemies, such as skeletons, have to be changed due to legal restrictions in depicting skeletons in Chinese media because of cultural norms. 111 These considerations in language and other aspect of content have meant that localization is oftentimes grouped with concerns about accessibility, such as making gameplay features accessible for those with physical disabilities or colorblindness, or changing user interface elements to make them usable for a variety of languages which may construct longer or shorter sentences than the base language, or understand non- linguistic symbols differently, among other issues. One example can be found in the input systems on PlayStation consoles. In Japanese markets, the 〇 and ✕ symbols on the controller are commonly understood to mean "OK/Accept" and "Cancel", respectively and games are thus programmed with that convention in mind. In North American and European markets, however, the opposite configuration is used as the symbols have a different convention of usage. In addressing the issue of audience, Costales (2016) ran a study of regional Spanish video game players that suggests, similar to Esser (2016)'s argument about television localization, conceiving an audience in video game localization is more complicated than simply conceiving or a regional or national audience. It may be, even in markets where English is not the primary language, the ubiquity of English as a lingua franca in global media have made foreignization strategies popular and/or that for video game players with access to the Internet, they can turn to English language websites for information and official details. While the findings are not necessarily generalizable to the game playing audiences as a whole, Costales notes that his findings suggest that perhaps "the localization of video games into a specific market is becoming more complex due to the influence of the global on the local." The multimodal nature of 112 games, as well as the globalized nature of contemporary popular culture, have perhaps shifted audience expectations towards code-switching from a native tongue to English. The last major challenge to video game localization is the logistical challenge. Localization is often an afterthought in the development cycles. Many games are translated by one or two individuals and localization teams may consist of less than a dozen people. Oftentimes localization is not done by the developer or even a regional office of the publisher, but by contract firms, which may not necessarily specialize in video game localization. With the amount of text that needs to be translated and localized, this can lead to production flow issues and to typos, minor mistranslations, or sometimes, overlooked text. The work in translating and localizing games is treated more importantly because a poor localization does not only make understanding the game's story and lore difficult or impossible but can also affect the ability for players of the target language from understanding gameplay mechanics, making playing the game difficult if not impossible (Fahey 2017). Thus many titles receive either poor localizations or are not localized at all. A publisher may decide, if they feel there isn't enough of an audience for a title outside of the domestic market, it may not create a localization at all. In these cases, especially when it turns out the developer may have miscalculated, fan translation and localization may emerge as a means of closing the gap, especially in regions that normally don't get attention in the larger games market, such as Latin America, and the Mideast. These fan translations tend to operate in spaces such as fan-subbing which has been looked at in Translation Studies (Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez 2006) with distribution within the contemporary media law landscape (Müller 2014). 113 Live service games, such as MMORPGs, have an additional set of challenges when it comes to localization. With a few exceptions (Heimberg 2006), there is little academic discussion as to the unique challenges of localizing such games. The fact that live service games require constant maintenance and the development of regularly produced content over a long period of time creates new challenges that are unique from other forms of video game localization. First is the fact that players who speak different languages play simultaneously, even if sequestered into different regional "servers." The simultaneous release of content across various regions requires localization teams to release content simultaneously as well. Unlike localization for traditional video games, where delays between different regional versions are common, live service game developers need to ensure every supported localization is ready for release simultaneously throughout the lifespan of the game, which can be anywhere from several years to decades. Thus, it is common to have closer integration of localization teams with the developer itself to facilitate relatively quick turnover of content production and localization. These localization teams work in tandem with the developer and each other to ensure that all content including quest text, item descriptions, and other lore and narrative elements of the content being released is ready to launch simultaneously. The amount of material that needs to be translated for an MMORPG can be daunting. Heimburg notes that an older game, Asheron's Call, contained about 350,000 words with about 15-20,000 more words added in additional monthly content (p. 138). In Final Fantasy XIV's case, English Localization Lead Michael Christopher "Koji" Fox 114 commented on the amount of translation needed for the game's first expansion content released in mid-2015. "We receive text from not only the scenario team, but also various other teams, and we’re constantly working to perfect the text right up until the last minute. It’s constantly a fight against time. For the expansion, we translated roughly 15,000,000 words between eight people in 2.5 months. Part way through we were concerned we wouldn’t finish, so we had help from people of other project’s teams." (2016). Heimburg states that the text displayed to players is not the only text that has to be considered, but questions of what text input players are allowed to use things such as character or item naming, or in communication with other players. Games which attempt to circumnavigate around issues of text communication, such Phantasy Star Online, which uses pictographs for player communication, have questions to address such as the specificity and universality of symbols and even the problem of players using too many symbols at once, causing clutter and noise in the communication (p. 138). Heimburg adds, interactive text that players see, such as when receiving an item, has to be programmed in. Specific item names are coded such that scripted phrases such as "You receive the Sword +1" are designated within the code as "You receive the $ITEM". Localized issues such as gendered language, as in French can complicate issues, necessitating further "meta-language" to be coded into nouns, usually by tagging words with markers such as a type of noun (pronoun, name, place) and gender (male, female, neuter). This degree of specificity underlies the point that localization needs to be considered very early in the process of MMORPG development, since this meta-linguistic programming, among other tools in implementing localization to players, works better the earlier in development it is implemented (pp. 148-149). 115 While much of the translation work is based in text, which is relatively easy to process and translate, there is also voiced content, such as in cutscenes, which must not only be translated, but voice acted in the target languages which further complicates the organizational hurdles faced by MMORPG localization. Finally, Localization teams have to address accessibility concerns, such as changing user interfaces to accommodate languages that may require more space in their writing, such as English or other languages which use an alphabet compared to Japanese. Aside from organizing and setting up localization teams, developers must also decide how players who may speak different languages can communicate with one another. One way to deal with this issue can be to segregate players by servers based on language or region. Another is to develop chat systems that allow players who speak different languages to communicate. One early example was Systran, an autotranslation feature added to Ultima Online. Another method was used by Phantasy Star Online, which allowed players to communicate by selecting generic phrases from a menu as well as draw pictographs to other players. Localization is thus a complicated process, usually performed by a small team expected to manage many hundreds of thousands of words of text, sometimes repeatedly over the course of years in the case of online games. Furthermore, localization has to also work across media, such as vocal performance and animation. Finally, localization has to manage quality control as well as make decisions over how heavily they will alter content to be accessible to the target audience. Localization is, in a sense, one important aspect of creating a shared understanding present within a contact zone. 116 Localization as an Aspect of the Contact Zone Localization presents an interesting complication to the conception of the contact zone. Whereas the original context for the context zones relies on a dominant colonizing force (which reflects itself through language, among other elements), localization is a strategy that is meant to bring about written content to as broad an audience as possible, sometimes rewriting or translating elements in ways more intelligible to audiences than literal translation. One reason that translation, and more precisely, localization matter in the conception of the virtual contact zone has to do with the centrality of forms of communication between languages within the zone. In Pratt’s original model, we see a mix of indigenous speakers, translators of Spanish and Indigenous origin, the adaptation of terms from one language to another, and the development of pidgins, creoles, and hybrid forms of linguistic communication. Localization thus serves as one of the ways, indeed the most obvious way that communication and common understanding is developed in the virtual contact zone. In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, the localization process is intertwined with the production of lore. The process of worldbuilding and lore is important in creating a virtual world. Lore acts both the narrative premise for the virtual world as well as the means for a shared base of knowledge for all of the players within the virtual world. Thus lore and its localization are important not just for design and economic reasons, but also to help create a shared community that members of the contact zone can enter and embrace. 117 Lore and the Construction of Narrative in Games Virtual Worlds, by and large, rely on narrative techniques to help build the fiction of their world. In particular, these storytelling devices usually referred to as "lore" or "world building" enable, often alongside more traditional embedded stories, for players to invest in the virtual world by creating context and points of identification. In addition, these games can utilize paratexts such as official websites, published books, forums, live streams, and live appearances to further strengthen narratives built into the virtual world, in line with the shift to transmedia storytelling in media at large as well as understanding how players in virtual worlds create and understand narrative (Atarama- Rojas and Menacho-Gíron 2018; Rish 2014, Jenkins 2004). These narrative elements matter because the majority of time and effort spent by players and localizers is in understanding and, in the latter case, translating these narrative elements to players. This effort in creating points of identification and story with narrative elements is critical in the creation of the virtual contact zone. While this section will not try to summarize narratology in game studies, it is important to note the importance of reading/decoding narrative as a human activity and the role that narrative plays in digital games. For readers/players/users, narrative is the means of identification with both the story and the world. There are several similar models of narrative structure that are useful to conceptualize the form in which narratives are constructed by authors and decoded by readers. In particular Young (2007) identifies Chatman's (1990, 1978) model as one that is useful in the context of looking at the narrative structure of games. While the model developed by Chatman was primarily aimed at film, there is some use in constructing an analogy between the 118 ways audiences of film and users in a virtual world find and construct narratives. The most striking difference is in the affordances games allow players to access narrative elements in a non-linear manner and across different points of space, effectively having a more obvious and direct hand in collecting and decoding narrative. Chatman's model supposes a few key assumptions on narratives. One, a narrative is fundamentally communication (1978, p. 31). Two, the communication in a narrative is not directly between authors and readers, but through implied authors and readers embedded in the narrative, from which the live author or reader imagines as they construct or decode the work, respectively (p. 32). Narrative is itself divided into two parts: story and discourse. Story is the part of narrative that contains elements such as plot, characters, and events, what Chatman defines as "content" (p. 19). The second part of narrative is the discourse, or expression, of the narrative. This includes elements such as structure and the means by which the work tells the story, or "expression." While Young (2007) uses this model to theorize building agents to construct and deliver narrative in a virtual world system, Chatman's model is also useful as a means of looking at how the medium of games allow for the construction and reading of narratives by developers and players. The act of making sense of narrative components as they come across them, temporally and/or within the narrative space is a key activity for building investment in the virtual world. This sense-making activity is partially why transmedia texts rely heavily on these interpretive activities by readers in order to construct narratives. Virtual worlds are further advantaged as texts in that they rely more on discursive elements rather than a temporally locked story (Chatman 1990). Virtual worlds allow players to create 119 emergent narratives and make connections, both inside the virtual world and through paratextual elements such as published books, websites, forums, etc. Like other artistic media, games utilize various narrative techniques in order to tell stories during and throughout gameplay. While games such as Tetris or Backgammon do not require what Tracy Fullerton (2014) describes as "Dramatic Elements", most games include some form of narrative. These forms of narrative help to create player investment in games in various ways. They can create a context for the conflict, such as in chess. Games with characters -- either created for the game, such as Mario or made by the player before play, such as in Dungeons and Dragons -- create identification between the player and their avatars. Games can have plots, structured similarly to other audiovisual media that players uncover as they play through levels, chapters, or scenarios. As a virtual world, many games utilize space to tell narratives, either plot-related or backstory elements that provide context, via objects in the world and the interaction between player and object. Sometimes this is in the form of written text or audio narration, such as diaries or audio recordings "left behind" by non-player characters. Other times, art design, lighting, and the number and type of objects created for a space has its own narrative, much in the same way mise en scéne in a film is used. Finally, players can receive story information through informational text, such as in the descriptions of items discovered in the world. This type of information in another way for players to learn about the space they inhabit and to further gain context and investment in the narrative of the game. One additional advantage to the use of tools for discourse in virtual worlds is that this also gives players tools to create their own narratives through the discursive 120 practice of role-playing. Emergent behavior and the creation of emergent narratives using the discursive tools available has long been a major activity of users in virtual worlds (Curtis 1992; Dibbel 1995; Taylor 2001; Pearce 2010). Lore and Localization in FFXIV Final Fantasy XIV's localization process differs from the methods discussed earlier in that the developer works with an internal localization team within the same organizational space rather than outsource localization to various regional offices or contractors. In addition, however, FFXIV's approach to localization is notable with regard to the creation of the virtual contact zone in how closely localization plays a role in the development of narrative through discursive means of expression available to the developer. In a sense, localization is part of the development process much earlier on and, because of the focus on language, plays a deep role in building that world. These approaches contribute to the construction of the virtual contact zone by not only creating a system for simultaneous content development but also by increasing the interest in the world's narrative across different regions of players. The localization team estimates that each patch, which is released in 3-4 month cycles between expansions, has around 100,000 words of text that needs to be localized across each of the supported languages. Expansions, which are large chunks of content that expand on the virtual world released every two years along with the patches, are a much larger localization task. According to Fox in a Live Letter, "For the expansion, we translated roughly 15,000,000 words between eight people in 2.5 121 months. Part way through we were concerned we wouldn’t finish, so we had help from people of other project’s teams," (Cherzy 2016). While the developer has a team focused on writing story and lore content, localization actually plays a significant role in the narrative development process. This is due in large part to the fact that the English Localization Lead, Michael Christopher "Koji" Fox, is also part of the team of writers responsible for Lore, headed by Banri Oda. Fox's role along with the importance of English as a lingua franca have influenced the importance of localization and the cohesiveness of the virtual contact zone. While the scripts for story elements are written in Japanese initially, the role of English in some of the terminology, due to the game's genre of high fantasy, calls for input by the English Localization team. The long tenure of the localization lead and his work on both the previous MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI, as well as localizing and writing content for the 1.0 version of the game also means that more trust is placed on localization as a source of narrative generativity within the virtual world. Fox, in a 2013 interview with the press, acknowledge the advantages of this organization for the localization team: "The greatest thing about being with the development team and being in Japan – and not just an outsourced translator that's a couple thousand miles away from the team that gets files via a middle man that knows nothing about the game – being actually there…. I sit right next to the main planner. When we get new quests or a new character I can just go right to them and say "what type of character is this? What happened to him before the quest? What happens to him after?" that way I can figure out who the character is and base a characterization off of that." (Fusionx 2013) There are three aspects to the localization: story content, story elements, and non-narrative text. Story content here includes the "main scenario", the term used by 122 the Developer to indicate player quests which are part of a single narrative, side quests, and all of the dialogue needed for all the non-player characters that are part of those quests as well as incidental dialogue for other NPCs. Aside from quest text as described above, the localization team translates story elements such as different types of small repeatable quests players can accomplish. Fox has mentioned that these are the parts of the game's narrative he and the English localization team as a whole have the most latitude and creative freedom in. This has also led to an increased interest in in-game narrative and lore, particularly in the story elements not directly related to quests. Quests such as F.A.T.E.s (timed battles which appear in the world and players can work together to complete) and Levequests (individual quests which can be repeated) were originally written with very spartan, functional text. In addition to narrative content, the localization team has also had a lot of freedom in designing player titles, small bits of text players can append to their character name, and achievements (small goals players can achieve for items and titles). The localization team was also largely responsible for the creation of paratexts such as a printed Lore book which was released in English first before being released in Japanese. Finally, the localization team also translates non-narrative textual elements such as support desk text as well as the slides which appear in the Live Letters. While the answers and announcements in the live letter are translated to the supported languages in a follow-up post as described in the last chapter, it is notable that the slides themselves are only in Japanese and English. 123 A concrete example of the impact of localization on development involves the creation of NPC names, whose names are based on different languages. In an interview, Fox notes, "NPCs as well are actually a collaboration between all of the localization team members. For example, the Hyur and Miqo’te names for NPCs are all done by the English team, the Elezen names are all conceived by the French team, the Lalafell names come from the Japanese team, and the Roegadyn names are a joint effort between the German and English teams and so, again, you have all these aspects of the game that are being created by not just the Japanese side, but also by the localization side as well," (Nelva 2013). While the focus on localization has been on localization in English, it is worth talking about the process for the other two officially supported languages: French and German. Like the English localization team, French and German teams are based in Tokyo and have similar access to scripts, writers, and other parts of the development team focused on creating narrative and textual elements. As discussed by Fox in a 2013 interview, however, the translation process differs in a few ways. First, localization focus on different parts of the work to translate which leads to situations where all teams have translated different parts of the script, for example, at different times. Second, all of the localization teams internally communicate in English. While this is a side effect of English's role as a corporate lingua franca, it has also been useful as a means of keeping all teams in accord. That said, as we will discuss below, the French and German teams take fewer liberties with the localization than the English version with regards to including pop culture references and other elements. 124 These aspects seem to suggest that English, both because of its presence as a common language among localizers, and the role of English localization in shaping scripts both by vetting borrowed English in the Japanese script and by shaping certain discursive elements such as quest text, has a privileged position among the localizations. This perception will play a role when looking at player perceptions of localization. Community Perception of Localization and Lore Players have sometimes expressed frustration with the English localized version of the game. Two complaints, in particular, stand out. One, there are complaints arguing the English language material favors more florid language and word choice at the expense of clarity. Second is what is felt to be an overuse of pop cultural references in the non-dialogue quest text, as described above. These sorts of complaints are not an uncommon phenomenon among fans and developers, especially with Japanese- developed games. In some cases, players wish to address what they see as a change in the nuance of language that differs from the original intent, with some more extreme fans even feeling that the localization is an out and out mistranslation. Table 1 is an example of such a comparison made by a player and posted on one of the main paratextual sources of information about the game (agneslynd 2015). With a disclaimer that the literal translation "is not how I see the translation team should be handling the dialogue," they show direct comparisons between a character's dialogue in Japanese, a literal English translation, and localized English. 125 Similar to this approach, players will also look at other localizations for comparison, in the case of FFXIV, its German and French localization as well as the more recent version in Korean and Chinese, to a lesser extent. Players who primarily play in French or German note in community forums such as Reddit that those localizations are drawn directly from the Japanese version, which uses more plain language compared to the English version, and is itself translated more literally in the target language. Another result of this is that the English localization tends to include more humor in its writing. In regards to the second point, it is that use of pop culture in the English language localization that sticks out compared to Japanese or the other localizations. One example of this is a quest where players team up to fight a giant crab named, in all version of the game, Cancer. The name of the quest in the main four languages (translated to English) are: “Usurper of Dead Faces: Cancer” (Japanese), “It’s Not Lupus” (English), “Challenge: Cancer, the Death Helmet” (French), and “Crab XXL” (German). While all four titles, to varying degrees, describe the nature of the quest, the English version doubles as a reference to the TV show House M.D. Players have complained that this use of pop-cultural references broke the immersive experience of being in the virtual world, despite the fact these references are mostly non-diegetic text in nature. A case study which serves as a good lens for looking at the relationship within the contact zone and localization can be seen by community reaction to how the developers localized a key moment within the game. For players to progress and unlock content, they must participate in "Main Scenario Quests", story-focused quests that 126 create a common narrative of the player as the "Warrior of Light" which help non-player characters as they travel around the game world. As they do so, they form relationships with non-player characters and these interactions as well as discursive elements such as interactive objects and side conversations with NPCs not directly related to these quests help flesh out the nature of these characters' relationships with players. In one such set of quests, a character that the player has come to know closely for a long time (for players who have been playing since the release of 2.0, someone they've known for almost two years) is killed in a dramatic moment. The dialogue surrounding the death of this character, Haurchefant Greystone, as well as his last words bring the storyline the players are involved into focus, solidifying who the main villains are and raising the dramatic stakes. As such, players as a community scrutinized this dialogue as well as the nature of the character's admiration and affection for the Warrior of Light that all players participate in. Players looking at the different localizations looked back at previous quests with the character of Haurchefant and discovered what they felt to be a change in characterization in the English version compared to others. Players noted that the English localization erased some of the more overtly romantic and sexual subtext with Haurchefant's appreciation of the Warrior of Light (The Player). Players went back to previous interactions between the Player and the character to show that this element to the relationship was written into the script. Some players went as far as to complain the English localization changed what was a clear attraction Haurchefant had for the player to just subtext. Players going back to these noticed several changes to the localization. Table 2 is another comparison of quest text looking at the difference in Japanese, 127 Literal English, and Localized English. This particular quest the table draws from became the center of controversy among players regarding what liberties the English localization team was making in their translation. In addition to the omissions in dialogue from the English localization, certain other changes were made, such as removing reaction shots by the player being taken aback by the more forward remarks and some high angle shots of Haurchefant gesticulating when he gets excited. Of course, as with any discussion it is worth noting that the playerbase was not unified in that opinion, with some preferring the less overt version of dialogue the English team went with, as it made the character both less creepy and less overtly comedic, particularly in light of the dramatic turn the character makes in the recent expansion. As one user on a forum put it, “I prefer NA Haurchefant TBH. He still totally wanted me to be his pony but he had a better sense of boundaries,” (flidget 2015). To support this argument, players went on official forums and other online communities. In many cases, they offered literal translations of Japanese, French, and German into English. This also tended to show that while French and German scripts tend to hew close to the Japanese script, the relative freedom the English localization team created a divergence in how the relationship between the player and Haurchefant was characterized. Table 3 shows an example of the difference between Japanese, English, and German takes on localization Regarding the German localization, for example, one user began: "So, three things that really stand out to me in these scenes: 1. HAURCHEFANT STOP BEING ROMANTIC. 2. First thing Haurchefant says makes him sound like a fucking puppy who just found a stick and I laughed really hard. 128 3. EDMONT CRIES SO MUCH FUCKING LOUDER IN GERMAN FUCK EVERYTHING Also, kind of an interesting thing: the German team was not shy about the blatant Catholicism references like the English team was. The Archbishop is called the Pope. The Vault is called the Archbasilica, which usually refers to the official seat of the Pope in real life." (whenarrowssing 2015). The controversy surrounding this apparent discrepancy in characterization became a matter for the Developer to communicate with players about in late 2015. In a special live letter held at the G-STAR 2015 conference in Busan, South Korea to promote the recently released Korean version of FFXIV (FF14Sokuhō; Mainai 2015; Ishii 2015), Yoshida and the development team were asked about the differences between the Japanese and Korean version of Haurchefant. Yoshida responded that this was due to the fact the Korean team used the English localization as their base script rather than the Japanese. This change in base scripts is what has led to the discrepancy. Similar to other moments of communication and mortification, Yoshida took the time to apologize for the confusion and to explain how this was being addressed within the localization teams. Yoshida's apology was followed up on the English-speaking side of the playerbase by a forum post by one of the English localization team members, John Crow (2015), who explained: "In the Famitsu interview, [Producer Naoki Yoshida] further clarifies that these changes were made due to LOC team concerns that Haurchefant's behavior might be interpreted as problematic. However, these changes to Haurchefant's characterization were made without consulting the relevant parties, and as a result, the JP and EN/FR/DE playerbases came to perceive Haurchefant differently, culminating with these significantly different cutscenes in patch 2.3. 129 When videos illustrating the differences between the JP and the EN/FR/DE cutscenes were posted online, some fans spoke out in protest. After internal discussion, it was decided that efforts would be made by the EN, FR, and DE LOC teams to bring Haurchefant's characterization gradually closer to that of the JP Haurchefant over the course of future updates. Moreover, the development team enacted a new policy that all cutscenes would be fundamentally the same, so that users across all regions would have more similar experiences." It is worth noting here that Crow follows a similar address to that of Yoshida and other members of the development team in taking responsibility for what was perceived as a breach of player trust and outlining how steps will be taken to fix these errors, as well as show a desire to be reintegrated as equal embers of the contact zone by showing that they understand their role as developers. "Over the months since, we have taken many measures to ensure that similar problems do not arise in the future, and I am proud to say that the LOC team works more closely with the scenario and cutscene teams than ever before." "Can we do more? Absolutely. FFXIV wouldn't be the game it is today if we were the type to settle for "good enough." Everyone who works on this project knows full well that we must always strive to be better than we were. And so we do, each and every day." "I don't expect everyone to agree with our decisions. Quite frankly, I am glad to see so many fans willing to voice their opinions, because it shows how invested you are in our story─that you care as much as we do. However, I do hope that everyone understands that these decisions are not made lightly─that we carefully consider the consequences of our actions." This case study illustrates some of the issues and concerns players have towards localization in FFXIV. Language plays a large role in creating a shared sense of understanding of the larger contact zone. Players have a deep investment in the lore of virtual worlds, both in the content of the story as well as how the story is told. Lore thus 130 plays a large role in how players become invested in the contact zone and issues of language and localization can become sticking points for the communication between players and the developer as discrepancies in localization cause confusion between players who opt for different versions`. Players will also look to see at differences between different localizations, especially if they notice significant discrepancies between versions. The developer, as interlocutor, then must decide how to address these issues both with players as well as internally as an organization themselves. The last element of localization and Lore that this chapter will talk about is where members of the contact zone have made attempts to localize for languages and regions that are not officially supported by the developer. Through fan labor, players have made attempts to create more investment for players who do not speak any of the supported languages natively. These projects also show how players contribute to and create a broader and more integrated community of players across languages. Community Attempts at Localization: The Lore in Spanish Project Separate from discussions and debates about the accuracy or authenticity of localized dialogue in the primary languages supported, there have been community created projects to expand the narrative elements of FFXIV to non-supported languages. Part of this stems from the playerbase that lives outside of the supported regions as well as those who may live in a supported region (such as North America) but speaks a language different than English or French as a primary language. One of the most visible of these projects is the Final Fantasy XIV Lore en Español project. This project aims at condensing and translating parts of the main story 131 and scenario of the game into Spanish. Originally started by a player in 2015, similar efforts have emerged and translated excerpts of the story and lore have been produced and shared over platforms such as Scribd, Google Docs, and YouTube. One example has been done through YouTube videos summarizing the main stories and characters in the game. One member of the project, JoXeus, created a series of text documents that detail the story of the FFXIV 2.0 and its events. Later on, he produced a 9-part YouTube video series that details, videos of about 15 to 20 minutes in length, the story of Heavensward, the game's first expansion, released in 2015 (2016). These videos utilize promotional images from sources such as the official web page and screenshots from the game to illustrate characters, locations, and key events. Another user, Edoran, has more recently taken up the task of translating the story of Stormblood, the game's second expansion (2017). In addition to these Lore summary videos, users such as JoXeus have more traditional gameplay videos which don't strictly fall under fan localization of lore but are conducted in Spanish and offer players insight into the game. As an example, one series titled "De Caza" shows off a specific gameplay feature, open world hunts, and explains how these hunts work in Spanish. Another example of the organization of the project is on Mediavida, a general Spanish-language forum for various fandoms. Within the FFXIV community, there are listings of Spanish language resources for players. Along with thread by players looking for groups, players also go through the process of answering questions asked by players, translating news, announcements, and events into Spanish, and aggregating information about the game and its lore in Spanish, such as the examples above. 132 Along with these projects that have focused primarily on summarizing events, such as the main storyline that players go through in the game, some members of the project have directly translated certain transmedia works related to FFXIV. One example is the set of short stories, "Tales from the Dragonsong War", which was published on the FFXIV website in 2015 after the release of the first expansion, Heavensward. These short stories focused on expanding the world building and characterization that was only touched upon in the in-game narrative. As primarily text- based, the lore in the Spanish community decided to directly translate those texts rather than summarize the events. These translations have been received favorably by the Latin American community of players, many of whom have expressed frustration that while Spanish is a widely spoken language, because of the regions where Square-Enix has officially localized the game, languages such as French and German took priority over Spanish. Aside from primarily Spanish language sites such as Mediavida, information about Spanish language material can be found on both the Official forums and on the FFXIV subreddit, a popular unofficial forum for players. The main sentiments that many players interested in Spanish Language materials have expressed is that, for one, having materials in Spanish is engaging even if they speak English and, for another, it is very useful to introduce friends who do not speak English into the game and get them invested in the game beyond the basic mechanics and gameplay. This project of fan translation serves as a case study to show how players can have agency in how the community is created and maintained. It is also an acknowledgment that in a global media ecosystem, no one entity can constrain nor 133 accommodate every possible cultural and linguistic background of its audience. Thus, if there is enough interest, the audience can participate in activities of localization in the service of maintaining the virtual contact zone. Conclusion The original conception of the contact zone was founded on a context of colonization that, for good or ill, necessitates several systems to translate and communicate across its members in a variety of languages. The virtual contact zone, such as Final Fantasy XIV, has relied on localization as the mechanism through which the linguistic elements of the virtual world, such as messages by the developer, client languages and user interfaces, and most importantly lore and storytelling are communicated to players. In this way, Localization is a key process for instantiating the virtual contact zone, creating a shared understanding among players. That said, decisions made by the developer with regards to localization have not always been fully accepted and, similar to the patterns of communication by the developer in other contexts, there has been a willingness to make changes and remain in open communication with the playerbase. In addition, members of the virtual contact zone can also participate in this localization project, filling in for places that the developer lacks the time and the resources to localize. This is valuable work, especially since the actual number and geographic distribution of players go far beyond supported languages and territories. The next chapter will examine player behavior within the virtual world and in paratextual environments to understand the role that game mechanics play in to create 134 a common language and structure of communication in the virtual contact zone. It will look at how players perceive other player communities and the role of the game client and game mechanics in creating a common understanding and maintaining the virtual contact zone. 135 Table 1: Comparison of Japanese, Literal English and localized English dialogue of the character Midgardsormr in the quest “黙約の塔へ”/”The Rising Chorus” Japanese Literal English English Localization ほう、汝も「超える力」を持つか・・・。幻体ごときでは、敵わぬのも道理よ。 So you too possess the Echo. That is why the phantom form cannot win over you. By Her gifts has thou earned a moment's reprieve. 然らば、我と引き合わせたのも、ハイデリンの意志か。問おう・・・汝は何故、ここへ参った？ In that case, it is Hydaelyn's will that we shall converse. Tell me, why are you here? Speak, mortal, and I shall listen. [PC speaks to Midgardsormr] 確かに、北天の星を燃やすは、我が一族の猛き咆哮。進軍を告げる、鬨の声だ。 This is true, the star in the northern skies burns with the valorous roar of my kin. This is the battlecry, calling to advance. Guided by a star...? Heh heh heh. 一族が向かうは、イシュガルド・・・。畏れを忘れ、罪を犯したヒトの棲処。 Their destination is Ishgard, home of the people who have forgotten fear and have sinned. My people have heard the song. Ishgard shall burn. [PC looks agitated] これは報復よ。イシュガルドの民は、己が罪から目を背けた。その罪こそが、尽きることない戦の火種。 This is retribution! The people of Ishgard are blind to their sins. Their sins demand battle without end. Sons must answer for their fathers' misdeeds. 136 そればかりか、あの者どもは今、再び罪を犯そうとしておる。故に、我が一族は咆哮をとどろかせたのであろう。 And yet more, they want to sin again. This is why my kin roars. We do not forget. We do not forgive. [PC shakes head in disagreement] 進軍を止めろと講うか。超える力を宿せど、所詮はヒトよ。それは、叶わぬ願いでろう。 You bid me to stop the war? You might possess the Echo, but you're just a human. I cannot grant such wish. Seven children did I sire. One now singeth of retribution. 我は、先の咆哮に応え、微睡から目覚めたに過ぎぬ。咆哮を上げたるは我にあらず、我が七の子のいずれかよ。 I have awoken to answer to the roar for it was not me who roared, but one of my seven sons. I rise to join in the chorus... イシュガルドの民は、己が罪を悔い改めぬというのに、何故、我が子とその眷属に、報復を止めようと命じられよう。かの地が焦土と化し、民が死に絶えようとも、因果応報に過ぎぬ。 As Ishgard doesn't want to repent, my child and their people will not delay the retribution. The land shall burn, their people shall die, the justice will be done. Thou art powerless to silence us, mortal. Yet thou shalt not live to labor in vain. Thy reprieve is at an end. [Light protects PC from Midgardsormr's influence] その光・・・光の加護か！ハイデリンめ、超える力を持つ者にさらなる力をあたえようとは。 That light... You protect him! Hydaelyn, you bestow more power on this one, who already bears the Echo! Hmph. Trickery is thy shield. This frail, ignoble creature is not gifted, but chosen... まさか、特異の者なのか？星よ・・・この者に力を貸せと、我に願うのか！ Could it be, you think him special? Hydaelyn, you wish me to grant him power? Hearken to me, Hydaelyn! I remember... and I consent. [The light vanishes] 137 よかろう。ならば、このミドガルズオルムが、汝を試そうではないか！ Very well. Then I shall test you! Fear not, mortal... I shall not harm thee... [Orange light pierces the PC and dispels the protection of Light] 汝を貫いたのは「竜の爪」。我が力によりて、ハイデリンのあたう、光の加護を封じる楔 The Dragonclaw has pierced you. By my power, it now locks away the blessing of light given by Hydaelyn. Heh heh heh. Mayhap thou thinkest me an oathbreaker? もっとも、星の光は陰りを見せておった。我が爪なくとも、いずれ消え失せていたやもしれぬがな。 Thus the light has also cast a shadow. Perhaps, even without my claw the light would grow dim one day. Thou art mistaken. If thou comest to harm, it shall be by another's hand, not mine. 我は、かつてハイデリンと契りの交わした。故に、その加護を受けてる汝を、くびり殺すのは控えよう。 I made a promise to Her. And so I shall not take your life. I did but strip thee of thy mistress's feeble blessing. だが、汝はヒト。イシュガルドの民のように、愚かな罪を犯すやもしれぬ。我が汝を見限れば、拾った命はないと思えな。 However, you're a human. Like people of Ishgard, you're capable of a foolish crime. Do not think I spare your life for nothing. Thou didst profit much by Her grace, but no more. [Midgardsormr creates an avatar of himself] ・・・我が幻にして、我が化身。今より、汝とともにゆく。 This is my apparition, my avatar. From now on, it will go with you. The convenant binds me to thee. 化身の目は、すなわち我が目・・・。化身の耳は、すなわち我が耳・・・。光の加護を失した汝が、何を為すか見届けよう。 The avatar's eyes are my eyes. The avatar's ears are my ears. I will see what you can accomplish without the blessing of Light. I shall watch... listen... and wait. 138 運命を拓く、特異の者よ・・・。己の力で、我が楔を砕いてみせよ。 Make your destiny, special one. Break free from my claw with your own strength. Fight and struggle, if be thy will. 特異の力を持つ者ならば、ヒトを裁き、戦を終焉へと導くこともできよう。・・・これは、特異の者たる汝の試練。 If you truly have special power, You can end the battle of judgement. This will be your trial. Man hath ever coveted that which lieth beyond his grasp. この地に揺蕩うエーテルを受け、いつしか我が身も蘇ろう。 My body will one day be reborn with the aether flowing in the land. I drink of Her body, and thence doth mine own find new life. いずれ来る復活のときに、汝が試練を乗り越え、ヒトが光の意志のもとにあらんことを願う・・・。 Overcome the trial then and bring the will of Light to people. When it hath grown whole, the loyal and penitent shall rejoice. だが、容易な道にはあらぬぞ。・・・じきに我が一族とヒトの大きな戦が起こる。我が子の咆哮は、すでに全天に轟いたのだ。 However, this will not be an easy path. Soon my kin will do battle with humanity. The roar of my children has already been heard in all of the land. The Dragonsong heraldeth a beginning... and an end. 139 Table 2: Table of dialogue between Japanese, English, and English localization of the quest "風霜にわかに”/ “When the Cold Sets In” (mechanicalzombie 2015). Blank cells indicate dialogue was cut from that version. Japanese Literal English English Localization オルシュファン:おおお、[プレーヤー]ではないか！どうした、さらに強靭になった肉体を、私に披露しにきたのか！？ HAURCHEFANT: Oh, if it isn’t [PLAYER]! What is it? Have you come to show me the development of your chiseled body? オルシュファン:……違う？ ………………本当に？ HAURCHEFANT……No? ………………Are you sure? オルシュファン: ふむ、ならば仕方あるまい。その顔を見れば、重要な用件だということはわかる。盟友たるこのオルシュファンに、何なりと言うがいい。 HAURCHEFANT: Hmmm, then it can’t be helped. Looking at your face, this must be an important matter. Say what you must to your dear ally, Haurchefant. オルシュファン: ･･････なるほど、開拓団の件で訪ねてきたのだな。皆まで言うな、それだけわかれば十分だ。 HAURCHEFANT: …I see. So, you've come about the expansion of Mor Dhona. You need not say the rest — I am already well aware of the situation. Haurchefant: The incident with the new frontier hands? No, no, you need not elaborate─I have been following their progress with no small amount of interest. オルシュファン: ふふ･･････開拓団･･････！実に肉躍るたくましい響きではないかしかもお前が参加しているとあらば、なおのこと･･････イイ！ HAURCHEFANT: Fufu… the expansion of Mor Dhona… truly, my blood dances to that robust sound! And if you are participating in it, there might even be… splendid! 140 オルシュファン: モードゥナに一大拠点が築かれれば、かの地の帝国軍も、クルザスへ介入しづらくなるだろう。加えて、お前には個人的な恩もある･･････ HAURCHEFANT: An adventurer’s guild in Mor Dhona will make it difficult for Imperial forces to invade Coerthan soil. Moreover, as I have a personal obligation to help you… Haurchefant: Brave men and women all… They do our nation a great service. The existence of a fortified outpost in Mor Dhona will do much to dissuade the Empire from trespassing on Coerthan soil. オルシュファン: これに協力しない道理はないと、本家に掛け合って、支援物資を手配したのだがな。 HAURCHEFANT: I negotiated a shipment of supplies to your cause, despite the lack of support from House Fortemps proper. Haurchefant: ‘Twas in the spirit of gratitude that I arranged for sundry supplies to be delivered to Revenant’s Toll. That the shipment should chance to be waylaid by heretics is poor fortune, indeed. オルシュファン: よりにもよって、異端者に奪取されるとは･･････。･･････実は最近、クルザスを根城とする異端者が組織化され、いささか手を焼いているのだ。 HAURCHEFANT: As for the matter of the heretics… they have organized their headquarters in Coerthas. Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to control them. Haurchefant: Poor fortune, I say…yet not without precedent. If you would know the truth of it, these incorrigible villains grow more organized with each passing day. オルシュファン: 異端者の頭目は「氷の巫女」と呼ばれる女･･････。我々も調査を続けているが、本名すら暴けていない。 HAURCHEFANT: The leader of the heretics is known as the "Ice Priestess.” Though we continue to investigate her, we have not even found out her real name. Haurchefant: This new unity of purpose we attribute to their leader─the Lady “Iceheart.” But though I have devoted significant resources to the task of identifying this woman, we have yet to learn so much as her birthname. オルシュファン: 異端者たちは、その「氷の巫女」を聖女のように敬い、死も厭わずに行動しているようでな･･････。奴らによる組織的な犯行が増えつつあるのだ。 HAURCHEFANT: The heretics consider her a saint, and are willing to act for her at the risk of death… Under her leadership, they are becoming increasingly organized. Haurchefant: What we do know is that the heretics speak of Iceheart in reverent tones, and would gladly embrace death rather than betray her. Such loyalty is rare indeed, and I fear to imagine what so committed a collective might achieve. 141 オルシュファン: 今のところ、このキャンプへの実害は少ないが、ここより西方では、度々奴らが目撃されているらしい。 HAURCHEFANT: For now, the actual damage to Camp Dragonhead is small, but there have been frequent sightings of heretic activity to the west. Haurchefant: The brigands have not yet been so brazen as to risk direct confrontation here in Dragonhead. Some few of their number have, however, been sighted not far to the west of here…and with ever-increasing regularity. オルシュファン: ホワイトブリム前哨地ならば、情報が掴めるかもしれんぞ。･･････行ってみるか？ HAURCHEFANT: Visiting Whitebrim Front might give you some information, but it will be undoubtedly be difficult. Will you go? Haurchefant: A visit to Whitebrim Front may bring you the answers you seek. Will you brave the snows knowing what implacable foes may lie in wait? オルシュファン: そうかそうか！支援物資の件は遺憾だが･･････期せずして、お前の汗が･･････再びこの雪原にきらめく日がきたようだな！ HAURCHEFANT: I see, I see! Though the matter of the supplies is rather unfortunate, it has led to your unexpected reappearance… Finally, the day has come when your sweat will sparkle in these snowy fields once more! Haurchefant: Halone’s blessings be upon you! Though I take no pride in the admission, many of mine own countrymen are not so well suited as you adventurers to dealing with such foes. Were they dragons, it might be otherwise! オルシュファン: お前は以前よりも強靭になった。そして、頷きひとつからあふれる、その揺るぎなき自信･･････イイぞ･･････ますます活躍から目が離せん！ HAURCHEFANT: You have become much stronger than before. And the unshakable confidence that your stoic nod exudes… How splendid… I have no doubt I’ll see you succeed once more! Haurchefant: But truly, I could not wish for a finer ally. You have done much for my house in the past, and I have no doubt but that I shall have cause to celebrate your deeds again ere long. オルシュファン: 何かわかったら、是非私にも報せてくれ。ふふ･･････この辺りは一段と冷えるからな、温かい床を用意して待っているぞ！ HAURCHEFANT: If you learn anything of value, please come share the news with me as well. Fufu… but this area has become increasingly cold, hasn’t it? A warm bed will be waiting for you! Haurchefant: Should you learn aught of value, pray return to me forthwith. A warm hearth and a warmer welcome shall be waiting for you. 142 Table 3: Dialogue for “ただ盟友のため” / “A Knight’s Calling” / “Um Ishgards willen” in Japanese, English, and German Japanese Literal English Localized English German English translation of German 聖騎士シャリベル: まさか力を使ってまで、圧倒されるだなんテ……！ SER CHARIBERT: Even with this power, we were overwhelmed…?! Charibert: Our power… How can this be!? Charibert: Verflucht! Wo ist meine Kraft?! Charibert: Curses! Where is my power?! ゼフィラン : 退け、もう十分だ！ ZEPHIRIN: That’s enough! Fall back! Zephirin: Fall back! Zephirin: Zurück! Das reicht! Zephirin: Back! That’s enough! アイメリク: 父上……！ AYMERIC: Father…! Aymeric: Father, please! Aymeric: Vater! Bitte! Aymeric: Father! Please! オルシュファン [プレーヤーに」アイメリク卿は、地下監房に囚われておられた。見てのとおり、救出は成功したぞ！ HAURCHEFANT: [to the player] Ser Aymeric was held captive in the lowest level. As you can see, our rescue attempt was successful! Haurchefant: [to the player] We were not too late, my friend! Haurchefant: (zum Spieler) Wir haben dien Großmeister in einer Zelle gefunden! Haurchefant: [to the player] We found the Grand Master in a cell! アイメリク : 何故なのです、父上ッ！ AYMERIC: Why must you do this, Father?! Aymeric: Why must you do this, Father!? Aymeric: Wieso, vater? Wieso tust du das? Aymeric: Why, Father? Why are you doing this? 143 アイメリク : 宿敵であったニーズヘッグが討たれた今こそ、嘘で塗り固められた歴史を正し、竜との対話を試み、イシュガルドは新たな未来へ進むべきときなのです！ AYMERIC: Ishgard's enemies are fallen, and Nidhogg is defeated! We should forge a new future for Ishgard, one rooted in dialogue with the dragons, not one coated and hardened by lies! Aymeric: Nidhogg is fallen! There is no need for further deception! Now is the time to renounce the lies which led us down this path─to start anew! Aymeric: Nidhogg ist tot! Jetzt ist der Zeitpunkt, die eschichte richtgzustellen und das Gespräch mit den Drachen zu suchen! Wir müssen eine neue Ära des Friedens einläuten! Aymeric:Nidho gg is dead! Now is the time to put history right and to seek a conversation with the dragons! We must herald the start of a new era of peace! トールダン7世: アイメリク、愚かな息子よ。千年… …そう、千年もの間、受け入れてきた歴史と信仰を、民は易々と忘れられると思うのか？ THORDAN VII: Aymeric, my foolish child. A thousand years… yes, a thousand years of faith and history — you expect the people to forget it all in an instant? Archbishop Thordan VII: And tear down the very pillars of our society─our history, our values─everything we have built over a thousand years? <sigh> A fool to the last. Papst Thordan VII: Und die Grundfesten unserer Gesellschaft neiderreißen? Du hast keine Ahnhung, närrischer Junge. Glaubst du, das Volk verwirft einfach so eine über tausend Jahre gehegte Überzeugung? PopeThordan VII: And demolish the foundations of our society? You have no idea, foolish boy. Do you think people easily discard a conviction held for a thousand years? オルシュファン:[ 盾を上げる] 危ないッ！ HAURCHEFANT: (raises shield) Look out! Haurchefant: (raises shield) Look out! Haurchefant: Pass auf! Haurchefant: (raises shield) Look out! トールダン7世: 行け……「魔大陸」へ…… THORDAN VII: We leave… to Azys Lla. Archbishop Thordan VII: Go. Azys Lla awaits. Papst Thordan VIII: Los! Augnach Azys Lla! Pope Thordan VII: Go! To Azys Lla! アイメリク:オルシュファン卿ッ！ AYMERIC: Lord Haurchefant! Aymeric: Lord Haurchefant! Aymeric: Haurchefant! Aymeric: Haurchefant! 144 オルシュファン :[ プレーヤーに] 無事……だったのだな……。お前を失うわけには……いかないからな ……。 HAURCHEFANT: (to player) You… are safe…? I couldn’t… bear the thought of losing you… Haurchefant: (to player) You…you are unharmed? F- Forgive me… I could not bear the thought of…of… Haurchefant: (zum Spieler) Seltsam… Endlich sind wir uns so nah, und doch fühle ich dich kaum... Haurchefant: (to player) Odd…We’re finally so close, and yet I can hardly feel you…” オルシュファン : 英雄に……悲しい顔は似合わぬぞ… …。 HAURCHEFANT: A smile better suits a hero… Haurchefant: Oh, do not look at me so. Haurchefant: Sei doch nicht trauring. Haurchefant: Now, don’t be sad… オルシュファン : フフ……やはり、お前は……笑顔が ……イイ……。 HAURCHEFANT: Fufu… truly, your smile is… splendid… Haurchefant: A smile better suits a hero… Haurchefant: Das steht dir nicht… meine Heldin... Haurchefant: It doesn’t suit you…my Hero 145 Chapter Four: Communication Between Players In the Virtual Contact Zone: Paratextual Platforms and Within the Virtual World The previous chapters have dealt with the ways in which the developer has attempted to establish a communicative relationship with players and the roles that translation and localization have played in the communication between members of the contact zone. In particular, both chapters have focused on how the development team has attempted to reduce the distance between the development team and the playerbase in order to construct a contact zone where all members, as much as is possible given the inherent power dynamics of the relationship, can have a stake in the creation, growth, and perpetuation of the community. What has been left out of this discussion has been the role that players have in communication with each other that contributes to the contact zone. This includes issues of how players understand each other, or more broadly, how one subset of players understands other subsets of players. The other issue that has not been broadly addressed is the role in which game mechanics, user interfaces, and other elements of game design to communicate with players despite language barriers. This chapter will look at how players of Final Fantasy XIV, as inhabitants of the virtual world, constitute and reinforce the virtual contact zone both within the virtual world and around it. This chapter will look at two aspects of this activity. First, the chapter will examine how paratextual platforms are used to create and define aspects of the contact zone, and how they can be used to bring the community together. Then, through a thematic analysis of one of the larger platforms for the contact zone, the 146 chapter will look at how players from other regions are considered, talked about, and communicate with one another outside of the virtual world. The second part of the chapter will address issues of game design and its role in the virtual contact zone. The chapter looks at designed features for player communication and how players utilize game mechanics, user interface elements and iconography, and player created visual tools to collaborate and communicate within the virtual world, even when there are linguistic barriers. Paratext and its Use in Media The concept of paratext as an element related to, but separate from derives from Genette (1997; 1991; 1987) who uses the term to describe "the means by which a text makes a book of itself and proposes itself as such to its readers, and more generally to the public," (1991, p. 261). It is also important to note that the paratext is not a strict barrier between text and not-text, but rather a "threshold" that "offers anyone and everyone the possibility either of entering or of turning back," (1991, p.261). Paratext is separated out into peritext (elements of the text close to, but not the main text), and epitext (elements of the text that are outside of the main text but are in direct communication with the text). In literary works, as was Genette's focus in his analysis, peritextual elements include the title, index, preface, etc. (p. 263). Epitext includes elements such as reviews, interviews with the author, advertising, and other texts. For Genette, these practices create a set of practices and discourses which create a convergence of effects. In cultural and media studies, paratext has been a useful and powerful analytical framework for looking at the relations between individual and media text from economic, 147 cultural, and personal perspectives (Leavenworth 2015; Hill and Pecoskie 2014; Gray 2010; Stanitzek 2005). The theory has been applied to examining media forms as diverse as television (Gray 2010), film (Brookey and Westerfelhaus 2002), digital media, such as hypertext or online video (Simonsen 2014), travel guidebooks (Alacovska 2015), fanfiction (Leavenworth 2015), and, as will be elaborated on below, games (Consalvo 2017; Dunne 2016 ; Fiadotau 2015; Rockenberger 2014; Consalvo 2007). The analytical power of paratext is the utility of being able to capture the increasingly complex and important flows between the main text and its ancillary texts. To paraphrase Johnathan Gray, paratext shows the distinction between the 'work' of the main text versus the 'text', the whole which includes the work and its paratextual elements. What most characterizes paratexts are the ways these texts move between author and reader as well as between readers themselves (Brookey and Gray 2017; Consalvo 2016; Hill and Pecoskie 2014). Genette's model is well positioned, perhaps in spite of the original context of his work in traditional literary studies, to elucidate how the video game texts circulate between authors and audiences. Games contain various peritextual sources, paratexts found appended to or in close connection to the text written by the development team, such as credits, official websites, and trans-media texts created by the development team, such as physical lorebooks, novels and short stories, and art books. Games also include epitextual sources of paratext, texts which related to the main text but not connected to the development team such as user forums such as the /r/ffxiv subreddit or the /ffo/ forum on 2channel, unofficial websites such as the XIVDB, and fan works. For media studies, this extrapolated model of Genette's paratext is useful in charting how a text is received by an audience and the circulation of 148 knowledge about a text which in terms create interest and engagement in a given work. This focus on circulation and building interest and engagement is, in part, why the study of paratexts and games has been a productive if somewhat contentious, form of analytical work in game studies. Paratext in Game Studies In Game Studies, Consalvo (2007) is perhaps best known for the application of paratext as a means of theorizing the development of player communities around games, both in historical contexts of gaming magazines and schoolyard rumors about games to more contemporary settings such as message boards and forums dedicated to MMORPGs. Consalvo first outlined the importance of paratext for understanding communities of gamers. Of note, Consalvo looked at the player community of Final Fantasy XI, an MMORPG that began in 2002 that is seen as the predecessor to FFXIV. In her book, Consalvo finds that various industries around games, such as video game magazines such as Nintendo Power, technology used for cheating such as the Game Genie, printed and online strategy guides and websites such as books by Prima Publishing and the website GameFAQs, and unofficial sites providing information and discussion for online games, such as the Allakhazam.com site offered for players of Final Fantasy XI, constitute a series of paratext around games. These sites and industries not only introduced people to video games generally and specific video games, but also created flows between players and games, whether they were in the forms of cheating, strategy guides, or help from fellow players to understand and overcome gameplay challenges. While Consalvo's work here was focused on the idea of cheating and how these industries emerged in part to help players find advantages in 149 games that could be considered cheating as well as the ways players have used these platforms to police cheating from others, it has served, along with other texts, as foundational in mapping paratextual analysis to game studies. More recent work has looked at how all games, even ostensibly single-player games are social activities and the role of spectatorship and in viewing and discussing the play of video games (2016) and how nascent game communities, such as video game streamers on platforms like Twitch.tv can redefine how paratext is categorized, as streaming and the audiences around them can shift video games from the central work to paratext for streamers and their audiences (2017). Other scholars have looked at the role of paratext in games and their utility for the study of game texts and the player community (Dunne, 2016; Fiadotau, 2015; Rockenberger, 2015) Consalvo (2007)'s use of paratext as a model to look at the circulation of texts in games between players and designers, as described above, has been criticized as breaking the "threshold" between paratext and context, thereby ruining the analytical power of the model (Burke and Christ 2014). Rockenberger (2015) in particular argues that many of these player communities do not function as paratext, but instead as just context since they do not interact directly with the text or the author. For Rockenberger, the use of paratext in new media and game studies “is used as a vague umbrella term with an extremely broad extension, covering almost everything somehow ‘related to,’ ‘referring to,’ or ‘surrounding’ the primary object (the ‘video game itself’).” She instead argues that paratext in games is limited to texts that are “(a) produced to be functionally subservient to (which obviously implies: specifically referring to) ‘the game proper,’ (b) authorized by entitled members of the game’s production collective, (c) (predominantly) 150 verbal, and (d) (at least partly) extra-diegetic.” instead arguing that what has been referred to as ‘paratext in game studies be instead supplemented by the term ‘framings’ as defined by Werner Wolf (2006; 1999). This reading of paratext as only disseminating from authorial sources seems to limit paratext to only cases where the author is communicating, extra-diegetically, to readers and potential readers. While the argument to supplement the term paratext with ‘framings' is understandable, as Wolf's definition accounts for framings may offer a broader toolkit for the analysis of games as texts. However, that does not mean that Rockenberger's definition of paratext isn't too narrow, particularly once we look at MMOGs and live service games that have an active player community and a development team that, at least in part, acknowledges them. These communities, in the case of online virtual worlds at least, are paratextual. These texts and sites are paratextual largely because, as has been established in the previous two chapters, the developer and community teams, the "authors" of the main text, which because of its medium, is constantly being added to and edited, are in communication with these communities. The range of communication and acknowledgment varies, but because these paratextual communities are in contact with the developer, these communities operate as a form of epitext. It is also worth noting as well that, among the thresholds of the text, we see intertextual relationships form around the work produced by fans, particularly players who are motivated by role-playing, which hinge on an understanding of a text and its paratextual elements. Applications of Paratext: Sources of Paratext on Final Fantasy XIV 151 FFXIV, like many online games, has a wide set of paratextual sources and communities which interact with the game and, in different manners, help establish the virtual contact zone. These sources or paratext, to use Genette's model are composed of peritextual and epitextual sources. Peritextual sources are those created by or officially maintained by the developer or parts of the development team related to the marketing and advertising of FFXIV. These include texts that are part of the game, such as cinematics and credit sequences as well as the program launcher, which not only serves as the means for players to start the game, log in, etc., but also displays current events in the game, links to the official webpage, current game news items, and the status of the game servers. Other peritextual sources are officially maintained websites and forums such as the homepage for the game, formatted and meant for prospective and brand new players, The Lodestone, the defacto official home page for the game aimed at current players that links to current news, the official forums, and a database of items, characters, abilities, and other information relevant to players. There are also web pages created for upcoming patch content and for expansions which detail what is coming to those updates, typically with some embedded cinematics and images along with text descriptions. Outside of this owned media content, the developer maintains an official presence on Twitter (one account for each supported language), YouTube, Twitch.tv, and NicoNico Douga. The last three social media accounts are used for streaming Producer Live Letters and, in the case of YouTube and NicoNico Douga, as used to host promotional videos as well as video content created by the various community teams in each supported region (Japan, North America, and Europe). 152 Epitextual sources tend to be unofficial and are designed for and built to support the playerbase, such as resource pages, social media groups, synchronous voice and text communication platforms such as Skype or Discord, Streaming and video platforms such as YouTube or twitch.tv, and unofficial discussion forums such as Reddit or 2channel. These include resource pages such as the XIVDB and Garlond Tools primarily in English or ff14wiki.info in Japanese, which data mining game files when they are released by the developer to build their databases. The main advantages to these unofficial resources sites is speed due to lower latency in many cases and the fact that, because of the way that game data is structured, it is easy for these resources to display information for all supported languages, which can be useful for players who need to know how a mechanic or skill is called in a different client language. On Social Media Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr, there are groups that form based on server group affiliation or on other in-game characteristics, such as players who play a specific character race. Voice chat-enabled platforms, such as voice applications like TeamSpeak or text and voice platforms such as Discord or Skype allow users to communicate in real time inside or outside of the virtual world and used oftentimes to coordinate groups during content, such as static parties or ad-hoc groups. Individual players or groups may cultivate a following of viewers from streaming the game on video platforms or creating video content such as visual guides to clearing in- game encounters or podcasts talking about the game in a more general level. Finally, some of the largest of these epitextual platforms are unofficial discussion groups around the game. Japanese players tend to use the subforums on 2channel, the largest unofficial discussion forum is the subreddit /r/ffxiv. 153 While not unique to FFXIV, paratextual platforms allow players to communicate with each other about the game, whether that takes the form of questions about gameplay and mechanics, how to clear content, feedback/criticism about the game, or discussion about the player community at large. Some of these platforms are small in scope, such as Discord or Skype, where the organizing principle is limited to small groups such as raid groups (either "static" groups with a long history or ad-hoc groups formed and broken up after only a few hours) or free companies (that tend to have between 2 and 50 members). Some are set up for all members of a specific server, such as groups on Facebook. Others have been used for certain playstyles, such as the proliferation of Role-playing threads on platforms such as Tumblr or the blog features on the Official FFXIV Community Page, which are used by individual players to discuss their experiences. That said, there are some platforms set up for general purpose discussion among players at large. For the English-Speaking community, the largest of these platforms even more so than the Official Discussion Board is the subreddit for the game, /r/ffxiv. Subreddits are specific community forums set up under Reddit, an active platform focused on provided spaces for discussion. These discussions are mostly-text based, though users can apply hypertext, via markdown, or post images or video links which can then be discussed, again, primarily in text. It is also worth noting that users are pseudonymous and are recognized my usernames which are easily created using only an email. No personal information is required to use the subreddit and /r/ffxiv, in particular, is publicly accessible, even without a username or login. As of 2018, the subreddit has 198,000 subscribers, with about 4,000 users on the page at any given 154 moment, and is the 768th largest subreddit on the site. This specific platform offers an opportunity to look at the playerbase and the ways in which these platforms are used to construct the contact zone outside of the virtual world. Player Perception of Differing Playerbases in Paratexutal Communities As a large platform for the community of players, discussion of topics related to the game include discussion on player communities. Because of the Data Center Model the game relies due to technical limitations on server processing and connection latency, players oftentimes use the World > Data Center > Language/Region model to subdivide player communities. While the Official Forums support discussion in the four supported languages, unofficial discussion forums, such as the subreddit gain traction for being open to all players, even though the posts are primarily in English, which again is in all likelihood a concession to the phenomenon of Global English. While there have been posts and discussion from and about non-English speaking player groups, such as European players and non-supported player groups. such as Latin American (LatAm) or Southeast Asian (SEA) players, the majority of discussion is focused on Japanese players as the primary player group that members of the subreddit speak about when talking about non-English speaking player groups. These discussions get at a curiosity that some players have about the playerbase at large, such as how other players handle content, how they think about the relative effectiveness of the various classes and jobs in the game, and what their reactions to announcements from the developer are. These discussions also show the difficulties that language barriers, as well as technical limitations, present in direct 155 communication with these players. As a result, these paratextual conversations about the player community served to help players wrestle with understanding the members of the community at large. It is worth noting, however, that these conversations are not exempt from many of the pitfalls that occur when talking about other communities. In particular, the prevalence of Global English and American cultural Influence, as well as the appeal and influence of what has been termed "Cool Japan", have created spaces of misunderstanding and conflict among players in these discussions. One way to understand the nature of these discussion has been through the lens of thematic analysis. A thematic analysis was conducted on 257 subreddit comments along 64 different threads spanning from August of 2013 to March of 2015. Posts were gathered by scraping threads which came up on searches pertaining to one or more of the following terms: 'NA', 'JP', 'EU', 'EN', 'Japanese', 'North American', 'French', 'German', 'English', 'JP server', 'NA Server', and 'EU server'. Posts not related to a discussion about the player community (such as critiques/comments about localization or press materials except for translations into English) were removed. From there, comments on posts were looked at and tagged if they utilized the keywords above. The texts of these posts were then scraped and placed in a spreadsheet along with their source URL. The texts of these posts were then looked at and themes were constructed, then refined. For discussion posts about player communities across all of the supported regions and languages, the approach and goals of these posts fall along three themes which I have referred to as anthropological, comparison, and educational themes. Anthropological Themes 156 One theme in discussions by players centers around the description of personal experience among other player communities or the description of non-North American player groups. In particular, there is a focus on one or more of the following conventions: personal experience on foreign-language servers, customs or conventions of player behavior on other servers, or how people are talking about topics on non- English forums. These themes can have positive and negative valences, usually focused on personal experience or explaining, with the rhetorical stance being explanatory (by providing anecdotal evidence) or by providing reality checks on the discussion. For example, a user describes the experience of playing content on a Japanese server as thus: There seems to be a general agreement of "you know the strategy unless you say otherwise." ... I ran into a party where two members had no idea what to do in a mid-level dungeon and everyone was confused when we wiped on the last boss. The 4th member and I laughed it off and explained the boss after that. Btw, if you want to let someone know it's your first time somewhere, variants of the following seems fairly standard as a first-things-first greeting: 初見です。よろしくお願いします。(hatumi desu yorosikuonegaisimasu) Another user's comments illustrate a sarcastic deployment of the Anthropological frame. They state, "Japanese players are actually able to clear Brayflox in under four minutes due to region-specific abilities that make them better at the game, and life in general." This comment highlights a critique with certain Orientalist attitudes some North American players have about the Japanese community. This attitude is often seen in Comparison themed comments, usually in order to bemoan the North American 157 playerbase. These comments are often that the Japanese community is inherently more cooperative and friendly because Japanese players are more inherently cooperative and honest about their skill level and knowledge of how to clear content, though overall their strategies tend to be safer and more conservative. English-speaking players are more individualistic, antagonistic, and more likely to lie about their skill and knowledge in order to "be carried" by others to clear content without putting in the correct amount of effort, though North American players who do clear content use more effective, if riskier strategies. Comments like the one above highlight the fallacy of this perception, despite its prevalence. Other comments, such the one below, more directly confront these perceptions by players: "Believe me, Japanese players bemoan the mistakes of others as much as anyone else. Source: I've been playing on a JP server with my Japanese friends for several months... TL;DR Japanese players are not mythical uber-polite creatures. They do think that you suck if you suck. They just don't do that while spitting in your face. Basically is people," Anthropologically-themed comments do not always have a nuanced view of these playerbase communities. Some players, drawing on personal experience of play, are skeptical of the communal nature of the Japanese playerbase, accusing them of being overly insular. These comments seem to draw on prior experience with Final Fantasy XI, the previous MMORPG. This threaded conversation proffers three users' sentiments about their own experiences of play and the notion that Japanese players are excluding of others. The commenter here uses "JP ONRY" as a pointed (and racist) characterization of the exclusivity of Japanese parties to non-Japanese speakers: People need to also understand JP Onry when the party finds out they're a dirty gaijin. Anyone that played 11 knows this all too well." 158 "{sorry JP onry} but i joined them anyway. JP means language not no gaijin" "you wish" These comments are usually proffered as a "reality check" when the conversation seems to fall into reductive statements about community. This back and forth, for example, shows two differing perspectives on how welcoming Japanese players are to non-native Japanese speakers. The use of "JP Onry" here is telling, not only as a somewhat sarcastic and orientalist complaint against Japanese players who exclude non-Japanese players, but also as this is a meme carried over from the player community of FFXI meant to highlight personal experiences of Japanese players excluding North American players due to a delay of the game's release in North America resulting in playerbases of difference experience and skill level that caused conflict, in addition to other issues, such as text communication that did not natively support multilingual input that were addressed and fixed in FFXIV. Another element to Anthropological theme is the discussion of non-English paratextual platforms and their role in the larger player community. One user, speaking on Japanese message board, 2channel, and how it is used by players to call out bad players states: "I have to disagree with this. The issue isn't that someone was shamed, the dishonor is that YOU shamed someone. The anonymity of 2channel allows them to shame players (where being shamed isn't the social taboo, it's doing the shaming that is)." Also present in these types of comments are non-English players offering their personal experiences playing the game and as part of non-North American player 159 communities. For instance, when the game began offering cosmetic items for sale via microtransactions in 2015, there was controversy among English-speaking players. Users of the subreddit were curious as to the response by the Japanese playerbase and a few Japanese players posted responses which reflect this personal experience, such as: "Hi. I am Japanese. Japanese people are angry. 【FF14】FINAL金玉蛙 5461脱糞【終焉】 http://hello.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/ogame/1413959763/l50 "金玉蛙" is Naoki Yoshida. "金玉"="testicle sack" "蛙"="frog" His face resembles them. "脱糞"="Defecation" "終焉"="The end" Why do they write slander by 2ch? That is because the Japanese forum of FF14 is very severe. It is closed if criticism is written. Japanese people feel stress. For example, this thread described the dissatisfaction to the fundamental system. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/198875- However, the thread was shut in only 2 hours. In 2ch, many people negative about cash shop are seen. They are sad that it is not different from a South Korean game." Of interest here is the express linkage to Japanese discussion forums on 2channel as well as the official forum to show the dissatisfaction with the then new cash shop for items and the comment here is using that first-hand experience to show that skepticism and negative feelings about it were common throughout the entire playerbase. Another comment by a native speaker tries to offer an explanation from a native Japanese speaker as to why Japanese players may be reluctant to communicate with 160 players who don't speak Japanese, in this case, embarrassment at being unable to communicate easily in English. This comment relies on having been told first-hand of this embarrassment by another native Japanese speaker: "「英語なんぞ日常使わないんで、俺なるべく英語避けてる。ダメな英語は恥ずかしいし、コミュニケーションも難しいので、イライラする」ってストレート言われ embarrassed. Thats what someone told me when I was playing FFXI a few years back. Japanese is my native language, so I often played translator. Built-in auto translate was a little sub-par." While these sentiments tend to include some implicit comparison and or informational/educational content, what makes these themes 'Anthropological' is the rhetorical grounding in "on the ground" experience. In addition, Anthropological comments are not aimed at teaching or instructing other players on how to navigate between playerbases, but on telling narratives of personal experiences and how they themselves navigated different playerbases. Some players, who have experience playing on multiple regions may use comparisons, but ultimately the Anthropological frame is about locating their remarks in personal experience, such as this last example: I play in JP server (Typhon) with okayish Japanese knowledge, and in FC that is 95% Japanese people. things that I noticed/experience in that server 1. JP players do not communicate much in party, only say basic things like "hello" and "thank you", almost no strategy talk< 2. Most discussion and chit chat by JP players were on FC chat. 3. Most shout in JP were asking for position of mobs that they can't find. 4. Have never met EN player who insults JP players and the same for the other way around. 5. IMO, things are civil here due to too low in number of EN players to have bad eggs and also too low to be noticeable by assholes in JP community that probably will do the insulting." 161 The Anthropological theme is deployed during these discussions of regional playerbases as a way of both grounding the discussion in concrete details as well as for the commenters themselves to offer their personal experience which is illustrative of the experience of playing the game. While these themes can be used to make comparisons, the main role of these themes is to offer narratives of gameplay and communication and, by and large, demonstrate similarities between all players, regardless of region or language. Comparison Themes Comparison-themed comments, in contrast to Anthropological themes, often frame discussions about the game and the playerbase through difference by deploying comparative statements or narratives, highlighting the differences between the game and other games in the genre, between the game and earlier iterations of Final Fantasy- branded MMORPGs or, most often, the North American playerbase and other regional playerbases. These comparisons can be technical in nature, such as talking about server lag based on the location of the data centers, basic comparison of community norms between different server groups, or even comparisons between FFXIV and other MMOGs. Many times, posts and comments reflect this "A vs. B structure". These themes are many times used to show the advantages and drawbacks of one playerbase to another, oftentimes with the implication or direct statement of one being better than the other. One key way this comparison theme asserts itself on the subreddit is when individuals bemoan what they feel is negative or anti-social behavior from English- speaking players compared to what they categorize as friendly, cooperative players 162 from other regions. One user talks about how players organize and complete content, stating: "I actually would really like the NA/EU data centers to adopt the JP standard of PF for learning, DF for clears. It's just so much better than DF being full of idiots wiping, and PF being full of "Min iLvl 200 farm, noob=blacklist, ragequit after 1 fail. I think the mindset is too rigid now to change, though." Another user talks about how the cultural norm of different playerbases can manifest even when all participants are in the same instance: "...There have been times where I've actually felt embarassed that I'm grouped in with these english speakers. example: One wipe on Ifrit HM (cleared it second time round) half the party is speaking english and abusing the tank with alot of swear words and caps lock, generally being a right royal cunt while the other half is speaking Japanese, completly calm and giving pointers to the tank because it's his first time. I've seen alot of this happening and 99.9% of the time it's an english speaking player. I also find it amusing how other people like me who can speak JP(for me, only a little) are just as nice as most JP regular players so you can take what you want from that" It is worth noting that while Comparison-Themed comments can utilize personal experiences as with the Anthropological Themes, the underlying rhetorical stance taken by users is to promote a preference or show one facet of the playerbase as more preferable or better whether framed as a personal preference or a wish for the playerbase at large to adopt the norms of one of the regional playerbases, often the Japanese playerbase. This theme can also produce comments which fall into reductive statements about playerbases which can range from positive, if orientalist, ideas about Japanese culture explaining why they can coordinate and clear content, to negative 163 remarks about North American or, more generally "Western", players' focus on the self and on personal gain over the group which causes players on NA servers to clear difficult content at a small rate than on Japanese servers. That being said, there are comments which use the Comparison Theme in order to debunk these attitudes. The next comment directly addresses another user's comments employing comparison (as well as personal experience though more in the service of comparison than as illustration as in Anthropological themes) and uses a comparative theming to refute their claims: "This post is going to be a little harsh, but to be honest, I think you need it. "I'm not going to generalise and say that the Japanese are more polite than the English-speaking players. But in the month I played, 1) I have never had a single good experience in a dungeon with English players. Granted, I've only done so 5 times. <strong>But they all either ended up with people AFKing, leaving, or flaming one another - all of whom I reported.</strong> 2) Japanese players almost always greet and say hello at the start of the dungeon, this is rare for the English players. I'd like to say however, that my experience with English players in FFXIV is consistent with that in other MMORPGs I've played (Runescape, Maplestory, WoW, TERA, Rift, ESO, Wildstar, etc)." 1) Don't say you're not going to do something then basically do it. 2) There is another thing in common among those 5 runs aside from the other players being English speakers: you. Funny how you choose to blame one factor and not the other (or the interaction between them). 3) The Japanese players you're talking about? They're not really nicer. They're just following their cultural script which gives that impression, then biting back their negative opinions of you when you mess up. Personally I prefer honesty helping me become aware to blissful ignorance of my faults, but hey, to each their own. 4) Confirmation bias: google it. I'd say you've got a bad case of it given your analysis. I played FFXI for 5 years with Japanese players and they 164 were all over the place in their behavior... You know, like human beings tend to be when you're not applying benevolently racist stereotypes of people in your interpretation of the world and its inhabitants." TLDR: I really hope these threads stop soon." Another valence of comparison was comparing FFXIV to Final Fantasy XI. These comparisons usually describe how the game has changed, usually improved from the previous iteration. The following comment addresses some of the critiques of FFXIV, particularly from players who were fans of the previous game both on the subreddit and more broadly across the contact zone: I remember there was some kind of outcry amongst the Japanese players about the "westernisation" of FFXIV back in Alpha and Beta. It's very obviously a western model tab-targeted, hotbar skills, gear treadmill MMO in terms of looks and feel. Although immediately recognizable and comfortable to a western audience, it's a pretty big change from what was expected from a Japanese publisher making an MMO for their home market... Those people you see on this subreddit who think FFXI was the best game ever, and FFXIV should have just been a high-def version? It's sort of like that, but without the widely held counter-belief that FFXI was borderline unplayable. ;D" Finally, another axis of comparison was in the comparison of FFXIV and other MMORPGs, usually World of Warcraft, Phantasy Star Online (A Japanese MMORPG), or various Korean developed MMORPGs such as Blade and Soul. "I was thinking about a lot of the "free to play Korean grinders" which I've played a few on Japanese servers...and basically you "pay to win" even if you have no skills. Gamble for that new high weapon? Bam you can now clear the instance. FF14 requires actual skill that you can't "pay" or "grind your way" through to clear so maybe that's what their complaint is." "When it comes to other MMO's be it South Korean or Japanese, it takes ages for them to arrive in the West" 165 NCSoft I swear if I don't get Blade & Soul soon, someone is getting mowed Down." These Comparison Themes emphasize the differences between their objects of comparison, which allows for useful critiques to come from the examination of the discrepancies shown, though they can, as some of the examples above illustrate, cause their writers to fall into reductive views on topics like the various regional playerbases. Educational Themes Education themed posts differ greatly from function compared to other types of posts regarding different playerbases in /r/ffxiv. These types of posts are focused on providing information to readers to assist them in understanding how to interact with and improve their time within the game and with other players. Unlike the Anthropological themes, Educational themes are not grounded in personal or first-hand experience but are focused on more concrete information that could be relevant to other players. These type of posts range in a specific topic about the game, include translation of interviews and other communication from the developers, phrase guides for communicating in other languages, strategy guides for completing content on non-North American servers, and links to non-English content as is relevant. For example, in a post thread explicitly about Japanese terms that are relevant coordinating strategy during gameplay, one poster adds: "Minor correction: ありがとう and not ありがと Some more additions: CF (Content Finder) = DF PT募集 = Party Finder (often shouts say PT募集から etc etc to indicate that you should join through PF) 募集中 = Recruiting (often found in shouts) 初見者 = beginner (this form is often written in PF texts) 166 経験者 = expert (same as above) @<job> = <job> left [in the sense of what they're looking for] - it plays on the similar sound of 後 ("ato") and "at" pronounced a la Japanese (as far as I've understood - I'm no native speaker) For you tanks out there: Shield / Sword Oath (忠義の盾 / 忠義の剣) often you just use 忠義 for Shield Oath when tanking" The other aspect of the educational themed comments is that of offering advice and help. Whereas Anthropological-themed posts offer advice indirectly, using personal experience as a lens, educational themed posts are more directly didactic in their tone with other users on the subreddit. As an example: "Most of the servers in the JP data centres are dominated by Japanese players. Tonberry has significant EN presence and Masamune has a pretty big EN playerbase too, if you want the full-immersion thing and avoid EN players. And be sure to switch to JP client too! (Dropdown menu in login screen)" These themes stand out in the conversations between players for their rhetorical stance of offering help. Sometimes this is framed in terms of personal experience, like the Anthropological-themed posts or by offering comparisons in approaches, as ink Comparison-themed posts. However, the main goal of Educational-Themed posts is to help other players without presenting much personal judgment or viewpoints. These posts illustrate borrowing from personal experience or comparison for the sake of giving advice to players. "To be honest, if all you want is to play the game, it takes very little to interact with the JP community. Just say the regular stuff like 宜しくお願いします/お疲れ様でした/おめでとう/ありがとうございました (hell, you can macro it) and read up on their strats before queuing for PUG content, 167 so you know what to do beforehand, and you can get through most content with actual conversations kept to a minimum." "Hi, you'll be needing these tips: http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1wjki7/various_tips_n_tricks_on_al l_3_primal_extremes/ Clarify what you want your ST and MT to do. 'JP rules' apply when you're in a party with JP players because they usually go into a fight where all the roles and tactics have long been predetermined beforehand, so no discussion is necessary as long as you also know the JP strategy." Education posts serve a crucial function. Where the other themes aimed to offer information or opinion about the experiences of communication or playing with differing playerbases, Educational-themed posts offer advice and an invitation for players to broaden the pool of players to work with and how to leverage the tools available on paratextual platforms to coordination and communication within the virtual world. They can also be a means by which players connect with one another from the paratextual platform to the virtual world itself. "To be honest, if all you want is to play the game, it takes very little to interact with the JP community. Just say the regular stuff like 宜しくお願いします/お疲れ様でした/おめでとう/ありがとうございました (hell, you can macro it) and read up on their strats before queuing for PUG content, so you know what to do beforehand, and you can get through most content with actual conversations kept to a minimum. There are still a fair number of English FC/LSes here so it's not like the EN community is totally dead, but it is shrinking. If you want to stay on Masa, feel free to look me up in-game (name in my flair) and I can see about maybe bouncing you an invite to my FC (our leader is in this thread actually) or a few LSes" While these three themes are not present across all posts on the FFXIV subreddit, these themes are prevalent among posts which seek to discuss, understand, 168 or create pathways of communication between English and non-English speaking playerbases, thus helping to construct the virtual contact zone as a global, multilingual space. This conception of the contact zone as such a space is also reflected within the virtual contact zone, both by the way in which communication tools are designed by the developer, but also in how players utilize these tools, along with game mechanics and encounter design, to communicate with one another. As the above comment notes, understanding the strategy can alleviate or even overcome linguistic barriers between players, which will be discussed in more detail in the next section of the chapter. Communication Between Players Within the Virtual World: The Role of Game Design in Constructing the Contact Zone Within the Virtual World, players rely on communication in order to forge relationships, coordinate strategy, and simply as an ends to itself for players whose enjoyment of the game comes primarily through socialization. Final Fantasy XIV, like many MMOGs, has built-in tools for communication through text. Textual communication is supplemented with basic tools to allow for multilingual communication. There are also built-in tools for non-verbal communication between players. The game, because of the form in which player actions, classes, and content is designed, allows players to coordinate and communicate in many parts, without the use of text communication, but through the effective use of game mechanics. Players are then able to quickly lay out and execute strategies for clearing content through mostly visual means of communication, utilizing text communication pictorially more so than by talking through strategy. 169 Designed forms of Communication The game is designed to offer various modes of communication between players, both written and visual. The main form of communication is the text chat system. Players have 12 modes of text-based communication. Three of these channels are proximity-based, heard by players in proximity to the sender in the virtual world ranging from close by the sender (/say) a somewhat larger radius around the sender (/yell), and within one zone of the virtual world (/shout). Then there are nine other group-based chat channels. Eight of them are called linkshells, which function as member-only group chats. Linkshells are designed so that creation, invitation and leaving them are easy to do and players can communicate with each other on a given linkshell channel regardless of location. Linkshell groups range from ad-hoc, organized for a specific form of content such as Role-Playing or Open world content, or for different languages (such as a Japanese-language only group on a North American server). Players can be invited to or leave from linkshells at will as long as there is space on their linkshell list. Finally, players have access to one chat channel specifically for the Free Company they are a member of. This allows Free Companies to not require a separate linkshell for communication. To go along with these channels of text-based communication, the game has allowed for a variety of text inputs through Unicode. Players can, theoretically communicate in any language whose written form is supported by Unicode. In practice, this does allow players to communicate in the four supported languages, regardless of what the client language is set to. This also allows players from non-supported languages/regions to communicate in-game, many times with the client set to English, 170 due to the influence of global English. This does allow players from across regions to exercise player conventions such as the use of Japanese terms such as よろしくおねがいします (yoroshiku onegaishimasu) and おつかれさまでした (otsukaresama deshita) or their more casual variations such as よろ～ or おつかれ～ at the beginning or conclusion of instanced content, respectively. Along with support for writing in other languages, the game has a built-in auto- translate feature. This was a feature brought over from previous MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI, but expanded for the supported client languages. The auto-translate feature works where players can press a button on the chat window and can scroll down a set of menus to find a term or they can begin typing a term and then press a button to be offered a set of choices from the list to complete the word or phrase as appropriate The auto-translate feature has about 3,000 terms registered. Most of these terms are nouns relevant to the game, such as attacks, spells, and items. There are also lists of common questions, words for time and date, and set phrases relevant to communication or gameplay such as "I don't speak any German," "This is my first time, here," and "Roll for loot, please." Aside from text-based communication, the game has a system of physical motions characters can perform and be seen by other players. These "emotes" are gestures that players can perform. They range from simple actions, such as waving hello or goodbye, to complicated ones, like special dances or flexing muscles, to subtle, such as facial expressions, or different ways of sitting in chairs or on the floor. Along with the visual gesture of emotes, the chat window will display, in the client language, a 171 description of the emote gesture being performed, who performed it, and, if relevant, whom the gesture was aimed towards. In addition to these designed systems for communication and player expression, game mechanics serve as another mode of communication between players, through a mix of learning the visual symbology of mechanics through the user interface as well as learning how mechanics can be coordinated and combined over time within a given piece of context. Semiotics of Gameplay: Game Time and Player Interactions Game Mechanics serve as a unique case study with which to understand how the contact zone develops means for communication beyond direct translation by a relatively small number of members on different sides of the contact zone. Chapters Two and Three focused on the role of the Developer and their communication, particularly since their role as designer and responsible for the maintenance of the virtual world places them in an analogous role to the colonizing agent in Pratt's original model. Pratt's conception of the contact zone is not only a space where subjects are subject to colonizers and their assimilating force. The contact zone is a space where its members live together and have to manage through their lives even in the shadow of both the colonizing force of stronger powers and the various language barriers that come from the mixing of people. Within the virtual world, we see a recreation of this mixing. Within the virtual world, players are thrust together and have to interact, even if the technical issues that come with distant physical locations or different languages come to bear, such as in the cases where Japanese servers have significant English- speaking players or on European servers where English, German, and French are with 172 rough parity. Players have to make their way in the virtual world, leveling characters, exploring spaces, clearing content like quests, dungeons, and raids, and socializing with others. These activities and experiences are colored by the modes of communication available to players. In Pratt's conception of the contact zone, that of the colonized territory, one of the aspects by which members of the zone communicate with one another, aside from direct translation, is through the development of heterogeneous forms of communication that arise from the confluence of members being located together geographically, such as gestures, pidgins, the development of creole languages, or other linguistic and non- linguistic means of communication. In the virtual world, aside from text chat and its supporting features and the emote system of gestures, game mechanics serve as these heterogeneous means of communication. Physical gestures and iconography can serve semiotic purposes and establish understanding when language is not available within real-world spaces of contact. In the virtual world, aside from the gesture emotes systems described above which contain small amounts of text support, game mechanics operate as this alternate form of communication that is intelligible to members of the virtual world. Game Mechanics are learned and understood through interaction with game systems (traversal, combat, and completing quests) and by learning an iconography that has been designed primarily to help players understand player abilities, but are repurposed by players to communicate using those abilities. While not the focus of this chapter, it is worth noting that the motivating action that creates communication through gameplay can be through the process by which players understand a semiotics of games themselves. Lindley(2005) presents a 173 framework for describing so-called "ludic systems", games and game-like interactive experiences, into various layers of encoding. From top to bottom, these levels of discourse (game text and cinematic/narrative systems), performance (player as active participant), simulation (the interaction between in-game systems and player choices create a diegetic world), and a "generative substrate" (the "systems of functions, rules, and constraints constituting a space of possible worlds of experience") are structured temporally as the effects of each are felt by the player over time. Furthermore, player actions can be looked at through temporal structures. Players actions and choices are structured as "moves", whether in quantized turns or, in the case of MMORPGs, in real- time. These moves by players are combined into "game-play gestalts", a pattern of moves. These gestalts combine into strategy, which can then be combined to describe the organization of entire playthroughs. One example of where this is applied by players is when new content is released, particularly more challenging "end-game" content, meant for players at the maximum job level. This content is a standard part of MMO game design, particularly for MMORPGs. As players reach the maximum level or skill level for their particular class, the aim of content shifts from the advancement of your character's Job level to acquiring items that can increase abilities and having players achieve by learning and overcoming the mechanical challenges by new content. Because of this, the game design rewards players for learning how the various mechanics of an encounter work and how their own skills and the skills of other party members (usually in groups of 8) can be used to overcome the challenge. 174 Though end-game content is where players are most challenged by reading, understanding, and successfully executing game mechanics, The game teaches players from the beginning the basic combat mechanics through iconography and trial and error. As stated in previous chapters, the game officially supports four different languages within the game client. Monsters, abilities, status effects, and other elements of the virtual world have different names for each client language. One way that designers have aimed to keep these abilities intelligible to all players is through the use of iconography. First, the general mechanics of combat are shown with a visual iconography separate from combat animations and the numerical display of damage dealt and received. Players organize job skills in UI elements such as hot bars or cross bars which allow then to use a keyboard or controller, respectively, to select actions. Skills that can be used are fully colored and selectable by an input device. Skills that cannot be used are greyed out. In addition, when skills are used, a cooldown of around 2.5 seconds is applied and visually shown using a screen wipe animation similar to a film countdown. For many classes, these actions can be chained into 3 action combinations or the use of an action can trigger a programmed random occurrence, or proc, that allows the use of or offers an improved version of a skill. For example, a melee character can chain three attacks to deal increased damage and add status effects that would not be possible if each skill was used individually outside of a combo or the White Mage class can sometimes proc a free cast of a cure spell on a random cast of a different spell, creating an incentive to cast both spells. 175 Second, player skills visual icons that are interacted with to activate their abilities as part of the user interface. While players can type out the name of an ability (usually in order to create short ability macros), players usually use the visual icon and, as they learn their class and the game mechanics in general, can understand what abilities are being used regardless of the client language. Tank classes understand what the ability called “Provoke” looks like, even if the client language would name the ability 挑発 (Chōhatsu), Provocation, or Herausforderung. Third, status effects (small mechanical bonuses or penalties) also have their own set of icons as well as a basic pictography. Status effects with a triangular point up, for example, indicate positive effects on the target (player or enemy), such as health regeneration or damage boost, whereas effects with a triangular point down indicate negative effects, such as poison or damage vulnerability. These status icons remain consistent for their effects through various types of encounters so players who have experience with the game can learn to “read” these status effects and can recognize when new status effects have been added to the game. Finally, in addition to the visual icons created for player abilities and status effects, there are a suite of visual icons for players to place known was waymarks and symbols. Symbols are a set of visual icons, such as numbers 1 to 5, circle, x, triangle, etc. that players can place on themselves and others, as long as they are in a pre- arranged or ad-hoc party. These can be used by players to indicate a role or even sometimes to make sure a person is visible during a busy moment of action combat as visual effects may make smaller characters hard to make out. Waymarks are similar to symbols in that they can be placed by players and are visible to all players in a party. 176 Instead of being placed on players, waymarks are placed on the virtual world, on any horizontal surface and appear as a small glowing circle or square on the surface and a letter or number, respectively (A-D and 1-3) above it. These visual elements are used extensively in creating strategies for content in order to map out where players should be for handling certain mechanics or in confirming positions of players. For example, in a fight where an enemy will damage all players at once and each player cannot be hit more than once by that damage, players have to spread around the enemy. Before the encounter a waymark can be placed in a safe area and players can stand around it, confirming their position, usually by using a cardinal or intercardinal direction. As described below, waymarks are also very important in player-created text macros to diagram player positions. Case Study: Tsukuyomi EX, Fight Macros, and Player-Created forms of Communication Players rely on the rules of the virtual world in order to understand how to interact within the environment and with other players. While understanding the communications systems that are built into the game are important, another way that players communicate is through game mechanics. In MMOGs, teamwork and coordination are key play modes that are encouraged in design. In the case of FFXIV, the game's focus on Player vs Environment content has led its design to rely on player abilities and skills that complement one another. On a broad level, this is expressed through character classes (i.e. Paladin, Bard, White Mage, etc.) and roles (Tank, Melee, Ranged, and Healer). On a more detailed level, these roles and classes exhibit synergy in gameplay. Tank classes get computer controlled enemies to attack them and they use defensive skills to mitigate damage while damage dealing classes defeat enemies and healer 177 classes keep the tanks and others from dying during combat. This so-called "holy trinity" design for MMORPGs has been a hallmark of design in large part because it engenders cooperative play in a way that feels natural to players because of their familiarity with both the fantasy genre in fiction as well as with games that have drawn inspiration from fantasy. Players spend much of their progression completing content in small groups or 4 players from across the various roles. This allows players to learn how their chosen character class works as well as how they work with other players in different roles. By the time players reach maximum level for their class, there are a series of baseline skills and competencies players assume have been learned, such as how health and damage work, how to interpret the iconography used by the game to show damage and status effects, and how certain skills may synergize with other character classes and roles. Mark Chen (2009) describes the communication and coordination process of raid groups in World of Warcraft. He identifies three types of activities necessary for overcoming complicated game mechanics in MMORPG spaces: collaborative communication, building player relationships, and forging trust. The process of learning and clearing content is iterative, with groups learning how their players can coordinate their character's abilities with each other to create successful strategies to clear content. Players, through communication strategies such as planning, socialization, and talking through failed attempts at learning, cultivate trust in each other, strengthening their relationships, and ultimately overcoming the complex mechanical challenge the raid content in WoW poses to its players. 178 While similar content in FFXIV is learned and solved in similar terms, there are some differences in the approach to communication between players. While FFXIV has the tools to cultivate consistent player groups to cultivate trust and forge and reinforce player relationships, because of the reduced number of players needed for raid content in FFXIV, 8 players versus Chen's instance of 40 players, it is often the case that players learn content in ad-hoc groups. These ad-hoc groups are either randomly assigned (Using the Duty Finder for automatic matchmaking) or are recruited for (Using the Party Finder which gives players across a data center a way to find players who meet certain requirements for the content that wish to clear) and only last the length of the instance timer, the time allotted by the server to try a piece of content for any given attempt, usually 60 to 180 minutes. In addition to learning content in ad-hoc groups, players who have learned the specific raid encounter have motivations to clear it on a regular basis (usually gear or items for character advancement), usually once a week, and can also clear content with an ad-hoc group. The key to being able to do this is ensuring the group is following the same strategy. This can be confirmed verbally, but in practice, it is common to use non-linguistic forms of setting down strategy. The case study below shows an example of how a strategy develops and disseminates and works as a common base for communication and coordination, despite whatever language barriers may exist between the specific players in question. Tsukuyomi EX is a type of encounter in FFXIV known as a Trial (in Japanese 討伐・討滅戦 tōbatsu/tōmetsu-sen, in French Défi, and in German Prüfung). Trials are single fights against a boss (called a Primal in English) that are designed for eight players, divided into groups consisting of two tanks, two healers, and four DPS classes. 179 There are two tiers of the fight, the normal version, and the EX, or Extreme version. The normal version of the fight has easier mechanics for players to overcome (with less strict penalties for failure) and, correspondingly, the rewards for players are minimal. Trials are designed to be incorporated with the series of main story quests that all players complete to advance in the game, so completion of normal trials is typically just a continuation of the story for players. The EX versions are more mechanically difficult versions of the normal fights with higher penalties for failure at dealing with mechanics. EX Trials last between 9 and 13 minutes. Players must defeat the Primal within that period of time, as the game has a designed 'enrage' mechanics which will defeat players once the time limit has been reached. In the case of Tsukuyomi EX, the encounter lasts twelve minutes and is broken up into four distinct phases Trials are usually broken up into multiple phases with different mechanics in each phase, though later phases oftentimes ask players to overcome challenges from earlier phases at the same time. In the case of Tsukuyomi EX, there are four distinct phases of the Trial that requires players need to learn what actions the enemy will use and how they work, coordinate with members of the group to deal with those abilities in a way that does not defeat the group, and execute abilities and movement in a controlled manner in order to successfully clear the encounter in the time allotted. Groups, particularly ad-hoc groups, will use macros in order to set up how the group will tackle the encounter. It's important to note the functions that these macros do and do not serve. Macros also assume players are familiar with the main class roles (tank, healer, DPS) and their basic abilities and responsibilities beyond the specific 180 tasks required of them in the encounter. Macros are also not intended to teach encounters. While players do organize and recruit members for (ad-hoc or static) groups and may use macros as a way to guide the learning and practice of the encounter's mechanics, the macros themselves are not meant to be used as guides for the encounter. Such guides are usually created by players and disseminated to the playerbase through paratextual platforms like Reddit and 2channel in the form of text descriptions, blog pages or online documents with text and images, online slide presentations, and videos on sites like YouTube. The functions of macros, then, is to lay out what specific strategy will be employed to deal with the encounter phase by phase. The goals of macros are conciseness, clarity, and group consensus. Similar to how Chen describes the importance of trust in large raid groups in World of Warcraft, FFXIV's groups use macros in order to ensure all members of the encounter are on the same page and can trust that everyone is aware of their roles. Figure 3 shows player created text macros developed to outline the strategy for completing the encounter. These macros are created in Japanese and English. Their use and creation rely of players understanding not only the basic mechanics of the game and understanding of the mechanics of the fight in particular but also how to use the user interface designed in the game. But macros are mostly written so that only minimal language proficiency is needed in their use, if at all. Tsukuyomi EX begins with one of the tank's "pulling" (attacking the boss, thereby starting the encounter and enrage timer) the boss. Because of the pre-established rules of combat, the tank who has the boss's attention faces the boss away from the group 181 while others, deal damage and/or heal the tank as the boss attacks. The boss's first main mechanic for players is, as indicated in the macro, Nightfall or 宵の早替え (Yoi no hayagae). Nightfall causes the boss to perform two different types of damage one after the other. One version of the mechanic calls for players to stand together in one spot to share damage. The other variant requires players to split up by role in order to minimize the damage taken by the group. The tell for this mechanic is visual. The boss displays one of two weapons, a gun or a lance. The macro in Figure 3 indicates where players should position themselves in the fight: stack behind for the gun, spread for lance. For the stack, the English and Japanese indicate stacking behind the boss, with the Japanese version of the macro even indicates the stack by stating in parentheses 頭割り (atamawari) which explains that damage is shared. For the lance mechanic, the diagram in each macro shows how players should spread, based on their role. In English, T for Tank, H for Healer D for DPS. In the case of this encounter both the Japanese and English macros use the same abbreviation, though there are encounters where Japanese Macros use abbreviated kanji for job roles, such as 黒 for 黒魔導士(kuromadoushi, Black Mage) or ナ for ナイト(naito, knight or, as localized, Paladin). In that case, English macros use the three character abbreviation for jobs, such as BLM for Black Mage or PLD for Paladin. The Diagram also indicates the directions where people should stack based off of cardinal directions, which are Indicated using the letters available with the waymark system, described above, with a note that the A waymark indicated north. Phase 2 is an "add phase", where the main enemy is untargetable and the party has to contend with one or more other enemies before the fight would continue. For this fight, 182 the add phase is short, with two types of enemies present. The space devoted to this phase in the macro is similarly short in both languages, only indicating which of the tanks (the MT/ "Main Tank" or ST or "Secondary tank"). As an aside, while the English Macros Titles this section as "ADDS", the Japanese version titles the section 雑魚フェーズ (zako fēzu or "small fish phase"). The third phase of the fight is the most mechanically complex. Players have to move towards a quickly decreasing "safe zone" of space. This is visually represented using the phases of the moon, as the boss's visual design and mechanics are borrowing from the Shinto moon god Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto. Thus the safe ground slowly waves in a crescent-shape and the dangerous area waxes like the gibbous moon. As this is happening, three players, chosen at random from the three job roles, have to move into the danger zones at specific points to let meteors fall on them, both away from the group and each other. These meteors then explode and create new safe zones for the players to move into once the entire arena becomes dangerous to stand on. The player- created macros, repurposing the diagram for Phase 1, help indicate where players chosen for the meteor should move to spread out. Healers move directly across from the group, while Damage Dealers and Tanks move left or right from the group depending on where the group begins on the west or east side of the arena (or D or B, respectively using the waymarks as the macro does). Once the mechanic is cleared, the fight moves on to the fourth and final phase. The final phase of the fight involves many mechanics that ask players to move to different areas of the arena to avoid different types of damage. There is an attack that deals heavy damage on the main tank as well as places a status that forces the tanks to 183 swap places in order for the main tank to survive the encounter. There are also a set of mechanics that ask players to group together into a safe zone while several rings of damage appear in the arena, then soon afterward split horizontally into three groups, again based on job role. While this phase has several mechanics to it, the macro only reflects this last mechanic, showing how players should stack horizontally for that mechanic. As mentioned already, these player-created macros are not instructional tools. A player who aimed to learn the fight using only the macros would be stymied on the last phase since mechanics such as an attack which forces the main and secondary tank to trade places, or the names of attacks that tell players whether to move to the boss's left or right and whether to move close to or far away from the boss at the same time. These macros only help to explain how to perform a mechanic in a specific way in cases where there are potentially several ways to overcome the challenge and the macros allow for all players to coordinate their actions. While text macros do utilize developer created tools for communication inside the virtual world, the understanding and execution relies of players understanding how basic game mechanics operate, how players of different classes play a role in clearing content, and being able to translate the visual and textual information found in the macros into actions that take place across a discrete unit of time for any given encounter. Being able to so do, particularly in an ad-hoc group where certain types of trust developed through socialization and conversation outside of the practice of and completion of content, relies on players reading and reacting to other players' 184 implementation of game mechanics and through their actions creating a semiotic system of gameplay. Conclusion Player communication takes on various forms, using available modes of communication both within the text of the virtual world, utilizing the tools designed by the developer for communication and interaction within the virtual world. Communication also takes place on paratextual platforms with players struggling with the creation and maintenance of the virtual contact zone across all of the playerbase, regardless of region or language. These forms of communication between players is fraught with the potential for misunderstanding, conflict, and miscommunication, whether that takes the form of a back and forth argument on the the /r/ffxiv or through gameplay mistakes that results in a group in a trial dying attempting to clear content and having to start again from the beginning of the fight. The form and spaces for this type of communication occur without the Developer playing a dialogical role in the conversation. However, given the amount of control and power the Developer has within the virtual world, in creating the tools and conditions for how players interact within the virtual world, their presence still pervades the context and means of communication. Players work to tell their stories and their experiences as well as find the means to work together, whether in a set or ad-hoc groups, in smaller easier tasks, or larger, more difficult challenges created by the Developer for players. Looking at these spaces for communication, particularly how players use these spaces is fruitful to our understanding of virtual worlds and the social lives of the agents within and around them. 185 While FFXIV has proven to be a fruitful case study for how online games construct their virtual contact zone, the next chapter will attempt to situate how FFXIV is illustrative of how developers and players construct these contact zones as game development has moved towards a live service model and how the modes of communication that exist in FFXIV can be leveraged to further research in game studies and communication. 186 Figure 3: Player-created Macros for "Tsukuyomi EX" in English and Japanese 187 Conclusion: Future Directions for Virtual Contact Zone in a "Games as a Service" Model of Game Design On November 12th, 2018, as part of the Keynote speech for the 2018 Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival, Producer Naoki Yoshida announced changes made to the game and how players could interact with others across data centers. While players were able to find players to complete instanced content, such as dungeons, throughout the data center using the Party Finder feature, it was announced that, starting in March of 2019 with the release of patch 4.5 and before the next expansion of the game, players would be able to travel to other servers in the data center via a 'World Visit' system, which allows players to visit friends and participate in world content, such as monster hunts, on any server within the Data center. An interesting addition made by Yoshida during the discussion of the new feature was the hope that players would travel to less populated servers to complete quest content when there was server congestion. Yoshida directly namedrops the most populated server across all regions and data centers as he states, interpreted by Localization lead Michael Fox: "So now you can go to these other worlds where maybe you have friends and participate in quests, hunts, search for buried treasure together. Of course, you can also do main scenario quests in these other worlds as well... So when 5.0 comes around, and the servers get really busy, you know maybe some players, maybe those from Balmung, can try to do some Main Scenario Quests at a less congested world?" The other major structural change announce was the addition of more data centers to American and European Regions. A third North American data center and a Second European data center would be added and go online in March alongside the World Visit system. As part of these changes, it was announced that servers on the two 188 current data centers would be moved onto the new data center. This news was met with mixed reactions. Yoshida and the development team appeared cognizant of the potential reaction to the news as they began in the keynote, (again interpreted by Fox): "And this is a very hard decision for us, but we plan on growing Final Fantasy XIV and to do that, we decided that this was the best route to take. So up until now, we've been running on two data centers in North America and in Europe we had one. But over the past few years, we've had a great influx of players. All you here, everyone watching on twitch, we've seen so many new players join Final Fantasy XIV (applause) I want you to remember back towards the release of Stormblood (Yoshida kneels and bows to the audience) and while it is great to have so many players join the game, again the servers are becoming crowded and they're getting... a lot of bad things are happening with those servers. It's just too crowded now. So to alleviate this problem, we have decided to open a new data center in both North America and Europe. However, in conjunction with the addition of this, there's going to be the necessity to have a regrouping of the worlds on the data centers. This will happen in Europe as well." In the following day's Live Letter, the details were further clarified. In particular, how the servers would be regrouped. The reaction by the live audience was mixed, as the regrouping meant that player communities which had formed across servers in each of the data centers would become separated, unable to communicate or collaborate together. In particular, the two most populous servers in North America, Balmung and Gilgamesh, would become separated from each other, the former moving to the new data center and the latter remaining in the original one. Yoshida stated (interpreted by Aimi Tokutake, Assistant Manager for Project Communications for Square-Enix's US office): "And I'm terribly sorry to announce this, but I'm afraid we will have to regroup the different worlds within these data centers... I'm terribly sorry about this, but we will have to do this, but let me show you how we will be shifting around the worlds within the North American Data centers. [Shows 189 slide outlining the data center and servers organization. audience reactions] ...I'm sure a lot of thoughts are going across your minds right now and it's a little bit unfortunate that we had recently introduced the cross-world Party Finder and we were able to create a community within the data centers and I'm really sorry that we had to make the decision to add the data center and reshuffle some of these worlds, and we do understand that it came at this timing and we did think really long and hard about this decision... Of course we made this hard decision because we want to continue looking into the future to expand the playerbase for North America and Europe and we want to avoid a situation where we would have issues with heavy congestion or servers going down because of a lot of people coming in to access so we deliberated about how we were going to regroup these different worlds together with our community teams. We've also monitored and investigated on the situation of the different worlds within each data center and thought long and hard in order to come to this decision." The decision has been met with mixed to positive reactions, with players hopeful for less congestion, but many others struggling with the choice to move servers for one friend group over another. Others are worried that the changes won't solve the underlying issues of server load and balancing as players may simply move to whichever data center will cater to the content they prefer (typically the split is between high-end raiding or role-playing content) and reintroduce the loading issues already present. Two weeks before the FFXIV Fan Festival, Blizzcon was held in San Diego. Blizzcon is the annual convention run by Activision-Blizzard for fans of Blizzard's games. At Blizzcon, the Lead Designer and Game Director for first-person hero-based shooter Overwatch, Jeff Kaplan, announced a new hero for the game, Ashe, explaining the abilities and features of the hero such as her role (Damage) weapons (a large pistol 190 and dynamite) and abilities (summoning a large robot ally as her ultimate move), the reasons for her design (the team wanted a weapon focused hero), as well as character details such as her backstory (a villain who leads a gang), her voice actor (Jennifer Hale), and who she has a relations within the Overwatch setting (She leads the gang that Jesse McCree, a popular Hero in the game, used to belong to). In a follow-up video which was posted on the game's YouTube account on November 5th, 2018, Jeff Kaplan summarizes Ashe both in terms of her lore and her mechanics: "She's a very strong personality, is very bossy so that eventually led her to found the Deadlock Gang and she eventually attracted people such as McCree into that gang. But it's her gameplay that you're going to find the most interesting and most exciting. She is a Damage character so she will fill the Damage Role." After describing the various abilities of the new character, Kaplan closes with: "So we know you're gonna come up with all sorts of cool and crazy combinations. I would highly recommend you not only go watch but you also go watch Ashe's origin story... Enjoy Hero 29, thank you so much, and have fun playing Ashe." Players reacted to this news with mixed opinions: happy to see a new hero to play as, criticism that the new hero was not a Tank or Defensive Role, criticism over the character's design (particularly her skinny, curvy body type and made up face looking much younger than her canon age of 29) being too similar to other female characters in the game. While Kaplan and the development team have responded to questions about character design and have changed content in Overwatch to balance maps and characters for play, particularly in light of the nascent Overwatch League which began in 2018, they have not directly addressed any critiques of this character. 191 These two events are unrelated in terms of the companies, genre of game, and context for their respective announcements. Yet they are related to how important communication between the members of the virtual contact zone has become in online games. These forms of interactions between the members of the contact zone highlight the shift and creation of a new landscape for relations between the Developer and the playerbase. The Emergent Landscape of Online Games Games and the games industry have shifted with the growth in ubiquitous internet and the emergence of mobile platforms for gaming. Shifts in monetization schemes for software development at large with the shift towards Web 2.0 economic models (as well as older Software as a Service models that date from the 1990s) has been integrated by several game publishers, such as Electronic Arts, Activision- Blizzard, and Tencent. These "Games as a Service" models focus on providing games and game content on a continual basis, developing new content over time in an effort to reduce attrition and increase both average and lifetime playtime, purchasing content to continue supporting the game. Games as a Service (GaaS) monetization schemes have been used to support Free to Play Models (common in mobile games, but also in large computer games such as League of Legends or Fortnite) as well as to support purchases past the initial sale of games. While GaaS began being used as a marketing term in 2007-2008 by Tencent, it is with noting that, for one, these models grow from the subscription models developed in MMORPGs since the mid-late 1990s and, for another, that the real explosion in GaaS as a monetization scheme embraced by the games industry at large has been over the 192 last five years. GaaS monetization schemes take various forms, such as downloadable content (DLC) and "season passes" for DLC content, microtransactions both for specific in-game items as well as randomized microtransactions ("loot boxes"), and games designed from the ground up as catering to esports and professionalization of video games, such as what Activision-Blizzard is currently attempting with its Overwatch League. Whatever the specific economic model used, the games developed for GaaS have relied on more frequent transparent communication between developer and playerbase than on previous models of development where engagement was more limited to the promotion of titles during development and through release, with at most a few announcements post-launch if there were issues with the game such as bugs. As with the forms of monetization listed above, there are several motivations for the increase in communication: the changes in game design in light of new affordances with more ubiquitous online access, the desire to limit attrition/churn in the playerbase, the desire to increase engagement and play time in order to increase sales in microtransactions (and thus the lifetime value of each player), or the investment in the game itself beyond playing, such as in esports titles that want to create a large audience of spectators. These motivations are linked in a desire to cultivate and grow a larger community of players and others invested in the game. While the motivations for this form of game design is largely economic, the games designed have taken advantage of these models of communication and growth that stem from MMOGs. This dissertation has focused on one game, Final Fantasy XIV, as a case study for looking at the role of communication between all of the stakeholders of a virtual 193 world: the players, the development team, and the publishers. The contact zone was used and expanded as a theoretical model for conceptualizing the network of communication and texts produced around a virtual world. This chapter looks at how the virtual contact zone can be brought to bear in current and future research on online games from virtual world experiences similar to FFXIV to other sorts of online games, which have just begun to embrace the GaaS model and the increased need to develop social spaces to interact with increasingly local playerbases. The Virtual Contact Zone Around Final Fantasy XIV Final Fantasy XIV offered a unique case study for looking at online games and virtual worlds as contact zones. Its history of development and reliance on communication with players made the patterns of interaction more perceptible. In addition the game's current development process focusing on simultaneous release internationally, its use of various media platforms as modes of address and communication with players, and the game's localization process that is closely linked to the lore and narrative of the game positioned it as a useful case study, and a different context for virtual worlds research that other online games such as World of Warcraft or Second Life. Chapter Two focused on the role of the Developer, a catch-all for the development team at large, but also representative of the role that a representative for the design of the virtual world who communicates with fans has become in live service games like MMOGs. Final Fantasy XIV's development history and its relationship with its fanbase over the game's initial launch, reorganization, redevelopment, and current maintenance. The Developer can frame themselves in various context: Manager, 194 Designer, and fellow player. These framings can help bring the Developer closer and in more concordance with players, but it also increases the need with which the Developer must respond to criticism or issues with the virtual world. It also means the Developer must be willing to accept responsibility for failures of the virtual world and to ensure that they communicate their own mortification and outline steps being taken to fix or adjust missteps. This is a continual process, as live development and new content are being created and released at regular intervals. The Developer's role in the virtual contact zone then is as a colonizing agent. They represent the organizations that created and maintains the virtual world, the publisher and development team. However, unlike colonizing agents in real-world spaces, the Developer is dependent on cultivating and maintaining a player community and the income from subscriptions and microtransactions are the means by which the game is financially successful. Chapter Three examined the importance of narrative elements to the design of virtual worlds. Lore plays a large role in how players engage with many types of virtual worlds and acts as a common ground for various activities within and around the virtual world. Players use narratives to anchor gameplay experience and to cultivate their knowledge of the virtual world as a whole. The chapter then looked at the role of localization as communication between Developer and playerbase within the virtual contact zone. FFXIV's unique method for localization and the closeness with which the localization process is linked to the writing process more visibly shows the relationship between localization and narrative, but also how localization acts as the voice for the Developer. Localizations reflect the regions 195 and languages the Developer believes is important to support, but in doing so highlights regions and languages that are left out. In these cases sometimes, fans step in to localize on behalf of those languages that are left out of official localization. In addition to the function of localization, the chapter also looks at how players communicate with each other and the Developer regarding discrepancies in how narrative elements are localized. Similar to other conflicts between Developer and players, discrepancies with translation have to be addressed and similar forms of address and similar rhetorical stances are needed in order to show that the Developer is listening to and responding to the playerbase. Chapter Four looked at player communication through paratextual platforms online and within the virtual world. Paratextual platforms help players to create communities across the limitations placed by the technical structures of the virtual worlds, with players being able to talk about the game and construct a contact zone across servers and data centers in-game. However, there are still some separations between communities, primarily by language. Looking at paratextual platforms, players talked about these other playerbases in various rhetorical modes, in an effort to understand and compare how different players of the game work with others and interact with the virtual world. The chapter also looked at communication between players within the virtual world. FFXIV offered designed communication systems aimed at text chat, machine translation, and avatar gestures. In addition to those, players utilized game mechanics and the iconography designed for those mechanics, as a means of communication and coordination. Through the use of player-created text macros and an understanding of 196 game mechanics, players are able to overcome difficult gameplay challenges even without having a common language. Limitations of the Study The dissertation looked at the spaces of communication, coordination, and coexistence between members of a virtual world, expanding on the theoretical model of the contact zone into virtual spaces to capture the dynamics in place between the relevant parties to the creation of, growth, and perpetuation of that community. The Developer for online games acts as a representative of the entire organization of people responsible for the technical, narrative, and systemic aspects of the virtual world. They also act as an interlocutor with players in order to communicate with them in the space of the contact zone. The study also looked at the role of narrative and localization and how the Developer must handle issues of communication across several languages. Finally, the study looked at the role of inter-player communication, both in terms of player perceptions of other communities and the ways players utilized all elements of design, from communication systems to game mechanics themselves, in order to communicate and coordinate to make their way in the virtual world. That said, it is worth looking at some of the limitations of the study. Selecting Final Fantasy XIV as a case study was useful in order to get relatively deep, quality data about the dynamics of communication and negotiation of that game's community. That said, while the study has considered the possible applications of the findings to other online games and other virtual worlds, it is important to note that more work across a larger body of online games and virtual worlds is needed in order to make larger claims about power between users and the designers and developers of virtual worlds. 197 Second, while the study looked at the role of language and localization in FFXIV, it focused on language in only two facets: how the Developer localizes the game and its reception, and how players communicate despite language barriers. In other respects where language and culture are addressed, such as player perceptions of different regional playerbases, they were done with a bias an emphasis on English-language platforms. More work looking at and analyzing Japanese, French, and German platforms could yield more data that could shed light on how English-speaking players are perceived. This could have been a useful comparison to the self-perceptions some English-speaking players have of themselves, particularly when comparing them to other player groups. Finally, the dissertation focused on the four main languages supported by the development team and localized in-house: Japanese, English, French, and German. This excluded the Chinese and Korean localizations of the game. While managed by outside firms and content for them is released later than the officially supported versions, these versions have had some mixing with the official versions. As discussed in chapter three, for example, it was the Korean translation of an important character that prompted player criticism over how that character had been localized in English. Second various cosmetic items, such as clothing, gestures, and mounts created originally for these other versions of the game, such as a Changshan and Qipao outfits, a "Side Step" dance, and a Panda mount for player characters to travel on. As of yet these cross localization exchanges have been limited to items (usually only purchasable as microtransactions) and are released by the Developer. 198 Finally, one last aspect of player interaction with the virtual world and, in particular, how players attempt to reframe the growth and development of the virtual contact zone that was not looked at was the use of technological tools for communication, coordination, and visually reshaping the world. Third party applications that track combat are used by players doing high-end content like raids to monitor improvement and tune strategies for clearing content. There is a "don't ask, don't tell" policy enacted by the Developer in regards to the use of third-party applications for the purpose of improvement and clearing content. However, these applications also have the program in functionality that some in the player community have perceived to be cheating. In addition to third-party apps, there is also a small community of modders who redesign character models, clothing, and other visual elements of the game. These modifications are only visible client-side (that is only the computer where they have been implemented), but they do challenge the visual look and space of the game as well as challenge certain limitations on depictions of nudity and sex that are limited by the game's official teen rating. These mods are used by a large minority among players who are motivated by role-playing and considering the role of these technologies could yield some interesting data in regards to alternative texts by players to reframe the relationship between playerbase and Developer. The Virtual Contact Zone in Online Games Final Fantasy XIV offers one case study for examining how we can theorize a virtual contact zone for looking at the social and communicative spaces in online games and virtual worlds. One of the goals of the study is to expand on Pratt's idea to Game 199 Studies and imagining what the virtual contact zone looks like for online games. This would have significant analytical utility as well as potentially offer a lens for design, given the trend towards live games and games as a service, as defined above. The virtual contact zone recontextualizes space. The space of a virtual world is not just colonized by a game developer or publisher but is literally created by them. Players are visitors to these created and curated spaces. The appearance, lore, and even how players interact with the virtual world are all conscious decisions made by teams of designers, artists, writers, and programmers. Yet, the playerbase in online games make up an important group. Their economic importance is self-evident, as the monetization schemes by which these games sustain themselves rely on large playerbases that spend money on subscriptions or microtransactions. Yet their importance is also communicative. Ultimately players need a reason to play online games. While player types and motivations for play differ, online games offer spaces of communication and sociality that can cut across regional or even linguistic lines. The Developer, thus, is just as dependent on playerbase in order to grow and maintain itself. This ebb and flow between Developer and playerbase vary in kind and intensity. Some games, like FFXIV, rely on recurring player subscriptions for revenue and in their design create and release new content in regular intervals to keep players invested in the game. Other games have looked to esports and professionalization of their games to generate interest and an audience for games. The virtual contact zone also has analytical utility in the ways it allows researchers to understand the creation and implementation of a game in terms of how players experience them. Whereas traditional narratives for the design and 200 implementation of games is rooted in the developer or publisher, highlighting technical or design details which set a game within a context or as a unique text within a genre or platform, the virtual contact zone model can be used to look at the impact of a game through player experience and the ways that players interact, clash, and/or navigate each other and the game itself. Another aspect of the contact zone is the locating of various texts by various agents within the contact zone in order to better understand the shape of this shared space. In "Arts of the Contact Zone" (1991), Pratt classifies the texts created by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala as "autoethnographic" in that it sets out to "engage with representations others have made of them" (35). Within the virtual contact zone we see communities of player engage in forms of these texts separate from the Developer, either directly challenging the decisions made on the virtual world or trying to address, describe, or critique characterizations about the various regional and linguistic groups of players that make up the playerbase as a whole. There are some lingering questions about the virtual contact zone that still need to be addressed. One is what happens to the virtual contact zone when the virtual world no longer exists. While there is some scholarship that has looked at communities around virtual words that no longer exist (Pearce, 2010), much of the research is focused on social life with communities in present virtual worlds (Chen, 2008; Williams et al., 2006) and the question of what happens to the spaces of communication and coexistence when the virtual world itself ceases to exist is open to further research. Fractures in the Virtual Contact Zone: Linkages and Breaks in the Social Space 201 Another aspect of the virtual contact zone that bears further scrutiny is a deeper and broader examination of its members as well as an interrogation as to membership and inclusion? Who is served in the construction of a particular contact zone? Who is marginalized or ignored? in the case of FFXIV, there is a privileging of specific regions and languages. These are choices on one hand made for economic and logistical reasons: the development team is based in Japan, English serves a large market in North America and the UK, the company has staff and offices that can serve French language players in North America and Europe as well as German audiences. On the other hand, the very circumstances that make those choices "easy" or "natural" have embedded in them deeper issues of economics and political economy. In this case study, there are some uneasy questions to ask such as why was the Korean version licensed out to be managed as with the Chinese version of the game, rather than managed in-house by the publisher the way that other localizations are? Is this reflective of political biases, intentional or not, by either corporate publisher or development team? A brief example may put some of these issues to light. Up until September of 2017, FFXIV players in Brazil and Russia had purchased the game as well as their subscription via Steam, the largest platform for digital game sales. While Square-Enix sells the game and monthly subscriptions on their own platform, players from these reasons chose Steam because, on that platform, the costs to play were in line with the economies of those countries. For example, a video game that would cost $50 on the US market will sell for the equivalent to $13-15, since that was what those markets were used to paying for games. In August, Square-Enix released an announcement stating 202 they were changing the subscription prices "to ensure that no matter where someone plays from, what currency they use, or which platform they play on, the price would remain roughly the same for everyone." The result of this was that now monthly subscriptions were about as much if not more than the cost of a new game every month and many players from these regions balked at paying an unsustainable monthly price to participate. In the release Square-Enix effaced an apologetic tone, stating "we would like to apologize for the frustration caused due to the lack of announcement ahead of time," and even offered free play time to the affected players. This instance met with mixed reaction from players. Some felt that this was fair and that those paying the cheaper Steam rates have been "getting away" with not paying what they should be whereas others tried to make the case that these changes were unfair given the economic conditions in the affected countries. Either way, this incident is reflective of some of the underlying economic tensions and division present in the virtual contact zone. In some ways, the ultimate power of the Developer, beyond being the creator and arbiter of how the virtual world is constructed and operated, has the power to expel members from the virtual world for the inability to pay to be a subject within the world. Granted, online virtual worlds that do not employ a subscription model do not do this explicitly, though in those cases, players with less buying power may see themselves, much as in real life spaces, fall behind as they must invest more time to make advancements that can be had with microtransaction purchases. The virtual contact zone is a purposely messy space that, for all the various digital and physical spaces it can manifest in, has certain fissures and breaks. Player attrition or churn is one aspect as players who grow bored or dissatisfied leave. Economic divisions such as 203 the previous example shut out would be players. Audiences that are considered marginal or invisible, such as players in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, are accounted for economically, but never directly addressed by the Developer, prompting projects like Lore en Español to exist by fans to fill those gaps. Finally, for as much as the Developer aims to present themselves in more equal standing with the playerbase, does see breaks in that communication, such as issues with localization discussed in Chapter Three or when microtransactions were first introduced and players across the various regions wanted to know how other players felt about their introduction, as briefly discussed in Chapter Four. The larger stakes in looking at virtual contact zones are larger questions of the role of capital investment in an online community. The infrastructure, development time, and labor are all in service to the creation of the virtual world. the virtual contact zone is reflective of ways in which communities centered around these virtual worlds are in necessarily messy and uneven footing along linguistic, nationalistic, and economic lines. That these members come together to communicate, collaborate, argue, and play is interesting, but underneath it, alongside issues of power and communication by its members, the ever-present global economies of game development are present in each bit of virtual ground. FFXIV 1.0 failure was seen as a failure not just of the game, but of the Final Fantasy brand. 2.0's success has proven to be key to Square-Enix's financial solvency in recent years and much of the relative freedom the Developer and players have had comes largely to the game's financial success, being most paramount in the publisher's agenda over the human connections made within the messy space of the virtual contact zone. 204 Future Directions of Games Research in a Games as a Service Ecosystem Moving on from Final Fantasy XIV and its particular virtual contact zone, there are some future directions for online game and virtual worlds research in light of the findings in the study and the applicability of the virtual contact zone as one model among many for looking at the underlying dynamics among members of the virtual community. These potential research threads have applicability to the field in order expand our understanding of virtual worlds from a variety of different standpoints within the space. One avenue for research is to look at the virtual contact zone and see what ways it is applicable to non-virtual world online games. Of particular interest are games which are part of the esports ecosystem, such as League of Legends, Overwatch, or Counter- Strike: Global Offensive, each of which has development teams that manage and change content over time. These Developers have to manage not just a playerbase organized by region or player motivation, but also a secondary group of professional players as well as a system of stakeholders who have financial interests in the professionalization, broadcast, and cultivation of an audience of spectators for that professional scene. On the other end of the commercial spectrum, it could be of interest to see the virtual contact zone model applied to smaller types of virtual world environments. Virtual world programs like VRChat, for example, allow players to create and import their own graphics as well as create private spaces for communication. The lack of lore or other narrative common ground could make a virtual world like VRChat an interesting case 205 study. More active focus on the role of player-created technologies and how they interface with online games and that impact on the virtual contact zone. Virtual worlds research on spaces like VRChat, may prove fruitful in seeing how these contested spaces operate in these more persistent and less stratified environments On a similar note, educational virtual world environments (WhyVille, Active Worlds, and other Multi- User Virtual Learning Environments) could also be an interesting focus for looking at spaces of communication, particularly because these contexts, in some cases being non-commercial virtual worlds, could give a sense of how members of these spaces which include shifting dynamics of creators and users and educators, mentors and students. Another avenue of potential future research is in examining the localization process for online games more closely. As discussed in Chapter Three, much of the literature on localization has focused on traditional video games. Examining the process of online game localization, specifically how closely localization is tied to development, could help researchers understand the reactions to localizations by players. This may be especially fruitful given online games are more and more relying on simultaneous global releases of content, such as online games that are entering the esports space. Also within the esports space, it can be a potential resource to interrogate the idea of the audience within the virtual contact zone. Traditionally, the notion of an audience for games was seen as synonymous with players. Players interact with games and are simultaneously the actor and audience for the proceedings within a ludic space. However, with the emergence of video genres of Let's Plays, streaming and streaming 206 personalities, and esports, there is an emerging audience separate from players that should be addressed in any future case use of the virtual contact zone. While the communication strategies by the Developer in the case study of FFXIV was, for various reasons, successful and resulted in revitalized and growing playerbase, future research should not neglect analyzing case studies and events where such communication between Developer and playerbase was less successful. One example case study could be looking at the development, reception, and unsuccessful communication between Developer and playerbase of the 2017 title, Star Wars Battlefront II. The game was designed from the start to use the Games as a Service business model. The Developer communicated through social media that they were addressing the critiques of the original Battlefront game released in 2015. In addition, however, the game was also a platform for a set of randomized microtransactions (colloquially known as "loot boxes") and the implementation of the game's design received criticism from players for making the game too difficult to complete objectives without purchasing microtransactions. There were also missteps by the Developer in how they utilized platforms as forms of address. Looking at this case study, or ones similar to it could help understand what happens when that space of contact breaks down, particularly for the Developer of the game. Concluding Remarks The virtual contact zone is a busy space inhabited by various individuals from different cultures, backgrounds, and levels of agency thrust together. Unlike the real world spaces of conquest, colonization, and subjugation that oriented the original 207 conception of contact zones, the disparities in power are not severe, nor are the consequences often as dire for subjects in the space. However, there are disparities of power within and around the virtual world. They are, quite often, commercial spaces and the aim for these is to cultivate a playerbase that can support the game and make it a profitable product to the developers, publishers, and other stakeholders. However, online games and virtual worlds have to balance those needs with the cultivation of a playerbase that actively wants to participate and interact with the designed world. In online games and virtual worlds, the Developer, players, and other stakeholders are situated in these spaces within and around the online game or virtual world. Communication from the Developer happens with the context that they are the arbiters of the space. However, one which needs the members to buy into using and being a part of that space. Players, for their part, utilize the virtual world and paratextual platforms to create a larger community, to address concerns to the Developer, and sometimes to create texts and technologies to fill needs the Developer either cannot or will not do for players. This dissertation has aimed to examine the potential for contact zones to describe and tease apart the relationships and forms of communication among those invested in online games and virtual worlds. The potential application for this model, for game studies and digital media studies, could help expand scholarship within the field. It is my hope that future research in virtual worlds can explore further the relations of power, forms of communication, and the ways that, within virtual environments "cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other," (Pratt, 1999 p.34) 208 References agneslynd. (2015, Jan 23). [Spoiler]Midgardsormr Japanese versus English? [Comment]. 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Asset Metadata

Creator Vichot, Rhea Antonia (author)

Core Title Virtual worlds as contact zones: development, localization, and intergroup communication in MMORPGs

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 02/20/2019

Defense Date 01/23/2019

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag contact zones,Final Fantasy,game development,intergroup communication,localization,MMO,MMOG,MMORPG,OAI-PMH Harvest,online communities,online games,player communities,role playing games

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Jenkins, Henry (committee chair), Frazier, Robeson Taj (committee member), Lippit, Akira Mizuta (committee member)

Creator Email rvichot@gmail.com,vichot@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-124791

Unique identifier UC11675536

Identifier etd-VichotRhea-7099.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-124791 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-VichotRhea-7099.pdf

Dmrecord 124791

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Vichot, Rhea Antonia

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA