World documents (picture included) : Reed- Hobbo field notes

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Reed Lu

Week 3 Participant Observation

    Doing Power and hierarchies in Habbo: Place-making and Membership

Introduction

I’m doing virtual ethnography in the game “Habbo”, by using my laptop to play, and using my phone to do screen recording. I stayed in the game for 3-4 hours on July 9th 2020. Habbo is a chatting based game, occurring in various rooms set up by its founder (players). Rooms actually are various scenes and social settings created or run by players provided for others to socialize. Founders spend money in decorating its place like the real world, and they can earn membership fees to found them. These rooms can be a buffet, coffee bar, disco bar, FBI office, foot-spa etc… Most avatars in the game are played by real people and players can find jobs in the game, such as to be receptionists.

Basically, players use email to create an account. Gender is required to choose, and only female and male are available.  But in the game, avatars can change their hairstyle, face, skin, clothes etc very freely, so gender expression can be altered freely not constrained by that previous selection. When first enters the game, a player is put into his own private room. And the first chatting place I go is a coffee shop. I call it the basic coffee shop, which is commonly the first chatting place newbies enter and have the first try to socialize.  He can decorate it freely by buying furniture, a lot of styles and things are available. Like in the real world, people decorate their room and invite friends to parties etc… I’ve heard some people talking to friends that he’s refurbished his room and invite them to see.  Except place-making through room decoration,  another way to complex and express avatars identity is through clothing.  Basic clothes are free but players need to buy advanced/stylish clothes by using the game currency (called Credits, or C). I observed that many people wear fancy and odd stylish clothes, they do spend money in this game. Players can earn credits through winning games (there are many game rooms), selling products,  founding a group to collect member fees or buy c with dollars.  Each player owns one private room.

Research Question

In my ethnography, I find the hierarchy and power relations in the game interesting, thereby I focus on how to realise the outsiders-insiders of a group in this game. How hierarchies are built and expressed.  For example, rooms are free to enter but inside each room, there would be areas that are only open to members of a specific group (can be this group or other groups which might be allied together). These areas are  blocked by gates that are owned by a certain group. To gain access to the gate（lazer gate) players need to join that group. Some require paying credits and get requests from a certain committee of this group.  Some don’t have that high threshold， just clik join the group, you will be joined and get access to that specific gate and area. In a room, there would be areas of different access requirements; i.e.  “vip area”,  “super vip” area or “special guest” , whose access is different. Then actually each room is constructed as a group or tribe, with hierarchy. But how bureautic it is depends on the founders and the group’s characteristics.

Multimedia Field-notes

 

  1. Screen shots

Private room (open world document to see)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basic Coffee room for Newbies  and People who get kicked out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cyber Bullying – First Touch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sensitive and uneasy talking

Use idle action (Zz)  — not open to talk; don’t want to talk; busy;

 

 

 

 

Doing Power 1: Membership: Gate and segregated areas — social network and money

 

VIP Areas and activities.

Badge (symbolic)

Ring bell to get in  or directly get in

 

 

Doing Power 2 : Familiarity with the world

Cooking chicken in the game — the Reality in Virtual ( another interesting topic) : how reality is experienced and comes in to being through social interaction

 

 

 

Doing Power 3-—-Bureaucratic power (election) and reputation ;

“Xx could ban xx with a single press”

 

‘“ A real founder doesn’t have to boss people around” “They have elected for that”

Memberships: Level of membership

  1. Administrative members or deep insiders

Familiar with each other : call by real name? (not the id name)

  1. Standard or lowest ( can only open one gate..)— outsiders

 

Counter-conduct 1 — challenge power

Through imitating their “special” costume

 

 

Another power structure in a different room : less restrictions ( relates to the theme of room ?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alternative structure to join in

Join by paying vs Join by being insiders

 

Greeting me and keep sending messages to me to pay fees to join their room. Pay More attention to people coming in. Competition in hiring members. “Trusted host” why stresses “trust” ?

“pick a seat” “ xx is leaving”

 

  1. Recording

 

Gate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grill chicken

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Double Entry Field-notes

 

Direct Observation                                                            Reflections

Quick chat — slow type

 

 Yaki(a player) chats with me in the basic coffee room; I reply slow; she doesn’t happy with that, says bye to me

 

 
Zz  Idle — no talking  I use it a lot..

And when I use it People won’t come to chat

 
Language

“Can you sweden”

“No. sorry”

“Can we be friends”

“No”

 A short chat of two players.

 

What implications? Insufficient info. Needs more chats.

 

Short chat; hard to know people more deep; hard to draw understanding
  Hard to follow Slang and abbreviation , and game language maybe?
Money – party ???
Basic room

 

Theme rooms:

 

Familiar people talk

Stand together

Dance or just stand

 

 

 

 I’m trying to distinguish two sets of rooms after 1 hour playing; Geting some sense of the structure and norms of socializingl where to go

 

Who is alone and don’t want to talk and where to stand
Try to Get in a room

 

Locked — need ring bell to get in

Unlocked — area blocked by group gate

Gate keepers : real players

 

Keep sending me : welcome

 

 

 Feel sad cannot go inside

Especially see others (mostly, those are who wearing fancy clothes, I can see money, money and time..)get in without any restrictions …

I feel dumb.. Imagine that there’d be a day I can freely enter and exit any gates…..
Grill chicken — sense of reality  
ID — Buy standard id

Top management

— security division

—-special visitor

  
Cologne — costume and identity/ imitate others

 

“Being Krisss get boring”

 imitate others — challenge others

 
Name — not avatar name Familiarity within deep insiders
Ban people  
Different rooms

 

Buffet

Fewer restrictions

Still have vip rooms , access to kitchen area requires membership, but easy to join

 

 

 

 

  
Greeting

Style

Trusted host – iron heart

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further Observation

 

  1. Further question: Spend more time to explore the structure of rooms, categories,  and find out whether and how the hierarchy system is correlated with room categories and room themes (and popularity of the group). Categories listed in the game are: Public rooms, include :“ official rooms”, “room bundles”;” games”; “our fansites” ; and Events rooms.

 

2.   Participate actively in different rooms. To see how characteristics of the group leaders correlates with the power structure.

 

3. New ways of participating: While this initial participant observation is focused on listening to people’s chat, the further participant observation could be to join more chats with other players. These can give observers another angle that how hierarchies work, impede new players, and can gain ideas of how hierarchies are negotiated in which situation, how people respond to those membership requests as to better engage with this game.  Since I’m a newbie, I face many access problems, and these learning processes can just answer my research questions. But since I’m not so enjoyed in the virtual world generally,   I feel hard to set out to my comfort zone to face barriers in virtual environments, which I think is not worth it. Even it’s virtual worlds, ethnographers (from my own case) do get embedded in that social setting, being cautious about its norms, and will be put into vulnerable situations.

 

4. Participant in more events. There are many recurrent events where a lot of people join, so a great place to participate and observe.

 

5. Other sites for observation: Go to the game’s review website or forum to see whether people talk about the access problem and power relations in that game, and what do they mention.