The rogue in the lovely black dress

Abstract

In this paper we present a critical analysis of player accounts of intimacy and intimate experiences in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). Our analysis explores four characteristics that players articulated about their virtual intimate experiences: the permeability of intimacy across virtual and real worlds, the mundane as the origin of intimacy, the significance of reciprocity and exchange, and the formative role of temporality in shaping understandings and recollections of intimate experiences. We also consider the manifest ways that WoW's software features support and encourage these characteristics.

Humanistic HCI

“…In our research on online sexuality and intimacy, we asked users of online virtual worlds World of Warcraft (Pace et al, 2010) and Second Life to tell us, in as much detail as possible, about an online experience that they considered to be "intimate"-and we offered no definition of intimacy in our prompt. We received about 150 responses, averaging about 100 words in length.…”

“…In , we studied designers of high-end sex toys (e.g., Jimmyjane, Lelo) and argued for an epistemic role of the sexualized body in their design processes (and by extension all experience-or intimacy-oriented design processes). We also studied the role of intimacy in online play, looking at friendships, romance, and cybersex in World of Warcraft (Pace et al, 2010). More recently, we offered critical-empirical studies of the design of new sexual desires in the context of sexual geo-mapping applications (Kannabiran et al, 2011) and contributed to the development of the notion of a subjectivity of information in the context of intimate experiences in virtual worlds .…”

Machine Learning Processes As Sources of Ambiguity: Insights from AI Art

“…for humanistic HCI research in several influential studies [47,62,68,80] as well as in contemporary scholarship on AI Art [9,96,99]. Specifically, we closely examined the artworks as well as their artists' technical descriptions of them.…”

Designing interactive systems through a game lens: An ethnographic approach

“…For example, research related to players' motivations (Yee et al, 2012), characters' value (Livingstone et al, 2014, learning (Nardi et al, 2007), virtual currencies (Debeauvais et al, 2012), personality (Yee et al, 2011), characters' names (Thurau & Drachen, 2011), transgressive play (Sundén, 2009) and demographics (Yee, 2006) have been conducted during the years. As the social dimension is essential in experiencing the game's potentialities, a number of investigations have explored the players' experience of intimacy (Pace et al, 2010), the factors that could explain the success or failure of a guild (Ducheneaut et al, 2007), leadership styles (Prax, 2010) and player behaviors (Bardzell et al, 2012) within raids, collaborative play and friendship among players (Nardi & Harris, 2006), how playing WoW enhance real-life social relationships (Snodgrass et al, 2011) and the constant negotiations between players and Blizzard on control, agency and ownership over the game (Glas, 2013). Several studies of WoW (e.g.…”