This book tells the story of what happens when a Cherokee gamer, using a storyteller's perspective and a methodology built from equal parts Indigenous tradition and current academic field knowledge, spends a year in what was at-the-time the largest online video game in the world. Following from work by James Paul Gee and Bonnie Nardi, Phillip Michael Alexander ventured forth into the game world to see what someone who was a gamer long before he was an academic might see in this same fascinating virtual space. In working ...
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This book tells the story of what happens when a Cherokee gamer, using a storyteller's perspective and a methodology built from equal parts Indigenous tradition and current academic field knowledge, spends a year in what was at-the-time the largest online video game in the world. Following from work by James Paul Gee and Bonnie Nardi, Phillip Michael Alexander ventured forth into the game world to see what someone who was a gamer long before he was an academic might see in this same fascinating virtual space. In working with, playing with, and sharing the stories of a ten-person "raid" group-players performing at the highest level within the game--he set out to determine how those gamers most invested in success built identities and communities. The resulting work is a reader-friendly, theory informed, virtual-boots-on-the-virtual-ground look at how gamers craft in-game identities, find like-minded gamers to form group identities, then organize to do staggering amounts of work in a virtual world
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