Playing Plant Wars: Participatory Ethnography, or in this case kicking ass!

For our current ethnography project we are conducting a sweeping look at gaming in conjunction with Artful Dodger Software LLC for their game Plant Wars. Check out our project blog: www.patternsofplay.wordpress.com

One of the tools ethnographers use to understand the users or participants of a particular situation is called participatory ethnography. This means that we go and do what they do. In a traditional ethnographic project, for example ethnographers are brought into the factory to see how working conditions could be improved, the ethnographers would go into the factory and maybe work a few days in the different kinds of jobs. Basically you are putting yourself in your participants shoes.

In the case of this project that means we go and play Plant Wars, which is a stellar thing to be doing and calling it work! Today I felt my first real rush of victory. I clobbered another plant!

This is an important part of our research because it helps us feel how it really is to play the game. We are doing much more than just thinking about how the interface is laid out or how the games community work. We are trying to really get to know why people play. Today I learned that with one little victory. Once you sink your teeth into a game and start feeling the accomplishment it hooks you. I want to be better at it. I want to become the best at it (though I know I will always be a low-level flunky compared to the Plant Wars superstars at the top of the battle ladder). Playing games like Plant Wars is definitely a serious and necessary research activity. I love this project and Plant Wars.

his graphic made my victory really sink in and made me want more. Something about the blood spatter and the winning of the fight really got me pumped up, and I want to keep playing and winning. I think I am starting to feel more of what the rest of the Plant Wars players feel.