Abstrakt
Even though some ethnologic studies focusing on virtual realities and MMORPGs has been published (Boellstorff, 2008, Nardi, 2010, Taylor, 2006), only little attention has been paid to the aspect of interfaces of those systems. In this work, we study how computer game interfaces influence user experience from methodological perspective.
As most of the anthropological research is based on direct participant observation, we would like to revisit these methods with respect to the interface of aforementioned virtual realities, in particular, for a popular game Elder Scroll Online. We work with a hypothesis that observing a participant in virtual worlds differs from real world observation due to the interaction limits.
In this work we propose adjustmets to the observation methodology which attempts to reflects these limits. On the example of the investigated game, we show reflexive outlook on the function of its interface and how it influences the participant observation.