How do humans learn to embody the inter-subjective conditions for being in the world? An ethnographic study of gaming in virtual spaces

Games have often been used as places of refuge and personal expression during uncertain times (Pearce, et al. 2007: 263). This project was concerned with exploring what difference it makes to the inter-subjective sociality of gaming when play takes place in virtual worlds.

This project presented ethnographic research carried out during participant-engagement with a group of interlocutors who play the game Dungeons & Dragons online. It analysed the game as a case study of the question of how humans learn to embody the inter-subjective conditions for being in the world.

Through the ethnographic examination of the lifeworlds of these Dungeons and Dragons players, at the intersection between the real world and virtual world mediated by particular kinds of technology, this project brings to life the interior dialogues and imaginative worlds of people who found themselves learning how to participate in what I describe as, following Lave and Wenger (1991), a new community of practice. By doing so, I contemplated the interaction between social presence, communities of practice, and belonging in virtual realms.