My research into the best ways to connect cell phones with MMOs has brought me to focus on identity: how it is constructed and what it means to players. I was reading Access and Affiliation: The Literacy and Composition Practices of English-Language Learners in an Online Fanfiction Community, by Rebecca Black, because of my interest in foreign language learning, and I stumbled across the following quotes on identity.
These hybrid elements of this online fanfiction genre scaffold ELLs' [English language learners'] access to the development of literacy skills by enabling them to act as “experts”, allowing them to construct identities as successful writers within the animé-based genre, and thus increasing their acceptance as English language users within the community.
The key point here is that participants in a community can volunteer to help others and be looked up to by them. Respect of one's peers is a strong motivator for continued participation in the community.
ELLs have the freedom to use and practice English with native speakers (Warschauer, 2000), develop an “authorial voice” (Kramsch, et al., 2000), and take on an identity as an English language user (Lam, 2000) outside the constraints of the classroom.
This is a problem that comes up in education constantly, but which is also relevant for games. Students in a classroom setting often feel constrained in ways that inhibit the development of identities the students themselves want to adopt and inhabit. By extending their identities as language learners beyond the classroom, and keeping those identities positive, students can escaped the shackles of the classroom and begin a lifelong love affair with language learning. The same is true for games. By helping players construct identities that make them feel proud, confident, and respected, game designers can keep players coming back again and again.
Within the fanfiction community the term “Mary Sue” describes a particular type of hybridized character [...] “A character that may be loosely based on the author. The character often is perfect and has a tendency to save the day. The story may focus around canon characters and their relationship to the character.” Thus, Mary Sues are recognized as one way that many female adolescents fuse their own identities with those of the characters and write themselves into a position of power in the fiction.
What are the corresponding ways that MMO players develop images of themselves as powerful? Leveling up helps. Membership in a guild helps. Increasing skill helps. In general, any reputation marker the game can give players for them to then take into social interactions in a highly visible way helps build player affiliation to that identity and that game space.
In composing online fanfictions, ELLs are able to draw on popular cultural, social, and personal resources to construct an identity as an English writer and reader that may depart significantly from the one that they are able to display in the ESL classroom.
The great thing about online identities is there's always another chance to start over. Regardless of the differences between the classroom and online communities, some percentage of writers who don't find success in the classroom will find it online. Add to that the free-form, nonjudgmental norms of the fan fiction community, and chances for positive identity construction go up considerably. What are the norms in MMOs? Are they more judgmental? How much control do designers have in shaping these norms? How do they affect players abilities to construct positive identities?
Additional quotes saying more or less the same thing:
What is significant to note is that they almost invariably follow such comments with positive feedback on the plot, a request for more “chappies” (chapters), or ask the author to “update soon.” Such positive feedback and requests for more writing can contribute to the construction of an ELL’s identity as an accomplished writer or designer of fanfiction.
These elements of the site also help ELL authors to establish a legitimate social position within the community as accomplished writers and promote their continued affiliation with writing in English.
