Desires at Play

Abstract

This article discusses knowledge production in game studies by exploring notions of emotion, closeness and (queer) desire in new media ethnography. It uses field notes and experiences from an ethnographic study of the online game World of Warcraft. As opposed to the kind of fieldwork where being, living, and staying in the field is the only option, new media ethnography brings with it the possibility of moving through different locations and bodies to the point where the borders between them may start to blur. The text positions itself within this very uncertainty to investigate its consequences for ways of knowing online game cultures. Drawing on autoethnography, as well as the body of ethnographic work interrogating erotic subjectivity and desire in the field, the discussion makes use of personal experiences - in particular an in-game as well as out-of-the game love affair - as potentially important sources of knowledge. Was it her, regardless of the game? Was it her through the game? Or was it the game “itself ”? The article provides the story of a particular way of being introduced to and of falling for a game, a woman, and the ways in which these two were intensely connected. Set against the backdrop of “the affective turn” in cultural and feminist theory, and in making visible how desire may circulate through game spaces, the article argues for an articulation of desire as intimately related to technology; of desiring technology and of technological, or perhaps technologized desires.