Party of two at a fraternity party!
Or boundaries of co-play in a duoethnography of Fallout 76
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7557/ejcgc.v17i1.8239Keywords:
Ethnography, duoethnography, play, co-play, Fallout seriesAbstract
For the emerging field of party studies in game studies, this paper offers one account of how looking at boundaries of play as they are maintained in situ can be meaningful for understanding play and partying in practice, beyond a theoretical phenomenon. The paper is based on a duoethnography conducted by the two authors through playing Fallout 76 as fieldwork together between December 2021 and April 2022. The aim of this paper is to explore how the situated boundaries of co-play impacted our experiences of duoethnography within the game as well as to discuss how these boundaries connect to our intersectional identities. We explored how spatial, game design and temporal boundaries shaped our gameplay. However, we were also impacted by our intersectional identities, as we are both cisgender, white academics of middle class background, although with varying backgrounds in terms of gender (cis woman and cis man), family status (childfree and father of two), and different academic status. As such, through restorying and reconceptualization, we critically discuss our experiences in dialogue with previous research, so that the boundaries are not taken for granted and thereby maintained without reflection.
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