About Digital Youth
"Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures" is a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives. Read more
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Photo Credits: Ritchie Ly and Geert Allegaert.
Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XI
Project staff: Rachel Cody
Collaborator: Mimi Ito
This project focused on the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Final Fantasy XI (FFXI). Several thousand “adventurers” comprise the world of Vana’diel in FFXI, teaming up with one another to travel around the world killing beasts, reclaiming cities, and rescuing the world from the growing forces of darkness. The main communities that the players form are linkshells, which are exclusive chat-channels similar to those of guilds in other MMORPGs. Linkshells can be social or event-oriented.
Our project focused on the linkshell KirinTheDestroyers (KtD), a close-knit community of over 100 members. KtD was one of the few “end-game” linkshells on the Asura server, capable of taking on extremely difficult challenges that required intense coordination and carefully organized strategies. The linkshell was also very friendly, with members referring to each other as family and logging on just to chat with each other.
Through participant observation, we were able to see how communities extend beyond the game into websites, messageboards, and instant messenger programs. This contact outside of the game strengthened and extended the relationships formed within the game. It also encouraged a level of collaboration that is impossible within the game, allowing players to create strategies through videos, screenshots, and community experiences.
Using the experiences of KtD, the research has focused on how the players learn within the game and how communities influence or enhance this learning. Players begin the game with little to no knowledge of the FFXI peculiarities, but through the friendships they form and the linkshells they join, they build and trade knowledge to become experts.
This project started in June of 2005 and continued until the spring of 2006.
