ABSTRACT
Developed in the mid- to late-1990s when the cybercultural project of open space was still more culturally resonant, a time before the market had proven massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) commercially viable even without such aspirations, EverQuest's producers believed that part of their task was to create interpersonal bonds between their players. Here, EverQuest's producers followed in the footsteps of Gary Gygax, the man who, along with Dave Arneson, was responsible for inventing Dungeons & Dragons and with it the genre of pen-and-paper, fantasy role-playing games (RPGs). To focus solely on the instrumental concerns of the dominant strategy, players can turn to the game mechanics themselves for guidance in how to build characters. It also re-focuses attention away from the status games of instrumental play toward the drag of identity experimentation and the MMO's usefulness as a technology for expanding our social realms into new, previously unavailable spaces.
