ABSTRACT
One of the features that most clearly differentiates Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) from the rest of the gaming world is the communication that occurs among players. One of the benefits of working with digital games is that game transcripts provide access to records of spontaneous, real-life communication that can be challenging or impossible to replicate in laboratory settings. The focus on illocutionary acts requires putting communication into social and cultural context to understand their intent, for the intent of conversation analysis is to understand the transfer of meaning and the moves executed by the participants to accomplish that transfer. This chapter examines other situations within WoW it is likely that expressives would be similar in both games. One way that we might advance this kind of study is by paying closer attention to discursive flexibility and to communication contexts and tasks within games.
