Community, Storytelling, and Play: Making and Breaking Rituals in Destiny 2

Title of the Paper

Community, Storytelling, and Play: Making and Breaking Rituals in Destiny 2

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Game Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Community Management, and Narrative Studies
• Keywords: Online Community, Narrative, Ritual, Community Management, Ethnography, Developer Interaction, Live Games, Destiny

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  1. Live games (e.g., Destiny 2) rely on long-term storytelling while requiring real-time development and player interaction, yet little research focuses on how these two aspects are integrated.
  2. Players tend to expect regularity in game narratives and updates while also desiring surprises and changes, creating a tension between these conflicting expectations.
  3. Community management plays a critical role in bridging developers and players, but its complexity and emotional labor are often underappreciated or overlooked, leaving it vulnerable to player harassment and negative emotions.

• Research Significance:

  1. Live games represent an important experimental form in modern media consumption and narrative structures. Studying their storytelling models holds significant value for developers, players, and broader cultural contexts.
  2. Understanding how player-developer interactions influence the gaming experience can provide guidance for optimizing design and management practices.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:
  This study focuses on the player community of Destiny 2, combining game narrative research with ethnographic methods to explore how players and developers co-create the gaming experience through rituals and interactions.

Solution

• Proposed Method or Solution:
  The authors conducted a 32-month online ethnographic study of the Destiny 2 player community, analyzing player behaviors, developer interactions, and narrative practices to explore "rituals" as a key mechanism in game storytelling and community relationships.

• Innovative Contributions:

  1. Introduced rituals and routine behaviors as a lens for analyzing game narratives and player interactions.
  2. Investigated how players co-create the gaming experience through community culture and interactions with developers.
  3. Proposed the use of storytelling as a tool for community management, emphasizing its role as a bridge between developers and players.

• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:

  1. Data Collection: Observed social media platforms (Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, etc.), developer blogs, and in-game behaviors to document player community interactions.
  2. Data Analysis: Used participant observation and reflexive methods to identify core themes, such as ritual creation, rule-breaking, and developer communication.
  3. In-Depth Analysis: Extracted interaction patterns between narrative and community management from case studies (e.g., player and developer responses to bugs and spoilers).

Research Findings

• Specific Results:

  1. Defined the ritualistic characteristics of repetitive game content and narrative mechanisms in Destiny 2 (e.g., weekly resets, periodic updates).
  2. Highlighted the importance of rituals in maintaining community belonging and social interaction, while also showing how rule-breaking (e.g., exploiting bugs) can reinforce or alter rituals.
  3. Demonstrated how developers use humor, narrative feedback, and conversational interactions (e.g., tweeting in the persona of game characters) to foster goodwill among players, while also facing challenges from negative player reactions when community expectations are violated.

• Advantages Compared to Existing Solutions:

  1. This study emphasizes the bidirectional interdependence between developers and players in shaping narratives, offering a new perspective on live game storytelling.
  2. Proposes integrating traditional community management functions with storytelling to support the healthy development of game communities.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:
  Case study observations revealed:

  1. Players often respond positively to unexpected events (e.g., bugs or humorous developer responses), enhancing community interaction.
  2. While spoilers and information leaks are accepted by some players, they have a significant negative impact on the overall community narrative, requiring developers to strike a careful balance.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  1. This study primarily observed specific sub-communities, which may not represent the diverse and extensive player base of Destiny 2.
  2. The lack of developer data and internal perspectives limits deeper understanding of the decision-making logic behind interactions.
  3. Future research should incorporate interviews with both players and developers to further explore the interplay between storytelling and community management.