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Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture
A study of Everquest that provides a snapshot of multiplayer gaming culture, questions the truism that computer games are isolating and alienating, and offers insights into broader issues of work and play, gender identity, technology, and commercial culture.
In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps--as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces.
Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)--including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online--and offline life--and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play--and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space--what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.
In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps--as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces.
Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)--including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online--and offline life--and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play--and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space--what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.
197 pages, Hardcover
First published February 24, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 5, 2018
Excellent study of virtual worlds. The book is "old" compared to 2018, but it still raises vital questions that have since shaped the debate and been explored even further. The book specifically centers itself on power gamers and transformation of rules and the meaning of play, female gamers and complex social identification in games (at the time) commonly aimed at "boys", and politics and ownership of virtual worlds, where consumer rights are not recognised, and where the labour of players can instantly be taken away if the company wishes to.
All in all, the book tackles some early thinking about what games become when we start to break down the segregation of real life / game and instead acknowledge the inclusion of the "outside" sociocultural reality in such game spaces. Players engage with games very differently, and this is precisely because each player is so very different, shaped by demography, class, gender, race .. graphic card and time of the day. Break down the magic circles, understand the emergent character of play (in social settings).
All in all, the book tackles some early thinking about what games become when we start to break down the segregation of real life / game and instead acknowledge the inclusion of the "outside" sociocultural reality in such game spaces. Players engage with games very differently, and this is precisely because each player is so very different, shaped by demography, class, gender, race .. graphic card and time of the day. Break down the magic circles, understand the emergent character of play (in social settings).
January 17, 2026
This really highlights how MMOs thrive on social connection rather than isolation, which still feels true today. It’s interesting to see how those shared gaming spaces extend beyond the game itself, and communities often grow around platforms and resources like apkvenom that help players stay connected and engaged.
October 20, 2018
I thought that this was a really interesting read. In some respects it's definitely out of date, and some arguments have progressed and reached wider consensus, but it's well-written (not insufferably academic; a little more like a journalist's exposé) and thought-provoking.
January 2, 2019
Finally got around to reading this after years of seeing it cited. Good observations, especially about female players, that still hold up today.
May 5, 2021
Did not learn a thing unfortunately.
November 24, 2025
Strong insights on the value of multi-sited analysis that manages to highlight how experiences that might sometimes be described as periphery can influence core experiences.
December 17, 2012
T.L. Taylor is a long time player of EverQuest and uses her experience as a social researcher to explain the complexities of the social interactions to non-players. As an online gamer myself, I appreciated her thoughtful look at how players change the games they play and create ways to connect with each other. One of the most effective chapters was called Where the Women Are and looks at how the gaming world is mired in stereotypes and doesn't know how to make women welcome and feel like gamers first and not women. This is a book that I would recommend to anyone who spends their time networking online as through the lens of EverQuest, Taylor makes many good points about how online communication allows us to move between many worlds.
February 5, 2012
A thin book, somewhat dated but still relevant. Taylor doesn't say much that hasn't been said before, but she does express some ideas more clearly and rigorously than can be found elsewhere in the literature. As a fairly light read, this is a decent entry point to the study of virtual worlds for reasonably informed readers; those who need a bit more hand-holding should start with Castronova. The fact that Taylor focuses on Everquest, which is strangely ignored by many scholars in her field, also helps to set this book apart from the rest. Not essential reading, but hardly a waste of time.
December 22, 2008
Short. Doesn't really feature much of the apparently extensive ethnography. Don't consider it a major work.
March 18, 2012
Thorough anthropological/ethnographic study of how one MMO game universe (EverQuest) and its players navigate the creation of community, culture and meaning in game and outside of game.
June 8, 2016
This was actually a quite interesting read! Easy to comprehend and relatable. One of the better non-fiction books I've had to read for a university course.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews