Anthropology and Video Games
Expertise
By Véronique Leclerc
In recent months, I had the opportunity to give a talk on digital anthropology at the University of Ottawa. This presentation allowed me to showcase this little-known branch of anthropology, and highlight the strength of atypical profiles in the video game industry.
My Atypical Path
My passion for video games began at a very young age, when my father bought a NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in the early 1990s. Over the years, my interest only grew. Beyond playing, I also wanted to explain what sparked this excitement and this urge to play.
This desire to explore the motivations of game developers when creating games led me to anthropology. This field seeks to identify human groups by considering various social, economic, political, biological and cultural factors. Anthropology often takes a multidisciplinary empirical approach.
To better understand the video game development process and the methods used to explore players’ motivations, I decided to specialize in digital anthropology. This subfield of anthropology examines the social issues raised by new technologies. It also focuses on studying people in virtual worlds along with their impressions, experiences, and interactions.
My Role at Frima
My role at Frima is divided in two parts:
- Video game market and trend analyst
- User research analyst
Analyzing Industry Trends
The video game industry is complex and rapidly changing—you have to keep a close eye on it! Trends can also vary from one region to another. Understanding the cultural, political, economic and social factors is essential to grasping these differences. That’s where my background as an anthropologist comes in to support our analysis.
Analyzing Players’ Behaviour, Motivations, and Expectations
Without players, the industry wouldn’t exist! Analyzing their behaviour both in games and outside them (social media, comments, forums, etc.) is key to offering a product that aligns with their motivations and expectations.
Digital anthropology is grounded in ethnography — an investigative approach aimed to ‘develop a knowledge of particular cultural worlds through prolonged familiarization or acculturation with specific communities of practice’ (Gauthier, in French).
Ethnography is therefore the analysis of communities, their interactions, lived experiences, and codes of conduct. This specialization not only helps us interpret how players go through their adventures in our games, but also to identify the needs of fans of franchises, products, and much more.
In Conclusion
Although anthropology is not a typical specialization in the video game industry, its empirical approach and focus on players provides valuable support to development teams.
More and more diverse professionals, such as anthropologists, psychologists, ergonomists and others, are also being sought after in the industry in response to market demands.
To learn more about anthropological analysis of video games, check out my memoir (in French). It focuses on the process of designing a virtual reality video game. My goal was to find out whether the virtual experience created by video game developers match the one experienced by players.