How To Save A World: The Go-Along Interview as Game Preservation Methodology in Wurm Online

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of preserving MMO cultures by recording lived experiences and place-based memories. It applies the go-along ethnographic method to Wurm Online to elicit location-specific memories and to examine community curation of history. Five themes—Distributed Identity, Presence and Absence, Static vs Living Heritage, Freedom and Control, and Tending—emerge, illustrating how players sustain a living heritage through ongoing care, signatures, and collaborative practices. The study demonstrates that preservation in digital games is best approached as a living process that honors user-generated memory, community archives, and embodied experiences rather than freezing a world in time.

Abstract

Massively multiplayer online (MMO) games boomed in the late 1990s to 2000s. In parallel, ethnographic studies of these communities emerged, generally involving participant observation and interviews. Several decades on, many MMOs have been reconfigured, remastered or are potentially no longer accessible at all, which presents challenges for their continued study and long-term preservation. In this paper we explore the "go-along" methodology, in which a researcher joins a participant on a walk through a familiar place and asks them questions, as a qualitative research method applicable for the study and preservation of games culture. Though the methodology has been introduced in digital media studies, to date it has had limited application in digital games, if at all. We report on a pilot study exploring applications of the go-along method to the sandbox MMO Wurm Online; a persistent, player-directed world with a rich history. We report on our motivations for the work, our analysis of the resulting interviews, and our reflections on both the use of go-alongs in digital games, as well as the unique and inspiring culture and community of this lesser-known game.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Screenshots of go-along locations. All screenshots are from the perspective of R2, except Figure \ref{['fig:wurm_screenshot_4']}.
• Figure 2: Finalised thematic map.
• Figure 3: A player-created map of Independencewurmmap, in full. The highlighted square is the region Figures \ref{['fig:nirav2']}, \ref{['fig:gumbo2']} and \ref{['fig:p3']} are based on. Travelling from the north coast of the map to the south coast, on foot, would take approximately 4.5 hours assuming consistent road coverage (based on a traversal of Cadence, which is a Wurm map of a similar size howbigmap).
• Figure 4: A map depicting the route taken on the go-along with Participant 1 (Nirav, curator of the Rockcliff Museum). The go-along began at the Rockcliff Museum (3) before beginning to travel via horse and cart to Fang Henge and the Rockcliff Cathedral (4). We then travelled to Lyric Beach (2) for supplies and visited the Black Dog Canal (1), continuing on to Freedom Market (6) before moving through the south entrance to the Pass (5) to the eastern entrance (9). We then retraced our steps back to Lyric Beach (2) to conclude.
• Figure 5: A map depicting the route observed via video during the go-along with Participant 2 (Gumbo, who is associated with the creation of the Dragon Fang Pass). The video can be accessed online dragonfangvideo.