Fragile Avatars: Playful Betrayal in Children’s Online Hacking Practices

ABSTRACT

As children in Norway increasingly spend time in online worlds, often identifying closely with their avatars, the potential for experiencing distress as a consequence of losing control of these digital selves has also increased. This article investigates the local notion of ‘hacking’ among a group of 8- and 9-year-old friends, and shows how users of the online world MovieStarPlanet must be attuned to the always imminent threat of having their avatars seized by other users. Expanding on Gregory Bateson’s concept of framing to illuminate the paradoxical nature of online play, the article argues that hacking practices involve the simultaneous conjuring of apparently contradictory frames. Taking advantage of the fluid boundaries between play and non-play, the children made subversive use of egalitarian values of inclusion to exploit the trust of their friends, allowing them to mute and exclude other users.

KEYWORDS:

• Avatars
• framing
• hacking
• Internet
• play
• social exclusion

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 According to a survey carried out in Norway in 2014, 21% of girls between 9 and 11 years old reported that MovieStarPlanet was their preferred game, followed by Minecraft (17%) and Hay Day (14%) (Liestøl 2014).

2 In total, approximately 200 local people were involved as informants, interviewees, and conversation partners. I carried out 45 semi-structured, tape-recorded interviews, in addition to many informal conversations without the use of a tape-recorder.

3 During my fieldwork, a VIP subscription costs NOK 30, for one week, roughly the equivalent of the sum many parents gave their children to buy candy on weekends. A one-year subscription costs NOK 549, about the same sum parents and grandparents would spend on birthday gifts. The children negotiated, sometimes successfully, with their parents about whether they could spend the money on a Movie VIP subscription rather than on candy or gifts.

4 In game studies, scholars have debated the applicability of the magic circle metaphor in the context of digital games since Salen and Zimmerman (2004) made the concept a key component in their analysis of the mutual impact of digital games and cultural values. See Consalvo (2009) for a critique of the structuralist emphasis on form over function that often accompanies the use of the concept, and Stenros (2014) for a defence of a more dynamic concept of the magic circle than those offered by Huizinga and Salen and Zimmerman.

5 Similarly, Snodgrass et al. (2016: 3), in a study of ‘guild’ association in World of Warcraft, argue that ‘participation in guilds can produce a sense of positive role fulfillment and even elation when in-game challenges are overcome with online friends and collaborators’.

6 Down from 30% in 2012 to 26% in 2013 (Liestøl 2014: 63).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Norwegian Media Authority (Medietilsynet) [grant number 14/974-2/JEA].