Conference presentation about YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates and the ways in which the games directly aims to simulate an economy but more subtlety utilises cultural practices to construct desire. The game also constructs the concept of labour and even drudgery around play.

1. AVAST: Social Networking and Complex Economies on the High Seas Gordon Fletcher - University of Salford Anita Greenhill - University of Manchester

2. “ Massively multiplayer online puzzle game. Those are the only possible terms you can use to properly describe Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates , one of the weirdest and most original puzzle games we've come across in quite a while… Imagine a persistent online world [with] Lego people in pirate regalia …” YOHOHO! PUZZLE PIRATES

3. Social Networking

4. Fashion and Roleplaying

5. Puzzle Games

6. Economies!

7. Use of the situationist concept of the event to interpret and understand the social meanings of Y!PP and the relevance of studying these environments in the context of information systems research The situationist approach enables identification of an element of the gameplay that is usually left unacknowledged – the mundane and repetitious aspects of social interaction in the form of labour Situationist events

8. Use the situationist concept of the event to interpret and understand the social relations of Y!PP Consider the ways that specific events, both spectacular and mundane inter-relate with specific artefacts Each event is shaped by context and circumstance Everyday life is punctuated by individual movement between and through events Situationist events

9. In Y!PP, everyday life is hallmarked by undertaking neverending puzzle tasks, looking for work in shoppes or on ships and checking the noticeboards of individual islands Players are drawn to the spectacle of ‘other’ events to offset routine events Spectacular events of Y!PP can range from blockades of an island, an encounter with the “Ghost Ship”, navigating to a new island, exploring a deserted island for firewood or iron and meeting new people Regular and planned spectacles also shape the Y!PP experience – including “free” days within games parlours Everyday events

10. Crafted and heavily-managed events reinforce the power of the game’s designers Also produces a sequence of events that exist between the most spectacular and the most mundane Irrespective of the designed intentions of any given event as a PoE Sink or a revenue generator, by being drawn to spectacular events players ‘buy-in’ to the political and economic messages and meanings that these events embody Other events

11. Crafted and heavily-managed events reinforce the power of the game’s designers Also produces a sequence of events that exist between the most spectacular and the most mundane Irrespective of the designed intentions of any given event as a PoE Sink or a revenue generator, by being drawn to spectacular events players ‘buy-in’ to the political and economic messages and meanings that these events embody Everyday events

12. Mapping events Hegemonic Mainstream Social/Political Resistance the mundane production of spectacle (planned?) detournement recuperation (altered) Hegemonic Mainstream managed events in-game limitations

13. What’s missing Clearer articulation of the role of artefacts in-game and in the construction of hegemonic power relations Further exploration of the ways in players resist the imposition of ‘game’ elements Changing meaning of the concept of “labour”