Exploration 6: Reciprocal-Reflexivity

 

                For this final exploration, I have decided to reflect on one new action that I want to implement in my mini action research study. Since Exploration 1, I have looked at the different ways I could gather data from my ongoing gaming and artmaking practices. At first, I was unsure if action research would be the proper method for me to pursue because I did not see my ongoing practices of gaming and artmaking as “actions” – in the sense that requires an intentional change in action research. The further explorations I engaged in throughout the semester proved me wrong. My perspective towards my ongoing practices has changed, and I learned to look at them through a critical lens. To give an example, in Exploration 3: Narrative Inquiry, I re-visited a distant gaming memory back from my undergraduate years, and I re-interpreted it through comic-style drawings. Going back to that memory and using drawing to narrate it was like a journey I was coming back to myself. And I changed during that process. Again, in Exploration 5: Data Visualization Analysis, I explored how I make sense of my gaming device in relation to the avatars I embody in my gameplays. I used the drawings of my gaming console as visual data, which helped me make meaning of my gameplays from another perspective – a new materialistic one. I give these two explorations examples of how my approach to my ongoing practices has changed and become alive. As a whole, all the explorations were dialogic for me; in a sense, they implemented something new as responses to one another. For example, the problem statement I wrote for my action research study has had slight changes due to the other explorations that followed it. Thinking of all the explorations as responses to one another, it is no surprise that my problem statement has transformed.

            In my problem statement in Exploration 2, I have indicated that I would be focusing on three different video game avatars I embody in my gameplays. My intention has not changed; I still want to explore the dialogic relationship between the self and the video game avatars and investigate how it impacts my self-making. In what ways this relationship is dialogical? In what ways the virtual in the avatar becomes actual for me? How can this relationship be used to critically engage in gameplay and identify the complex (cultural and political) layers that form an avatar and its milieu? How do identities of the self and the complex layers of the created (fictional) avatars communicate? With these questions in mind, I initially thought about conducting this action research based on my process of embodying fictional video game avatars. I thought of using screenshots and recordings of gameplay and my drawings as visual data to analyze my dialogic relationship with avatars. Also, considering the gaming device as apparatus, I thought of investigating the impact of non-human agency on my self-making from a new materialist perspective. However, I felt a bit limited thinking of my action research within this problem statement. As referenced from Allison Weir (2008) in Karen Keifer-Boyd’s (2008) article below:

            When I identify with you, I am reconstituting myself, my identity, through traveling to your world; through coming to know you, by listening to, witnessing your experience, I    am expanding myself to include my relation to you. But rather than assimilating you into                  myself, assuming sameness, or simply incorporating your difference without change to      myself, I am opening my self to learning about and recognizing you: I cannot do this            without changing who I am. And because this process changes our relationship to each     other, it also changes you – more so, of course, if the process of identification goes both        ways. (p. 208)

            I can still see how this argument below can be applied to the relationship between oneself and the avatar. However, I also feel the lack of being in conversations with other gamers, other than those I engage in casually within my social circle. For example, I want to interview other gamers from different backgrounds in online multiplayer games. I have observed my partner playing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) online with his friends, and it inspired me to pursue a similar method to engage in dialogues with other gamers. I have observed him gaming and talking to his friends simultaneously; they are fully involved in gameplay, but their conversations with each other are not fixated on gameplay; they gossip about others, talk about their jobs, etc. I have observed how organic their conversations were, not only because they were already friends but also because they talked through their avatars. Speaking through their avatar selves seemed to direct or shape their dialogues accordingly. I do not know how to explain it yet, but that is precisely why I want to implement a similar cycle into my action research study. I believe that it will help me look at avatar self-making from multiple perspectives and foster my reflexivity. As argued in the article: “Reflection as reciprocal reflexivity involves seeing a situation from multiple social justice positionalities, revealing differential power relations, and disclosing who benefits from the research” (p. 198).

            I want to explore how I, and the other gamer(s) communicate with the avatars we embody in the same video game environment. I also want to explore how we communicate with each other when we are embodying avatars. By conducting online gameplay interviews with other gamers, I want to implement another layer of dialogue to our avatar self-makings. Online gameplay interviews are another cycle I want to implement in my action research study; however, other cycles can be added later as well. I believe that online gameplay interviews will also help me look at our dialogues from the video game milieu perspective, adding digital ethnography as the primary method I will be using in this cycle. I will aim to conduct a performative, reflexive digital ethnography. In accordance, it is stated in the article that: “Data for social justice action research may comprise embodied, visual, and performative actions” (p. 199).

            In this new cycle of my action research study, I will expand my reflexivity about my dialogic encounters with avatars to the dialogic relationship with other avatar selves. This cycle of action research will be limited to video games that allow online play with others, which could be a limitation. However, it can also help me engage in other video games that I usually do not play on my own. I might need to use another gaming console to have more options for online gameplay as well. I will also need to recruit participants from gaming forums like Reddit and tell them about the research and ask them if they would be willing to participate, either by private messaging or by e-mailing them. I might also need their contact information since I will be interviewing them while we are gaming together at the same time. However, first of all, I will need to make mini research on video games that allow online play and make select some to play among them. In any case, this new cycle will allow me to take action and get out of my comfort zone to engage in multiple layered dialogues with gamers and their avatar selves. From this cycle, I hope to get data that will allow me to explore how I, and the others gamers’ avatar selves interact within the game and how those interactions effect our dialogues in return. I wonder if this cycle can help reveal the power structures in selected video games in relation to our identities as gamers coming from various backgrounds.

Keifer-Boyd, K. (2012). Critique, advocacy, and dissemination: I've got the data and the     findings, now what? In S. Klein (Ed.), Action research: Plain and simple (pp. 197-215).     New York City, NY: Palgrave.