T. L. Taylor | |
|---|---|
 T.L. Taylor speaking at the 2017 Game Developers Conference | |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Brandeis University |
| Thesis | Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Environments (2000) |
| Academic work | |
| Main interests | Sociology,video games |
T. L. Taylor (born 1967) is an American sociologist and professor. Taylor specialises in researching the culture of gaming and online communities,in particular,esports,live-streaming,and MMOGs such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft .
She received her Ph.D. (2000) in sociology from Brandeis University. Her dissertation,Living Digitally:Embodiment in Virtual Environments,explored design and embodiment in MUDs and graphical virtual worlds. [1]
Taylor was a founding faculty member of the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen where she was a professor from 2003-2012. Before that she was an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. She is currently a Professor in Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [2] She has been both a Visiting and Consulting Researcher with the Social Media group at Microsoft Research New England. [3]
She co-founded AnyKey.org with Morgan Romine in 2015 and served as its Director of Research from 2015-2020 then Advisory Committee chair from 2020-2021. [4] AnyKey's aim is to support inclusion and diversity in the gaming and esport community.
Taylor is on the editorial boards of the journals Games &Culture,Social Media and Society,American Journal of Play,and ROMChip. She is a member of Twitch's Safety Advisory Council [5] and was a member of the Advisory Board for Riot's Scholastic Association of America from 2018-2020.
Taylor has been noted as providing insight into the emerging world of live streaming,the growth of professional esports, [6] and virtual worlds. Taylor also explores the relationship between the self-expression of players and designers' imperatives, [7] as well as challenging the perceived dichotomy between online and offline experience. [8]
Her first book,Play Between Worlds (MIT Press,2006) focused on the massively multiplayer online game EverQuest. It explored the social aspects of play,powergaming,gender,and the creative practices of players (including intellectual property implications).
Taylor's second book,Raising the Stakes (MIT Press,2012),examined professional computer gaming. She visited the World Cyber Games,as well as a number of other tournaments and did interviews with a variety of participants in professional competitive gaming. The book looks at a number of topics in esports,including their status as sports, [1] rulesets and competitive play,gender,and spectatorship and performance.
Her most recent book is Watch Me Play (Princeton,2018). Taylor analyzes the rise of game live streaming,focusing particularly on the platform Twitch. Continuing her interests in the sociology of play,governance,and management,she discusses how live streaming has come to transform everyday gaming,as well as amplify the growth of esports. The book explores the affective and precarious labor of these broadcasters,the emphasis on media entertainment within esports,and the transformative work of live streaming. [9] It won the American Sociological Association's Communication,Information Technologies,and Media Sociology section 2019 book award.
In addition to her work on these subjects,she has also spoken and written on doing ethnographic work that spans both online and offline sites. She is the co-author (with Tom Boellstorff,Bonnie Nardi,and Celia Pearce) of Ethnography and Virtual Worlds:A Handbook of Method (Princeton,2012), [10] which works as a guide for researches to apply familiar ethnographic research methods towards understanding virtual worlds and participants interactions within them. [11]
Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although organized competitions have long been a part of video game culture, these were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s, when participation by professional gamers and spectatorship in these events through live streaming saw a large surge in popularity. By the 2010s, esports was a significant factor in the video game industry, with many game developers actively designing and providing funding for tournaments and other events.
Bonnie Nardi is an emeritus professor of the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she led the TechDec research lab in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. She is well known for her work on activity theory, interaction design, games, social media, and society and technology. She was elected to the ACM CHI academy in 2013. She retired in 2018.
Judith Stefania Donath is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, and the founder of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. She has written papers on various aspects of the Internet and its social impact, such as Internet society and community, interfaces, virtual identity issues, and other forms of collaboration that have become manifest with the advent of connected computing.
Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnography, cyberanthropology, and virtual anthropology.
Video game culture is a worldwide new media subculture formed by video gamers. As video games have exponentially increased in popularity over time, they have had a significant influence on popular culture. Video game culture has also evolved with Internet culture and the increasing popularity of mobile games. Many people who play video games identify as gamers, which can mean anything from someone who enjoys games to someone passionate about it. As video games become more social with multiplayer and online capability, gamers find themselves in growing social networks. Playing video games can both be entertainment as well as competition, as the trend known as electronic sports has become more widely accepted.
Paul Dourish is a computer scientist best known for his work and research at the intersection of computer science and social science. Born in Scotland, he holds the Steckler Endowed Chair of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he joined the faculty in 2000, and where he directs the Steckler Center for Responsible, Ethical, and Accessible Technology. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the ACM, and the British Computer Society, and is a two-time winner of the ACM CSCW "Lasting Impact" award, in 2016 and 2021.
The Bartle taxonomy of player types is a classification of video game players (gamers) based on a 1996 paper by Richard Bartle according to their preferred actions within the game. The classification originally described players of multiplayer online games, though now it also refers to players of single-player video games.
Tom Boellstorff is an anthropologist based at the University of California, Irvine. In his career to date, his interests have included the anthropology of sexuality, the anthropology of globalization, digital anthropology, Southeast Asian studies, the anthropology of HIV/AIDS, and linguistic anthropology.
Mary Flanagan is an artist, author, educator, and designer. She pioneered the field of game research with her ideas on critical play and has written five books. She is the founding director of the research laboratory and design studio Tiltfactor Lab and the CEO of the board game company Resonym. Flanagan's work as an artist has been shown around the world and won the Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica in 2018.
Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the Internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but not live-streamed.
Twitch is an American video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions, in addition to offering music broadcasts, creative content, and "in real life" streams. It is operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. It was introduced in June 2011 as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv. Content on the site can be viewed either live or via video on demand.
The live streaming of video games is an activity where people broadcast themselves playing games to a live audience online. The practice became popular in the mid-2010s on the US-based site Twitch, before growing to YouTube, Facebook, China-based sites Huya Live, DouYu, and Bilibili, and other services. By 2014, Twitch streams had more traffic than HBO's online streaming service, HBO Go. Professional streamers often combine high-level play and entertaining commentary, and earn income from sponsors, subscriptions, ad revenue, and donations.
Félix Lengyel, better known as xQc or xQcOW, is a Canadian Twitch streamer, internet personality, and former professional Overwatch player.
Imane Anys, better known as Pokimane, is a Canadian-Moroccan Twitch streamer and YouTuber. She is best known for her live streams on Twitch, broadcasting video game content, most notably in League of Legends and Fortnite. She is currently the most-followed woman channel on the platform. She is a member and co-founder of OfflineTV, an online social entertainment group of content creators.
Celia Pearce is an American game designer currently teaching at Northeastern University as an associate professor. She is a co-founder and current Festival Chair of IndieCade, an international festival of independent games. She is currently a professor at Northeastern University and occasionally talks and shows games at art and game events such as Different Games and Incubate Arcade.
OfflineTV is an online social entertainment group of content creators based in Los Angeles, California. They produce a wide range of content, from prank videos to vlogs to the housemates playing games together. The group maintains a large following on their social media platforms.
Rachell "Rae" Hofstetter, better known as Valkyrae, is an American Internet personality. She has been YouTube's most-watched female streamer since 2020. She was named "Gaming Creator of the Year" by Adweek, and has received a Game Award.
Charles White Jr., better known as Cr1TiKaL, is an American YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and musician. He became popular from his video game commentary videos on his YouTube channel "Penguinz0", as well as his monotone voice and deadpan delivery of humorous commentary. He has gained significant coverage over his online career.
Youna Kang, better known by her online 3D Virtual YouTuber persona CodeMiko and alias The Technician, is a South Korean-American Twitch streamer and YouTuber. Kang is best known for her live streams on Twitch, interviewing other streamers, content creators and internet personalities as her alter ego persona CodeMiko and for pushing the envelope with regards to interactivity in VTuber technology.
Maya Elaine Higa is an American Twitch streamer, conservationist, falconer, wildlife rehabilitator, and singer. She is the founder of Alveus Sanctuary, a non-profit exotic animal sanctuary and virtual education center based in Austin, Texas, and the host of the Conservation Cast, a weekly conversation broadcast on Higa's Twitch channel designed to connect her audience and conservationists.
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