T. L. Taylor | |
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 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 was a member of Twitch's Safety Advisory Council (2020-2024) [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]
Game studies, also known as ludology, is the study of games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. It is a field of cultural studies that deals with all types of games throughout history. This field of research utilizes the tactics of, at least, folkloristics and cultural heritage, sociology and psychology, while examining aspects of the design of the game, the players in the game, and the role the game plays in its society or culture. Game studies is oftentimes confused with the study of video games, but this is only one area of focus; in reality game studies encompasses all types of gaming, including sports, board games, etc.
Powergaming is a style of interacting with games or game-like systems, particularly video games, boardgames, and role-playing games, with the aim of maximizing progress towards a specific goal. Other players may consider this disruptive when done to the exclusion of all other considerations, such as storytelling, atmosphere, and camaraderie. When focusing on the letter of the rules over the spirit of the rules, it is often seen as unsporting, un-fun, or unsociable. This behavior is most often found in games with a wide range of game features, lengthy campaigns, or prize tournaments such as massively multiplayer or collectible games.
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, played individually or as teams.
Bonnie A. 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.
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 BCS, 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.
Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming of video or audio in real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as streaming, the real time nature of livestreaming differentiates it from other forms of streamed media, such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos.
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.
Thomas Jefferson "Chance" Morris IV, known professionally as Sodapoppin, is an American Twitch streamer and YouTuber. He has one of the largest followings on Twitch, with over 8.7 million followers and over 398.3 million views as of August 15, 2022; he also has over 1.11 million subscribers and over 444.5 million views on YouTube. According to Social Blade, Morris sits at the number 10 spot for the most followers on Twitch; he also ranks number 15 for the largest total number of views on the platform. He is a co-owner of and content creator for gaming organization One True King.
Alexandra Valeria Botez is an American-Canadian chess player and commentator, poker player, Twitch streamer, and YouTuber. In chess, she holds the FIDE title of Woman FIDE Master (WFM) and has a peak FIDE rating of 2092. She is a five-time Canadian girls' national champion and one-time U.S. girls' national champion. Botez has represented Canada at three Women's Chess Olympiads in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Alexandra and her younger sister Andrea Botez host the BotezLive Twitch and YouTube channels, which each have over 1 million followers and are one of the largest chess channels on each platform.
Imane Anys, better known as Pokimane, is a Moroccan-Canadian internet personality.
Celia Pearce is an American game designer currently teaching at Northeastern University as a full 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 Marie Hofstetter, better known as Valkyrae, is an American live streamer and YouTuber. She is a co-owner of the gaming organization 100 Thieves and has been YouTube's most-watched female streamer since 2020.
Ludwig Anders Ahgren, known mononymously as Ludwig, is an American live streamer, YouTuber, podcaster, comedian, esports commentator, and competitor. Ahgren is best known for his live streams on Twitch from 2018 through late 2021, and on YouTube beginning in late 2021, where he broadcasts video-game-related content as well as non-video-game-related content such as game shows and contests. He is also known for his work as an esports commentator at various Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments. He is the co-owner of the esports organization Moist Esports. He began streaming full-time on February 16, 2019.
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, for 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.
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