Introduction

This ethnographic study was conducted in my Ethnography for Designers class. The goal of this project was to select a field of interest with an online community in order to observe and analyze their culture and to answer our research question: What role does an online community have in a Pokémon Masters EX player’s gameplay experience?

We chose our research question because of our interest in how online communities have shaped a player’s experience with the game, whether positively or negatively. To do so, our research was completed through a virtual form of applied ethnography. Our research process included observations, interviews, contextual research, and analysis in order to produce an ethnographic report detailing our process and findings that answer our research question.

At the end of our ethnographic fieldwork, our team concluded that the r/PokemonMasters Discord server was a Mecca of guidance in a Pokémon Masters EX player’s experience. We learned that this was a very positive and friendly community that revolves around giving and receiving help from each other, and that this affected players’ experiences positively both in and outside of the game.

Fieldwork: Observations and Interviews

Observations

Each member of our team completed 12 hours of observation within the r/PokemonMasters Discord server. In total, our team collected 48 hours of observation sessions. Of my 12 hours, I did 4 observation sessions. I tried to space each session apart across the 6 weeks of fieldwork so that I could collect data at different times, in hopes that I would find more variety in participants or conversation topics. The time period that I observed in the server ranged from early October 2021 to mid November 2021. I attempted to study interactions from the creation of the server in August 2019, but I discovered it was unfortunately not possible because the old chat history had been deleted in late 2019.

Observations were recorded in journals, and each journal entry consisted of jottings and a field note. Jottings were notes taken while we were actively observing the field during that session. Jotting notes could be anything we noticed or thought of while observing; they didn’t need to be made sense of yet, that would be done at the end of the session. This is when we would write a field note. Field notes allowed us to reflect on what we observed in that session and analyze what everything could mean in the context of our research question. To write our field notes, we followed a modified version of the SPEAKING model by Dell Hymes, which is known for establishing disciplinary foundations for ethnographic study. In this model, we included the following categories: setting, participants, ends (social business), key (tone of interactions), norms (common and ordinary behaviors), as well as acts (sequence of events).

Across all of my sessions, I spent time observing every channel in which I could see interactions between human beings. Channels that consisted of bots were ignored, so those were the only channels I did not observe in depth. The channels I observed had many topics including general chats, Pokémon Masters help, grievances over gacha, meta discussion, and co-op gameplay. All of these channels were very active; they updated several times a day with interactions between members. Within the first few sessions, I noticed that many channels were spaces specifically dedicated to helping others. There were several channels and resources created by community members that were available for any member to use for help. Even under other topics, people were quick to offer their assistance or advice whenever others were having trouble with the game or had a question. Over time, I also noticed how normal it was for this community to be so positive and supportive towards each other. This is not always the case in online communities, especially game related ones, so this was exceptional to note as well.

Interviews

In addition to our observations, we conducted 4 interviews with active members of the Discord server. These interviews were conducted over voice chat in a private group message, including our 4 team members and the participant. Before the interview, we asked the participants to fill out consent forms for their permission to document the interview with screenshots and recording software. 

For the interview itself, our team performed different responsibilities: moderating and facilitating. In each interview, one team member would take on the role of the moderator. This role meant that this team member would be leading the conversation with the participant for almost the entire duration. They would ask questions, keep the conversation on topic, and make sure that the participant is comfortable (after all, we are strangers on the internet). I contacted our first interview participant and moderated their interview. The team members that were not moderating were facilitating. Facilitators’ responsibility is to take notes while the interview is occurring. These team members would be able to ask any additional questions towards the end of the interview. With this interview setup, we were able to ensure that the moderator would control the direction of the interview while the facilitators provided 3 different perspectives with note taking. When each interview concluded, our team met again briefly to discuss any key insights from the interview itself or how it related to our previous observations. 

We spoke with 4 different interview participants, and each one taught us something unique because of their different experiences and roles in the server. Our participants included a member who asked for help often in the server, a member who looked through the server for help with less conversation, and two moderators. The two server members helped show us how the help and resources of the server positively impacted their gameplay experience. We also heard about their experiences with other toxic gaming communities and how the Pokémon Masters EX community was so much kinder in comparison. The two moderators helped us learn more about how the server is organized in a careful system in order to help people, and they also confessed to us how much they care about making the server a positive space for Pokémon fans to go to either for help or just to chat about their love for Pokémon.

Speaking with community members directly allowed us to hear about more personal experiences and insights about the r/PokemonMasters community and Pokémon Masters EX itself. Their responses were extremely valuable to our research and helped us identify patterns that would later lead to answering our research question. From the very first interview, I discussed with my team about how I was amazed that the participant had followed patterns I had already seen in my observations, even though I did not mention these things at all to them. Each interview provided us with evidence like this, and helped us learn about the community in ways that weren’t easily possible with observations alone. 

Challenges

While I would say that most of our research process went smoothly, there were a few complications that we overcame.

First, our field of interest was originally for a different game entirely. At the beginning of the process, we spent the first 2 weeks planning our research for this game and field space. Unfortunately, we ran into a lot of trouble getting permission from a gatekeeper for this game community. After asking permission from multiple Discord servers with either no clear answer or response, we realized that we quickly needed to completely overhaul our research plan in order to meet our deadlines. As team leader, I contacted the team and laid out a plan: with the short time period we had, we had to individually contact new field spaces for permission to conduct research. That way, once we had permission confirmed, we could re-do our research plan from the ground up. This plan was successful, and we quickly received permission to study our new research field: Pokémon Masters EX. After changing field spaces with this new game, we had no further trouble speaking with the gatekeepers (in this case, moderators). The moderators of this community actually expressed a lot of interest in our project, and they were very helpful during this process. We experienced for ourselves how impactful the help from this community can be!

To address any other challenges, I would say that I did experience the limitations of virtual applied ethnography and how it could be frustrating at times. Virtual ethnography lacks a lot of things I could observe in real-life interactions such as body language, tone of voice, appearance, movements, etc. Also, Pokémon Masters EX does not have a way for me to observe players within the game itself. This made it difficult to judge people’s actions vs their words when talking about their gameplay habits or behaviors. I had hoped to be able to do this, but it was unfortunately not possible. Regardless, the data we were able to collect despite limitations ended up strongly supporting our answer to our research question. I do believe that the personal conversations with interview participants helped break the barriers of virtual ethnography a bit, because we could hear the participant and interact more like an in-person conversation.