What Sort of Fish Was It?: How Players Understand Their Narrative in Online Games

This paper examines how players of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) interpret and reshape game narratives, drawing on the concept of "textual poaching" from fan studies. Its central argument is that online gaming communities are valid, complex social entities that justify their behaviour by drawing on competing rule sets, including in-game norms, end-user license agreements, and informal community codes. The author positions this work as a response to the tendency of games research to focus narrowly on individual player types rather than collective understanding and transmission of narrative knowledge.

The analysis centres on World of Warcraft, examined through its general chat channels, guild structures, and the contested treatment of griefing and social conduct. The paper argues that players frequently find themselves operating within a text they are simultaneously critiquing and rewriting, a condition it describes as narrative flux. Using the example of Onyxia, it shows how a narratively engaged minority of players altered the game's storyline, while most players remained largely unaware of the underlying quest chain and its consequences. The study concludes that narrative information does not transmit evenly between player groups and tends to surface only when a dramatic event demands a response.

A second case study concerns A Tale in the Desert (Atitd), a smaller, construction-focused game with minimal built-in narrative. Here the research documents player-run roleplay events, including the "Phile's Concern" incident, in which an invented widow's search for her husband was reinterpreted by players in unexpected ways. The author finds that giving players opportunities to subvert existing game structures proved more successful than imposing traditional roleplaying narratives. The paper draws on Michel de Certeau and Jenkins to conclude that player appropriation can meaningfully influence the development of play texts, even as designers struggle to accommodate such a diverse and sometimes contradictory user base.