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Let Me Entertain You: Designing for Surveillance and Online Gaming

This paper argues that surveillance in online multiplayer gaming is best understood as a source of entertainment rather than solely a threat.

• The report argues that surveillance in online multiplayer gaming should be understood as an entertainment feature, with visibility between players deliberately designed as central to the appeal of these services rather than merely a risk to minimize.
• Drawing on Foucault's panopticon and Taylor's study of the CTRA mod in World of Warcraft, the authors frame activity monitoring, live webcams, and presence cues as intentional design choices that make players visible to one another.
• The analysis rests on a five-month participant-observation study across PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox, plus a design review of four services: Xfire, Steam, Raptr, and PlayStation Home.