Материал: Актуальные вопросы современной филологии и журналистики. Ковалев Л.В

Actual issues of modern philology and journalism № 2(37) 2020

game process and the plot or even argue. In MMORPGs, the game development company plays the role of a master, and the players have practically no opportunity to convey their opinions to them or enter into a dispute.

Another manifestation of the behavioral norm is the language that is used while playing. In both costume and board role-play games as well as in forum ones player‘s speech should be consistent with the character. In MMORPGs it is the players who communicate, not the characters, and their speech directly depends on the personal characteristics and education of the player. Thus, in MMORPGs speech has a more practical purpose that is the need to achieve a result together with other players. It is important to note that gamers‘ speech follows the same general rules of the language the player speaks. For a person who is not a gamer the difficulty in understanding may be caused mostly by special game related vocabulary. If players discuss something common, not directly connected with the process of gaming, they use common vocabulary not related to gaming. On the other hand while communicating about game matters they use a lot of special vocabulary which is not easily understood by outsiders. Mostly game related communication is close to busi- ness-like or professional communication in terms of its shortness, preciseness and determination to fulfil the objective.

The speech in MMORPG may be observed in two forms, oral and written (typed). Oral speech is more difficult to make a research on though it could be done with the help of a digital recorder. It should be noted that oral speech used in MMORPGs has all features of casual oral speech with a number of thematically referred words included.

Oral speech can be observed in two cases, either a group of people sitting in one room and playing the same game or some players using special voice chat software. In both cases it differs from normal oral face-to-face communications because the players don‘t look at each other but at their computer screen. Even when sitting in the same room they don‘t have an opportunity to watch mimics and gestures of the other player because their attention is turned to the game process. Therefore the intonation is the only feature that can be monitored without seeing the peer‘s face and it is very important in such conversation. There can be also a problem with recognizing voices when there are many people in chat simultaneously. Without looking in the chat list one cannot see who is speaking at the moment and sometimes it is hard to define even the gender of the person speaking. There are overlays for the voice chat that show the name of the speaker in the corner of the game window but when there are some people talking simultaneously it is still confusing.

Voice chat software is used mostly when immediate reaction is needed and when the player acting in a team does not have time and opportunity to write messages in game chat due to the fact that some time is required for the server to connect with the player‘s PC and also due to the situation when the player should press other buttons to perform some actions in game. Usually players use this kind of software to coordinate the actions of many players at the same time or when they need to discuss some new content in game that they are trying to process and master. It is common for every guild on the server to have some special channel in any of voice chat software and often there is also a channel for the whole server. Guild channel usually contains several rooms for different purposes and events where people can gather either in small groups or rather large ones. The example of voice chat software TeamSpeak 3 channels can be seen in Picture 1.

It can be seen in the picture that it is a guild voice chat software interface where there are six big sections each containing a number of rooms. Every section or room is used for a particular purpose such as Territory Wars and Dragon Conquest events, Officer Channel and more. There are also rooms for casual chatting in The Fortday section. It is visible that some rooms are not open for all players with the help of a lock icon. On the other hand the officers of the guild have a possibility to bind all channels together and speak to all users in all rooms and sections at the same time which ordinary users cannot do.

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Below the list of sections and rooms there is also a small box for written messages (not presented in Picture 1) but such messages are rarely used, mostly in cases when some of the participants have no microphone.

Picture 1. Voice chat software channels

Sometimes people use voice chats to communicate on casual matters not just for gaming. In that case their speech may have no indication of their being gamers but when they participate in some in-game event a lot of special lexical units are used. Most big player groups prefer to use voice chats not to lose time writing some important information for every player. When there is a voice chat opened players will hear what is said even if they do something else at that moment but when the information is written in game chat it may soon move too far covered by other messages and will not be seen by the player who is currently away from the computer.

Gamers‘ speech can also be observed in written form which is represented in either in-game chat or in forums, guides and social networks. This article will deal mostly with in-game chat. Ingame written speech is easier to analyze than oral as one can always screenshot it for later rereading. It is also easier in terms of installation; one does not need any additional software for this as the game supplies the players with the elaborate system of in-game chats. This research with deal with a popular MMORPG called Perfect World, both Russian and International versions [12, 13]. The ingame chats are usually divided into several channels which are usually colour-coded and can be switched among. There are usually channels for trading, for guilds, for groups, for private conversa-

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tion and for all server communication. Some games offer cross-server communication as well. If at some point players do not want to see the messages in particular channel they can usually turn them off. The example of colour-coded in-game chat channels in Perfect World game can be observed in Picture 2.

Picture 2. In-game chat channels in Perfect World game

The yellow text in the picture shows the world chat channel which can be seen by all players if they don‘t turn it off. The pink colour is used for private chats with people in player‘s friendlist.

The dark blue colour shows private messages with people who are not in friendlist. Private messages can be seen only the two players engaged in communication. The green colour shows messages in group chat, they are visible only for the players united in ne group (not more than 10 characters in Perfect World). The cyan colour shows the guild communication and all characters in the guild can see it if they are online (up to 200 characters in Perfect World). There can be also white colour chat seen only by those around the speaker and orange colour chat for system messages produced by the game itself.

The space for a message in game chat is always limited and the length of it is usually about 100-110 symbols and the space for messages usually takes from one tenth to one sixth of the game interface. That space is called a chat box. Combined with the fact that a server may have some hundreds players online and wishing to write something at the same time which makes the chat flooded with different messages, a player has to look constantly and attentively at the chat box where messages follow each other quickly and disappear from the view similar to scrolling text on TV. Once it scrolls away it is hard to find it again and one should scroll back for some time to see the necessary piece of information. Sometimes chat box clears and old messages disappear forever. Having several channels helps to look for the type of information the person is interested in at the moment.

It is noteworthy that the necessity to convey the message in severely limited space and to react to other people‘s messages in the shortest time not to be outrun by others determines the peculiarities of gamers‘ written speech. To express the wish to find someone particular to help fulfil the mission one should write an extended complex sentence using both main and auxiliary parts of speech to point where exactly the help is needed and what type of character with what characteristics is required. For example a chat message like this bm cleric sin seek(def) +1dd for IU19+ means that the person needs characters of particular classes (bm ‗blademaster‘, cleric, sin ‗assassin‘, seek ‗seeker‘) and one more character of any class able to deal a lot of damage (dd ‗damage dealer‘) to help them with the quest in a dungeon called IU (short for ‗Icebound Underworld‘). Moreover one of the characters in question (seeker) should meet special requirements concerning their def ‗defence levels‘. The message also tells that the dungeon will be passed till the last 19th boss respawning several times (for which + is added after 19), which is more than the quest requires. In Russian

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version of the game the same meaning would be conveyed like this в ЛА на фул вар прист син сик(пз) 1дд, where ЛА is the same as ‗Icebound Underworld‘ (‗Ледяной Ад‘ in Russian), фул means 19, вар stands for ‗blademaster‘, прист is ‗cleric‘, син is ‗assassin‘, сик(пз) is ‗seeker(def)‘, дд is ‗damage dealer‘. These two examples show that a lot of shortenings are used in gamers‘ written speech to compress the message ad fit it into 100-110 symbols. It is also important to note that such messages are very business-like precise and emotionless. With all the differences between English and Russian as modern languages in general there seems to be the same tendency of omitting verbs and pronouns and minimalizing prepositions and endings. English text also is devoid of articles which are important for the language in general.

There is one more point about game chat messages, which is the fact that particular patterns are used practically by all players though there are not any special rules or restrictions about the way of shortening. These patterns differ in Russian and English versions of the game but within the same version they are followed. For example in English version if players want to sell, buy or trade some item or service they usually write it like WTS ‗I want to sell‘, WTB ‗I want to buy‘ and WTT ‗I want to trade‘ respectively, though ‗I‘ is omitted from the shortening. In Russian version the messages about trading options usually feature either full words продам ‗I want to sell‘/ куплю ‗I want to buy‘/ поменяю‗I want to trade‘ or phrases like кружевное платье цены в пм ‗I want to sell a courtesan dress, write your bid in a private message‘, where the verb is omitted.

Another way of shortening the length of the in-game message is using in-game links that show detailed information about the linked object. In some cases the game also shows if the person who clicks the link has a similar object equipped. It is a convenient way which allows to show the object‘s characteristics without writing anything or to understand if a character is suitable for some mission. Picture 3 shows an example of a detailed link in Perfect World game.

Picture 3. In-game detailed link in Perfect World game

If a person clicks a link presented in the chat box and put in [ ] symbols (in Picture 3 it is the orange text in the lower left corner) there appear two windows. The left one shows the linked item,

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the right one shows the item of a similar kind equipped on a player who clicked the link. All this information gives the player an idea of the qualities of the linked object and its detailed description which could not be written in 100-110 symbols of the in-game message.

In conclusion it should be noted that video games are considered a popular pastime nowadays and a lot of people both young and elderly spend a significant amount of time playing them. One of the most popular types of video games are MMORPGs which allow the player a lot of freedom of choice among many different settings, types of characters, behaviour etc. Such games do not demand much from a player that is why they gain more popularity than older text or face-to-face RPGs.

All gamers may be said to belong to a gaming subculture as playing games takes a lot of their time and influences their worldview. Being a subculture it has some particular features of social, behavioral and symbolic nature. As any subculture in general gaming subculture is heterogeneous and is represented by a number of smaller subcultures which have certain differences. Most characteristic feature defining the type of subculture is its members‘ speech.

The gamers‘ speech is determined mostly by special vocabulary concerning gaming and the devices used to play games. Outside of that sphere of communication the speech of gamers does not contradict the norms of the national language. It is important to note that game-induced communication can be described as business-like, precise, full of shortenings and rather emotionless. The reason for such kind of speech is that both time and space for conversation in games is limited and gaming requires quick and well-coordinated actions.

In order to provide gamers with the necessary tools to succeed voice chat software is used. It allows huge groups of people to coordinate their actions in game by means of oral communication which does not require typing and saves time. Gamers‘ speech in oral form is harder to monitor for research but some peculiarities of it can be still noticeable. It has most characteristics of intermediated oral speech in general. As the players cannot see mimics or gestures of each other the intonation is very important as well as voice recognition. All in all gamers‘ oral speech is determined by the topic of communication. If the game or gaming process is discussed then a lot of special vocabulary is used and the speech is more difficult to understand for the outsider. Otherwise it is usual oral speech that can be heard from common people not connected with games.

Gamers‘ written speech in game itself is determined by the limited space and the necessity to react and type quickly. That causes peculiarities; one of them is using a lot of shortenings in ingame chat where the messages should be no longer the 100-110 symbols. Special vocabulary combined with shortenings makes in-game chat speech even less understandable for outsiders than oral speech where players usually use less shortenings. Games try to supply players with a possibility to express their ideas more fully using less chat space by means of in-game linking which gives players detailed information while using only a few symbols.

All in all in-game communication in MMORPG can be described as induced speech which has all the characteristics of speech in general, no matter what the language is. The only peculiarity is its vocabulary and the necessity to shorten most words for the communication to be successful in given circumstances.

Библиографический список

1.Internet Culture. URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_culture (дата обращения –

31.01.20).

2.Смирнова И.А. Субкультура общности пользователей Интернет // Виртуальное пространство культуры. Серия «Symposium». Вып. 3. Материалы научной конференции 11–13 апреля 2000 г. Санкт-Петербург: Санкт-Петербургское философское общество, 2000. C. 148149.

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