Plastic Buttons, Complex People: An Ethnomethodology-informed Ethnography of a Video Game Museum

Abstract

This paper reports on an ethnomethodology-informed ethnography of a video game museum. Based on 4 weeks of ethnographic fieldwork, we showcase how groups of visitors to the museum achieved the interactional work necessary to play games together and organise a museum visit as a social unit. By showcasing and explication excerpts of museums visits we make the "taken-for-granted" nature of these interactions visible. Embedded within an activity map that outlines how people "prepare", "play", "wind down" and "exit" games, we showcase the sequential, temporal, and carefully negotiated character of these visits. Based on our findings and the resulting "Machinery of Interaction", we propose three design implications for spaces that aim to exhibit video games and/or try to facilitate co-located, collective video game play.