The Player-Ethnographer: An Ethnographic Approach to the Study of Non-Player Characters in Digital Games

This paper reports on the first steps toward the construction and evaluation of a novel methodological approach to the study of non-player characters in games, NPC Ethnography. In this approach, ethnographic data collection and analysis methods are applied to the study of game NPCs. The proposed approach has been tested in a single case study, an exploration of the appearance of “independent lives” among NPCs in the computer roleplaying game Fallout 4. This case study was motivated by the suggestion that the appearance of NPC autonomy is a key contributing factor to the commonly desired qualities of realism and believability. A total of 273 hours of ethnographic fieldwork were conducted, and ethnographic analysis of the resulting data led to an emergent framework of evidence for the appearance or illusion of NPCs leading independent lives. In this paper I discuss and evaluate the applicability of real-world ethnographic methods to NPCs as virtual human subjects, as explored through the case study. The ability to apply most of the tested methods to NPCs without significant modification to textbook examples of real-world applications supports NPC Ethnography as a valid methodological approach. The generation of useful results through the preliminary Fallout 4 case study illustrates the potential utility of NPC Ethnography as a methodology for applied NPC studies in games and virtual environments.