Scenario for 'non-place' documentary on Lost Ark

Scenario:
 'Non-place' Documentary on Lost Ark

To start with, we must clarify the definition of 'non-place.' Non-place is a concept coined by a French anthropologist, Marc Augé. Non-places are the generic spaces and globalized environments we experience as airport, motorway underpasses, carparks and other custom-designed and left-over spaces of mass production, consumption and global capital. They are not personal, not historical, nor not concerned with identity. However, non-place can sometimes be a place for other people. In that sense, massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are also a form of non-place in the sense that many people freely come, given an identity as a ‘player,’ interact with the game world in a formed set of text and signs.

However, in the sense that it can be personal or historical to some people, it could also be said that MMOG also has an aspect of place- one might feel at home within the game even more than the real world, or the time spent in the game world, experiencing the change in game and character could be a valuable experience to certain people. Therefore, I would like to point out both aspects of place and non-place in a game and make a documentary about it. Lost Ark is a MMORPG I chose for making the documentary.

 

I would like to start with the non-place aspect of Lost Ark. How emotionless interaction occurs between the player and the game, and how the game encourages the players to participate in simple and repetitive tasks. The same messages will occur to very players and characters while they follow the journey the developer prepared for them, and how the story of player being the ‘special one to save the world’ is not that ‘special’ after all, since all the other players are told the same thing.

Then I would like to focus on the place aspect of the game. Since it is a MMOG, different players each correspondent to a person in the real world actually interact with each other through various format of communications, like text, voice, ping and etc. There are emotional interactions as well, making events personal for the agents related in the interaction. How the achievements inside the game affect the person and the relationship with other players extend out to the real world will be depicted.

The video will conclude showing how both place and non-place aspects coexist within Lost Ark, leaving some food for thought and the decision making to the viewers.