The Rise of Massive Multiplayer Online Games, Esports, and Game Live Streaming - An Interview with T. L. Taylor

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper

Interview with T. L. Taylor explores massive multiplayer online games, esports, and game live streaming, connecting online leisure to cultural and technological dynamics. It covers her background, how childhood play shaped later scholarship, and why early digital environments like EverQuest sparked intellectual curiosity. The conversation explains what MMOGs offer, how game communities can be studied, and how an “assemblage” perspective clarifies the mix of personal meaning, social processes, and technological structures.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

American Journal of Play

Tell us how you played as a child?

Did your own early play experiences affect your scholarly interests and research?

How did you first come to study the relationships among culture, technology, play, and games?

What are massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), and what kinds of play do they offer?

How have you approached studying these game communities? What methodologies and sources have you used and why?

How does your notion of “assemblage” help us better understand games?

The Rise of Massive Multiplayer Online Games, Esports, and Game Live Streaming An Interview with T. L.Taylor T. L.Taylor is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and cofounder and Director of Research for AnyKey, an organization dedicated to supporting and developing fair and inclusive esports. She is a qualitative sociologist who has focused on internet and game studies for over two decades, and her research explores the relations between culture and technology in online leisure environments. Her Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming (2018), which chronicled the emerging media space of online game broadcasting, won the 2019 American Sociological Association’s Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology book award. She is also the author of Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming (2012) and Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (2006), and coauthor of Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method (2012) . Key words: assemblage; coconstruction; esports; Everquest; live streaming; MMOG; professional gaming; Twitch; video games American Journal of Play: Tell us how you played as a child? T. L.Taylor: My play was standard fare and fairly traditionally gendered, rooted in storytelling and imagination but also influenced by watching television. With stuffed animals and Barbie dolls, or just various outdoor spaces, I hada lot of material both for solo and social play. A lot ofit was tied to favorite television characters we’d act out. I was also a huge fan of Viewmaster and enjoyed spending time “in” that stereographic space. While our family tended to code sports for my dad and brother, roller skating played a huge role in my life. This was a really interesting one for me because it wasn’t funneled through a sporting frame, but it was a place of imagination. It’s hilarious to think about now, but I loved pretending to be a player on the famous L. A. Thunderbirds derby team we watched on TV. For me skat- 107 American Journal of Play, volume 12, number 2 © The Strong Contact T. L.Taylor at [tltaylor@mit.edu](tltaylor@mit.edu) ing was embodied experience and joy, then later it became a social outlet when I became a young teenager. Skating has actually remained one of my favorite things to do now as an adult. Roller rinks are fantastic places! AJP: Did your own early play experiences affect your scholarly interests and research? Taylor: Not particularly. While our family certainly had its share of board games, they weren’t the center of my play life, and I didn’t grow up in a home with computers or even early game consoles. Aside from arcades when I was younger, it wasn’t until grad school—when I got my own personal computer—that I really got to play digital games. And even then those didn’t animate my research interests at first. It was only when I found EverQuest, an early massive multiplayer online game (MMOG), that my intellectual curiosity got peaked. I will say, though, I’ve always felt that things like Viewmaster and Disneyland (where I spent a fair amount of time growing up in Southern California) primed me for that genre of gaming. AJP: What was it about Viewmaster and Disney that did it? Taylor: I think both tapped into some experience of being elsewhere, in another world. In my mind’s eye, with the Viewmaster I was somehow always “in”that 3-D photographic space. And Disney, well Disney is just so tied forme to a sensory and embodied experience that evokes a kind of worldness. AJP: How did you first come to study the relationships among culture, technology, play, and games? Taylor: When I first got to graduate school, I assumed I’d probably continue to study something along the lines of what I’d done for my undergraduate thesis, which was work on consumption practices in refugee communities. At the time, I was interested in how people navigated consumer cultu

FAQs

What role did T. L. Taylor’s childhood play have in her later research interests?

She reports that early play experiences did not directly determine her scholarly interests. However, she notes that media like Viewmaster and Disney helped prime her imagination for immersive genres.

What are massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) according to Taylor?

MMOGs are networked virtual worlds with real-time synchronous engagement and communication. They enable heterogeneous play such as questing, monster killing, skill-building, exploration, and community building.

How does Taylor study game communities and what methodologies does she use?

She combines qualitative research tools—interviewing, participation observation, and archival work—with sociological concerns about power, stratification, and institutions. She also uses science and technology studies approaches that treat technology as an actor.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper