What's in a toon name?: player evaluations of toon names in Lord of the Rings Online and Toontown Rewritten.
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Date
2024-08-27
Authors
Mark, Connor
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Abstract
This thesis concerns attitudes toward player character (toon) names in two online video games: Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) and Toontown Rewritten (TTR). In particular, this thesis aims to uncover what properties of good toon names are. While a little has been said about toon names in LotRO (Turkay 2012, Bainbridge 2016), nothing has been said about toon names in TTR. Moreover, there has been no research on either game concerning players’ opinions about what makes a name good. A combination of interviews and surveys was used to collect data. In addition to open questions, participants were tasked with comparing pairs of toons that differed in either name or appearance. In one task, participants saw only one toon from each pair and, in the survey, had to rank the name on a scale from 1 to 6. Conversely, in the second task, they saw both toons in each pair and had to select which one they preferred. The goal of the thesis is to build a foundation of knowledge on toon names in online video games, using two games in order to compare and contrast them, ideally giving some insight into what is game-specific and what could occur across online
games more generally.
The results indicate that while the games are different, many of the general attitudes among players of both games are the same. In particular, participants judged that some names are considered better on some toons than on others, that difficulty in pronunciation worsens the quality of the name, and that offensive names are dispreferred. Overall, players of LotRO are concerned with immersion and faithfulness towards Tolkien’s worldbuilding while TTR players enjoy names that are creative and humourous. Additionally, while some participants of both games are okay with or even enjoy names that generally do not match the toon named, LotRO players found these mismatches okay when it did not harm immersion and TTR players thought that mismatching names could be ironic, thus bringing humour to the names. This work contributes to a body of research examining players’ preferences of naming toons in online games and more generally towards aesthetic preferences in terms of naming things.
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Keywords
linguistics, onomastics, MMORPG, Lord of the Rings, Toontown