for this particular development of player preference is clearly bound up in the very
public status that such a position wins in return for his hard work. His attitude to this
status is quite ambivalent, however, and is torn between obvious pleasure in the
recognition such status brings (“I recall that some other people were translating this
FAQ into Spanish, Portugese, and other languages. If they could mail me the URLs
of their translated FAQs, I'll add them here”) and exasperation with online relations
with people who don’t measure up to his notion of minimal competence: “I _WILL
NOT_ answer any gameplay related questions about this game. It's not because I'm a
prick (haha, I know), but because you wouldn't believe the types of questions I get.”
This kind of social role is comparable to the role of expert in the group of boys
observed by Schott (2002). In his account of the ‘actuality’ of play his analysis
unearthed examples of the way that game-play can be successfully orchestrated and
structured under the guidance of peers. Comparable to the metaphor of ‘scaffolding’
(Wood et al., 1976), which is used to describe the nature of support offered within
tutor student interactions, Schott provides evidence of collaborative game-play
fulfilling several key functions of tutoring. Namely, the demonstration of how to
achieve goals and highlighting critical features of the task that a solitary player may
overlook or take time to unearth. However, the main obstacle to the effectiveness of
collaborative play came from the ‘group expert’, who was unable to provide a holistic
account of the game’s structures from his gaming experience, in contrast to
observations relating to the guise of the game offered by the group’s ‘watchers’ (Orr
Vered, 1997). These deficiencies led the group expert’s consistent venture to take-
over and demonstrate his ability to respond to the procedural demands of the game-
system. Another instance of ‘expert’ making little reference to the relevant aspects of