Understanding Esports Teamplay as an Emergent Choreography: An Ethnomethodological Analysis

We, as researchers of situated game play from players’ perspectives, may be overlooking aspects of how players, in-and-through their actions, actively orient to the complex interconnectedness of interactional resources when playing multiplayer games in teams. This study analyses, from an ethnomethodological (EM) participant perspective, video data of several screen recorded Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) matches being played by two teams that were geographically dispersed, to understand how teams choreograph their game play as part of larger sequences of situationally emergent tactics. We incorporate an understanding of expanded choreography developed within the field of dance to understand the interconnectedness of the interactional resources available to the participants to collectively, and situationally, choreograph their team play. The EM participant perspective provides a focus on what players, micro-interactionally, orient to and make relevant to each other by making each other accountable for own and others’ actions that are interconnected to the ‘basic elements’ of movement. The main findings are that the choreographing is done collectively and, largely, based on the information gathered in-and-through callouts that function as a choreographing device. However, the choreography is not based on verbal communication (alone), but on the interweaving and interdependence of each player’s movements and actions on-screen in-and-through interaction with the basic elements of movement.