The Other Playground: Negotiating Precarity in Dark Souls III Player vs Player Encounters

Abstract

The Dark Souls game series (FromSoftware 2011-2016) is known for its incidental multiplayer encounters wherein players can watch, be aided by, or fight other players throughout a single-player campaign. This extended abstract outlines an assessment of how fan community-produced player vs player etiquette may respond to Dark Souls III PvP encounters, in which one player chooses to invade the playground of the other. In this extended abstract I will outline my examination of this etiquette, asking if it may be read as a set of formalized identity-producing moves that appeal to fairness in order to negotiate the precarity that is central to game design and player experience in Dark Souls III.