Meet the HUEHUEs: A Sociotechnical Approach to Disruptive Behaviour in Multiplayer Online Games

This paper discusses the relation between disruptive behaviour in online environments and the design of multiplayer online games, focusing on huehueing, a widespread phenomenon of disruptive behaviour in online games linked to Brazil's national identity. The discussion is based on a sociotechnical view that understands MOGs not as the combination of a technical artefact and a social construct that belong to different realms and mutually influence each other but as the two sides of a single coin in which huehueing is inscribed. This vision allows the identification of how and why the social dynamics of huehueing is capable of temporarily changing the mediating ground, and therefore the design features of the game.