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Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader
World of Warcraft is the world's most popular massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), with (as of March 2007) more than eight million active subscribers across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia, who play the game an astonishing average of twenty hours a week. This book examines the complexity of World of Warcraft from a variety of perspectives, exploring the cultural and social implications of the proliferation of ever more complex digital gameworlds. The contributors have immersed themselves in the World of Warcraft universe, spending hundreds of hours as players (leading guilds and raids, exploring moneymaking possibilities in the in-game auction house, playing different factions, races, and classes), conducting interviews, and studying the game design--as created by Blizzard Entertainment, the game's developer, and as modified by player-created user interfaces. The analyses they offer are based on both the firsthand experience of being a resident of Azeroth and the data they have gathered and interpreted. The contributors examine the ways that gameworlds reflect the real world--exploring such topics as World of Warcraft as a "capitalist fairytale" and the game's construction of gender; the cohesiveness of the gameworld in terms of geography, mythology, narrative, and the treatment of death as a temporary state; aspects of play, including "deviant strategies" perhaps not in line with the intentions of the designers; and character--both players' identification with their characters and the game's culture of naming characters. The varied perspectives of the contributors--who come from such fields as game studies, textual analysis, gender studies, and postcolonial studies--reflect the breadth and vitality of current interest in MMOGs.Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg are both Associate Professors of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, Norway.
294 pages, Hardcover
First published April 18, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 7, 2013
I do appreciate that the authors in this volume took time to actually play the game they study. I felt that rather than just reading about it, their experiences in this world would lead to a greater understanding the complexity of the game, and the awesome fun too. I did find, however, that while quite a few essays are well written but out of date (as is likely to happen, especially in such an expanding field as gaming), some others got on my nerves as I didn’t feel any belief in what the author was saying, and that the inaccuracies or just simple neglect could not be explained away by having been written during Burning Crusade (since then, three more expansions have been released).
Quite a few of the articles are out-of-date, so the specifics of them no longer hold true a few expansions later, but the ideas behind them are still relevant. The important of the economy as a structure is very much still an issue, both with the addition of transmogrification (changing the appearance of one piece of armour to look like another of the same type) and dwindling numbers on particular servers. The problem of not being able to impact upon the game environment has changed through the expansions with the addition of phasing, as you progress through certain quests or stories, the environment you are shown is changed (none more so evident than in Mount Hyjal in Cataclysm).
Some essays looked rather negatively on WoW with no sense of charity of purpose, and illustrated the issues in a very simplistic manner that didn’t do justice to the game. War and Histories seemed very basic, labeling the Horde as environmental and the Alliance as ecological destroyers which doesn’t quite stand true when you take into account the different perspectives of the races. The essay on Post-Colonialism in WoW I felt wasn’t quite understood. Yes, some races are based on real-life cultures, but I don’t feel (perhaps this is subjective) that it was meant to be demeaning in any way, as the player chooses the race and adopts that culture. Race could be seen to be subordinate in WoW, with the major differences only being class choices available and aesthetics. I also take note with the depiction of role-playing being see as deviant and not the way the developers intended. There are specific realms for role-playing with more rules (and it is easier to report those who break them), but also the developers aren’t policing role-playing as it is very individual how one chooses to role-play, and guilds and communities will self-monitor this. The nature of quests, while still very much kill X of these or collect Y of this, has become more consolidated with better threading of the storylines.
The essay on gender was extremely problematic. There are important issues around gender inside the game itself and externally in the gaming industry, however I felt the author was pushing an agenda by ignoring certain aspects of WoW. Just on the background of the game, the author refers to some characters who are absent in-game, or ignores the strengths of those in-game in favour of defining them only by their romantic relationships. There is no mention of Jaina Proudmoore or Sylvanas Windrunner, both in-game heroines of incredible strength and who defied powerful men to be such important roles in the shaping of recent history. The author also doesn’t point out that there is no playable differences between male and female characters, and or allow that female and male players (of any sexual preference) do choose characters that are of a different gender.
While some of this book was interesting in offering different perspectives, regardless of the age of the text compared to the game itself, I did feel that quite a few essays were incorrect or the authors were analysing the game unfairly by ignoring certain aspects.
Quite a few of the articles are out-of-date, so the specifics of them no longer hold true a few expansions later, but the ideas behind them are still relevant. The important of the economy as a structure is very much still an issue, both with the addition of transmogrification (changing the appearance of one piece of armour to look like another of the same type) and dwindling numbers on particular servers. The problem of not being able to impact upon the game environment has changed through the expansions with the addition of phasing, as you progress through certain quests or stories, the environment you are shown is changed (none more so evident than in Mount Hyjal in Cataclysm).
Some essays looked rather negatively on WoW with no sense of charity of purpose, and illustrated the issues in a very simplistic manner that didn’t do justice to the game. War and Histories seemed very basic, labeling the Horde as environmental and the Alliance as ecological destroyers which doesn’t quite stand true when you take into account the different perspectives of the races. The essay on Post-Colonialism in WoW I felt wasn’t quite understood. Yes, some races are based on real-life cultures, but I don’t feel (perhaps this is subjective) that it was meant to be demeaning in any way, as the player chooses the race and adopts that culture. Race could be seen to be subordinate in WoW, with the major differences only being class choices available and aesthetics. I also take note with the depiction of role-playing being see as deviant and not the way the developers intended. There are specific realms for role-playing with more rules (and it is easier to report those who break them), but also the developers aren’t policing role-playing as it is very individual how one chooses to role-play, and guilds and communities will self-monitor this. The nature of quests, while still very much kill X of these or collect Y of this, has become more consolidated with better threading of the storylines.
The essay on gender was extremely problematic. There are important issues around gender inside the game itself and externally in the gaming industry, however I felt the author was pushing an agenda by ignoring certain aspects of WoW. Just on the background of the game, the author refers to some characters who are absent in-game, or ignores the strengths of those in-game in favour of defining them only by their romantic relationships. There is no mention of Jaina Proudmoore or Sylvanas Windrunner, both in-game heroines of incredible strength and who defied powerful men to be such important roles in the shaping of recent history. The author also doesn’t point out that there is no playable differences between male and female characters, and or allow that female and male players (of any sexual preference) do choose characters that are of a different gender.
While some of this book was interesting in offering different perspectives, regardless of the age of the text compared to the game itself, I did feel that quite a few essays were incorrect or the authors were analysing the game unfairly by ignoring certain aspects.
May 1, 2010
A World of Warcraft Reader is a collection of academic analyses of World of Warcraft (WoW), one of the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Games and Virtual Worlds of the 2000s. Each analysis is the result of an academic person combining hands-on, long-term experience in playing WoW with personal research focus; thus, the book comprises several (mostly unrelated) studies on textual analysis, gender, space and architecture, interactive narrative, (post-)colonialism (why, oh, why?!), quest structure in WoW, etc. While the related work is often thoroughly reviewed, few of these studies present new insights. Conversely, the book seems an exercise into expressing personal theories; while this reviewer has appreciated the chapters written by Espen Aarseth and Jill Walker, there doesn't seem to be much more material with general appeal in this book. Overall, read this book only after exhausting true classics on the topic of (virtual) worlds, such as Christopher Alexander, Richard Bartle, Joseph Campbell, Edward Castronova, Nick Montfort, and Vladimir Propp.
September 20, 2012
A few of the articles in this book are thought provoking and interesting. Unfortunately there were a few that didn't really impress me. I felt that a couple articles didn't make that much of an outstanding point. Another downside to this book is the fact that it is out-of-date. That, of course, can't be helped as it was published just after the release of Burning Crusade. However, the fact that it's now dated tends to impact the reading of this book.
January 2, 2019
I got this through a Humble Bundle sale. Some of the essays were good. Some weren't.
July 9, 2019
Really interesting social and cultural critiques about and within the framework of World of Warcraft. Couple of misses, but many more really intriguing perspectives.
August 29, 2008
An excellent resource for anyone interested in how World of Warcraft is both reflecting and directing the culture(s) that produced it. Shane Hinton and I recorded a full review of the book for our games podcast First Wall Rebate (firstwallrebate.com); look for the review episode to appear there within the next couple of weeks.
March 25, 2009
Written by academics that play WoW. They made some observations that were quite interesting-Almost legitimizes wow, made it relevant in real life.
Note: This was a library book that I had to skim through the last chapters because it was due and I could not renew it because another had requested it. I plan on getting it from the library again or buying my own copy.
Note: This was a library book that I had to skim through the last chapters because it was due and I could not renew it because another had requested it. I plan on getting it from the library again or buying my own copy.
January 11, 2012
Most of these essays seem a little shallow, but nearly each of them make an interesting point or two. While this book isn't amazing, most of the work contained is better than is the norm for this sort of literature.
April 8, 2012
Interesting ethnographic articles about various aspects of how players and programmers create and maintain identity, play and a sense of verisimilitude in World of Warcraft. A good read for people interested in culture, digital culture, world-building and MMOs.
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October 4, 2015#digitext #research #teaching
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews