World of Warcraft is a massively multi player online role playing game or MMORPG. It's the fourth installment in the Warcraft franchise and allows players to interact and explore the vast regions of two worlds, Azeroth and Kalimdor which make up the fictional universe in which the game is set.
For a monthly subscription fee of nine pounds, players are able to join its online community of millions and embark on quests, gain experience levels and set out on adventures within this expansive virtual world. The game offers eight playable races with unique racial traits, nine playable classes, and twelve professions to choose from. Each has its own personalized qualities, appearances and abilities, as well as a loyalty to one of two factions or power groups; either the Horde's or the Alliances'. A players faction ultimately determines who their allies will be, who they will be socializing with and who they will be slaying. Once gamers have made these initial decisions, they are then able to enter the World of Warcraft as their avatar and communicate and interact with people from all around the globe. It's important to note that there are several more intricate qualities and features to World of Warcraft, I only intended to outline the general themes and functions of the game-play to aid your understanding of the game which is the setting of my case study.
The subject of my case study is Nicholas Walton, a seventeen year old who claims to be a fan of the game. Nicholas was first introduced to World of Warcraft or WoW in November 2005 when his older brother bought the game. He bought a copy for himself shortly later and has been an active member of the games virtual community and a self confessed fan ever since. Over the two years, Nicholas has accumulated a total of one hundred and twenty three days of total game-play, on average playing for ten hours a day. His main avatar, a night elf named Zelu took eighty hours to reach the maximum experience level of seventy.
Although theoretical definitions of 'the fan' vary considerably, it is Henry Jenkins exploration into defining the term that suggests its meaning is to do with an "excessive and mistaken enthusiasm" for something or someone, when an individual is "devoted" to something far greater than oneself. Given the extreme lengths of his playtime, as well as his commitment to improving his avatars status I would define Nicholas as a fan.
I do plan to delve deeper into the qualities of a Warcraft player as well as Nicholas' personal reasons for identifying himself as such a fan, although I would firstly like to explain what theoretical areas of the fan I intended to explore in this case study as well as the topics I wish to discuss.
In this case study my initial aim was to achieve an understanding of what had drawn Nicholas into the game, what he liked about it and how and why he considered himself a fan of World of Warcraft. But I also wanted to question his views concerning the games negative portrayal within society and in particular by the mass media; something that became apparent to me in my primary research into the topic. With Nicholas' feedback I hope to put forward a detailed comparison between the positive and negative views and opinions of being a World of Warcraft fan, drawing on theoretical studies concerning self identity, self expression, as well as the concepts of community, stereotypes of online gamers and the implications of moving away from social norms through deviant subcultures.
****CONCEPTS OF COMMUNITY*****
World of Warcraft has established a global online community of roughly eight million devoted players and fans. Although the actual size of this online world has never been specified, it is believed to be the size of a small country. It acts as a communal area in which like minded people are able to engage, interact and kill one another!
"It's just like msn but playing a game, your interacting with other players online"
McLuhan's popular notion of the 'Global Village' describes how the introduction of electronic mass media will push forward the concept of the human race as 'one family'.
"through intense interaction with electronic media ' the human tribe can become truly one family and mans consciousness can be freed from the shackles of mechanical culture and enabled to roam the cosmos."
This online world provides individuals with an area in which geographical boundaries have no meaning, it is an area for all.
"I have friends in Germany, Sweden and America."
The game allows people to join guilds where "You can meet friends,and share adventures". Jenkins term, 'textual poaching" defines how Warcraft allows online gamers to shift from an audience member to instead becoming 'active participants in the construction" of this gaming world. A few years ago a large scale protest took place in one of the of the games sectors . Players formed a barrier and blocked a bridge effectively cutting off an area of the game refusing to move until some issues concerning warrior class were reviewed. Although the crowds started to disperse once the game developer Blizzard began deleting accounts, what this shows is how a fan group allows individuals to organize a resistance against those who regulate content, "responding with hostility and anger against those who have the power".
In 'Computer Games: Text, Narrative And Play', Dianne Carr discusses how this sense of community tends not to remain within an online context.
"But engagement with the game does not finish when the game session ends and the console of computer is switched off. Players continue to think about, imagine, even dream about, the events, landscapes and characters of the game; and particularly committed fans go further, joining online communities of fans and contributing to message boards, art galleries, writing groups and other forms of expansive embroidery of the game and its components."
"I go on the message boards, check out peoples gear, I have keep and eye on whats going on really"
World of Warcraft also has an active community of fans who create their own artwork and objects which they are able to import into the game and share with other players. Jenkins study on 'Trekkie' fans concentrates on fan fiction writer communities that have formed up from the films and television series. As World of Warcraft is still fictionally based it is important to address Jenkins account of 'textual poaching" which is when communities of fans "retool their narratives into something radically different" such as fan art and comics as well as costume design that can be used within the game.
"Communities are envisioned as supportive and protective, they are believed to offer identity and relation to traditional bonds, including race, religion and ethnicity. As these communal bonds are loosened or discarded, the individual is perceived as vunerable - he or she is 'unstuck from the cake' of custom and has no solid, reliable orientation of the world"
However, Lewis disputes that the role that community is meant to play within an individuals life.
"Communication mediated through the Internet has skewed the manner in which people now interact with one another. In their article, Communities in Cyberspace, Mark Smith and Peter Kollak comment on how new media communication raises the question, "what is the relationship between the self and the body?".
"Online interaction strips away many of the cues and signs that are part of face-to-face interaction. This poverty of signals is both a limitation and a resource, making certain kinds of interaction more difficult but also providing room to play with one’s identity. The resulting ambiguity over identity has been a source of inspiration to many who believe that because people’s physical appearance is not manifested online (yet), individuals will be judged by the merit of their ideas, rather than by their gender, race, class, or age."
As I previously mentioned, World of Warcraft allows players to choose from a range of forms they can take on and also adapt their chosen avatar to suit their personal preferences. For example Nicholas' night elf, Zelu is a rogue meaning that he has the ability to appear invisible to other players whenever he chooses.
"I'm a sort of quiet guy who doesn't interact as much as everyone else, having a rogue I can decide whether people see me or not"
Through his World of Warcraft avatar, Nicholas has been able to take on a virtual identity that he is unable to achieve in reality. Night elves are described on the World of Warcraft homepage as "reclusive", "shadowy, immortal beings" who until recently "closed themselves off from the rest of the world and remained hidden atop their holy mountain of Hyjal". Although Nicholas claims not to have adjusted his characteristics a huge deal within the game, he has placed his true identity into a new and more superior context. What i mean is that everyone in the virtual world of this game is considered to be a hero, here Nicholas seems to have transplaced his own identity into a more sensationalized and revered character, where his personality seems more suited and accepted.
"I like to make sure my avatar looks good, if the character looks impressive then you know he's going to be a challenge."
It is interesting to compare this idea to Henry Jenkins discussion on how fans are often stereotyped and identified as "isolated", "emotionally and socially immature" and "unable to achieve a proper place for themselves in society". Although the words "reclusive" and "isolated" share the same definition, in this instance their actual meanings vary. Jenkins stereotype places the individual in a negative light, whereas the description of Nicholas' night elf is seen in a far more positive way. Theorists Park and Roberts actually suggest that anonymity empowers the individual to be more honest about about their identity "and take greater risks in their self disclosures than they would offline".
However, when creating a new self many fans of online virtual communities lose touch with reality and start feeling despondent of what is actually real.
"It's hard to relate to real life after playing this game because it becomes your life and you can't think of anything else."
Theorist Lisa Lewis believes that the "absence of a stable identity" leaves an individual feeling ungrounded, without connection and "open to irrational appeals". She also stresses the implications that resentment of reality can have on a fans relationship with family, friends and loved ones.
"My family doesn't understand why I'm so involved in this game, I think they're disappointed in me"
"People have said to me that I'm fucked up because I play so much"
Jenkins explains that "the fan still constitutes a scandalous category in contemporary culture", that fan based subcultures are generally misunderstood by the public and is therefore "the target of ridicule and anxiety, of dread and desire". With fan culture "fundamentally alien to normal culture", Jenkins was able to pull together a list of popular stereotypes of fans.
****STEREOTYPES, SOCIAL NORMS AND DEVIANT SUB CULTURES****
When applying them to my case study, I found that particular stereotypes in the list were easily countered by the opinions and statements I collected from Nicholas. Some however were extremely applicable to the negative opinions surrounding fandom, for example the claim that fans are emotionally unstable and immature.
"If you are deprived of this game you get really angry"
"This game gave me depression, it was really addictive"
Nicholas stressed the addictive quality of World of Warcraft several times throughout the interview, stating that it was "an illness" and that "you need control" in order to play the game. It seems possible that as this game delves further in the realms of fantasy and escapism than other sorts of fandom, the supposed traits of a fan could become dramatically exaggerated. The games addictive nature could bring forth the same side affects and emotional reactions seen in other sorts of addicts.
Fans are often stereotypically feminised and desexualised by the media, although i would have to argue that this is not the case with Warcraft fans. The target audience of World of Warcraft gamers is young white males, the game is centralized around violence and achieving higher status through even more violence. Crispin Thurlow, theorized in his book which studies computer mediated communication that the majority of computer games contain exaggerated representations of gender.
"Spaces within games are masculine. Music, images and actions all embody a sort of 'super macho' hyper-masculinity"
"WoW is better than any console game I have ever played, it takes them all out"
Computer gaming is generally accepted as being a masculine activity and although female participation is existent, they do not play to the same degree that males do. Jacob van Kokwiijk believes that "role playing games offer a chance to take up the super ego representation of the big action movie star", allowing male players to create a more masculine extension or version of their own identity.
Jenkins list is only a general outline of fan stereotypes and as I showed, these negative traits may not actually apply, or if they do it can be to varying degrees. What these stereotypes do highlight is the way in which representations of fans portray them as deviants of contemporary society. Lewis describes these deviants as sub cultures that are edging away from the normality's of society. Lewis claims that these deviants are perceived to pose a threat to societal values as their "mentality is dangerously out of touch with reality". It allows for an "us" and "them" scenario to be set out, meaning that the activities of the "them" the fan are seen as unrewarding and deviant, and "us" a normal society, engaging in normal and safe leisurely pursuits.
"I've learned that it's really important to restrict yourself to just a few hours of this game a night, to also make sure I get in a few hours of sport during the week and when i get invited out to parties make sure I go."
Nicholas acknowledges the negative effects that being a World of Warcraft fan can have on your life, particularly when attempting to engage in the social norms.
"People would ask me questions and my answers would be short answers, I wouldn't know what to say"
Recently Nicholas has made the choice to cut back on Warcraft playtime. He still considers himself a fan but but more of a "casual fan" and recognizes the deviant qualities of being a committed player.
"It's important to not let this game make you think you need to play it."
****CONCLUSION****
To conclude, participation within online worlds is able to take the concept of the fan to a considerably higher level. Computer games are a "transition of fantasy from a voyeristic position" allowing individuals to literally be part of the object they hold such a devotion for. As technology continues to progress, the extent to which virtual communities and communication becomes the main form of socializing remains unclear. The definition of a an fan of an online community will perhaps go through its own transition, become less deviant and receive a new definition but I suppose we will have to wait and see.
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