As I treaded on the vast plains and wastelands of World of Warcraft and the near infinite spaces of Second Life, I noticed that players in these two environments exhibited both similar and different behaviors. In both worlds, players often changed the gender of their avatars, and both role-played to fit different roles or made no attempt at all to hide their true self. At the same time, players formed different types of social structures within each world, and ran both according to the limits of their space as well as their own, self-created rules of their enclaves. In both communities, there were various individuals that did things less than acceptable, and their punishments varied by both the game space and their individual groups. I noticed the demographic, or at least the demographic I perceived, was significantly male. And along that line, in both environments the true identity of the person behind the avatar was unknown, and purely up to the speculation of both myself and other players. Both worlds, undoubtedly, created a world separate from reality, and brought forth behaviors both unexpected and unique to our society.
The first characteristic of note is the governance of the players. Firstly, the players are subject to the rules set by the “wizards” (a la LambaMOO) or administrators, of the game. In both World of Warcraft and Second Life, the players were expected to play within the rules and bounds of the game – in other words no cheating or hacking. The administrators of the game enforced these rules, as well as many disputes amongst the players. In both World of Warcraft as well as Second Life, if a player had an issue with another player and required the powers of an administrator to resolve the problem, then they often filled some kind of form to call attention to the issue.
Points of interest in governance arise, however, when the players solve their disputes “out of court.” In World of Warcraft, clans often have their own rules. Some involve giving the loot to the leader of the guild, or distributing loot among players based on their rank. Breaking of clan rules often leads to a kind of review by the upper members of the clan. Many of the rules of governance in a clan are decided much like the governance of post-”liberation” lambaMOO. Players, usually classified as “formalizers” or “resistors” (Mnookin) who either press for more control over player interactions or more general freedom, express their opinions and hope to push policies into clan “law”. In Second Life, similar situations occurred. Players often created spaces for particular niches of users, and often within these spaces they had a set of rules separate from those set by administrators of the game.
The creation of content in both games was handled differently. In World of Warcraft, the content creation was entirely created by Blizzard, exercising the kind of control reminiscent of the "D'nalsi Island Adventure" in Lucasart's Habitat. (Morningstar and Farmer) Item creation existed within the game, but only according to the formulas planned out by the architects of the game. In Second Life, however, a freer form of creation was allowed. Players were allowed to create spaces entirely from scratch, shaping their world as they saw fit. The world inside the game of Second Life is no longer dictate by a single company, but are changed and reconfigured by its citizens. (Pearce) In essence, World of Warcraft is analogous to a theme park, as it presents players with a predefined space and expects the players to experience that space in a predefined way; and Second Life is like a city, changed and changing at the hands of its inhabitants. (Pearce)
Player representations in the game differed as well. As described by Taylor, design of the players is limited by organizational, technical, and economic factors, and the values of the design are dictated by immersion, social identity and responsibility, and legitimacy. In both World of Warcraft and Second Life, the avatars are limited to two genders. In World of Warcraft, the races of the characters are limited to a set predetermined by the creators – races designed to organize the players and fit the technical and economics constraints of the game project as well as immerse the player in the fantasy setting, allow interactions and emotions of the avatars legitimate to that setting, and limited the ability to change the avatar in order to maintain social identity and responsibility. Second Life, however, disposes of many of the design conventions described by Taylor, allowing the design to fall to the players. Again, the environment is no longer dictated by a single entity but changed by all of those involved. The only design concept maintained is the idea of social identity and responsibility. Assets in the world are connected to individual characters, and creation of alternate characters is limited.
The anonymity of the players in both of these worlds creates rather interesting situation where the player's real life identity, in all respects – gender, age, race, etc. - are all questionable. While playing World of Warcraft, I came across a play on the acronym MMORPG, which means Massively Multiplay Online Role Playing Game. A friend of mine jested that it really stood for “Many Men Online Role Playing as Girls.” This was both to describe the real-life demographic of World of Warcraft as primarily male, and the fact that many of these men played female characters in World of Warcraft. The anonymity in World of Warcraft as well as Second Life allows this, and by the words of Curtis (of LambaMoo): “This is such a widely-noticed phenomenon, in fact, that one is advised by the common wisdom to assume that any flirtatious female-presenting players are, in real life, males.” This is not to say that females do not enjoy playing World of Warcraft or Second Life; in fact they do for many reasons such as competition and social aspects (Taylor), and many of my female friends are as addicted to World of Warcraft as their male counterparts. The mystery of the user behind the character allows also for a communal entity, as the character can be played by multiple users, as seen by Mr. Bungle in LambaMOO, played by a large group of NYU students. (Dibbell) I, myself, also shared a character with my brother on World of Warcraft, and yet rarely informed other players of our character's changing consciousness.
In many ways World of Warcraft is similar to Second Life, mostly in the types of social situations that may occur in their spaces, such as sociopathic players, clan rule, and user anonymity. Second Life, however, allows more complex social environments by allowing the players to shape both themselves and their environment. In the end, the analogy of the theme park to the city plays true: World of Warcraft is a pre-constructed experience, while Second Life is constructed by the players who play it. Despite this difference, player to player interactions is actually not all that different between them. Second Life allows for a larger range of social interactions (dancing at a disco and flying through a city) than World of Warcraft's set-in-stone environment and emotes, but the basic social ideas are still there. Social clubs still form, griefing still occurs, and many men online still play as girls.
Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace." http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html
Mnookin, J. (1996) Virtual(ly) "Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication: Volume 2, Number 1: Part 1 of a Special Issue, June, 1996. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html
Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991) "The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat." http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html
Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf
Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf
Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming," Convergence, Vol. 9, No.1, 21-46, Spring 2003. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/CourseReadings/TaylorMultiplePleasures.pdf
Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." International Journal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1. www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf
The first characteristic of note is the governance of the players. Firstly, the players are subject to the rules set by the “wizards” (a la LambaMOO) or administrators, of the game. In both World of Warcraft and Second Life, the players were expected to play within the rules and bounds of the game – in other words no cheating or hacking. The administrators of the game enforced these rules, as well as many disputes amongst the players. In both World of Warcraft as well as Second Life, if a player had an issue with another player and required the powers of an administrator to resolve the problem, then they often filled some kind of form to call attention to the issue.
Points of interest in governance arise, however, when the players solve their disputes “out of court.” In World of Warcraft, clans often have their own rules. Some involve giving the loot to the leader of the guild, or distributing loot among players based on their rank. Breaking of clan rules often leads to a kind of review by the upper members of the clan. Many of the rules of governance in a clan are decided much like the governance of post-”liberation” lambaMOO. Players, usually classified as “formalizers” or “resistors” (Mnookin) who either press for more control over player interactions or more general freedom, express their opinions and hope to push policies into clan “law”. In Second Life, similar situations occurred. Players often created spaces for particular niches of users, and often within these spaces they had a set of rules separate from those set by administrators of the game.
The creation of content in both games was handled differently. In World of Warcraft, the content creation was entirely created by Blizzard, exercising the kind of control reminiscent of the "D'nalsi Island Adventure" in Lucasart's Habitat. (Morningstar and Farmer) Item creation existed within the game, but only according to the formulas planned out by the architects of the game. In Second Life, however, a freer form of creation was allowed. Players were allowed to create spaces entirely from scratch, shaping their world as they saw fit. The world inside the game of Second Life is no longer dictate by a single company, but are changed and reconfigured by its citizens. (Pearce) In essence, World of Warcraft is analogous to a theme park, as it presents players with a predefined space and expects the players to experience that space in a predefined way; and Second Life is like a city, changed and changing at the hands of its inhabitants. (Pearce)
Player representations in the game differed as well. As described by Taylor, design of the players is limited by organizational, technical, and economic factors, and the values of the design are dictated by immersion, social identity and responsibility, and legitimacy. In both World of Warcraft and Second Life, the avatars are limited to two genders. In World of Warcraft, the races of the characters are limited to a set predetermined by the creators – races designed to organize the players and fit the technical and economics constraints of the game project as well as immerse the player in the fantasy setting, allow interactions and emotions of the avatars legitimate to that setting, and limited the ability to change the avatar in order to maintain social identity and responsibility. Second Life, however, disposes of many of the design conventions described by Taylor, allowing the design to fall to the players. Again, the environment is no longer dictated by a single entity but changed by all of those involved. The only design concept maintained is the idea of social identity and responsibility. Assets in the world are connected to individual characters, and creation of alternate characters is limited.
The anonymity of the players in both of these worlds creates rather interesting situation where the player's real life identity, in all respects – gender, age, race, etc. - are all questionable. While playing World of Warcraft, I came across a play on the acronym MMORPG, which means Massively Multiplay Online Role Playing Game. A friend of mine jested that it really stood for “Many Men Online Role Playing as Girls.” This was both to describe the real-life demographic of World of Warcraft as primarily male, and the fact that many of these men played female characters in World of Warcraft. The anonymity in World of Warcraft as well as Second Life allows this, and by the words of Curtis (of LambaMoo): “This is such a widely-noticed phenomenon, in fact, that one is advised by the common wisdom to assume that any flirtatious female-presenting players are, in real life, males.” This is not to say that females do not enjoy playing World of Warcraft or Second Life; in fact they do for many reasons such as competition and social aspects (Taylor), and many of my female friends are as addicted to World of Warcraft as their male counterparts. The mystery of the user behind the character allows also for a communal entity, as the character can be played by multiple users, as seen by Mr. Bungle in LambaMOO, played by a large group of NYU students. (Dibbell) I, myself, also shared a character with my brother on World of Warcraft, and yet rarely informed other players of our character's changing consciousness.
In many ways World of Warcraft is similar to Second Life, mostly in the types of social situations that may occur in their spaces, such as sociopathic players, clan rule, and user anonymity. Second Life, however, allows more complex social environments by allowing the players to shape both themselves and their environment. In the end, the analogy of the theme park to the city plays true: World of Warcraft is a pre-constructed experience, while Second Life is constructed by the players who play it. Despite this difference, player to player interactions is actually not all that different between them. Second Life allows for a larger range of social interactions (dancing at a disco and flying through a city) than World of Warcraft's set-in-stone environment and emotes, but the basic social ideas are still there. Social clubs still form, griefing still occurs, and many men online still play as girls.
Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace." http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html
Mnookin, J. (1996) Virtual(ly) "Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication: Volume 2, Number 1: Part 1 of a Special Issue, June, 1996. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html
Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991) "The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat." http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html
Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf
Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf
Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming," Convergence, Vol. 9, No.1, 21-46, Spring 2003. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/CourseReadings/TaylorMultiplePleasures.pdf
Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." International Journal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1. www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf
Comments