Discussing Gender... Again

I spoke earlier about a number of troublesome comments Bonnie Nardi makes in her book My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft regarding gender. At that point I hadn’t read much of the book (only a few chapters) so I was making assumptions about Nardi’s notions about gender; however, she spends a significant time discussing gender in her section “Cultural Logics of World of Warcraft.” While much of what she says is refreshing (considering the way some of her comments came across in earlier sections) some of it, to me, still problematic (and I plan to ask her these things during our discussion tonight).

Nardi spends a significant amount of time discussing the kinds of language males used in this virtual world. She explains: “The social space was maintained as one in which males set the rhetorical tone. Sexualized, homophobic language was normalized in text and voice chat (although stopping short of what would probably take place in a men’s locker room)” (153). She argues that this kind of language occurs because the virtual environment created in World of Warcraft is that of a “boy’s tree house.” She points out that though men appeared dominant because of this language the tree house “allowed females more latitude in speech and action than everyday life typically does—latitude they often leveraged and enjoyed” (153). I don’t feel that Nardi fully explains this concept—how exactly are females given more latitude in speech and action and how are they not allowed this in real life?

Speaking in terms of this kind of language, I will focus briefly on a quote from later chapters. In her “Coda” she discusses gambling in Crete and cockfighting in Bali and writes that “according to Malaby and Geertz, the displays of masculinity entangled in these activities drew on deep anxieties, and the need to constantly reassert masculine identity verged on a kind of social obligation” (199). Nardi seems to gloss over this point, moving directly into the fact that gambling and cockfighting can also lead to pleasure because of the pure “fun” of the game. I think, however, that she should have taken a closer look at what Malaby and Geertz had to say for a number of reasons.

Nardi discusses the fact that men who play World of Warcraft female characters typically let others know. She mentions several times that World of Warcraft doesn’t have a lot of players that gender-bend. I question this on a number of levels. First, she notes that she wasn’t particularly interested in certain guilds that cater to gay people and other minorities. In her discussion of masculine language, she discusses the frequent homophobic slurs used during play. It seems to me that gender-bending is deeply discouraged in these types of guilds and therefore she didn’t really get the full sense of the amount of gender-bending that occurs in the game. Furthermore, when discussing men that play female characters (and are “out” as men) Nardi focuses on the fact that the men play the character because they want to look a nice female ass. At first, Nardi questions the reality of this and asks one of her students if she should believe players when they tell her this is why they play female characters. Her student said yes, believe them. I wonder, though, if her student wasn’t merely attempting to reassert his own masculinity. I feel that the men in the game that claim they play just to look at females backsides are actually just attempting to reassert their masculinity, which Nardi’s book seems to prove is an important part of gameplay. Though it’s not within the scope of Nardi’s book, I feel that it would be important to look at the ways in which social construction of masculine identity plays into the ways in which these men answer such questions.

Besides the fact that Nardi seems to ignore the social construction of gender, another problem I had with her discussion of the topic was her use of the words “feminism” and “feminist” in this chapter. In one area of the book (though I can’t seem to locate it now) she mentions that even though the game has flowers and pretty colors, it’s not just a “feminist” game. I find this strange and I’m not sure Nardi has completely taken into account what feminism is. Feminism isn’t about making sure the game is pretty for girls but still has guns for boys. Feminism is about realizing that females can like pretty things as well as guns, or they can like bleak, black and grey things, or whatever. And males can like all these things too.

The one positive aspect that arises from Nardi’s discussion of gender is that she acknowledges that much more needs to be done to fully understand the gender dynamics that occur in-game.

Questions for the Class and for Nardi:

1.    1.  In her discussion of the boy’s tree house, Nardi points out that females are welcome despite the fact that it’s more of a place for boys. How does the fact that the female bodies are hypersexualized in games, even in World of Warcraft make this possible?

2.    2.  If players had the ability to change their characters appearance even more (i.e. body size, height, etc.) would this effect game play and the dynamics of the game?

3.   3.   Nardi mentions that she’s not primarily focused on some groups such as gay guilds, etc. She also talks about how there is little gender-bending in WoW. Is it possible that, because of the hostile environment, during her study she didn’t find gender-benders because of the environment? If she’d studied gay groups, for example, would she have found more gender-bending? If gender-bending actually does occur in-game (and Nardi just missed it) how would this change the study of gender within the game? 

Performance, Not Performance

Bonnie Nardi’s My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of War Craft, is, first of all, a much easier read once the reader has immersed him or herself into the virtual world of WoW. In the second section of the book, concerned primarily with Active Aesthetic Experience, Nardi performance, as do many video games theorists. One of the most interesting aspects of her discussion is, however, the she takes a different approach to the understanding of the performative. In Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other she discusses performativity as something similar to Judith Butler’s notion of performativity: “…that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains” (Butler). This idea has been particularly interesting to me in regards to the performance of gender within videogames. Nardi is, at least in this chapter, not interested the understanding of performance in this way. She writes, “I do not use ‘performance’ as a metaphor for the reproduction of culture through certain actions (see, e.g., Butler 1990) in which people are unaware that they are ‘performing’ but rather as it is used in sports or theater, where participants engage in specific, recognizable instances of performative activity” (54).  Nardio explains that WoW is very much like “normal” visual-performative activities that occur in the real world such as dancing, theater, etc. Though to the untrained eye gaming may seem to better embody Butler’s understanding of the performative, it also allows for performance of activities within the game.

Nardi explains that “situational awareness” (originally a military term) is particularly important to playing World of Warcraft (which I learned first hand last night while participating in my first duel). Situational awareness, she explains, denotes “the ability to mentally process rapid multidimensional environmental changes” which is also necessary in team sports (55). Furthermore, it seems more likely that characters within these games know your performance better than they know you: first, they will know your performance of your avatar (gender, attitude, etc.), and secondly as the character’s “performance of its actions” (56). Interestingly, both of these aspects of the performative as ultimately controlled by the owners of such games. Nardi points out that “activity theory and actor-network theory posit that technology embodies a powerful agency not strictly under human control” (62). Because only certain actions are allowed in the game, performance is ultimately controlled by this agency. Nardi calls this type of activity “regulated performance.”

Further into the section, Nardi draws a parallel between performance and participation, which I believe is an important distinction. This better describes the difference between Butler (and other theorists’) notion of the performative and the way in which Nardi is using the term. As Nardi discussed in “Play as Aesthetic Experience,” John Dewey argued that aesthetic experience is participatory, and World of Warcraft is most certainly an example of an aesthetic experience, despite the fact that Huisman and Marckmann disagree that WoW’s type of participation is “interesting” because of the number of players (85).

When considering games the size of World of Warcraft, ideas about the difference between “work” and “play” begin to take on new meaning—there is certainly a lot of work to be done regarding games such as these. Nardi points out that theorists have struggled to define the two and that “whole seemingly straightforward notions, when scrutinized, they seem to dissolve into inconsistency and contradiction” (94). (She also notes that the discussion of these concepts “maintains a distinction between ‘game-play’—i.e., the performance of a game—and ‘games’ as cultural entities such as hide-and-seek or World of Warcraft” [94].) Nardi uses and interesting example to illustrate the difference (and lack thereof) between work and play: Mark Twain’s Tom Saywer chapter entitled “Tom Sawyer Whitewashing the Fence.” While describing the scene, Nardi writes, “Freedom and necessity, work and play, seem to inhabit clear categories. But Tom knows that these categories are open to manipulation precisely because they are subjective” (98). One of the ways World of Warcraft players distinguish work from play, for example, is by defining work as an obligation and play as something enjoyable, but as Nardi points out, the two often intersect. (We see this in her interview of Pen, Chiu, and Lefen, who describe mandatory WoW raids as work.) And yet, terms such as “hard work” appear frequently throughout gameplay. After successful raids, players congratulate each other on the “good work” they’ve done. Nardi sums this up by saying that “play is, at the highest level, a freely chosen activity while at the same time opening the potential for worklike results. A notion of freedom must be understood in its social matrix, not as a philosophical absolute” (101). I feel like this idea is one of the most important we’ve read in games theory. Because games, gaming, and gamers are so often misunderstood, it’s important to take into account the fact that our ideas on the topics should be understood in context rather as absolutes.

Questions:

How are the different ideas of performance seen in WoW?

How can the quotes “technology embodies a powerful agency not strictly under human control” (62) relate to the readings from Turkle?

In what ways has “situational awareness” come into play in your WoW experience?

Anthropological Dig

Bonnie A. Nardi’s book My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft” is, I imagine, similar in concept to Celia Pierce’s Communities of Play. This book, like Pierce’s, starts off with an overview of the game Nardi is studying in “Part One: An Introduction to World of Warcraft. Having yet to start the game myself, this overview was helpful in framing the world in which Nardi positioned herself for her ethnographic research. Before getting into an indepth discussion of the nuances of World of Warcraft, Nardi mentions a number of purposes for this research. First she mentions that “World of Warcraft is an exemplar of a new means of forming and sustaining human relationships and collaborations through digital technology” (5). The notion that a game can form human relationships is, as we’ve come to see, quiet different from the stereotypes that so often permeate the gaming community. Rather than keeping gamers from forming real (i.e. out of game) relationships, these games help members to create new and different types of relationships. (Though, of course, there are members who have forsaken “real life” relationships for the game, Nardi posits that this is another stereotype of gaming.) Furthermore, Nardi explicitly states that there are three ultimate aims of this book, which are: 1) “to develop an argument about World of Warcraft that examines play as active aesthetic experience,” 2) “understanding play in its contemporary digital manifestations,” and 3) ethnographic reportage. More specifically, Nardi argues that “video games such as WoW are a new visual-performative medium enabled, and strongly shaped, by the capacities of digital technology, in particular the execution of digital rules powerful enough to call forth complex worlds of activity” (7). Since my entrance into the world of serious games study, I have been primarily interested in this idea of the performative as it plays out in games, and look forward to continuing this look into performance through the reading of My Life as a Night Elf Priest and through my own ethnographic look into WoW.

One of the main goals, it seems, of Nardi’s first few chapters is to dispel some of the stereotypes that often permeate discourse related to games. She writes that “WoW is a virtual experience like reading a book or watching a movie, but also an action experience like a sport” (8). I find this parallel between video games and sports to be an interesting idea, especially considering the stereotype Nardi points out of the lazy kid living in his parents’ basement. It’s difficult, I imagine, for non-games to realize the complexities of movement involved in playing the game. Not only are the characters moving, but the player develops his or her motor skills through these games. (James Paul Gee would point out that developing motor skills is only one positive outcome of serious gaming, and I agree.) Though, as I mentioned, I’ve yet to start playing World of Warcraft, I’ve already been warned that a mouse is necessary to play—simple finger movements on a keyboard will not suffice.

Nardi’s discussion of the intricacies of WoW play have made me realize that not only purchasing extra equipment (a mouse) will be important to game play, but committing an entire new knowledge set to memory will be a requirement. In her section “A Short WoW Primer” in chapter one “What is World of Warcraft and Who Plays It?” Nardi begins to describe some of the information one must commit to memory before playing. She explains ideas such as leveling, mobs, and classes. During this discussion, she points out a number of things that proves that WoW is certainly a serious game. She notes that WoW is a virtual world—“a set of linked activities chosen by the player and carried out within a three-dimensional virtual space” (13). The creation of such a space is particularly important to game play, and WoW goes so far as to eliminate the advertising that has become so popular in games (as Henry Jenkins would point out). Continuing this idea of the virtual world, Nardi explains a parallel between real world activities and gaming activities, namely the “character development” that occurs in both. Though she specifically mentions the Victorian meme, such character development has carried over into contemporary society. The developments that take place in games and out of games is, I believe, not only character development but also a form of performance. Though I don’t have the space to discuss performance in detail, Nardi brings up a number of instances in which gender is performed: Nardi mentions that female players don’t approve of “rough masculine discourse” such as profanity, homophobic discourse, and sexist comments (20). It seems to me that these virtual worlds are interesting for ethnographic studies as well as the ideas of gender essentialism (which, at this point, Nardi seems to be buying into).

Questions:

Nardi mentions that she rarely crossed her “virtual world” with her “real world.” How would her research have been different if she’s allowed this crossing-over?

Following the above question, what would happen (in general) if this were to occur?

Are virtual and real worlds becoming more difficult to distinguish?

What elements of performance have become evident just within these first chapters? 

The Facebook Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in the Sherry Turkle Experience

Because I have just become part of a new (to me) “new media” it seems fitting to discuss the last section of Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from Each Other” in terms of the YouTube video I just posted. In the first section of her book, “The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies”, Turkle discussed the ways in which robots are designed to perform “as if”. This, of course, means that the robots have been designed in such a way that it is easy to forget that they are robots at all—they have the ability to act “as if” they care, “as if” they’re responding, etc. Oddly enough, in her second section, “Networked: In Intimacy, New Solitudes” she discusses (not in the same words, however) the ways in which people are becoming programmed to act “as if”. In our YouTube video, entitled “Framing Identity: Google + versus Facebook”, Antonio, Emily, and I discusses the ways in which Google + is superior to Facebook because you can “frame” your identity according to who will see the post. We point out (humorously, I hope) that Google +’s circle feature allows different aspects of your personality to be show according to who’s watching. Literally, one frames his or her identity in a circular frame.

Turkle acknowledges what she calls a “collaborative self” in which “all questions about autonomy look different [because] on a daily basis, we are together even when we are alone” (169). When choosing to create accounts on Google +, Facebook, Twitter, or any other number of social network cites, we choose to be not only “alone together” but we also choose to take part in a collaborative self. First, we create a profile for everyone to see. (We claim that these profiles represent the “real” us, but they are, as Turkle mentions, just another way of performing.) Once these profiles are created, we add friends and begin commenting, chatting with others, and creating status updates. (Once again, these status updates are carefully selected to portray the person we wish to be… acting “as if” we’re busy, “as if” we’re popular, etc.) Once these accounts begin to form, a collaborative self also is created. When looking at my profile, an outside viewer (perhaps a stalker?) no longer sees Kesha. The person outside looking in sees the statuses I’ve chosen (“sort of” me), and they also see with whom I’ve been talking. Judgments about a person don’t just come from the person’s own actions anymore. We can judge them based on what others have said about/to them. I imagine that, though this collaborative self appears to exist only online, the fact that we’re constantly updating these social networks proves that this isn’t the case—do we become our collaborative selves?

As I’ve hinted at throughout this blog, online forums are, I believe, one of the best places to experiment with identity. In our YouTube video, Antonio is able to experiment with a number of different parts of his identity: son, employee, and friend. Each of these parts of Antonio’s identity are actually part of a whole, but with social networking sites like Google +, there’s no need for anyone to be aware of the whole. Turkle writes that “the network’s effects on today’s young people are paradoxical. Networking makes it easier to play with identity (for example, by experimenting with an avatar that is interestingly different from you) but harder to leave the past behind because the Internet is forever” (169). Though the character in our YouTube video is able to express all these different parts of his personality in what seems like a safe environment, Turkle brings up the fact that it’s not as safe as it seems. Privacy policies, when it comes to social networks, are confusing things that we often simply ignore. Though we extoll the virtues of Google + in our YouTube video, in actuality there’s no real way to keep the people in other circles from doing some investigating and finding out the “truth” about our characters behavior. I’m sure that a simple Google search could turn up pictures that a social networker thought were available only to a select number of friends. Social networks give us a false sense of security. These networks, like robots and people, act “as if” they are safe environments. Google + performs as a more private alternative to Facebook, but only in an “as if” sense. Though, on social networking sites “one’s profile becomes an avatar of sorts, a statement not only about who you are but who you want to be” there will always be, if it’s been put online, a part of yourself that you wish to ignore. Furthermore, social networking never allows for the true self because, as Turkle writes, “whenever one had time to write, edit, and delete, there is room for performance” (180).

Questions:

How do social networks, robots, and humans all act as “as if” performers?

Following the question above, what are the implications of the fact that humans share qualities with these electronic devices?

How have our lives become illusions? (We’re given illusions of choices, illusions of feelings, illusions of real selves…)