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?
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