Being in the World (of Warcraft): Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game.
This paper discusses two main claims made about virtual worlds: first, that people become “immersed” in virtual worlds because of their sensorial realism, and second, because virtual worlds appear to be “places” they can be studied without reference to the lives that their inhabitants live in the ac...
| Publicado en: | Anthropological Quarterly Vol. 83; no. 1; pp. 17 - 46 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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George Washington Institute for Ethnographic Research
Winter 2010
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=510964119&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 510964119 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00035491 ANQ jtl: Anthropological Quarterly issn: 00035491 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Winter 2010 vid: 83 iid: 1 pid: 12361 pub: George Washington Institute for Ethnographic Research artinfo: ui: 510964119 10.1353/anq.0.0110 ppf: 17 ppct: 29 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: C – @attributes: type: P size: 16.9MB tig: atl: Being in the World (of Warcraft): Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. aug: au: Golub, Alex su: Video games & society Virtual reality Realism Theory of knowledge World of Warcraft (Game) sug: subj: Video games & society Virtual reality Realism Theory of knowledge World of Warcraft (Game) ab: This paper discusses two main claims made about virtual worlds: first, that people become “immersed” in virtual worlds because of their sensorial realism, and second, because virtual worlds appear to be “places” they can be studied without reference to the lives that their inhabitants live in the actual world. This paper argues against both of these claims by using data from an ethnographic study of knowledge production in World of Warcraft. First, this data demonstrates that highly-committed (“immersed”) players of World of Warcraft make their interfaces less sensorially realistic (rather than more so) in order to obtain useable knowledge about the game world. In this case, immersion and sensorial realism may be inversely correlated. Second, their commitment to the game leads them to engage in knowledge-making activities outside of it. Drawing loosely on phenomenology and contemporary theorizations of Oceania, I argue that what makes games truly “real” for players is the extent to which they create collective projects of action that people care about, not their imitation of sensorial qualia. Additionally, I argue that while purely ingame research is methodologically legitimate, a full account of member's lives must study the articulation of in-game and out-of-game worlds and trace people's engagement with virtual worlds across multiple domains, some virtual and some actual. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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