Reconstruction Vol. 13, No. 3/4
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The Warcraft Civilization. / Sansone
Keywords: Culture Studies, Ethnography, Sociology
<1> The evolving complexity of video games in narrative, gameplay and technology has steadily pulled researchers from game studies and other disciplines into examinations of games and what they say about our culture. Some examine what games say about players and what their activity says about them as part of society. Others explore what the game itself reflects about our culture; how a specific game can, could or does affect our society.
<2> In exploring something larger than a fixed boundary game, William Sims Bainbridge’s The Warcraft Civilization moves the conversation a good deal further. This game is no longer just a single game, but a collection of games. This collection is placed inside something greater than a virtual world, a virtual civilization, with all of the social components therein. Therefore, what can researchers learn about our civilization? Bainbridge argues that as a civilization, World of Warcraft opens up the opportunity for scientists and scholars to research components of society without concerning themselves with how socially acceptable it may be to debate the merits of a real religious, economic or political institution.
<3> “Strangers can often see a society more clearly than its members. By visiting the very strange world of WoW and making sense of what we find there, we are able to look at our own world with fresh eyes. Indeed, WoW is in great measure an allegory, so its exaggerations can call our attention to facts we miss as we go about our habitual activities in the real world.” (14)
<4> Bainbridge’s work shows how World of Warcraft and similar games can provide the possibility of becoming wholly immersed in a society to gain perspective on one or more of the social aspects. It is divorced from real life prejudice but sufficiently reflective of the analogues and antecedents to appreciate what insights could be gained from researching them.
<5> As Bainbridge specifically notes, this work is not concerned with the enormous amount of quantitative data that could be mined with available third party software tools, but with the qualities of a civilization found within. To immerse himself in this civilization, he spent more than 2,300 hours in a two-year period roleplaying 22 different characters of varying occupations, classes, races and genders across multiple WoW servers to examine most all social aspects that could be experienced. His background in two areas related to exploring a virtual civilizations, artificial intelligence and full immersion into various religious, cult and political organizations, help him explore technical and social angles of how and why certain aspects can and could exist in WoW. Each section within the book, covering one aspect of civilization, starts and ends as a story about one of his avatars and their experience with that part of society.
<6> Each massive multiplayer online roleplaying game is unique because of the society it fosters. Some MMOs have already passed into history. Unlike other games, these cannot be reloaded onto new servers and replayed in a way that represents the original. MMOs derive their particular flavors from having a multitude of players engaged at the same time. Without the millions of users all over the world making up the various societies in the civilization, the game simply is not the same. Thus, Bainbridge argues, researchers need to study these civilizations now while they are still an ongoing concern. These civilizations provide an opportunity to unite social and information sciences, as he argues, knowledge can only be articulated within a specific cultural context.
<7> Though the storytelling of his characters can be interesting and helpful in providing some color, they lack the pacing of the fantasy novels they appear to emulate. Bainbridge expressly says that he does not want the book to be academically dry. Each chapter is bookended with a tale of the experience of his characters in their exploration of their heritage, religion, social interaction or identity, for example. Though helpful in capturing the tone and experience of the environs, he overcompensates in trying to flavor the text. The storytelling tone moves between role playing session and marketing presentation:
<8> “My first quest for Erona was to help reclaim Sunstrider Isle by killing eight mana worms that had grown immune to our magical control, and the second was to kill lynxes that were upsetting the natural balance. Afterward, Erona told me, ‘Your continued successes shall be rewarded,’ and she passed me on to her assistant, Lanthan Perilon. Indeed, each quest I completed rewarded me with experience points, which had added together to take me to the middle of level 3, when I met Lanthan.” (118)
<9> It would be possible to infer a maturity or building of experience without referring to game mechanics. It would read better if he had chosen to write his narrative or describe the scenes in pure game terms. With greater emphasis on the character and less on direct callouts from in-game metrics like experience points and levels, his goal of setting the theme for the chapter would have been more self-evident and engaging. Once he gets out of his own way, the exploration of the virtual societies ranges deep. His discussion on heritage fascinate, as he explains how the game’s backstory, its literary and cultural callbacks and analogues to events in world history are folded into WoW’s events and characters. Of particular fascination are his deft explanations of the literary origins of the various races within this world, drawing not just from Tolkien, but Baum, Grimm and Greek myth.
<10> When he delves into social and economic discussions, the book picks up steam. Bainbridge’s discourse on cooperation explores the nature of roles -- how one calling, or class, can complement another -- when completing quests encourages social interaction by design. This contrasts to the “implicit cooperation” players offer each other with corresponding skills.
<11> Bainbridge explains that “even without a formal agreement to cooperate, one player can benefit implicitly from the actions of another whenever their goals differ but overlap.” (124) Characters with the skinning skill, the ability to take the hides of dead animals and cure them into leather, are his prime example. Other characters may kill an animal but leave it behind as they cannot process the hide. A character who can skin benefits from the raw materials left out for him to acquire leather. This leather is then sold to others or used by the character to manufacture goods like armor or bags. Conversely, a character who skins could enter an area and clear it of animals as they acquire more hides, making it easier for others to traverse. More than just the one character benefit from the actions of another character.
<12> This relates to the concept of economic systems he later covers, where avatars may be capable of trading raw materials and finished goods with each other, even those managed by the same player, to generate revenue. Though economics remains the dismal science, within WoW, the examination of market systems -- Auction Houses -- and the professions -- skills that characters employ to earn money without killing -- offers a fairly complete and relatable explanation of capitalism. By studying the virtual civilization of Warcraft, Bainbridge explores both its intricacies and their influence from and insight into our real civilization.
<13> Bainbridge’s discussion of identity is where the work really shines. He digs into how self-conceptualization and identification by others can become radically more when you are separated from your own self by race, gender and status in very different ways than real life. Being able to role play in real life as an employee, spouse or parent does little to prepare someone to view themselves as a gnome or orc. Racial bias and prejudice take on new meaning when biologies radically differ, as well as when these prejudices are hard-coded into the history of the game’s societies and realized in the way the computer-managed characters treat players.“The races in World of Warcraft not only have a number of distinctive characteristics but they are also attributed characteristics by the stereotype held by players of other races.” (176) This then is reflected in how players treat each other. A player may experience prejudice as the maligned party and as they have in real life. They can see that how prejudice against someone like their character had nothing to do with them, the player, as a person but how their character was “born”. Gender bias becomes more complex when other players cannot, yet do, assume that an avatar is the same gender as the player. Even names take on new complexity as Blizzard has 13 rules governing what you can call you avatar.
<14> The Warcraft Civilization provides a solid, sweeping investigation of structured universe, a fully realized virtual civilization with its own economy, religions, society and history. Bainbridge does an admirable job discussing all this entails, but leaves you wondering what is at the periphery of his discussion. What would the quantitative data show about racial or class distinctions or preferences? Would they show different statuses of avatars on different servers? This was outside this publication, but suggests a venue for further research. These virtual civilizations do deserve more research for exactly the reasons Bainbridge offers; there may be more we can glean from research but we need to do so while the opportunity remains open and the societies vibrant.
Works Cited
Bainbridge, William Sims. The Warcraft Civilization. Cambridge, Mass.:, 2012. eBook.
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