Growing up in a family of five with two older brothers explains all the reasoning behind my interest in gaming. As the only girl of a family of five, I never had sisters to play Barbie and dolls with. Instead, I have two older brothers, eight and ten years older than me, who absolutely love to play video games. In fact, they love gaming so much, that my oldest brother founded his own company called Panda Game Manufacturing. Growing up, my brothers babysat me by having me watch them ride Chocobos in Final Fantasy, guide Link in The Legend of Zelda, shoot enemies in Call of Duty, and the list goes on. The first game that I started playing intensely with my brothers was Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, which eventually led to playing the expansion pack, Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. I started off by playing campaign mode and completed as many missions as I could until I lost patience and gave up. The campaign mode was fun, but multiplayer melee games was where I found myself late at night. I would create LAN (local area network) games with friends on Battle.net, the multiplayer network. Tower defense was also very addicting and I was able to play it for hours.
This blog will explore World of Warcraft (WoW), a new media in many aspects. Although I have not played much WoW, I have spent a lot of time watching my brothers and friends spend hours on the game. As a result, I have decided to challenge myself and do research on WoW and explore its features of new media.
New media is continuously evolving as it is injected with new ideas and adapts to our needs. World of Warcraft evolves based on a fast-paced entertainment environment. The role-playing game originated from games such as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), which were played with cards boards. D&D traditionally had a small but loyal following who were considered to be true geeks and nerds for delving into the fantasy world of dragons and wizards. Blizzard took the concept behind D&D and visualized it, and sped the game speed up. They hoped that their new product, World of Warcraft, would go beyond the small following attracted by D&D and appeal to the masses. They were wildly successful with their new game, having nearly 12 million worldwide subscribers. WoW, like other types of new media, builds off old media. WoW is not the first RPG and it most certainly will not be the last. Its conceptual foundation can be found in D&D, and then EverQuest, which was an MMORGP that came before WoW. The reason WoW is so successful today is because the development team at Blizzard has done an unparalleled job at turning their imaginations into a tangible and wildly entertaining product. WoW goes beyond the nerds and geeks of gaming circles to reach millions more, even creating commercials involving popular icons such as Mr. T, Ozzy Osborne, and Verne Troyer (Mini-me). WoW has also spawned new media in ways developers never anticipated. Movies have been made about the characters and the lore behind the game, Blizzard Convention (BlizzCon) has become a huge gathering, and many other pop culture sensations. In becoming a form of new media, WoW has itself become a stepping-stone for other forms of new media to sprout and grow off of it.
WoW Commercial
Well-known inside joke within WoW. An example of dungeon raiding.
World of Warcraft, also known as WoW, is undoubtedly a form of new media. The fact that there are over 12 million people from around the world, playing on servers together, illustrates how WoW is interconnected with the Internet and the vast array of people who take part in it. The many features in WoW, such as customizable avatar characters, is also an example of new media. WoW has become a distinct virtual world that is always evolving and growing, thus allowing people to live a second life by living vicariously through their characters and avatar (uvanewmedia).
World of Warcraft is “an online game where players from around the world assume the roles of heroic fantasy characters and explore a virtual world full of mystery, magic, and endless adventure” (Blizzard Entertainment). It is characterized as a ‘massively multiplayer online roleplaying game’ (MMORPG) that is set in the Warcraft Universe. Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, is the developer of the game series Warcraft. In addition to the computer game, Warcraft’s story develops through other forms of franchising such as Warcraft comics, manga, novels, and board games.
WoW was first announced by Blizzard in September 2001 at the ECTS trade show. The game that took five years to develop, was finally released on November 23rd, 2004 on Warcraft’s 10th Anniversary of franchise. By April 2008, WoW was estimated to hold 62% of the MMORPG subscription market. The game was created as an open environment concept where players could do what they wanted. Quests are available to players to guide them through the game and allow for character development, however they are optional. WoW’s appearance and controls are all customizable by installing add-ons and modifications (us.battle.net).
Putting play to work can be seen in various aspects of WoW. Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford’s article “A Playful Multitude? Mobilisng and Counter-Mobilising Immaterial Game Labour” discusses how interactive games are the paradigmatic media or empire. Their article mentions how “work in the video and computer game development industry, a sector of creative, cognitive labour that exemplifies the allure of new media work.” ‘Employment nirvana’ refers to those who are being paid to play in the making of virtual games. Peuter and Witheford explain the corporate organization of game creativity—development studios and publishing companies are the basic organizational structures of gaming industries. They note that developers are disadvantaged in relation to publishers as they are forced into an indentured servitude. In the case of WoW, both the developer and the publisher are Blizzard Entertainment.
Immaterial labour is another concept that is explored in depth in Peuter and Witheford’s article. WoW and all other digital games are immaterial commodities that are primarily designed by immaterial laborers. Designers, artists, programmers, producers, and testers are the backbones of game development. The article examines four stages that game developers undergo: pre-production, prototyping, production, and “alpha-beta-final” stages. Starting from the “beta” stage, game testers are present and play games to find “bugs” that need to be fixed and test games for playability.
In addition to game testers that follow a “work as play” mantra, there are also companies that help players level-up and advance in the game. According to the company, Power-levels.com, “it would take 768 hours to reach the highest level you can hit in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.” Companies like power-levels.com sell services to help people advance in their game. After paying a fee, the company will take over the player’s account and fulfill his or her request as to what they want done with their account. Outsourcing such Warcraft skills is a prime example of new media that has gone beyond the game. 768 hours of leveling up from level 0 to level 70 in burning crusade would cost $556 and 384 hours of leveling up from level 60 to level 70 would cost $239. People who want to have high-level characters are able to go to online marketplaces such as eBay, to purchase retired players’ accounts (Terdiman).
Guy4Game is another power-leveling company that operates in China, Korea, Japan, and Mexico, but is based in Canada. Flora Chen, Guy4Game’s manager, states that they have a staff of 150 full-time workers and a client list of 100,000 customers (Terdiman). Chen explains how clients have various kinds of requests—some want to reach a specific level as soon as possible and some clients simply want steady progress, but want to be able to play during specific hours.
GmLvl.com is another power-leveling company that employs over 2,000 people to help clients reach their goals (Terdiman). Although there are numerous companies that help players level-up, game publishers actually do not allow such actions and behavior. According to the publisher of WoW, Blizzard Entertainment, “Making use of power-leveling structures is a violation of our account-sharing policy. This policy is discussed in World of Warcraft’s terms of use, which players agree to prior to playing” (Blizzard Entertainment).
In addition to leveling-up characters, there is also the growth of a virtual economy—they call them virtual sweatshops or gold farming factories. These ‘factories’ are often at internet cafes, old warehouses, or even private homes. Workers are normally harvesting virtual gold to sell to wealthier gamers. In Fu Zhou, China, there is an online gaming factory with seventy people who kill monsters to rack up points. On average, they earn $47-$250 per month, but many earn less than a quarter per hour (Barboza). These factories normally operate in secrete as they are illegal. Some factories are even based in dormitories—some students work for two to three months and some even work for a year. There are students as young as sixteen years old, but most of them are high-school drop-outs (Barboza).
The fact that people are playing to work, shows the extent that new media has gone. Not only is the computer game WoW considered a new media, but the game creates broader patterns of new media and social relationships such as outsourcing companies in China that make a living off of WoW.
Farming for Virtual Gold. Video from the NY Times:
In many ways, World of Warcraft prepares users for a world that is becoming more and more digitized. Players can perform almost any real-life function in WoW, from having a profession to getting married to fighting wars. Manuel DeLanda in his article, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, touches on how in the future, robots will help us fight wars. Even today, there are robots employed in combat roles by various militaries around the globe. One such example is the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that has been used extensively by the United States Military in Afghanistan. Although these UAVs are not made to operate independently of human control, they are an important step towards the future of true robotic intelligence. I believe that games like WoW are an important step in this process.
The idea of fighting a virtual war has many benefits and drawbacks. Combatants who know that they will not die or get injured in combat will act differently than if they were really getting shot at. This will undoubtedly allow controllers to be more aggressive in their decision-making if they bear no personal risk of injury or death. On the other hand, robots cheapen the value of life and may make the decision to fight wars an easier one. Games such as WoW also teach valuable real-world skills. Player vs. Player (PvP) is an important aspect of the game where players compete against each other to win arenas and rated battlegrounds. These games are extremely competitive and teams must use communication and teamwork to win. Strong leadership is also essential so that quick decisions and adaptations can be made to changing battle conditions. These are all desirable qualities of a “virtual citizen soldier” that Stahl mentions in his article, Have You Played the War on Terror?. Even though WoW does not involve hunting down and killing terrorists, these skills will become very useful in real-world scenarios because of WoW’s focus on small unit tactics.
Generation Kill, is an HBO documentary about the current generation of young men and women serving in the US Military that has grown up on violent video games. These young people often posses a cavalier and cocky attitude about war that reflects the sense of invulnerability they feel through virtual gaming. As war becomes more and more robotic and automated, the entire paradigm and philosophy of how warfare is conducted will shift to reflect these changing values.
Below are two images from a first-person shooter point of view. As you can see, it is very difficult to distinguish which one is from a video game and which one is from reality.
World of Warcraft: An Analysis 