Digital Culture, Play, and Identity

ISBN 10: 0262516691 / ISBN 13: 9780262516693

Published by MIT Press, 2011

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0262516691I4N00

Synopsis:

Exploring World of Warcraft as both cultural phenomenon and game, with contributions by writers and researchers who have immersed themselves in the WoW gameworld. World of Warcraft is the world's most popular massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), with (as of March 2007) more than eight million active subscribers across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia, who play the game an astonishing average of twenty hours a week. This book examines the complexity of World of Warcraft from a variety of perspectives, exploring the cultural and social implications of the proliferation of ever more complex digital gameworlds. The contributors have immersed themselves in the World of Warcraft universe, spending hundreds of hours as players (leading guilds and raids, exploring moneymaking possibilities in the in-game auction house, playing different factions, races, and classes), conducting interviews, and studying the game design-as created by Blizzard Entertainment, the game's developer, and as modified by player-created user interfaces. The analyses they offer are based on both the firsthand experience of being a resident of Azeroth and the data they have gathered and interpreted. The contributors examine the ways that gameworlds reflect the real world-exploring such topics as World of Warcraft as a "capitalist fairytale" and the game's construction of gender; the cohesiveness of the gameworld in terms of geography, mythology, narrative, and the treatment of death as a temporary state; aspects of play, including "deviant strategies" perhaps not in line with the intentions of the designers; and character-both players' identification with their characters and the game's culture of naming characters. The varied perspectives of the contributors-who come from such fields as game studies, textual analysis, gender studies, and postcolonial studies-reflect the breadth and vitality of current interest in MMOGs.

About the Author: Hilde G. Corneliussen is Associate Professor of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Jill Walker Rettberg is Associate Professor of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Hilde G. Corneliussen is Associate Professor of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Jill Walker Rettberg is Associate Professor of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, Norway. T. L. Taylor is Associate Professor in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She is the author of Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press).

Bibliographic Details

Title: Digital Culture, Play, and Identity
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication Date: 2011
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket