This is a beast of a post (although not as long as some others). I am attempting to make some sense of my argument for my paper, so I am being thorough in the hope that I can get some good feedback. Thanks in advance if you read all this. 
Enjoy the journey:
In making my thoughts and assumptions explicit, I have very strong opinions about how World of Warcraft favors certain playstyles over others. I feel that the design and “loudest” player groups have created a game culture that favors ambition, aggressiveness, and a focus on certain achievements over others. (Warning: The following sentence might be highly subjective or half-baked). High level or “epic/elite” activities, raiding, or player vs. player are seen as “better” than any-level activities like exploration, pet collection, or crafting. While these any-level activities are not seen as unimportant, they don’t have near the prestige of the other activities, and are often treated as a means to an end.
So for my paper, I am analyzing FigurePrints, a service offered by Blizzard that allows World of Warcraft players to create a custom 3-D statue of their avatar in the game (for the mind-boggling price of $130). After my first attempt at doing a semiotic reading, I have a vague sense of a thesis. This is something along the lines of: The FigurePrints interaction favors dominant, aggressive, and high-level players over players that are low-level or less concerned with aggressive or competitive play. I am trying to be careful that I don’t twist the evidence into saying what I want it to say, so I am posting this in the hopes that someone might tell me if I am just making stuff up, or if there is some legitimacy to what I am saying. Or perhaps I just need to word my thoughts a different way.
I begin with a statement about what the figure itself represents. It is a text that represents the player’s time investment, their attachment to the character and the character’s place in the history of the game lore, the character’s (and player’s) growth over time, the character (and player’s) growth in a larger social context of friends and other players in the game, and on and on. It is a text of rich and personal meaning, and the choices that FigurePrints provides limit players to only certain kinds of meaning. I will illustrate this with a syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis of the choices provided to players in the creation of the figure.
Syntagmatically-speaking, the creation of the FigurePrints statue consists of choosing from a Pose, a Base, and a set of Armor.
FigurePrints main editing screen
I think I need to explore the importance of limiting players to these 3 choices, but as of yet I haven’t analyzed it that much. However, I currently can adequately speak about what each of these paradigms represent and what choices are given.
Pose as a representation of body language
Players can choose from 44 different poses, 33 of which involve the use of a weapon and depict the character in battle. This leaves 11 poses that could reflect the character out of battle. Of these 11 poses, 5 are gestures that depict behavior that is aggressive or negative in the culture of World of Warcraft. There are the character poses of yell, chicken (taunt), rude (making an obscene gesture), train (a gesture that represents a despised activity in which a player or players, on purpose or on accident, lead a large group of monsters to another player resulting in chaos, game lag, and death), and beg (perhaps an even more despised behavior than a monster train).
The remaining 6 poses are stand, walk, wave, kiss, kneel, and sit. Out of 44 possible representations of body language, this seems to be a very limited range of choices for creating a character figure that is NOT fighting or calling attention to the negative cultural aspects of the game. Granted, the game is called World of WARcraft, not the World of Politeness and Compromise. However, there is much more to a player’s character and gameplay than fighting. Players engage in arguably more social/helpful scenarios than they do in fighting, and they collect plants, mine for metals, go fishing, craft items, and engage with storylines. But there are no poses for any of these.
Base as a representation of [something]. < I don’t know what to put here yet. It is a symbol of elevated status, of standing on top of something, of being built upon something. I don’t know. Anyway:
There are 4 choices of statue bases:
Choices for figure base
Marbled Floor: The “plainest” of all the bases, but represents a material of luxury and importance.
Horned Stand: Horns are aggressive, bestial, and associated with violence
Gold Mound: wealth, greed, achievement
Onyxia Base: This one is interesting in that it cost an extra $10, perhaps due to printing constraints. However, more cost is usually associated with a “premium” or “superior” product, which in this case is the base that represents a large, epic battle against a dragon. This particular battle is a well-known (relatively-speaking) raid in World of Warcraft, and is sort of a rite of passage for players that begin raiding. Here the “premium” product is reserved for players concerned with raiding.
What is missing from this assortment of bases is the choice to have your character standing in a meadow, or at a crafting station, or near a fishing hole, all of which are places that exist in the game and can have very special meanings for players.
Armor as a representation of fashion and achievement
Choices of armor are limited to the armor you have actually collected in the game. In the analysis I did, a level 80 character that has done many raids and player vs. player fights has 10 armor options as opposed to a level 20 character who has 3. Additionally, 2 of these options are for Christmas outfits that every player has access to. If you remove those options the armor choices are 8 to 1 in favor of the player that engages with game activities that reward players with special armor.
As I mentioned before, there are an incredible amount of activities that players can engage with. Players can follow the storyline, harvest materials, craft items, play the stock-market on the auction house, explore the game world, collect pets, teach other players how to play, help out other players with difficult situations, make new friends, and on and on. However, these activities in themselves are not rewarded with special sets of armor. Special sets of armor are reserved for players that engage with high-level game content, and are successful in killing “epic” monsters, or defeating other players in tournaments.
Since FigurePrints only allows players to “dress” their character in the armor they have acquired in the game, this places a much higher value on high-level players concerned with raids and player vs. player activities. This is most evident in the words used in the instructions:
Instructions for choosing what armor to put on the character
These are the instructions shown to all players, regardless of if they have 8 sets of high-level armor to choose from or 1 low-level set of armor.
Any player without high-level armor could be described as either not interested in those aspects of the game that provide the armor, or as not “advanced” enough to have acquired it. By not providing this player with as many options to “dress” the character, the player is limited in the ways he or she can create a meaningful representation of his or her character.
FigurePrints situated amongst other texts
And then I can also talk about FigurePrints as a creative activity concerned with creating an artifact that represents the player’s character. In seeing FigurePrints as this, I can compare it to many other artifacts that are created to represent the character: costumes, drawings, forum signatures, fan fiction, and the WoW Armory just to name a few. In exploring these artifacts, I have seen an interesting occurrence: artifacts that are created from scratch by players have very different qualities than artifacts that are generated using information from the game.
Some future design implications?
Namely, game-generated artifacts seem to focus on achievements, statistics, armor, and items. Player-generated artifacts seem to focus on personal stories and social elements. Some of this is discussed by Silvia Lindtner, Bonnie Nardi, and Fernanda Viégas. This will be more important in the future as representations based on digital data become a source for decision-making. If social spaces like World of Warcraft use their digital data to reduce the rich experience down to statistics and equipment, what implications does that have for the ways in which we value others and ourselves?
My next step will be to go back to my readings and start pulling out stuff that either explains in better detail what I am talking about or helps support my claims. From there I will start constructing some sort of coherence.
Anyway, thanks for reading this. I welcome all feedback, and I am especially concerned about:
- Am I twisting the evidence to support a bogus claim?
- Is there a better way to word this claim? (I think there is)
- How might I construct this argument for my paper?
- What have I missed? Am I lacking something critical to making this argument?
7 comments
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December 7, 2009 at 12:17 am
yujiazhao
You might want to also look at WoW itself, and compare this to WoW. I feel like this kind of services perpetuate those unfairness and values embedded in the game itself.
regarding the questions:
I think it is a fair claim.
I don’t know a better way to word it.
You might want to cluster evidence and readings first?
I cannot think of any, if I do sometime later, I’ll let you know.
December 7, 2009 at 3:14 am
milara
I have never played any MMRPG game but I feel that I was able to understand very well the description of your argument and it did make sense to me. I think that your detailed syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis help me to understand your claim.
As I was reading your posting, for some reason it came to my mind the association between the armors and the varsity jackets used in HS. If I understood you correctly, there are many activities that players can be engaged in; however, only bellicose/aggressive activities are rewarded with armors. So, it seems to me that something similar happens at High School, students can be in the art department doing drama or poetry but that will never earn them a varsity jacket, they need to be in competitive athletic teams. I guess that is an interesting juxtaposition of these discourses, just a thought.
On the other hand, I guess you might also consider the economical power to buy these figures. I mean, even players who have all the existing armors, they would really need to have the extra $130 bucks to pay for the inane figure. Well, I guess that if they had money to pay for the monthly membership for so long as to gain all the existing armors, they also would have money for the figure.
December 7, 2009 at 3:23 am
chadcamara
Thanks for the comments both Yujia and Miguel.
The varsity jacket is an interesting comparison. I hadn’t thought of that but it makes sense in a variety of ways. The money investment is a good point as well. If you consider how much money and time went into getting that armor, the figure should just be given to you!
I feel that should also point out that activities that reward characters with armor do require a lot of collaboration and teamwork, and often take place with groups of friends (whether real life friends or in game friends). There are definitely some positive things going on there.
It just seems that these activities are more highly regarded, and it doesn’t have to be that way.
December 8, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Dane
Ditto on the varsity jacket comparison.
When I was in high school I was heavily involved in both nordic skiing and band. If you spent three years on the nordic ski team, you would automatically “letter”, and qualify for getting a letter jacket.
If you were in band for three years, you would get a letter as well. However, unlike all athletic letters, which were unadorned, your band letter would say “BAND” in huge letters across it, as though to label it as “a letter, but not, you know, a real letter.”
As I think back, my friends who dared to wear their band letters had some serious rocks.
December 7, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Jay Steele
Chad:
Your explanation of this service and the semiotic issues you have identified are very interesting. I have no experience with WoW or FigurePrint and felt like I had a pretty good understanding of what you are analyzing. I did have a few questions which still appear to be unanswered and may contribute to your analysis. For example, once someone forks out the $130 and finishes designing their “statue” what happens then? Is it something that they can display in-game? Does Blizzard send them an actual statue that the user can put on display in their home or office? Can it be re-designed as the user gets more armor sets?
I was a little confused when you described some of the poses as being “negative”. Did you mean that they would be looked upon unfavorably by other players if a player struck that pose in the game? Or does “negative” mean that it detracts from the overall purpose of the game? That second question leads to an even bigger issue. Since you are presenting your semiotic analysis within the context of why some aspects of the game appear to be overlooked or marginalized, I am wondering if it is possible to actually specify whether or not there is an explicit objective of WoW. Is there a determinable end? Do you “beat” the game? Can you max out your character? I do not know the answer to these questions but I think if you would address them it would help me to better understand how you are framing your semiotic analysis.
There is also one other little phrase that you used in your post that grabbed my attention: “I feel that the design and “loudest” player groups have created a game culture that favors ambition, aggressiveness, and a focus on certain achievements over others.” I immediately thought about whether this was being perpetuated by the game designers themselves or rather it was being driven primarily by a group of players. Maybe it is a combination of both. No matter what, I think it may again be useful to develop a better understanding of what is driving this culture of ambition and aggressiveness.
These are just a few of my initial observations from your post. I really like what you are doing with this and would love to read your final paper. This is good stuff. Thanks.
December 7, 2009 at 10:11 pm
chadcamara
Thank you for the comments Jay. In answering your questions I think I will gain some clarity to myself:
The statue is printed on a 3D printer and sent to the player in the mail, so yes it is an actual statue that they can put on display. Here is an example of one:
You can redesign it, but you would have to pay another 130 clams to get another one sent to you. This cost obviously affects how the player views this figure, as perhaps the one and only figure they will ever print to represent their character. (This is why I feel it is important to analyze the options that they give to players, since it is am important construction of self, time-investment, and personal meaning-making).
When I said the poses were “negative”, perhaps it will help to list them out so we can see them together. The non-battle poses are:
To describe the last 5, I know negative is the wrong word. But perhaps I can come up with a word based on the understanding I will work through here. Out of the 11 non-battle actions a player can choose, 5 of them carry connotations of aggression towards other players. Your character can be rude, yell, beg, or call someone a chicken. Train is a bit arguable because sometimes you can be helpful to other players by letting them know a train of monsters is coming. However, “monster trains” are associated with new and “unskilled” players. The term “noob” to refer to a new player is not exactly an affectionate term. So in many cases a monster train evoke less than positive reactions.
So the point I am making there is that out of 46 (i said 44 earlier but it is 46) poses, players that don’t want fighting poses or body language that connotes aggression towards other players can only choose from 6 poses:
walk, stand, kneel, wave, kiss, and sit. Where is shake hands, welcome, dance, craft, create, hug, high-five, ponder, etc.? These are all things that players do in the game, and most of those have character animations already programmed in the game.
About the explicit object of WoW (and perhaps many other MMORPGs):
It depends on who you ask. As a player, researcher, and critic I feel that there is no one specific objective. That is what makes these virtual worlds so compelling. You can be a crafter first and foremost, you can seek to kill all the biggest monsters in the game, you can try to explore the entire map and take pictures in the most remote regions, you can spend your time going out of your way to help others achieve their goals, you can play as a researcher studying the social dynamics, you can try to make friends as soon as possible, you can get in a guild to network, etc.
But let’s say you have just gotten interested in playing World of Warcraft. You don’t know where to even begin, so you look online at some tutorials and guides. You will immediately begin drowning in an ocean of statistics and the “proper” way to play your characters, so that you don’t look like a “noob” and you don’t “waste time”. The majority of guides instruct players on how to be level efficiently and get to the “good stuff”, which is the end-game content. I have often heard this phrase, “World of Warcraft starts at level 60.” (which turned to level 70, and now level 80 with recent expansions).
So the “loudest” voices are the players that are writing these tutorials. There are no tutorials about how to help the most people, or how to level slowly and enjoy the storyline, or how to create a character that resonates with you, or how to learn from different cultures. Maybe if enough people wrote those kind of tutorials and showed that they cared about that, then Blizzard would make changes to the gameplay that gave players that. Currently they don’t. They expand the majority of the content for the players writing the end-game, efficient-leveling tutorials.
A brief history of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft can provide some insight. The evolution in very basic terms is:
tabletop role-playing games (like dungeons and dragons)
MUDS (multi-user dungeons)
Everquest
World of Warcraft
This is very simplified, but an understanding of those genres tells us that they are statistic and achievement based, but also that the story and social elements were always important. My assumptions about why WoW focuses more on end-game and achievement as opposed to anything else is threefold:
1. World of Warcraft was designed to be a “better Everquest” (I won’t go into what that means, but it is important for the next part)
2. Everquest and typical MMORPG fans and players were the first players to play World of Warcraft, thus the most powerful voice in shaping the design and culture of the game. In an admittedly stereotypical and vague description, these players were typically male, born of the video game [sub] culture that celebrates competition, elitism, dominance, and cheating – all in the interest of being the “best.” This type of play style was first and therefore defines the ways in which new players and new types of people not typically familiar with video game [sub] cultures or role-playing games can engage with World of Warcraft.
3. Blizzard hired psychologists to help design a game play experience that was, for lack of a better word, addicting. They used examples from other “addicting” activities and used what was engaging about them and pumped World of Warcraft full of them. These things were decided to be achievements and statistics.
Again, that is a very simplified and possibly untrue account of the history and design of WoW. But even if I am wrong about all of that, it doesn’t change the fact that virtual worlds are rich social spaces where the “rules” and “norms” of the game are co-shaped by the designers and the players. And I think it is important to understand where those rules and norms come from so that we don’t limit the types of experiences people can have. A big part of this class is concerned with that, as is Manovich’s notion of cultural interface, Jeff’s critique of creative software, and several other HCI and social science topics are as well. (I welcome anything relevant to cite as I make my case!)
Anyway…I just realized that was somewhat messy, but it helped me understand some things better. Thanks Jay (and myself I guess.)
December 8, 2009 at 2:37 pm
jeffreybardzell
I basically buy your claim about what is “privileged” in WoW and the ways that this subset of play styles is valorized.
I especially like that you identify and even visualize the alternatives–crafting, exploration, fishing–and situate them in terms of fulfillment in the game.
You don’t really talk about primarily social players (i.e., people like me!) and I think if you add us in, it will only help your argument. Indeed, I think it can strengthen your argument in many ways. The game may not be called World of Compromise and Discuss, but this isn’t a Massively Single Player Offline Game, either. And I think that fishing and crafting are indeed very social activities–as is raiding, of course, but in a different way. So I think there is an opportunity to enrich what is already a good argument here but teasing out the significance of (Blizzard downplaying) the social.