Reflections on WoW

I've been playing World of Warcraft for about two years at this point, and I've never been able to get a character to level 70 in all that time. This is probably due to the fact that, until recently, I played exclusively by myself. I just saw no need to find a buddy to play with, since most of my friends played on different servers or stopped playing by the time I go on the bandwagon. However, over the past several days, my roommate and I have begun playing WoW together for a couple of hours each day and having a much greater time at it. We are able to progress through the beginning quests very quickly, taking on harder and harder mobs, in larger groups, with less effort than I used to apply in solo play.

In thinking about group play versus solo play, I began to see several procedures in the game design that benefit from playing well with others. Instance raids and group quests aside, I found that basic quests, trade progression, and producing a survivable character became much easier, and more enjoyable, when playing with another player. From creating rare arcanite items to successfully defeating an elite mob without burning a lot of high-level spells and potions, the game is geared to benefit sociable players. As I said in my previous post, this is what I will be investigating in the paper for this class. Procedures in World of Warcraft influence and privilege team play.

Ideological Frames and WoW

In examining the ideological framing of Vagrancy and Tax Invaders (not to mention the myriad examples of conservative taxation propaganda that consistently returns to the Space Invaders play style... are they seriously unaware of the past twenty-plus years of videogame development?), it is easy to see how political ideology can be expressed in a game environment to persuade people to take action. In GTA:SA an obvious connection may be made between eating fatty foods and getting fat, and the social ramifications that follow such a course of action. The ideologies these games warn against, as well as the ideological constructs they reinforce, are made self-evident by the presence or absence of procedures to address and control them. Bogost goes even further to explain how contextual decisions frame the ideological controlling procedures in these games, and draws specific attention to how context can emphasize or demean the ideologies.

In Bushgame, for example, the player controls all-American heroes in a quest against the "evil Republican Empire," embodied by Voltron. While this may seem comical, it is clear after playing for a few minutes that these design choices combine to produce a context where the ineffective economic approaches the Bush administration took in the first term may be seen as unbelievable. Something as absurd as a giant combining fighting robot representing the Bush administration's approach to support the Bush tax cuts (among other administrative decisions), not to mention the use of giant fighting robot versions of key cabinent members and political appointees (Giant Fighting Karl Rove is easily my favorite, though the FCC chairman piloting Janet Jackson's breast is a close second), does not seem that far fetched when augmented by instructional vignettes designed to provide information about the Bush administration's tax plan and the bodies that benefit. While the player characters, including Fat-Ass He-Man or Christopher Reeves, seem ill-matched to combat these enemies, the game's procedural message is clear: the entire situation is absurd, so we must do the best we can.

What does all of this have to do with World of Warcraft? This is what I will be investigating in my research paper for this class. In essence, my argument is that WoW uses procedural controls and ideological frames, among other procedural devices, to advocate cooperative play styles. Players are much more successful, in regards to quest progression, level progression, and trade progression, when they play with a varied group of player characters than they are playing strictly solo. The control interface, the character limitations, trade professions, and quest structure are all geared toward cooperative play, especially in higher level encounters.

World of Warcraft and analysis

I've been playing WoW for about two years now, and it's easily one of the most fun gaming experiences I've had. My friends have a running joke that I'm getting a Master's in WoW, or that I get paid for playing WoW. While I can't honestly say that either of these statements is wholly true or false, I can say that by examining the various aspects of MMOs in general and WoW in particular, my development as a student of digital rhetoric has been substantially furthered.

For example, in Klastrup's chapter on death in WoW, the argument is pro-offered that dying in the game provides a clear penalty for reckless play, but is also a social event. In a game experience, especially one in a community, dying becomes a rite of passage or a joke, more than a painful experience. There is a palpable penalty attached to dying, of course, but in a heroic game such as WoW it makes sense that the player is given many opportunities to succeed, despite such minor setbacks as being horribly murdered.

I found Aarseth's chapter about the spatial experiences of WoW to be the most interesting chapter we read today. It is a strange realization that the game world is comparatively small, but that it is completely understandable to spend multiple days of gameplay exploring all of it. It is an interesting piece of procedural rhetoric to build a fractured, compartmentalized gameworld. The player is never really exposed to how small the gameworld is, but rather finds it expansive. This is because the primary mode of locomotion is foot travel for the first few levels, with beasts of burden accellerating the travel experience later on. It would be a very different and less engaging game if the gameworld were the size of the United States, with real-world travel conditions. By building the gameworld on a smaller scale, the designers made the game playable for casual and die-hard gamers. Additonally, by building natural divisions between the various regions of the gameworld, the player never really feels limited by the comparatively small gameworld. Running from one corner of Westfall to another is tiring, even though you are only moving a few hundred yards. The procedure at play here is the suspension of disbelief, which is critical to building a game as engaging and enjoyable as possible. If the developers need to take a few liberties with distance, then that's perfectly understandable.

As a rich text experience, Krzywinska's chapter explains the combination of fantasy components that creates WoW. In building a game experience that is a rich as one finds in WoW, the developers combined aspects of Tolkein and Jordan's game worlds, among others, to build a cohesive piece of geek culture. Holidays, quest designs, play areas based on fantastic settings, and even NPC names all play a role in welcoming a geek to a full game experience. As a gamer and self-styled geek, having a common background to share with my fellow gamers, which is expressed throughout the gameworld, helped draw me into WoW.

A brief note about the scholarly analysis of game experiences in WoW: You really have to play WoW to understand it. You have to have been slaughtered by a mob of murlocs, or ganked a gnoll, or pulled Petunia away from her hog bodyguards, in order to best understand what is going on in the game. You can read about it all day long, but until you've cast arcane missile against a mob, you really can't know what the game is about.

As for the question of whether or not WoW is a persuasive game, I can't say. I can see the control choices, such as limiting the hotkey interface to twelve options (in a game where, using modifications, a player can display as many as fifty control icons) force the player to specialize his character's playstyle. I can see the proliferation of group quests and instances, where individual players are doomed to failure, as a persuasive procedure to emphasize the community nature of the game. These choices are clearly rhetorical devices, but I don't know that I could say that the game itself is persuasive. I'd like for us to talk about this in greater depth during class today.

LEEROY JENKINS!!!

Because it will come up in our conversation, and because it's a pivotal event in the evolution of WoW as a game platform, here's a video. (Taken from YouTube)

Politics and procedural rhetoric

The control interface choices a developer makes in producing a politically-minded game often says more about the issue he is addressing than the graphics or other aspects. By allowing some control types while limiting or eliminating others, the developer forces the player to interact with the issue on different levels. Bogost explains that these choices of procedure are integral in building a successful argument.

The best way for me to explain how I see this is through example. In September 12, the player is given command of a remote targeting device and no clear explanation of how to fight terror. If the player chooses to shoot a terrorist, the game displays a cruise missile flying into the terrorist and destroying the surrounding area. Upon impact, anything within the blast zone of the missile is destroyed, including civilians and civilian structures. Civilians wandering around the map see the devastation and become terrorists, and the cycle repeats. This game, Bogost explains, limits the player's interaction to either shoot with a cruise missile to kill tiny terrorists... or not. It says something about the US doctrine of surgical precision strikes against individuals. I think the game would have been even more engaging if there were a counter that measured the cost of the strikes to both the US and to the village, in both lives lost and dollar value.

I found Darfur is Dying to be a much more engaging and innovative approach to political gaming. Again, the interface is simple, but the gameplay dynamics are much more complex. In order to stave off attacks by the militia against your village, you have to actively contact members of Congress or the President to stop the conflict in Darfur. The actions of your avatar are so limited that you, the player, have to break the fourth wall and engage in real-world political activities to help your virtual village survive. This game presented a very interesting, if overly simplified, example of macropolitics effecting smaller scale environments. Also, by not addressing the underlying causes of the conflict, the creators have developed more childish interface. Since your avatars are children, they most likely do not understand why the militia is trying to kill them; only that the bad guys in trucks are actively hunting, and to be caught by them is very bad. When the village is attacked, the player's avatar, usually a small child, has to rebuild the village and try to get crops growing again. Outside support becomes the most important aspect of the game, since the "Take Action Now" button reinforces all village stats and helps the player reach a more successful conclusion.

Consequences of action, such as those found in September 12 and Darfur is Dying allow the player to understand that certain actions provide certain results, and that those actions should be reinforced both in the game world and the real world. These kinds of controls are procedural rhetorics at their core. I wonder, then, how much of this can be translated to non-political or non-persuasive games?

Procedural Rhetoric

Preface: I know this analysis and response is going to seem simplistic as compared to other analyses, but given the analytical tools available, it's the best I can do.

It appears that Bogost proposes that by developing or limiting the controlling options available to the end user, the game developer advocates a certain level of interaction or player experience. His analysis of GTA III, for example, demonstrates that the player is all but forced to engage in subversive actions as opposed to more socially acceptable approaches. The PC cannot directly interact with most NPCs (the exception being quest givers, who provide insight into the game through brief machinima presentations). However, the player can kill anyone and take their money, weapons, and/or car. The game world is dynamic and open-ended, but the actions the player can take are limited by the developers to keep the key gameplay aspect, anti-social behavior, alive throughout the gaming experience.

Similarly, in the McDonald's Game, which I played in preparation for this class, the key to success lies in inappropriate corporate behavior. Playing the game according to "the rules" of proper corporate conduct, such as paying fair wages or using safe and environmentally sound farming practices, almost directly results in failure. Where it costs $5000 to develop a pasture on clear ground, it costs only $3000 to bulldoze old growth rain forests or native villages and develop that tract into farm land. Rewarding an employee is much less effective than firing one and hiring a replacement. The controls do not allow for raises for employees or safe farming practices in most cases, which limits your options. In essence, you are forced to make bad decisions and live with the consequences.

These kinds of controls remind me of both Foucault's and Burke's discussions on rhetorical controls and orientations, respectively. Foucault, for example, explains that conforming with the established social constructions of how things are done is reinforced by several nodes of authority in a network of social control. Failure to comply with these often unwritten controls results in the member of the society being ostracized or labeled "crazy." Further, the public internalizes these controls through a network of reinforcements, both external and internal. Breaking these internalized controls is difficult and painful, and therefore is often not undertaken. In the case of games, having a finite and anticipated number of control commands or opportunities for interaction feels normal. By offering a large number of options for interaction, such as is demonstrated in GTA IV or the Elder Scrolls series of games, the player may become confused or discouraged from further play. There simply are too many options available.

Burke's explanation of terministic screens and orientation also lends to the discussion of procedural rhetoric. Orientation, in this case, refers to the accepted perspective of the end user. That which occurs within the normal orientation of a gamer in a game setting, such as shooting a cab driver in the face and stealing his car, feels right. Paying for the cab ride does not, so it was not included in early iterations of the GTA game series. Alternately, in the McDonald's game, the player is offered only a select number of options for each challenge which he encounters. Solutions outside those control configurations are not allowed, so the player is forced to adopt the orientation of a vicious corporate controller and take otherwise despicable actions in order to succeed at the game.

In both of these cases, the procedures of the game are designed to espouse a very specific paradigm of gameplay and build a strong rhetorical example of how the player must interact. Persuasive games, according to Bogost, use procedural rhetoric to convince the audience that a certain course of action is appropriate. For example, in the Tax Invaders game, the player is encouraged to avoid tax collectors while collecting money. This game, produced to support the Republican party's program of tax cuts, advocates tax evasion in favor of personal wealth. By keeping keeping the game experience on message, the player may find himself more likely to support tax cuts based on a negative experience in the game. The game itself did not state that taxes were bad, but in order to successfully complete the game, the player has to internalize this notion, which is reinforced throughout the game experience.

Unfortunately, I can see that this line of thinking can result in the kind of negative attention espoused by Jack Thompson and the anti-gaming politicians. Games such as GTA IV can be construed as advocating violent solutions to problems.

1) How can a pro-gaming advocate explain the arguements in favor of procedural rhetorics without opening the window for traditional anti-gaming arguments?

2) What other definitions of rhetoric are effective at explaining Bogost's idea of procedural rhetoric?