Arachne Challenges Minerva: The Spinning Out of Long Narrative in World of Warcraft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

My focus here is to explore the ways in which World of Warcraft can be said to have a long narrative. Core to my argument is that 'worldness' is key to understanding how it is that long narrative can be sustained and make sense. I will historicise long narrative formats through reference to epic poetry--taking as my starting point the battle of narrative form between Arachne and Minerva in Ovid's Metamorphosis, as well showing that world-based long narratives are often driven by media economics and especially franchising. Using Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a point of comparison, I show that because the 'World' of Warcraft is driven ludically, a rather different type of long narrative is produced than found in other media formats

Learning and Games

Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning In this chapter, I argue that good video games recruit good learning and that a game's design is inherently connected to designing good learning for players. I start with a perspective on learning now common in the Learning Sciences that argues that people primarily think and learn through experiences they have had, not through abstract calculations and generalizations. People store these experiences in memory -- and human long-term memory is now viewed as nearly limitless -- and use them to run simulations in their minds to prepare for problem solving in new situations. These simulations help them to form hypotheses about how to proceed in the new situation based on past experiences. The chapter also discusses the conditions experience must meet if it is to be optimal for learning and shows how good video games can deliver such optimal learning experiences. Some of the issues covered include: identity and learning; models and model-based thinking; the control of avatars and "empathy for a complex system"; distributed intelligence and cross-functional teams for learning; motivation, and ownership; emotion in learning; and situated meaning, that is, the ways in which games represent verbal meaning through images, actions, and dialogue, not just other words and definitions

The Dynamics of Co-Creation in the Video Game Industry: The Case of World of Warcraft

These latest years have seen both an increasing development of Users Generated Content (UGC) on the Internet and a growing number of free transactions of these contents through online communities. The video game industry shares this general trend and we shall examine it in detail through the example of a worldwide success game, World of Warcraft (WoW). This massively multiplayer online (MMO) game exhibits two specific economic characteristics. The first one is that the original content is produced by a game developer who keeps intellectual property rights while leaving open to players some possibilities to modify that original content into an enhanced content. We call this innovation process, which involves both the participation of the producer and of consumers, co-creation. Based on a typology of the different UGC in WoW, we specify the meaning of co-creation and put forward some arguments on the players' motivations to co-create and their consequences on the attractiveness of the gameplay to the players' community. The second characteristic is that co-creation is not limited to the design of the game before its marketing. It is a continuous interaction between players and developer even after its marketing. This dynamic process requires both regulatory actions by the developer and a new industrial organization to distribute these UGC through the WoW players' community.open innovation, online community, video game, innovative user, customization

The co-evolution of the “social” and the “technology": a netnographic study of Social movements in virtual worlds

Virtual worlds provide new forms of social interaction. They offer alternative spaces where social functions can be carried out in online three-dimensional virtual environments. One social phenomenon which has moved into the virtual world is the social movement, which are an important means of bringing out social, cultural and political changes through collective action. These social movements exist in an immersive technological ecosystem which is constantly evolving as designers release patches which change the way users “live” within these environments. Using a biography of artifacts approach, we explore not just the evolution of the technological artifact itself (the virtual world), but also its co-evolution with the social phenomena (a social movement). Using Netnography, a modified version of ethnography, and actornetwork theory, we explore a social movement in World of Warcraft, and observe how it evolves over time as changes to the virtual world are implemented

The discourse deictics ^ and <-- in a World of Warcraft community

In the written English variety used in a community of World of Warcraft players, two iconic lexical items created from symbols have undergone semantic change. The words analyzed are ^ and <--, which have shifted from iconic deictic items used for discourse reference to non-iconic epistemic meanings. ^ shifted from a discourse deictic to an affirmative of a previous utterance, and <-- shifted to a self-identifying meaning similar to a pronoun. The existence and evolution of these lexical items are related to the medium in which they were created, as their meanings are associated with a visual-spatial environment created by textual chat in the virtual world. The different meanings of ^ and <-- currently exist in polysemy in the community, and the continuum of meanings are documented using data from natural language use spanning three years. A statistical analysis is performed on the data, and a diachronic change in meaning is found; furthermore, the observed change follows the path of semantic shift processes previously documented in spoken language. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd

Issues in the study of virtual world social movements

Virtual worlds are online three-dimensional worlds that are often constructed to look much like the real world. As more people begin to use these virtual worlds, virtual communities are emerging enabling various social activities and social interactions to be conducted online. Based on a literature review of social movements, virtual communities and virtual worlds, this paper suggests a framework to guide IS research into this new and exciting area

Learning in virtual worlds : Using communities of practice to explain how people learn from play

Although there is interest in the educational potential of online multiplayer games and virtual worlds, there is still little evidence to explain specifically what and how people learn from these environments. This paper addresses this issue by exploring the experiences of couples that play World of Warcraft together. Learning outcomes were identified (involving the management of ludic, social and material resources) along with learning processes, which followed Wenger’s model of participation in Communities of Practice. Comparing this with existing literature suggests that productive comparisons can be drawn with the experiences of distance education students and the social pressures that affect their participation

Why do gamers buy 'virtual assets'? An insight in to the psychology behind purchase behaviour

The present study investigated the phenomenon of buying 'virtual assets' for game avatars. Virtual Assets are items that are bought with real-world money for an avatar in-game. Weapons, items, pets, mounts and skin customisations are the most popular examples. Using a qualitative methodology - in this case Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) - six gamers that regularly bought in - game assets were interviewed. IPA was chosen because of its emphasis on lived experience, and each participant had subjective experiences of gaming and purchase behaviour. Of particular focus in this study were the superordinate themes of motivations for purchase behaviour, the resulting psychological impact on the gamer, the social benefits of gaming and virtual asset purchasing, emotional attachment, self-expression through the avatar, impulsivity versus thoughtfulness in purchase intention, and the impact of a transaction machinery on the 'game experience'. Motivations that were found to be of particular importance were item exclusivity, function, social appeal, and collectability. It was found that virtual items enable the gamer to express themselves, feel real satisfaction, and build lasting friendships. Essentially, virtual assets and gaming mostly had a very positive impact on the participant’s psychological wellbeing. Implications for gamers and games production companies are considered