World of Warcraft as a globalized world games
Hilde Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg, researchers at the University of Bergen and has edited an anthology about World of Warcraft comes out on MIT Press in spring 2008.
In the 80 – and 90-century pioneers hoped that the Internet would make us blind to skin color, age and gender. On the internet, it was thought, would these differences be erased, and people would be able to communicate freely, without prejudice and without having been put in stall even before they began to talk. We wanted to experience true equality. But is it so easy?
Internet is no longer just about web pages, e-mail and instant messaging, but about a myriad of social arenas in which we interact with people from other parts of the world, such as YouTube , Facebook , Second Life – and video games, Massively Multiplayer Online Games. World of Warcraft is one of the most played and most notorious mass using games in Norway and worldwide, with over nine million players from Europe, America, Asia and Australia. When you log on to World of Warcraft participate in a true global village, and it is quite likely that you will cooperate with an Italian or a Russian who you end up on teams with other Norwegians. Nine million players participating. A golden opportunity for collaboration across nationalities, one would think – when I play nattalv or troll and you play orc or gnome, so wow power leveling it does not matter just what country we come from, right?
The newcomer to the World of Warcraft have to go through a steep learning curve to master the game, but the game leads us through the mission that teaches us about the properties of the character is having, to fight monsters and to buy and sell things for the local currency, gold coins. In addition, the social world is explored. You have to figure out how to form teams with other players and how to join a guild or guilds with other players. Collaboration is central to the World of Warcraft . To overcome opponents in the game requires good planning and thorough team effort: one must not only solve abstract problems in the game, but also to maneuver in a social environment.
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