• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
 
The United Fronts: The Procedural Rhetoric of Cooperative Gaming in
World of Warcraft 
Sean J. CallotPrepared for Dr. Jan Rune Holmevik 9 December 2008
 
Callot 2
America was founded on the concept of community action and group participation. Sarah Vowell explains that Massachusetts’ first governor, John Winthrop,stirred his crew of colonists to suffer and struggle together to build “a city on a hill” inthe New World (Vowell). Centuries later, First Lady Hillary Clinton explained, “it takes avillage to raise a child,” further demonstrating America’s strong community ties and howthey are critical to the future of our country. On November 4, 2008, the people of theUnited States elected a community leader, Barack Obama, to the presidency on promisesto unite people toward a common good. The vast majority of jobs posted on internet jobsearch websites emphasize communication and effective teamwork. All of theseexamples emphasize the importance of working together to overcome challenges, rangingfrom local and personal to national and international. America is a network of communities, as any middle school social studies student can readily explain.It comes to no surprise, then, that this concept of the importance of community participation has pervaded the gaming community. Role-playing games, beginning withGary Gygax’s
 Dungeons and Dragons
and continuing to today’s massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), embrace this all-American concept of cooperation to develop and overcome challenges. The most popular MMORPG on themarket today, Blizzard Corporation’s
World of Warcraft 
(
WoW 
) embodies cooperativegaming in almost every aspect of gameplay. While it is completely possible to enjoy thegame without playing with others, Blizzard embraced Ian Bogost’s concept of proceduralrhetoric to great effect.
World of Warcraft 
encourages the player to engage in community participation through the implementation of several systems scaled for cooperativegameplay, including the economic system, the trade skills, the talent tree system, and the
 
Callot 3
group quest structures.
Theoretical Constructs:
In order to explain how these systems mandate player interaction, it is importantto understand what we mean when we discuss these types of systems and procedures. IanBogost has extensively examined different kinds of systems game developers have usedin order to elicit certain desired responses from their games. In his book,
 PersuasiveGames
, Bogost explains how some games are built as tools of persuasion. Their designers control the player’s interaction with the story or system by designing controlsthat restrict certain behaviors and reward others.Brenda Laurel sets the theoretical groundwork for Bogost’s theories in her book,
Computers as Theater 
. In her theory, user interface design closely mimics the actions of a stage crew and performers producing a play for the audience. What the audience sees isa representation of the lines of computer code (or the “script”) performed on the desktopof their computers (“stage”) by the program’s external output (“actors”). The programmers serve as stage managers, directors, and other “backstage” roles, whoseactions are only seen by the audience as the actor’s performance on the stage.Bogost’s manipulation of this metaphor replaces Laurel’s faceless backstage performers, who merely create and interpret the data for representation, with players whohave a clear agenda for what the audience should be drawing from this virtual performance. The backstage crews prepare and produce a persuasive story, which resultsin the actions on the “stage” telling a very clear persuasive story. In other instances, these
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...