Player Types, E-sports and Theorycrafting – Some Topics from the Games Conference

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In my last post I wrote about the trip to the DiGRA conference (Digital Games Research Association) in the Netherlands through the use of a gallery. Now I’ll bring up some of the discussions that emerged around the various presentations. If you’re interested in some of the things game academia (the European scene anyways) is talking about currently, you might find this post worthwhile.

One thing that astonished me when I sat down to watch some of the presentations on WoW, was that most of what they said, was common knowledge to me. This is not to say that I’m so clever, but more to say that any WoW player would have been nodding along to what the researchers were saying. It also makes me wonder how much of games research is based on confirming and validating the knowledge that the game community already has.

This presentation was a good example of this:

The WoW based presentation by Kristine Ask was focusing on how different play practices have developed under the same game design. She had taken the terms already found within the community, such as “casual”, “soft-core” and “hardcore” (I’m sure these to a WoW player don’t need explanation).

She used the concept of domestication in the sense that it “highlights the cognitive, symbolic and practical dimensions“. So, how I understand it, it’s about how players handle the game and how they ‘tame’ or appropriate it.

	Casual	Softcore	hardcore
Symbolic	Social Interaction	Challenging Leisure	Competition
Practical	Friends and Alliances	Beaurocratic	Organized for world firsts
Cognitive	Fellow Players	Targeted	Experts

This distinction makes me wonder about how game design is already targeting different play styles by making these wild swipes of totalitarian nerfs to the current tier of raiding, so that casuals and softcores can have fun after the hardcore players have already exhausted it for the sake of competition. Maybe WoW’s answer to the different domestications of WoW has been to tailor their content accordingly. The distinction between normal and heroic dungeon/raiding content, then, is less about progession and recycling as it is about letting different play styles with different values access the same content.

The question remains, is it even possible to cater to both hardcores, softcores and casuals equally? As it is right now, it seems the casuals and softcores are getting the large end of the deal at the price of the hardcores’ interests.

My teachers treat WoW as a little yesterday in terms of what games they deem interesting subjects for research, there’s a lot of research done on WoW already, but I was still pleased to see and hear WoW mentioned several times, even in relation to e-sports.

This panel on practicing masculinities largely dealt with masculinity as the title also reveals, but mainly through e-sports including WoW arena.

The researchers talked about WoW Arena as an e-sport being very peripheral and not considered “sporty” enough. Especially constant patching and class imbalances are problems with regards to WoW Arena’s position within e-sports. Thus, WoW Arena players were actively engaged in creating a sense of their own place, an alternative to the “sportified model” of how the Major League Gaming (MLG) frames e-sports.

Notice how the MLG logo reflects the sporty aspect of e-sports by appropriating the MLB logo.

The presenters also spoke about two main discourses within e-sports emphasizing different attributes and values in play: “the geek” and “the jock”

Geek	Jock
e-sports	”real sports”
MMO, RTS	FPS
Computers	Consoles
Technology Having a fast computer	Embodiment Fast reaction skills

The geek talks about his gameplay as feeding on highly refined skills, intensive knowledge, mastery and commitment. The geek can take the opportunity to opt out of physical sports, but retain the competition through playing computer games and still perform masculinity this way.

So while the geek thinks about skill as being clever, the jock is a “cyber-athlete” who tends to de-emphasize the technology and puts the body forward as the main tool. For instance they would say that Halo had more in common with fx paintball.

Since the panel was about how masculinity was practiced in these gaming communities, they also spoke about what was usually considered acceptable female participation, that is “Halo hoes”, booth babes and cheerleaders.

These two presentations on identity were also really interesting, and both used WoW (one more than the other) as material for analysis. Surprisingly the discussion quickly turned and started being about gender-bending (playing a character of the opposite sex), a term Nick Taylor (one of the researchers presenting) critizised, saying “sex-swapping” was more suitable. I actually agree even though I’ve called it gender-bending myself, I just mainly adopted the phrasing from the sources I used at the time.

Gender is more about our constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes, while sex is biological. So when you play a character of the opposite sex, you may not act feminine just because the character is female.

A claim was therefore made that sex-swapping for males playing a female character was not transgressive. It’s interesting cause I wonder how far the gaming community has moved on this topic. Sometimes I still see the question arise “why do some guys play a female toon?” as if it’s still this strange phenomenon. However, it’s such a common practice now and male players are already the majority, so this choice of play is not really a big deal, everyone assumes everyone is (a white heterosexual) male in fx WoW anyways. I’ve been called a “he” many times, often I’ve wondered if there even was a point in correcting it. What Nick Taylor did deem transgressive was instead females engaging in sex-swapping – playing male characters.

Nick Taylor also expressed critique about the interpretation of sex-swappers when they say they just want to “look at a sexy behind”. This phrasing is not hard to find on the internet, you’ll find it on the WoW forums in a second. I also suspect that it stems from male players wanting to distance themselves from any string of something not fiercely heteronormative, “it’s not like they’re GAY, GOSH! No no, that’s impossible when they play this female toon because her ass is sexy”. So the “nice butt” argument, I suspect, is more about impression management than these guys actually drooling over their female avatars.

During the discussions the problem of the “raging homophobia” to use one researcher’s own words, was also brought up.

These presentations about theorycrafting had many examples from the WoW theorycrafters and dealt with Elitist Jerks amongst others.

The presentations focused on knowledge production and how the players worked to gain control instead of being controlled by the game. A question was posed by a member of the audience about any counter actions to theorycrafting and I instantly thought of the Ironman Challenge.

In short, the Ironman Challenge is a style of leveling that puts severe restraints on the character. An Iron(wo)man character cannot wear items of green quality and up, nor can they take on a spec, to see the full list of rules, check The Land of Odd and Psynister’s Notebook, who are both authors of this idea. The first character we know of, that has completed this challenge, reaching lvl 85, is the warlock Ironsally, whose journey you can read about on the blog Tome of the Ancient.

I can only speak for myself when I say that leveling my own Ironman Character Elford the (former) Executive, is without a doubt a withdrawal from the extensive theorycrafting that I feel is dominating WoW, even outside of the raiding scene. I’m not a theorycrafter myself and often find the constant demand to stay updated and ALWAYS play with the most optimized setup exhausting.

By playing an ironman character, I feel like I am safely opting out of this race and can play as I want. All the stuff around a character, gemming, spec, enchants, heirlooms etc, is now a blank. There is only the way I play, how I push this character with all it’s restrictions as far as I can, and I find this liberating. This character is flawed, it sucks I know this, but that’s the point. So for me, playing Elford is very much a counter response to the surveillance players exercise on each other.

There were many other presentations but I chose to highlight these as their work drew on WoW as a case study. These were also the ones that really inspired me and had me think about myself as a WoW-player and the community.

As a final note, while the panel on Minecraft was going on, one of the kids was asked if you could win in Minecraft, and the answer was that maybe you could, if you mined the entire world. Kids can be so funny, I’ve got a long way to go to win Minecraft then!

The WoW Ironman Challenge – Level 30 Status

Elford is now lvl 30 and this is a status on the Ironman Challenge as a gnome mage up till this point.

On the Ironman Challenge

I didn’t expect to hit level 30 while still abiding to the rules of the WoW Ironman Challenge and I don’t know how much further I am able to go.

It was a lot of fun in the beginning, I enjoyed having to be more analytical about how I moved around in the landscape and dealt with quest-chain “bosses”. Especially the latter made it painfully apparent to me how weakened I was as the Grand Magus Doane incident was the first to really give me a challenge. Doane has not been the only one and I have been forced to categorically wait with quest-chain bosses till I outlevel them by 3-5 levels.

I’m at the point where I have to take on quests and mobs that are green and I’m dreading the moment where both will be grey. Knowing myself, this will act as a huge deterrent when I lose the immideate gratification of progress and xp when killing a mob. Fighting my way through the wilderness will be more of an dreadful obstacle than it is right now while I’m still collecting xp from the kills.

Again, a non-staged screenshot depicting a hunter I met in Strangethorn Vale, who killed off a bunch of mobs chasing an overwhelmed Elford. Obviously she spotted my struggles and advised me (IC) to go and find easier pastures. The irony of it was that this was easy pastures, all entry quests were green!

On Playing a Mage

I wanted a spellcaster because I anticipated a melee would be suffering from the lack of bonus stamina that gear provides and would be constantly eating and bandaging.

I've also been using Elford for experimental purposes. Poor guy was led into the haunted house at Raven Hill and killed by the Unseen. I needed to confirm that they were still around in Duskwood and they were. Forgive me Elford!

Maybe I was wrong. Being a mage has definitely proven to be a challenge as well, and I wish now that Joy the Nerfed Hunter was my ironman contender instead. In the end I might make her!

Wanding is just not an option, I can’t control mobs long enough to get any decent damage out of just wanding, on the other hand, mana isn’t the biggest of my concerns, keeping a distance and not getting hit is.

I usually like to pay attention to learning how to play the class I am engaging in, so under normal circumstances, I’d take Elford into a battleground to get my keybounds to a millisecond of a reaction time. I’ve always found PvP to provide excellent training grounds for getting closer with the class, but obviously, this is not available under the aforementioned rules.

What’s also concerning me is the lack of talents. It has been difficult for me to come to terms with the fact, that I will not learn how to really play a mage this way. The patterns of play and strategies I’ve been building up, will eventually be completely futile, useless for anything other than being crippled like now.

On Gender-bending a Character

I’ve always found it difficult to connect with my character if it was not reflecting my gender, so while the ironman challenge is a challenge for all of us (Döra listed everyone here), so was playing a male character a personal challenge for me.

From the onset, I thought I had done a good job of picking a somewhat okay class but anticipated that I might have sabotaged myself by making that character male.

To my relief it has gone really well and I have a good sense of Elford and find him special. Without turning him into a roleplay story and caricaturing his personality, I doubt I would have been able to like the ironman character as a dude. If I had had to just randomize a male (gnome) character, I would have truly hated it and struggled intensively with finding ways to “see something” in him. But I had to draw a pretty stereotypical outline of Elford to circumvent that, which by my own standards, was a success at making him enjoyable to play. No doubt if I gave him a detailed background story that goes beyond what I wrote as an intro, he would be a direct Mary Sue.

Whatever! – I’m no high brow roleplayer and caricatures can be really entertaining, at least for the puppeteer.

On Playing on a Roleplay Realm

If you’ve been following the trials of Elford, you’ll know that no screenshots have been staged and all his adventures that include other players are actually genuine. I chose to play Elford on my original realm, Argent Dawn EU because I wanted to deck him out in pretty (but useless) bank alt clothing. I later transferred back everything I had given him in starting capital and made him earn his way.

I don’t regret playing on familiar territory, which is not what most of the other Ironman Challenge players have done, but if I had to pick another fresh realm, I would without a doubt have opted for a roleplay realm again, simply because it has offered plenty of encounters with roleplayers (and some not) who have added joyful and spontaneous player-content to Elford’s adventures.

I might be looking for ways to attract more of this, including using the addon FlagRSP, which gives you the option to display a window adding extra information about your character that isn’t conveyed through character design/gear etc. I have not used this addon before, so this is a new and exciting part of the Elford setup.

On the Future of Elford

I don’t see Elford carrying a mage flag through the finishing line at 85. I don’t even see him going to Outland as an Ironman.

This part of Duskwood was like a death trap.

I’m considering making Joy into an Ironman although that wouldn’t really be Ironmanning it, which however is fine by me.

Elford is losing his fun more and more, and the moment where he struggles too much with grey mobs for green or grey quests, I would just not be enjoying playing him.

I am trying to think up a new and interesting way of leveling that would still be a challenge, such as perhaps keeping his gear white and grey, but taking on a spec. Or upgrading gear that is not visible, such as rings and trinkets, using only drops and quest items. I’m leaning towards the former, probably a frost spec but without the huge and ugly elemental out.

There is one thing I’m sure of: I’m finding Elford a lot of fun as a roleplay character and portraying his journey as a story makes him vibrant in my mind when I play him. I will be continuing the short stories about him, even when he might not be an ironman any longer just because the things that happen to him amuse me, he amuses me, and writing about it all here amuses me too.

Next episode: Thank God Elford Didn’t Suffer From That!…
From the beginning: Elford the (former) Executive and the Ironman Challenge

Summing it Up – Gender-bending pt. 10

The Gender-bending series is based on the result of my own little survey, attempting to map all the motivations of WoW-players playing a character of the opposite gender. Each part deals with a certain aspect of gender-bending in games. This is the summary post, pt. 10.

Prelude

Part 1: Advertizing the survey
Part 2: Throwing myself to the lions….I mean trolls!

Results

Part 3: The Spectacle of Play and Characters
Part 4: Avoiding Clones
Part 5: To Wear or to Not Wear Robes
Part 6: Bring the Player, not the Gender
Part 7: Uniqueness and the Trademark of the Female Dwarf
Part 8: In Game Advantages
Part 9: For the Love of Names

Conclusion

Part 10: Summing it Up

Gender-bending in WoW has to be understood as part of the medium of games. To the outsider (which sometimes includes players than don’t gender-bend) it might look weird and as if someone has issues with their gender identity. I bring you an example of this from someone who posted in my survey-advertizement thread, saying they did not play characters of the opposite  gender because:

“No, im confident of my sexuality :P“

I wrote in part 3, that this is nearly never part of the issue, and gender-benders know this.  As virtual worlds provide a space where players can inhabit separate bodies they create themselves, although under the restriction of character creation modes, they can play and experiment with the character’s appearance. To people who play a character of the opposite gender, the option of male or female is often viewed alongside other choices such as class and race. Playing WoW includes playing with avatars, which gender-bending can be viewed as a product of.

In addition, when we look at WoW as a part of a gaming history, we understand that players come with a heritage as well. Some of them have been using the game medium for years and are used to creating characters in many different genres, including ones which only allows for certain genders to be the main character, or a certain class. Gender-bending in WoW, despite the fact the reason to gender-bend to unlock new mechanics is nigh, is neither unusual nor deviant, but generally a common phenomenon amongst players.

Overall gender-bending works as a tool of either specified gain or avoidance, with the wish to achieve a form of variety, playing the biggest part. The many available modes of play in WoW, the different classes which opens for new mechanics and therefore new ways of playing the game, alleviates being able to make this range of characters look different and apart important to players. Aesthetics were central to the majority of players as well, although specific reasons were far and apart. The wish for smooth and aesthetically pleasing modeling and animations were fundamental, but also cultural understandings of gender in trying to abide by them or avoiding them, were present.

Using WoW as a place to explore gender is less common, but nonetheless favored by female players, who play male characters in order to avoid attention and perhaps to blend in to the male dominated space in WoW. Gaining benefits in the game as a motivation for gender-bending ranged overall low.

Being able to stand out and create a unique character was exhibited, but still in accordance with a high aesthetic value to the players. The name of a character is perhaps the highest form of individuality one can achieve in WoW, and thus a particular name were more befitting of the opposite gender for some players.

I believe gender-bending can tell us a lot about both the ways characters in the game are perceived and utilized by players, but also how cultures and norms of the game and its players, can both co-exist but also challenge each other.

One of the initial reasons this interested me, was the difference in occurence between the genders, female gender-benders were very rare and I wanted to know why. As my survey didn’t include people that didn’t gender-bend, I don’t have the other side of the coin. One of my sources, Ducheneaut, Wen, Yee and Wadley’s (2009) study Body and Mind: A Study of Avatar Personalization in Three Virtual Worlds, could indicate the reason behind this, so this will have to be my best guess: Female players prefer creating idealized versions of themselves more than male players (especially in Second Life) and I believe gender is linked to  projecting a version of identity, whether it’s congruent or wishful, onto a character.

One of the posters said on the general forum when I posted the survey:

“[...] I don’t understand why people take the gender of a virtual character seriously…“

Another poster, and a very insightful one of the kind I’d say, responded saying this:

“Gender studies is an extremely fascinating field. Gender is a very complicated construct. It’s taken for granted by the vast majority of people, after all, because it’s the norm to accept  the one you’re assigned to at birth, and most are comfortable with that. To others, it’s an endless source of confusion and frustration, because it’s a cornerstone of one’s identity and forcing something like that is very unsettling, to say the least.

Of course, as you say, it’s not quite the same for a virtual character. But the way we are adressed and treated is still defined by which gender we are perceived as. To those who struggle with these things, it’s very important and not something you can just shrug off.“ (link)

Think about it, the internet, the virtual worlds where we can choose our own bodies, can challenge how most people look at gender and identity. In WoW or any other virtual world (or chat rooms/forums etc for that matter) you can be whatever you want and some games even include the option to be neuter. The fact  the physical presence and gender of people are dislocated when we meet them in virtual worlds, I think, can change how we understand identity, approach others and construct ourselves. In what circumstances in WoW does it really matter what gender you are?

As our lives are increasingly dependent and influenced by computer technology, games that inhabit this medium become a more stable part of our leisure activities. While the subscription number of WoW continues to rise alongside other similar platforms, so does the spreading of how we utilize virtual bodies – avatars/characters to the mainstream, perhaps rendering this mode of being and play completely normal in the future.