[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. This week, Michael Walbridge attempts to summarize the world of the World of Warcraft in its entirety.]

"Oh no, not another article about World of Warcraft. Tired of hearing about it." If you've ever thought that, stop reading. You won't find this interesting.

Some of you still are reading, though, and we both know why that is: because the topic is humongous. There is the universe, and there are galaxies, solar systems, and planets. There are development platforms and genres, there is World of Warcraft, and there are individual games and their communities.

World of Warcraft has spawned at least two books of published essays. One of them has an entire chapter on the most mundane of the most mundane--fishing. World of Warcraft spawns entire blogs and sites that are dedicated to the many, many corners of WoW. To the experienced gamer, games have the ability to be an entirely different experience from person to person.

To the beginning gamer who plays WoW as one of his first games, this is understood quickly instead of gradually. This leads to an opportunity for intelligent observation, the scale of which equals insight into an entire country. Take a comment from a non-official WoW forum: "At 70, you can choose from one of three factions: Raider, PVP, and Casual. You then blame the other two factions for 'ruining the game.'"

Only in an MMO that is as large as World of Warcraft is it made clearly apparent that there are all kinds of players (people) and that video games can be a setting for social interaction, larger than life. You can meet another player and that player can feel, unlike the ones you regularly play with, like someone from another country, another world, another clique.

Even the division of the players into over 100 server still leaves your own cities populated with people who make themselves authority figures, public artists, savants, professionals, entrepreneurs, professors, thieves, beggars, preachers, and thugs. All who play it, know it.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: The World Behind The World Of Warcraft" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. Recently, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. This week highlights some of the thoughts from professor Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer.]

Of the seven people I interviewed, Michael Abbott is the only one who is not a game journalist; he is, however, accurately classified as a games writer. His persona matches his writing: confident, mild, wise, and academic. Still, the two words that keep coming to my mind are "gentle" and "enthusiastic." While the Brainy Gamer is an experiment, he is not far removed from his subject material. It isn't just in text that he gets really excited about games and even more excited that people are talking about them with maturity in an open forum.

Brainy Gamer started in August 2007, a blog dedicated to "thoughtful conversation about video games". Before one year had passed, it had received over 270,000 unique visits, 1,000 RSS subscribers, and an average of 15-20 comments per post. (For those who dig Google Page Rank: 5, purely by word of mouth and text.)

I asked about why he had started it and what it was for. As many know, he is a professor at Wabash College. Brainy Gamer was initially simply a work project, but Brainy Gamer, a living and breathing creature, took on a different life. Even Abbott's opinions have been shaped by the discussion taking place, and now he has new and informed ideas about a myriad of topics, including gaming communities, their formation and evolution, and the place of games in academia.

"I took a sabbatical from teaching; this is my project. It's my attempt to bridge the gap from game community to a new form of game scholarship. Initially, my real purpose was to demonstrate at Wabash that you can be serious about games. The blog started, and it became clear to me that this is something that could be integrated into the liberal arts. It was a lightbulb moment."

"It all started as conversation, but now part of my mission with Brainy Gamer is to convince people that games can and should be a part of a curriculum. It's difficult: we have people who are saying 'just let me play games and have fun,' but there are also those who have never played games and who are saying 'how can we let this in the academy'? I think both groups are resistant, but for totally different reasons."

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'Game Community Interviews, Part 4 - The Brainy Gamer's Michael Abbott" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. Recently, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. In the coming weeks, Walbridge will be detailing some of the key points from the individual interviews conducted for the piece. This week describes his third interview with former GSW columnist and current Kotaku writer Leigh Alexander.]

My wife and I went on a disaster of a vacation for over a week after I had talked to Kieron Gillen. My wife had a work party thing at the worst theme park of all time on the day of our return. I originally had thought I could interview Leigh inside of this park, but decided that no, I really couldn't, even if background noise was minimized. We went home and I rushed inside and called Leigh immediately because a car wreck on I-15 had made late (five minutes) to calling her.

Just as with the other New Yorker I interviewed, I talked to Leigh on Friday as the weekend dawned. I think I looked forward to talking to her more than anyone else because her blog was the first or second one I discovered and I had really based my own doctrine, if you will, on the content and style of what is written there and at the Aberrant Gamer.

Instead of immediately asking about the whole label or community thing, I simply asked why she had her personal weblog SVGL. Kotaku must take a heavy toll--that's a lot of writing and a lot of work and yet she still writes on her personal, non-ad-supplemented blog.

Why did she start it?

"I wasn't really sure what I wanted to say yet, so it was simply a repository for my thoughts and a place to practice my voice," she told me.

"Well, don't you get a hell of a lot of practice now without it? There must be another reason, a reason you still keep it."

"It's still important for me to be able to say things I want when there is nowhere to publish them," she told me. "I mean, it'd be a misconception to say that we are getting paid for our opinions all day and write thoughtful stuff--that's not what our jobs are." She did stress that thoughtfulness and opinions are still part of journalism as a whole; it's just that "think-pieces and editorials" are not the bulk of what she is getting paid to do.

Then I shifted, and asked if there's a commonality, a common, unacknowledged sort of creed all those blogs kept. "Game journalists are constantly having an identity crisis," she told me. "Fans have so few places to go," she told me. "Lots of people don't know about this kind of discussion, and many still don't. If more people knew this discussion was taking place I think we'd have more people who are interested."

"I didn't even know about this kind of discussion myself," I said. "I'd have gotten into a long time ago had I known about it. Gamasutra and GameSetWatch introduced me to it and from there I found the Aberrant Gamer and from there I found your blog and eventually decided to write this piece. Would you say there is a name for this? What do you all do?"

Unlike the last two people I talked to, there was no caution or hesitance with Leigh, at least not on this question. I'd never seen it written anywhere, but she'd obviously been thinking about it longer than I had. "Oh, I'd call it game criticism," she said.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'Game Community Interviews, Part 3 - Leigh Alexander" »

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[The Game Anthopologist is about gaming communities. This week, Michael Walbridge explores the Culdcept Saga community and its struggles to survive and grow.]

If a game is beloved by its players, but doesn’t have the desired support from the developer or those who control the only networks you can play it on, what happens to the community? If it’s a game on Xbox LIVE, it dies, and you can only play by scouring the Internet for a partner and scheduling a match or co-op.

Most games on LIVE manage to find a replacement: another sports, FPS, or LIVE Arcade game to migrate to. But a few games are so unique that there is no PC equivalent and no foreseeable replacement for the nomadic community designate as the next oasis.

But there is an exception, a species we could put on the endangered list: Culdcept Saga, a game so unique and intensely loved by its few supporters that the community is going to extra effort to prevent its death.

A history: Culdcept Saga was released in February of this year and is a sequel to the cult classic Culcept, released in December of 2003 for the PS2. It combines strategy, cards, and dice rolls on a board and has puzzling game design choices, such as the revealing of each player’s hand when his turn comes.

The game is not built with the Xbox 360’s abilities in mind: it is fairly limited graphic-wise - or at least, not that different from what you see on a PlayStation 2 - and this is the main reason that at release, it only cost 40 dollars. It still has an “Only on Xbox 360” logo on the top, despite not being the system’s proudest game (unless, of course, you play it).

Reviews were highly mixed. Most games have a general consensus, but not here: Metacritic scores have a wide range, and in the February 2008 Game Informer, where the reviews come with a “second opinion” mini-review, the two scores were 7 and 8.5 (they usually come within half a point of each other).

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: Culdcept Saga - On the Brink of Extinction" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. Recently, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. In the coming weeks, Walbridge will be detailing some of the key points from the individual interviews conducted for the piece. This week describes the second interview with Kieron Gillen of Rock Paper Shotgun.]

My second interview was with a writer from the blog Rock Paper Shotgun, a place that covers my favorite games format, the PC. Not knowing how to approach, I thought, “Well, they’re four game journalists and they’re all British.” So I tried my best to do what an intelligent British gamer would: I mailed all four of them with the subject “I request a sacrifice”. One of them replied in part with

"Hi Mr Walbridge

You have prompted a shadowy gathering of the RPS hive mind. I step forth, and give the answer. Imagine this in a voice that's very deep, and flames are spouting from my nostrils.

Anyway - pleasure to meet you. Sorry that Carless has talked you into doing work for his evil GSW. I fear and shun him."

That’s how I met Kieron Gillen. I chose to talk to him over talking to all four of the RPS writers because I'm not sure how to talk to four people at once at this point, and I'm still collecting my thoughts. It turned out to be the right choice.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'Game Community Interviews, Part 2 - Kieron 'NGJ' Gillen'" »

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[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. So, last week, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. In the coming weeks, Walbridge will be detailing some of the key points from the individual interviews conducted for the piece. This week describes the first interview with Newsweek writer N'Gai Croal.]

N'gai was the first writer I interviewed, but not the first person I contacted. On the first day I started asking, which was June 6th, N'gai responds with "Can you do a phone interview at 4pm EST...i.e. in 20 minutes?"

Um.

I realize that it's Friday. He's a busy man, he happened to be in his office, and he has about an hour left before his work week, if it has any semblance of normal standards, is over. In short, I get lucky, and I also don't have my questions because I assumed that I'd have the weekend to write them. Guess not.

So I don't have a way of recording phone calls. I still wonder how a good way to do this would be--not everyone will agree to Skype. They may have better things to do, and they may not be interested in using a headset.

I called him in what seemed an instant later--the last time I felt like this was when I called up a girl to go on a date, a feeling I thought would never resurface in my lifetime. Who the hell do I think I am? I could talk to some of these other people, sure, but an editor at Newsweek? As my very first interview that I'm doing in video games land? When I just have one commentless little first article on a column at GameSetWatch?

"Hi," I say. My first question is incredibly stupid, yet I don't realize how laughably bad it is until weeks later; I'm still embarrassed every time I remember. "So uh, how do you pronounce your name?"
"Guy," he says. Stupid Sprint service blind spot in my stupid apartment! "Excuse me, what?" I say politely.

"Guy," I hear again.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'Game Community Interviews, Part 1 - THE CROAL'" »

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[The Game Anthropologist chronicles Michael Walbridge's ventures into gaming communities as he reports on their inhabitants and culture. This column is a summary of Michael's interviews with six prominent and prolific game writers and one professor who all have one thing in common: they spend a lot of time blogging, too.]

A Changing Industry

It’s no secret that game journalism and writing about games is dramatically changing, but what’s not so simple is describing or naming those changes. Even more difficult is determining whether personal, alternative writing spaces can be considered communities, and how they function.

Chris Dahlen’s Save the Robot and Leigh Alexander’s now retired The Aberrant Gamer are two of my favorite GameSetWatch columns. I have since followed these writers to their blogs, Save the Robot and Sexy Videogameland. I noted that in the blog chain they are a part of, sites such as Dubious Quality and Giant Bomb kept reappearing, as if there are common ties. I couldn’t see any explicit mention of these ties, however.

As a newcomer with a puny blog and very few paying game writing assignments to call my own, I thought it fascinating that so many overworked, 50+ hours a week journalists were, for no pay and not necessarily as part of their work, keeping frequently updated blogs. At work they write and when they’re taking a break they’re…still writing. “Why, when they’re taking a break, are they still writing? Why aren’t they, I don’t know, playing video games? They certainly don’t get to do that as much as they’d like….”

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: 'A Community That Writes About Games'" »

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[The Game Anthropologist chronicles Michael Walbridge's ventures into gaming communities as he reports on their inhabitants and culture. This time round, he takes a look at Valve's seminal Team Fortress 2.]

Darn FPS Kids And Their Language

It is no doubt or secret that the first person shooter genre and its communities are highly steeped in the competitive spirit. If playground basketball has its ball hogs, FPS has its kill hogs. The team, for all its necessity, can shove off. This usually isn’t considered a problem, though; it’s what we expect, right? We’re shooting at each other. FPS servers are, after all, playgrounds. A player being the Kobe Bryant of the team is the least of your worries.

In concrete life, when an adult goes to observe children in their element, the children do not act the same. Social science research is often rife with hand-wringing—“how can we study people scientifically when the object of study changes simply because of its being studied?” More than one researcher has lamented. Plunk down a random adult in the back of a high school classroom and the kids act differently. In the digital realm, though, kids don’t care that you are there.

Those who look for scapegoats blame the games. Those of us who play games have a better memory of our childhood; young males, adolescents, children are depicting animalistic humanity and lack of development while online and on Xbox Live because they’re just that: kids. While research and artistry can show us much, we don’t have to look far to see it for ourselves.

All Grown Up

In Team Fortress 2, a game which has been sold to at least 2 million people, showboating, kill-whoring, and brazen, crass insults are a rare sight (on non-modded servers with standard maps, anyway). This is puzzling for many reasons. Not only is it an FPS, it’s a quality, competitive one that is only available from Steam. (Counter Strike kids are different from Halo kids, but not in the way you would hope—many of them are hopelessly vulgar.)

Each character has a taunt for each weapon; that’s 27 animated taunts available, including the verbal ones your character automatically utters upon killing. Not to mention the fact that any time someone kills you 3 times in a row a big “NEMESIS” gets planted next to that person’s name.

When you die, the game zooms in on the person who killed you. Big fists appear over him so you can tell who keeps shoving you back to observing your teammates. Failing to get revenge? Here’s the third shot of your ass being handed to you by some kid from Iowa. But the kid says nothing. Rarely does.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: Team Fortress 2: Radical Departures" »

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[The Game Anthropologist chronicles Michael Walbridge's ventures into gaming communities as he reports on their inhabitants and culture.]

If you've played Warcraft III on Battle.net lately you'd feel like more people were playing Defense of the Ancients, popularly called DOTA, than the actual Blizzard game it’s based on. In fact, DOTA is likely the most popular and most-discussed free, non-supported game mod in the world, judging by the numbers. (It's also been a notable inspiration for the plethora of Tower Defense Flash games in recent years.)

Over at the “official” DOTA Allstars forums as I write this, there are 800 people logged in and over 100,000 total topics and over 23,000 topics in the general forum in the last month. By comparison, Warcraft III, the game it is modded from, only has a few thousand topics at most over on the Battle.net website.

Competitive RPG Action the Way We Want It

The game itself is technically played in RTS format but is often described as “RPG combat.” Many players were disappointed by Warcraft III; some were disappointed it wasn’t more like Starcraft, and many found that the heroes system watered the game down into an experiment that was interesting enough to play, but not fun enough to worship.

Warcraft III match strategies are centered around the selection, leveling, and gearing of heroes, with all units simply being support for the hero. Turning points, victories, and defeats are hero-centered. DOTA turns Warcraft III’s hero system on its head—instead of playing an army with an important leader, you simply play the important leader while the computer takes care of the army.

Continue reading "Column: The Game Anthropologist: Defense of the Ancients: An Underground Revolution" »

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