Individuality and Structure in Virtual Worlds

So heres the thing with me and World of Warcraft. I study anthropology and intend to write my thesis on WoW. I spend a semester preparing and planning and thinking, a semester doing the actual fieldwork and this semester is about thinking again and then comes the actual thesis writing. And of course ive been deeply lost in World of Warcraft all this time. Here's more or less what I was getting on about at the #ggmcph talk:

When deciding to start the whole World of Warcraft project I was mainly inspired by two things. First, a book called Exodus to the virtual world written by the economist Edward Castronova. It’s a speculative work and his major point is that since virtual worlds are typically made to be fun and satisfying - both gaming worlds like WoW or social and creative spaces like Second Life - and since they also by now have thriving economies of their own, the real world will not be able to compete in the long run and we will all end up spending all our time in virtual spaces. That’s rather an extreme notion but seeing the development we have with more and more people spending more and more time in f. eks. World of warcraft I still find it a rather interesting thought.

The other thing that got me interested was all the stories of quite normal people who start playing, and are soon playing 18 hours a day, don’t pick up their phone until their friends just stop calling and suddenly realize that the only person they’ve seen for the last 3 months is the Chinese grill delivery guy. This happens rather a lot.

And so, what is it that is so alluring and satisfying about World of Warcraft and if we are all to end up spending so much time in virtual worlds, what does it do to us? How does it affect our way of being social and how does it feel to live through an avatar, controlling a little digital puppet?

Now those are of course enormous questions and I could talk about all of it for a very long time, but I only had 20 minuttes. I restrained myself to talk about the importance of individuality versus structure because Ive come to think a lot about that recently and I think its an important balancing point in virtual worlds, a balance that will come to mean a lot in the future as well. I made a cute drawing because it makes me feel better.



First , the importance of the structure. One of my friends asked me an great question. "People spend so much time and effort levelling up and getting achievements in WoW! Why dont they transfer that to their real life, like thinking of loosing wheight or getting better at math as achievements? And thinking, if I pass this exam ill be a level 35 anthropologist!!"

So I thought about that and this is what i figured out. It comes down to structure. WoW is full of clearly defined goals. The main path is spread out before you, reach level 80 (soon to be 85). You know what you need to achieve and how to get there. Then there are all the achievements and other little markers of succes and progress and again they are all clearly defined and you know how to do it. Should anyone run into a quest or achievement they dont know how to do, there is a vast community online they can turn to and get answers imidiately. The gaming world has a continuos, understandable logic that can be relied on. Real world does not. Real world is odd and full of surprises. Nasty ones. Anyway...

Also there is very low personal risk in all this as only your triumphs are published. The Guild doesnt recieve a "Mia just failed miserably in killing the firebreating Duck of Pain" announcement. I can keep trying and once I succeed the Guild chat will announce to all: "Mia earned the achievement Slayer of the Fiery Pain-Duck!" (there is no such achievement, I made it up)and I will recieve instant recognition and congratulations from guild.

Because the structure makes everything "knowable" and predictable it gives the player a feeling of security, of agency and empowerment – you know what to do and you know how to do it! It may take a lot of time and what may feel like tedious work, but at least its all taking place in a fun and colorful fantasy-world, and you are continually getting more and more awesome. There arent really any possible set-backs, there is not really any way you can become less. Only the human factors, like if your Guild throws you out because you're a whining helpless bastard or if it gets spread around the server that you are a nasty ninja-looter (person who always runs off with the good loot. That can harm you. But the structure will not.

Now the importance of individuality: My guild leader said to me once, that one of the great things about world of warcraft it that it can be played in so many different ways. And people do play it in very different ways. They also think about and relate to their avatars in very different ways. Some see it as a tool they access the world with that needs to be as efficient as possible, others also see it as a means of expressing or even experimenting with their own identity and spend a lot of time on getting it to look just right and have the right stuff. Others try to make fantasy archetypes, like the perfect dwarf hunter and work very hard on that, choosing just the right hunter name and look. Now all of these are status indicators in this social sphere. Having a "tool" avatar that is insanely efficient usually goes together with a thorough know-how of the game and a lot of status and community importance is gained by being awesome and empowered in this way. The idetintity-hunt is a status marker in more subtle ways and its purpose is to show off identity markers more than skill and knowledge. I have to mention here, that I did my fieldwork on a so called "normal" server and that things would have been mightily different if I had chosen a roleplaying server.

Now Blizzard has been very good at accommodating the greatly differing play styles and desires of their customers, by having a plethora of differing achievements they can strive for and continually renewing and expanding the game. But still, the more you play the game the greater the risk of growing bored because you know the structure too well, you’ve done all the stuff, and its becoming confining. This is where individuality becomes a very important thing. WoW is a distinctly social space and we like to distinguish ourselves and show off our personal creativity, achievements and oddities to others. Whenever were in a social setting and among other people, we start looking for ourselves, which is also why Facebook and advertizing in general is littered with "What musical are you?" "what Harry Potter character are you?" "What Mercedes are you?" "which sexually transferred desease are you?"

So what does that mean in the context of a virtual social world? Once the well-known structure starts to become boring we start exploring how we can be special in it. The more freedom available for creativity and individuality the more fun we have, the more time and effort we spend and the more attachmed we become to that world and our narrative in it.

Now lets compare with Second Life for a moment. Second Life is not a gaming world, not what we call Object Oriented, like World of Warcraft. It is made entirely for socialising and creaticity. Compared to WoW it has very little structure, but a heck of a lot of creaticity and freedom. Here the users can create content themselves through the combination of small elements, a sort of digital building blocks. This content is then bought and sold or just shown off. Now if you enter Second Life with no imidiate social goal, groups to join or things to seek out, you look around, think "what the FRAK is the point" and leave. Because there is no defined object, no game to join.

World of Warcraft is a gaming world and that makes a lot of structure necessary, so that things can have shape and make sense. Now if we were to introduce user generated content to WoW it would be a hell of a challenge to keep all structure from going straight to heck. The players in WoW also have the opportunity to be creative in the combining of elements, its just bigger elements that are already very clearly defined, like gear and achievements. I think much could be gained by expanding the players freedom and room for personal creativity but it will become a balance between giving the individual creative space and maintaining the structure.

I made another drawing that almost completely fails to make sense


And this is the point I was trying to get to. In the present and future of virtual worlds, a part of the technical and organisational challenge will be this. Balancing structure and user-freedom to provide both security and comfort and enough freedom and individual agency for it to be fun.