As mentioned, WoW is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Games, while still not entirely respected within the scope of academia as meaningful objects or activities, have fundamentally been a part of human civilization for its entire existence; there is evidence of games and playing in ancient artifacts whether textual or material. Games are not simply a part of our world like any other subject of analysis, rather â[a] consideration of games [âŚ] is a consideration of realityâ because games themselves often are, either intentionally or unintentionally, a sort of representation or âmanifestationâ or reality itself10.
They do this in part by creating and using whatâs ultimately described as âthe magic circleâ11 within any game. The essential point of the magic circle here for our purposes (there are many variations to the theory) is that the circle exists to limit the world of the game/ritual/play; the player creates an ultimately firm but permeable boundary between the gameworld and the real world. [âŚ]
Yes, you as the magician are performing the ritual (game) within the circle, but the intent is actually to protect the ritual (game) and the magician (you, the player) from whatâs beyond the circle. The implication here if we follow the same logic is that there may be something that is intended to protect the player from when playing the game if the game (magic circle) creates the gameworld (ritual space, play space).
As games are manifestations or representations of reality, they can also be and are (intentionally or unintentionally) âpowerful means for disseminating ideas into the populationâ and to create âcivic agendasâ, whether or not the ideologies imparted are turning people âgoodâ14. That is to say, games carry with them a particular and self-contained ideology that one must, by necessity, engage with in order to play the game. In quite a bit of the literature, there were very bold claims by theorists stating that there is a âclear systemâ of good and evil15 within World of Warcraft. [âŚ]
WoW is specifically a Role-Playing Game. That is to say, when engaging with the game one is creating a character/avatar that has some modicum of identity within a fictional universe that has a particular genealogy in the construction of its narrative. The question here to consider what is the relationship, or are possible relationships, between player and avatar and also what are the larger implications between the particular genealogy and construction of the gameworld by the developers. It is important to first discuss a concept created by Dr. Fox Harrell:
Phantasms are a combination of imagery (mental or sensory) and ideas [âŚ] It is a challenge to the idea that human thought, especially thought regarding society and culture, reflects a ârealâ and objective world. [âŚ] much of what humans experience as real is based upon imagination.16
The ideas that Harrell refers to are systems of cultural knowledge and beliefs, whether traditional, stereotypical, ideological, or based on experiences17, and that within his definition of cultural system he is including computational systems18 (such as video games and the code that constructs them).
Indeed, within the scope of a video game, the existence of a limited set of possible options when creating an avatar/character contains within in an epistemic belief that those options should accommodate most players. This belief and assumption goes unchallenged, that is to say it is an Invisible Phantasm19, until someone excluded from the cultural system points it out, rendering it a Revealed Phantasm20. [âŚ]
The player within World of Warcrafted is âanchoredâ via the avatar within the gameworld, only able to engage with the gameworld/cultural system through the avatar; this is unique and is not present in any other media21. While some of the literature maintains that identification with the avatar and role-play are not the same but are often confused, wherein role-play is by necessity performative of what you think the character should act as while identity regards personal association with oneâs invented avatar22, I would go back to the example I gave when demonstrating that not all engagement is on the same level to instead posit that identification with the avatar within the scope of an RPG is a sort of spectrum. [âŚ]
However, World of Warcraft while within the West occupies and maintain a specific global hegemony:
[âŚ]I would suggest that the globalization of media access has combined with Americaâs role as the worldâs most pervasive cultural producer to situate the Western cultural mythos as familiar to audiences worldwide. There is also the simple fact that Blizzard is an American company, which likely influences its tendency to construct its gamesâ ethnocultural schema along the lines of Western - particularly American - social ideology.32
This results however in the reality that the Alliance are thus Good because they are West and the Horde is implied Bad because it is Rest. Indeed, the back of the box art for the original Warcraft: Orcs & Humans game reads âEnter the world of WarCraft, a mystical land where evil Orcs and noble Humans battle for survival and domination. [âŚ] Destroy the Orcish hordes or crush the weakling Humans⌠the choice is yoursâ, wherein the choice is implied to be between being âevilâ and crushing the noble weaklings or being noble and destroy the evil hordes33. The game inherently makes the Horde the Other from the onset and the (soon to be) Alliance as the Center. The ironic thing here, as we will discuss later, the majority of the Alliance races are in fact not âNativeâ or natural to Azeroth. [âŚ]
To continue then with the magic circle game metaphor, the avatars (the manifestation of ourselves whether one fully or partially identifies with the character) that we create for the purposes of the game (ritual, World of Warcraft) to engage with the gameworld (separated from reality by the magic circle) are ultimately phantasms (sensory image + culture system to provide context) that are either Revealed or Invisible depending on whether oneâs own subjective reality is contained within the cultural system of the game itself. This gameworld in turn is also a phantasm with its own cultural systems and images (the coding of the game by the developers) that is based upon both Invisible Phantasms of real-world peoples perceived through Western/White gaze and derivatives of prominent fantasy worlds (e.g. Tolkienâs mythology) which likewise are Revealed Phantasms by the authors of those elaborate popular fantasy worlds (e.g. Tolkien and Western European mythology with Catholic mythology).
To put it another way, there are two magic circles: the player creates a phantasm-of-self (on a spectrum) as an avatar to engage with the gameworld within the limits/magic circle of the game, but the game creates the (Western) society-as-phantasm as a gameworld to engage with the players/magic circle within the limits of their audience. One magic circle is a reflection of the other magic circle, mutually imposing limits upon the other, both separating the other from the âreal worldâ or their âreal selvesâ. What is also left outside the circle are the cultural systems that Western society makes âvirtualâ by invoking their image without their idea (a sort of demi-phantasm) and likewise the cultural system of the subaltern that is most natural to the excluded player36. [âŚ]