Digital Participant Brainstorm

My immediate idea is to focus on the world of MMO RPGs - massive multiplayer online role playing games like World of Warcraft. My live-in boyfriend and my two former roommates are avid players, so they are great candidates for interview. I was intrigued by the claim in the most recent documentary that "my relationships within the game are more intimate than my real life relationships" (paraphrasing), so I think my take on the subject might be the question of "intimacy without proximity" and how the relationships you develop with other people inside these gaming worlds affect your desire to play longer and more often.

As someone who has never participated in these games, I am inclined to hypothesize that anyone who claims real emotional/spiritual intimacy with people they never see, or only ever perform one activity with, have a pretty messed up idea of what intimacy means. That's a pretty biased hypothesis, I know, so I'll probably have to tweak it a little if I want to get good information out of my interview subjects and not piss them off by implying they all have personality disorders. I will try to discover, however, what deficiencies might exist in a person's "real life" to make them seek intimacy with people they rarely see, and whether these deficiencies are created by the choices and personal qualities of individuals or whether they are brought on by larger social/societal forces.

Some possible questions:

• What got you started playing World of Warcraft?
• How many hours a week/in one sitting?
• Do you think spending that time on the computer precludes other, more traditional social activities? If yes, do you ever consider scaling back your play time for that reason?
• Do you feel more connected to the people around you or to the people you meet in the game?
• Do you think a proportionately higher number of WoW players share your interests and your point of view?
• If you could change anything about your life, what would it be?

(I'm really hoping someone in the class plays or has played an MMO RPG of some kind, so they can tell me if any of these questions are condescending or downright stupid.)