With 11.4 million paying subscribers as of March 2011, World of Warcraft is by far the most popular MMORPG out there. It serves as a prime example of the kind of activity parents and teachers decry, painted as anything from a complete waste of time to a breeding ground for full-on video game addiction. It's also a target of disdain for many young people, who freely assume that World of Warcraft players are socially inept losers and would rather prance around pretending to be an elf than spend time with real, human friends. The stigma is powerful, and it comes from all sides. But do the players feel it?
Call this guy a nerd and see what happens.
"There was and is a stigma attached to it," Seago confirms. "Like it's a weird thing that only super nerds do, or it's not cool for whatever reason. Also that it takes over your life when it starts and it's a huge time sink." When I ask him if he's ever reluctant to tell people he plays World of Warcraft, he again replies in the affirmative: "I think people mostly don't understand how fun it can be, and I 'm not the kind of person to ridicule something someone else does that I haven't personally tried. So I tend to think the people who ridicule it are doing so out of some sort of insecurity of their own."
Social stigma aside, what are the players themselves actually like? In the PBS documentary Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, we watch World of Warcraft players convene for a giant gathering sponsored by Blizzard Entertainment. Many are wearing elaborate, hand-made costumes and seem downright giddy, surrounded by other similarly devoted players. We are introduced to a couple that met inside the game and ended up married; we see friends who have been playing together for years, finally putting faces to the voices. Then comes a declaration from one woman that would give anyone pause: "I'm closer to my friends inside the game than anyone I know in real life!"
If these World of Warcraft players are truly finding themselves unable to relate to others outside the game, that would certainly be cause for concern on a broader societal level. Seago, however, is skeptical. "I think that's a really unusual circumstance, compared to the way most people's lives work. Most WoW players too." He pauses, weighing his next words. "There are so many people that play WoW - I found out my cousin plays, I found out my uncle, a conservative Southern Baptist minister, plays too - so it's a huge sample of the population, and to me that's still a very unusual perspective to have among WoW players."
You can laugh, but this guy's tank has mad good armor.
Still, there is certainly a vibrant social element to the game, which is perhaps its biggest draw for some. "The solo element is more boring to me," Seago explains. It's the same thing over and over. Within the game it's called 'the grind.'" He and his best friends joined a gay-friendly server, called "Proudmore," and formed a guild whose purpose was "not to tolerate the nastiness and immaturity you see out in the game at large." Seago serves as an officer for this guild, and as such he has the privelege of voting on whether or not to admit new recruits. "There's a rigorous screening process...we are only taking applicants who are referred by someone else because we are really trying to keep it small."
So, has he made friends within this more tolerant community? "Most of the officers in the guild I would consider friends. Three of them have my cell phone number, they can text me and stuff." Has the game itself facilitated these connections? "I am friends with some people in Warcraft that I wouldn't be friends with in real life, but the people I am closest to, I could definitely be friends with in real life. Gay guys in their mid-twenties, that kind of thing." When asked if he'd meet them in real life, he hesitates. "I would consider it, but I don't know, unless it was somehow avoidable I probably wouldn't."
In the same Digital Nation documentary, we saw South Korean teenagers sent to "video game rehab" by the dozens; one boy's mother washed dishes 12 feet away from her son, who sat gaming at his computer, and claimed to be helpless - there was nothing she could do to get her son to step away from video games, even for a moment. Whether she was in fact so helpless is up for debate, but regardless, American parents surely have this same fear for their children. And the pull of games is a mighty one, especially when there is such a strong social element. Says Seago, "You feel like you want to keep pace with the people you play with, and achieve what they achieve." But are all players powerless against the game's allure?
Dr. Drew can help your children break the vicious cycle.
"Some weeks I don't play at all, some weeks I play up to 8 hours. Usually when I play, I play for at least 3 hours a time." He adds that since he started playing, he has deliberately scaled back his playing time. "If I let myself, I could spend a lot more time playing the game than I want to. There's so much you could do, or try to do, that I would ultimately feel was not worth doing." Has he ever felt the pull of addiction? "No. I never felt addicted to it, or like it was affecting other parts of my life negatively. Also, I try hard not to buy into the stigmas about it. It's something I enjoy, it doesn't have negative consequences. Why shouldn't I do it? Before I played, what was I doing? Watching movies, playing other computer games, playing video games. Just because it's more concentrated in one place doesn't make it worse."
Surely, though, there are those without the self control to police their own playing time and maintain a healthy balance in their lives through sheer force of will. Children, in particular, might be prone to such excesses. But what of the theory that these elaborate, cooperative games might help children develop valuable communication and career skills? In another PBS documentary, Digital Learners of the 21st Century, kids at a charter school play and even design video games as an integral part of the curriculum. Our new digital world is all about problem solving, these educators claim, and a video game is nothing if not a world with a series of problems that must be solved in order to increase ability and eventually "win," or beat the game.
Charter school kids are awesome and smart!!
Having firsthand knowledge of the gaming environment, Seago is a little skeptical about whether or not World of Warcraft could help children develop these crucial abilities. "I think it could definitely do that. But I would be really hesitant to put children in the sort of inflammatory environment that it fosters and just hope there is a positive takeaway. I think in a very controlled environment, kids could learn things about social interaction by playing WoW or something similar."
There is a common thread of perspective, however, when it comes to the value judgments parents and teachers assign to video games versus other traditionally "virtuous" activities. One interviewee in the Digital Learners documentary pointed out that often children are rewarded for staying up all night to study, but playing a video game into the wee hours is seen as a delinquent behavior. There may be a contradiction at work here, especially if playing certain games is a kind of preparation for their future lives.
Seago's take is similar: "What do you feel like you should be doing with your life? If you read books ten hours a day because that's a 'good' thing to do, would you say 'I need to moderate this somehow'? If you want to keep your job, that's great. If you're moderating from a vague sense that it's a bad thing to do, but you can't explain why, that should be examined futher."
"If it's fun, and it doesn't hurt anyone," he adds with a shrug, "Why not do it?"
-fin-
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