Question: what is it that makes MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft and Everquest so popular? Why are they so enjoyable and addicting for millions of people? All over the world people are logging on to the internet to play, people from different cultures, places, and niches that spend large amounts of time and money on MMORPG’s. How were they designed to be so engaging, why, and by whom?
I started thinking along these lines because of a Popular Narrative class I took last year. In that class we focused on film and literary theories and, in a way, pop culture theories can be applied to video gaming because it too is a popular medium. Theories put forth by Roland Barthes, Roger Bromley, and Pierre Macherey dove into the world of literature and popular fictions. They dealt with what literatures could do for, and to, people, all the while trying to understand how fictions both help and harm the societies in which they exist. They attempt to figure out why popular cultures are they way they are, and created their own theories to help others understand it.
Macherey’s theory of literary production, or Bromley’s work on social functions of popular fiction are not encompassing enough to be fully applied to video game culture, in the sense that in the 70’s no one could have known that video game culture would be as popular as it is today. They do not account for a massive virtual world created in an online space. However, they deal with ideology, how it is enacted, understood, and can be constructed and manipulated. This is what I wanted to apply to video games because it seems of great interest. As has been said, MMORPG’s bring people together from all corners of the earth, and not all of them necessarily share RL (real life) ideologies. How might this translate into the real world? Are there dominant ideologies that pervade the whole game space, ideologies that everyone can agree on? Who constructed them and how are they ultimately conveyed?
The only way to truly find out is to venture online to talk to people, find out what it is that drives them to play games like WoW (World of Warcraft), Everquest, or even the growing number of console video games with online capabilities. The research would have to contain elements of anthropological study as well. Unfortunately, people can be unreliable. In a virtual fantasy world, researchers have to be weary of separating RL from myth. Also, trying to understand the one, dominant force behind the creation of any massive multi-player game is problematic due to the fact that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people involved in the creation of any one of these games. Is the director of a video game considered the artist or author of a game as auteurs are for film and authors for literature? I cannot be sure myself, but that is the beauty of research, discovering new ways of thinking about things you think you already know.
