Abstract
This article explores issues of racial essentialism and ethnicity in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). The fantasy world of Azeroth mirrors elements of real-world race-based societies where culture is thought to be immutably linked to race. The notion of biological essentialism is reinforced throughout the gamescape. Race plays a primary role in the social and political organization of Azeroth. Among other things, race determines alliances, language, intellect, temperament, occupation, strength, and technological aptitude. The cultural representation of the respective racial groups in WoW draws upon stereotypical imagery from real-world ethnic groups (e.g., American Indian, Irish/Scottish, Asian, African, etc.).
Classification 0410: group interactions; social group identity & intergroup relations (groups based on race & ethnicity, age, & sexual orientation)
Identifier / keyword MMORPG race ethnicity essentialism World of Warcraft
Title Race-Based Fantasy Realm: Essentialism in the World of Warcraft
Author Monson, Melissa J 1
1 Metropolitan State College of Denver, Denver, CO, USA monson@mscd.edu
Correspondence author Monson, Melissa J
Author e-mail address monson@mscd.edu
Publication title Games and Culture
Year 2012
Publisher Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks CA
ISSN 1555-4120
Source type Scholarly Journals
Language of publication English
Document type Journal Article
DOI
http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/10.1177/1555412012440308
Update 2012-10-01
Accession number 201235317
ProQuest document ID 1081862328
Document URL https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/1081862328?accountid=7305
Last updated 2012-10-03
Database ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection
Year 2011
Publisher McFarland & Company
Location Jefferson NC
ISBN 9780786458950
Source type Books
Language of publication English
Document type Book
Update 2013-06-12
Accession number 4401059
ProQuest document ID 1285624929
Document URL https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/1285624929?accountid=7305
Last updated 2013-09-16
Database ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection
Abstract
Digital technology has opened up a range of new on-line leisure spaces for young people. Despite their popularity, on-line games and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games in particular are still a comparatively under-researched area in the fields of both Education and more broadly Youth Studies. Drawing on a Five year ethnographic study, this paper considers the ways that young people use the virtual spaces offered by MMORPGs. This paper suggests that MMORPGs represent significant arenas within which young people act out a range of social narratives through gaming. It argues that MMORPG have become important fantasy spaces which offer young people possibilities to engage in what were formally material practices. Although this form of play is grounded in the everyday it also extends material practices and offers new and unique forms of symbolic experimentation, thus I argue that game-play narratives cannot be divorced from the everyday lives of their participants. Adapted from the source document.
Title "It's like my life but more, and better!" -- Playing with the Cathaby Shark Girls: MMORPGs, young people and Fantasy-based social play
Author Crowe, Nic 1
1 Brunel University, UK nic.crowe@brunel.ac.uk
Correspondence author Crowe, Nic
Author e-mail address nic.crowe@brunel.ac.uk
Publication title International Journal of Adolescence and Youth
Year 2011
Publisher A B Academic Publishers, Bicester Oxon UK
ISSN 0267-3843
CODEN IJAYEP
Source type Scholarly Journals
Peer reviewed Yes
Language of publication English
Document type Journal Article
Update 2011-11-02
Accession number 201119145
ProQuest document ID 902096907
Document URL https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/902096907?accountid=7305
Last updated 2011-11-04
Database ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection
Abstract
Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens is a collection of scholarly essays that seeks to represent the far-reaching scope and implications of digital role-playing games as both cultural and academic artifacts. As a genre, digital role playing games have undergone constant and radical revision, pushing not only multiple boundaries of game development, but also the playing strategies and experiences of players. Divided into three distinct sections, this premiere volume captures the distinctiveness of different game types, the forms of play they engender and their social and cultural implications. Contributors examine a range of games, from classics like Final Fantasy to blockbusters like World of Warcraft to obscure genre bending titles like Lux Pain. Working from a broad range of disciplines such as ecocritism, rhetoric, performance, gender, and communication, these essays yield insights that enrich the field of game studies and further illuminate the cultural, psychological and philosophical implications of a society that increasingly produces, plays and discourses about role playing games.
Subject discipline Anthropology
Title Dungeons, dragons, and digital denizens: the digital role-playing game
Monograph title Dungeons, dragons, and digital denizens: the digital role-playing game
Author Voorhees, Gerald; Call, Josh; Whitlock, Katie
Publication title Dungeons, dragons, and digital denizens: the digital role-playing game
Year 2012
Publisher Continuum
Location New York, London
Series Approaches to digital game studies
ISBN 9781441195180
Source type Books
Language of publication English
Document type Book
Update 2013-06-12
Accession number 4406595
ProQuest document ID 1288988812
Document URL https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/1288988812?accountid=7305
Last updated 2013-09-16
Database ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection
Abstract
In the canonical literature (Huizinga, Caillois), play has been thought in its rapport with culture. This rapport is often described as paradoxical, as being organized around the two opposite if not incompatible poles of rule (order, discipline) and fiction (creative liberty and fantasy), corresponding roughly to the significations of the words game and play in English. Based on long-winded ethnographic research, this article focuses on an under-studied phenomenon: live action role-playing games (LARP). As a sort of immersive and ludic voyage in fictional worlds, participants in LARP's play out costumed characters according to precise rules of simulation, yet with the opportunity to come and go as they please and to make their own choices. Reconciling game and play, LARP's are original forms of cultural creation which are not only collective but collaborative. Adapted from the source document.
Classification 0207: sociology: history and theory; theories, ideas, & systems
Title Live Action Role-Playing Games: Reconciling Rules and Fiction
Alternate title Un jeu qui reconcilie les regles et la fiction : le jeu de roles grandeur nature
Author Kapp, Sebastien 1
1 EHESS
Correspondence author Kapp, Sebastien
Publication title La Revue du MAUSS
Year 2015
Publisher Editions La Decouverte, Paris France
ISSN 1247-4819
CODEN RMAUEV
Source type Scholarly Journals
Language of publication French
Document type Journal Article
DOI
http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/10.3917/rdm.045.0091
Update 2016-03-01
Accession number 201604864
ProQuest document ID 1767326069
Document URL https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/1767326069?accountid=7305
Last updated 2016-02-23
Database ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection
As part of the process of migrating everything from the www2 RPG Research website to the w3 RPG Research website, a couple of issues came up for me that I wanted to briefly touch on.
First, embedding media. Taking this blog post as an example, the blog post includes an embedded youtube video, but simply copying over everything in the body text does not bring over the embedded video. It's not a difficult process to migrate it, however!
To embed a youtube video, here's how:
1) Copy the embed code: Youtube makes it easy for us. Just right-click on the video and click on 'copy embed code', as shown below:
2) In w3, go to Insert -> Media.
3) Click on the 'Embed' tab, then paste the embed code you copied:
And that's it!
Second, I want to touch on internal links. Some links on www2.rpgresearch.com are internal - they point to files on the www2 server itself. For an example, look at the links in this blog post. If you simply copy over the body text as usual, then the links will break on w3.rpgresearch.com.
There's two possible approaches for migrating internal links. One approach could be to turn the links into external links, pointing back to the files on the www2 server. However, the approach I went with was to instead migrate the files over to the w3 server, then make internal links to them. I went with this approach because we intend to migrate everything anyway, and because it keeps the links from breaking if the www2 server disappears.
1) Download files from www2
2) Copy over the body text to w3
3) Click "Insert/edit link" for each internal link
4) Go to the Upload tab and upload the file associated with that link, then click Insert.
And that's it!