COMM 3344-1 :: Games for the web :: Students Via Boing Boing

I dont know waht ethnography is, but its interesting. There is ALOT of material to comb through.. but gems like this pop up:

“MMORPG-ocracy
I think the ideal political relationship between game developers and game players would be something of a democracy. I feel most things benefit from democratic discourse, including games. Though within this democratic framework, there with be those that “exercise” more power than others; the developers have almost absolute power on game play mechanics, storyline, and even access to the game, in the case of World of Warcraft, whereas the players’ only power is the ability to quit playing and paying for the game. Despite this, developers would be ignorant to assume they can do whatever they want to with a game. So a proper balance of power is needed to keep both developer and player content.

An example of this power struggle in the past: the beautifully executed naked gnome warrior civil disobedience at Ironforge. Hundreds of unhappy players congregated to protest to deficiency of the warrior class. Blizzard, the developers of the game, took action to disperse the unruly crowd that was heavily burdening the server by denying access to these player’s accounts for three hours. While not an immediate success, however, this did influence the developer’s decision about the warrior class in later patches. The developers obviously exercised the majority of the power in this situation, but the players were able to have (at least a little) say in the development.

It seems like these Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing World are little different from nations. The developer are the governing body, and the players are the citizens. Unlike the United States, however, it would be easy for the citizen of World of Warcraft to leave this virtual world, and I’m certain the developers fully realize this.”

Fascinating rumination indeed.