For this assignment I chose to look at a space I’m very familiar with. I chose to study someone from World of Warcraft (WoW), a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). I’ve played this game for about 2 years. My main purpose playing it is to advance through the game and not so much for the social interactions. The interactions in this space are very task oriented, basically people only get together to complete quests or take on challenging monsters. Few people in the game actually engage in real role playing, but there are many other different factors that make this virtual environment interesting.
In WoW you can form parties in order to explore the game with other people. I decided to look for someone to do a couple of quests with. I found someone with the nickname Strydessa who was willing to complete a few quests with me. Strydessa’s avatar is a female, night elf who has reached the highest level possible in the game. Something that people notice in WoW is the type of armor that you wear, the better armor you have the more hardcore of a gamer you probably are. Strydessa’s armor was of the best type, which told me she spent a lot of time playing the game with many other people. The avatar’s gender doesn’t really tell me much about the person behind the keyboard, most people know that a lot of guys tend to pick female avatars because other guys would be more polite to them by giving them money, or even just because it is something better to look at in your screen.
We started doing our quests and I realized that this person was very talkative. At the same time she was also very demanding, which was not to my liking. The person also seemed to be very careless and did a lot of things without consulting with me first, which resulted in us having very bad communication and in result we died a couple of times. Strydessa did apologize to me the couple of times we died. I didn’t get upset about dying, I rarely do ever get upset and I had just met this person so even if I was, I wasn’t going to show them. After we were done with our quests, I asked Strydessa what her real gender was, Strydessa told me she was actually a guy who lives in Ohio. This of course did not come as a shock to me since it was something I expected. We said thanks to each other and left the party we formed.
My experience with Strydessa allowed me to form an impression of this person’s character. Strydessa didn’t seem like a neurotic person, from the actions and the way Strydessa expressed herself I could deduce that they were very laid back and somewhat careless. The way Strydessa acted also led me to think they were extroverted, she/he was very talkative. I can’t really rate the person on openness since I didn’t really spend a long amount of time talking to them, and our conversations were mainly task oriented. I also can’t rate this person on agreeableness, since we didn’t have the opportunity to discuss things that needed an agreement, but I found this person to be very careless about their actions.
I feel my impressions were in line with the Hyperpersonal model and the SIP theory. When I first saw Strydessa’s avatar I had the impression that this person was going to be a very serious, task oriented player who might want very little social interaction and focus more on the task at hand. I put a lot of weight on one of the few cues the game gives me, which was the armor they wear. I assumed that very good armor meant a very good, serious gamer. But, as we interacted more I came to realize that this was not true. The way Strydessa behaved when we were questing together suggested to me that they were very careless and I felt that if I had spent more time or perhaps done more serious stuff with them, I would have eventually disliked this person. The hyperpersonal model explains my immediate impression of Strydessa, while SIP theory explains why overtime I would have eventually gotten annoyed at this person.
4 comments:
I'm curious about the impact of the gender of the other player's avatar on your impressions. Did the fact that the avatar was female mean anything to you before he revealed his identity? You did say that it didn't tell you anything about the true gender of the person itself, but could it have possibly influenced what you thought about the player?
For example, if you thought the player was male, did you think that he was clever, or a freeloader, for taking a female character so that others would be kinder to him? Or, if the player was indeed female, did you try to be kinder to her? I have personal experience with male players who used to play female characters (having friends who would do that, and I would party with them), so whenever I see a female character, I almost always automatically think it's a male behind it, which gives me an initial bias. Did this occur with you?
Other than that detail, Strydessa doesn't sound like someone I'd want to spend ample amounts of time with either, especially if during raids or other endeavors that take hours. Too much talking doesn't give you much time to respond, does it? Good analysis of his character despite the fact that he seemed annoying!
This brought me back to when I played Diablo II back in middle school, another online RPG by the same company. The conversations were mostly task oriented then as well. Specifically though I remember there were always older players who tried to manipulate younger players into trusting them, offering "legendary items" in exchange for the new players dropping some of their own items, where the older player would then just use tricks and skills unfamiliar to the new player to steal the dropped items. And it would often work. So in my experience, the online gaming community actually tended to be somewhat paranoid (the new players) and malicious (the older players), rather than solely cooperative in nature. Though certainly there were *some* good people.
As for the constructive criticism, good job making the terminology and gameplay easy to understand for people who haven't played WoW, and giving a feel for what the WoW online community is like (it was an interesting contrast to my own history).
I've definitely spent a couple of years playing this game myself (and have finally found the need to quit as of late actually) but from my experience in the game, it was a little hard to actually convince people of my actual gender when I did play with them.
I have a question however...if you had initially found out that Strydessa was actually a female, would you have been more forgiving about her carelessness and possibly would've talked to her more? There are many people whom I know that have that bias of females being a less than adequate gamer and will tend to have a lower expectation of their skills regardless of their equipment they have on. Just a thought! Great job on explaining the game and gathering the cues!
Thanks for your comments guys!
Enduro: I don't really pay attention to the gender of the avatars when I play the game. For me it could either be a female or a male behind the avatar. I have many friends who play with female characters for many different reasons, so I don't really pass judgment on males using female avatars, they must have a reason for doing it.
If the player was in fact a girl, I would be a little nicer and courteous towards her, but not because I think females are bad at video games, but rather because I feel I need to be more respectful towards them.
Chris: I also used to play Diablo II when I was in High School. My role there was mostly of helping people, I didn't really go in there to chat or meet others, but rather to help others. I found ways to "exploit" the game and help others by giving them free money or good items. That was a long time ago, and I remember people being suspicious when I said I was gonna give them stuff.
Kelly: Like I told enduro, I don't think I have a bias of female gamers. I know a lot who are better than me at games. In my case the difference in how I might interact with females comes from respect, I feel that with guys I can joke around and say more things than with females especially if I don't know them.
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