Going To School In Azeroth

Via the Guardian Gamesblog, a link to an unusual ethnography class. From the post: "[The site is] a selection of weblogs and reports from students at Trinity University in the States who've been charged by their prof, Aaron Delwiche (a good friend to virtual worlds weblog Terra Nova), to conduct ethnographies of the hugely successful World of Warcraft as part of their credit requirements for their 'Games for the Web: Ethnography of Massively Multiplayer On-line Games' course. The 15 term papers and the associated documentation are great first steps for the students in examining the social character of online social spaces, and a very good insight for people who've never had the chance to dive into one of these virtual worlds."

Not the first time for artificial ethnicities

[Megane]

I've heard that when a TV series or movie is being filmed that includes "alternate races", particularly ones which require prosthetic makeup (orcs, klingons, whatever), the various ethnicities of extras will tend to congregate with others of the same ethnicity in the studio cafeteria. But of course this is nowhere near the scale of MMOGs.

Re:Not the first time for artificial ethnicities

[AuMatar]

And I tend to go to lunch with the people on my team at work, rather than the marketing guy. I think the fact that they work closer together and form friendships may weigh heavily into that correlation.

Ahhh School...

[Reapy]

Figuring out new ways to make fun things suck.

respect guys

[ehmdjii]

that's a great opportunity to find enough time to play WorldOfWarcraft. ;)

And I thought I had a good topic for a paper

[wilgibson]

I spent last spring writing a 14 page paper on the symbolism present in .hack//(just the games), and I thought that was awesome. But if I could have written about WoW, which I was playing heavily at the time, that would have been a whole lot better.

I'm obviously going to the wrong school though. I had to my "video game" paper as an independent study, they have a course on this?!?!

Re:And I thought I had a good topic for a paper

[th1ckasabr1ck]

Can you post your paper somewhere or e-mail it to me or whatever? I loved the .hack games and would be interested in reading it. steve dot evolution at gmail dot com

PreReqs

[VickiM]

I wonder what this class counted for? Some kind of sociology or psychology? Or a comp sci elective? Anyway, they probably had to have an account, or promise to get access to one, when signing up for the class. I read the one on being in a guild and skimmed the paper on sexism. Is it just me, or are students really bad at writing papers anymore? Not that this was a graduate course, or anything, but the one on guilds was so full of fluff I thought I was reading a Mallowmar.

Who pays for it?

[stpitner]

If the school offered to pay for the WoW subscription, I'm all in. But this is college, where everything required to use for a class you always have to pay for, so I'm guessing they won't do that.

What would the textbook be? The strategy guidebook?

The closest I ever came to a class like this was Literature of the Fantastic, where we were able to read books like War of the Worlds, Frankenstein, Witches Abroad, Starship Troopers, and ... I can't remember the other 2 anymore. Not exactly playing an MMORPG th

Re:Who pays for it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The full reading list [trinity.edu] is posted online. The textbook is Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds [amazon.com] along with other assorted readings.

Amazing!

[Kingrames]

Someone finally thought of the children.

Eve Online

[C0rinthian]

Personally, I'd love to see studies like this done in Eve, where social interaction is much more pronounced. (and much more interesting)