RSSWoW’d By Science
Sep 17
Life in Digital gaming, Internet, mod, modding, Nardi, NSF, social interaction, world of warcraft, WoW Comments Off
It turns out that gamers might just be freaks worthy of academic study. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s website, the National Science Foundation has awarded Bonnie Nardi at UC-Irvine a grant to study how people play the popular online game World of Warcraft. According to the grant abstract published on NSF’s website, Nardi’s research will focus specifically on modding (basically, changing the game environment to suit one’s whims). Programmers, either commercial or individual, build add-ons that perform functions in the game environment that the game itself does not. Because the game itself is built to be collaborative (there are some things on it that are just damn hard to do alone), mods are usually a group effort, too, since a need must be both identified, then acted upon in a way that fits within the game’s larger framework. An example of a commonly used mod in WoW is an add-on that imposes a coordinate grid on the game’s maps to make sharing exact locations easier among players. Yes, I know this because I play.
So far, it looks like this research is getting a bad rap. I find this ironic since gaming is blamed for a whole host of social ills, from obesity to agoraphobia to just plain awkward social interaction. Here we have the opportunity to understand the effects of gaming just a bit better, yet many consider that not worthwhile research, whether conducted in a scholarly manner or not. This research is especially important as gaming continues to transition from something that’s done at home alone (ahhhh, I miss my old Atari and Nintendo) to something that creates a true digital environment in which people interact both in and out of character.
Tools such as instant messaging have already transformed the social environment. For me, it’s allowed me to develop close friendships with people around the country whom I haven’t even met in person, while allowing me to maintain communicate more easily with my “real life” friends. If IM has had such an impact, I can’t begin to imagine what the impacts will be of online gaming, in which groups of people are working towards shared goals in a collaborative manner. Perhaps this study will begin to answer that question and help us all understand the shape of the future.
