Beyond Steve Johnson and James Gee

So just when I thought I understood what was going on I found out that I had barely scratched the surface. Both Eric and I have discovered that there is much to think about when playing our respective roles of priest and warlock in a raiding party. In fact, I found my way to a set of WoW community blessed link to the warlock community. I was reading a posting in this one, and realized I could not understand a good bit of what she was talking about. Actually, I could understand her stuff pretty well, but it sure is indexical (the meaning is indexed to a highly specific context/group). She is explaining ninja'ing in party raids. This excerpt is about rolling for loot:

I explain that all pass to start with, and then manually /random for selling rights. I say this because I can disenchant, so the group has the option of me DE'ing it first, and all of us randoming for the gem. Or, alternatively, they could all roll, and then the winner has the option if they would like it DE'd, or just sell as is. Everyone says that makes sense, we pass and /random, the Druid wins. He takes as is.

But this one sent me running from the guy's website. Now, I do know the casts he's talking about, but I still can't make good sense out of this!

Against warriors, you can either wait or cheese the charge with pet attack, drop dots, death coil -> immolate. If you cheesed the charge that means his intercept is down and you can just kite him at this point, otherwise, renew your corruption and drain tank/conflag him till he’s dead. That will do the trick with just about any spec/warrior/pet. For soul link warlocks however, their procs (crusader/untamed blade) although they’re magic, they are not dispellable for some reason. Hopefully they fix it, and felhunters can live a little longer vs warriors.

So I'm thinking, this stuff is even more complex than Johnson and Gee are thinking and writing about. THis is layers of complexity...language is only a symptom of a deeper culture at work. I'm trying to think of comparable play that is this sustained and this complex and this collaborative. I can't think of anything...except my jorb. And that's not play; heck there are days when it's not fun either.

This gives me pause. No, not the 'not fun' part, but the fact taht the only comparably complex, sustained, collaborative activity I can think of is my work.