This is a hard post to make, because it is self-revelatory, but it seems to me if I am to have an honest experience as an ethnographer, self-reflection is essential. Also, I am spending all this time in serious WoW play because as a doctoral student, I agree with Gee's assertion, "Video games recruit identities and encourage identity work and reflection on identities in clear and powerful ways. If schools worked in similar ways, learning in school would be more succesful and powerful. . ." (What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, p. 51). I don't think I would do this without that motivation - my choices for leisure hours tend toward gardening, grandkid and reading.
So, as to identity work so far, my personal understanding of what Gee calls the "tripartite play of identities (a virtual identity, a real-world identity, and a projective identity)" is unfolding as follows:
My doctoral student identity would be what Gee calls my "real identity," and, upon reflection, I find my behavior in this experience to be completely characteristic of my previous sense of my self, but even more extreme. I am a researcher first, I want to know as much as possible before going in to a new experience, so I get the official strategy guid, read it carefully, with highlighter in hand (and use those little sticky post-it tabs for the bits I'll want to refer to later). I am a planner - I use the strategy guide to plan an itinerary for a session, so I organize my quests in a very efficient order so as to minimize travel and maximize the value of looting (and yes, I make a list). And I am almost pathologically reflective - I have lost myself in the gaming experience from time to time, but most times I do not lose my observer stance. I even dream about it this way - I leapt up from bed this AM to this post; I can't remember the dreams, but apparently these ideas are what my brain was musing upon for most of the night.
My current virtual identity was a carefully constructed identity, in how I choose to design the character in the beginning. First, the world faction I chose was Alliance, because, as a Tolkein fan, those Horde guys looked like bad guys to me, and I didn't want to be a bad guy. I chose the name Perrenelle VERY carefully, because there is so much in a name. First of all, Nelle is my grandmother's name, my middle name, and a name that I reclaimed when I came back to school (from Vicki the Director-type to VickiNelle, the student). Secondly, I am a father's daughter, so perre (a mispelling of pere) appealed to me. And finally, Perrenelle was a real person, a 14th century alchemist. Upon reflection, my choice of character's sex as female was pretty easy. I'm in my mid-fifties, studied a lot about gender identification in my earlier most radical feminist years, and that wasn't one of the more intriguing choices for me. It seemed a comfortable given. I chose the race, Night Elf, because of how I deeply value nature and the environment, and I could identify with their commitment. I chose Druid as my class because I could experiment to some extent with how it might be to be another class, since Druids can play so many roles (from healers to casters), and can have good solo play as well as group play. The professions I chose were healer (because of my real-world interest in botany, and because it is a positive role, rather than a role focused on damaging others), and alchemist (because transmutation and transformation appeal to me, in the Jungian sense).
It is in my "projective identity" that things get really interesting. This is where I increasingly see Perrenelle as my own "project in the making, a creature whom I imbue with a certain trajectory through time defined by my aspirations for what I want that character to be and become (within the limitations of her capacities)" (Gee, p. 55). This is VickiNelle as Perrenelle. First of all, I discovered myself feeling oddly guilty and apologetic to Perrenelle when I chose not to play during the holiday. I wasn't "exercising" her. Then, in the past week, I've noticed that Perrenelle is too darn stubborn for her own good (when she couldn't find her corpse, she kept looking for it way too long instead of just giving up and paying the toll to the spirit healer to be resurrected). And she's way too solitary - she wanted to try to tackle Fell Rock all on her own (Twisted Hatred), and there's almost no way that can be done as a Level 9 Night Elf. And she's just a little too passive and well-socialized, because she feels pressure to follow the suggested sequence of quests from the "official strategy guide," rather than just being spontaneous. And finally, she gets distracted at the most inopportune times by the scenery and pretty flowers (she's an herbalist, don't forget).
My projected identity in WoW is highlighting my preference for solitary or very small group play, and giving me an opportunity to reflect on how deep it is, and the implications of choosing to be solitary or pushing myself to join with someone else I don't know (which I have been also trying out). Pretty deep stuff for something that's just a game.
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