World of Warcraft has escaped from the holodeck. It is no longer a contained bounded system I enter and leave as I choose. Much like Professor Moriarity in one of my favorite Star Trek episodes, WoW has escaped and is running amok IRL. Funny thing is, I don't sense a need to trick it back into the box. Right now, much like the chief medical officer in the Star Trek episode, I'm kind of charmed by and curious about what WoW wants from me.
Yesterday, in conversation with him, Eric mentioned that he thinks about WoW outside of WoW play, even in meetings. Well, so do I, though not in meetings...yet. Mostly I ponder in those idle moments that USED to be space for thinking about work: the shower, morning coffee, the commute, making dinner, and sundry intervals of spacey daytime drifting. Last evening, after our successful Gruul run, ho hum, I sent Eric an email to get a look at the data capture I know he'd have ported to WoW Web Stats. You see, I'm on a personal mission to analyze and repair my damage output. It should be higher. For crap sake I'm wearing 4 pieces of T4. LOL.
As I trawled the data I could not help but connect my current reality with something Eric and I had talked about yesterday -- the role of virtual play worlds in our adult lives. Yes, we (the family plays WoW), watcha hella less TV, only go out to see realy good movies, and don't play board games much anymore (thank God; I hate board games). But I do not think WoW play is a direct switch out for those passive, consumer activities. IMHO, adults, at least some of us, are recapturing stolen play, getting back in touch with our inner adolescent. When we do large WoW raids, I am very often consciously aware of how much it reminds me of when, around age 12, we played massive games of kick-the-can or football in the streets from late afternoon through dusk up to the point players' moms broke up the critical mass by calling kids in for dinner. The same vibe pervades: comraderie, argument and negotiation, and serious play interspersed with serious fucking around.
However, unlike that sort of play time, and perhaps BECAUSE I am an adult, WoW play has become, continues to be, more of a hobby than an excuse to hang out. THis is the sense in which it has escaped the Holodeck, left the afternoon streets, and crawled into pre and post play space. I actually want to improve and be a really good player. Now true, I did work on my spiral in football, but I never did anything near what I do to improve my casting sequence in WoW. And, oddly enough, this attention does not feel like work. Now, granted, farming mana motes in order to get the runic spellthread to put on my T4 leggings to bump up my spell damage by 35 points... yeah that feels like work. LOL. But generally speaking there is a pleasure there that is bigger than the moment of play and sustains me, heck, drives me, to do the work of play (ooo there' a title for an article).
... more coming...
No comments:
Post a Comment