“THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A LICH KING” WORLD OF WARCRAFT AND THE POETICS OF GAMING

“THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A LICH KING”

WORLD OF WARCRAFT AND THE POETICS OF GAMING

i

Acknowledgements

ii I would also like to thank:

My brother and Tetris rival for introducing me to RPGs and a whole new world of storytelling George and Martha Raj for their unconditional love and for being my role models in every possible way

Mabel Wale for her commiseration and eternal kindness Matt Slack for his game design knowledge and expertise

Dr. Amanda Gilroy for her precise insights, vast wealth of knowledge, openness, enthusiasm and encouragement

My partner. Thank you for getting me through all the bouts of self-doubt, for your love and for your unwavering faith in me

And finally, my mom and dad. I’m sorry you’re not around to see how much games have truly rotted my brain.

iii

Contents

Preface

1

1. “Encrypted Twilight Texts”

4

Introduction

2. “It’s Not About History, It’s About Power”

9

The history of World of Warcraft

3. “Orcs Can Write?”

14

Authorship

4. “And Then There Were Goblins”

20

Textual boundaries

5. “Intercepting The Message”

21

Narratives and paratexts

6. “Stalling The Ravage”

30

Game goals and textual repetition

7. “Who’s A Big Troll?”

35

Characters, subjectivity and immersion

8. “An End and a Beginning”

41

Conclusion

1

Preface

Like many children growing up in the eighties, video games were an integral part of my childhood. The many hours spent engrossed in the worlds of video games have left an indelible mark. I still find myself humming the Super Mario Bros. theme at random times. I have lost countless hours of sleep to Zelda games. I have a favorite Streetfighter character. I spent my babysitting money on playing Mortal Kombat at the bowling alley. I had nightmares involving Tetris blocks falling down in endless waves. I remember the terrifying sounds of unseen monsters in Doom, creeping around in the dark behind the walls. If I close my eyes, I can see and hear Megaman explode in white balls of light as I fail to steer him away from an underwater mine. Growing into adulthood, I never lost that connection to games. Even so, as a burgeoning cultural critic, my initial childhood wonder has been replaced by something else: a deep-seated desire to understand how these cultural texts are created, and how players interact with them.

I am not alone in this quest. Games are ubiquitous, as an estimated 58% of Americans now regularly play video games, spending a staggering 21 billion dollars in 2012 alone.1 Furthermore, video games have evolved beyond mere entertainment, as they are used in a variety of contexts, from military training to trauma therapy.2 Played on this unprecedented scale, video games are evolving into the prominent media form and a central part of modern culture. The information age has, under our noses, become the gaming age.3 As a result, critical engagement with games is on the rise. In this new area of media studies, deep

divisions have emerged between various academic factions. Some critics are mostly interested in the interaction between player and game code, while others focus on how the ideology of games impacts players. These strands of game studies are mainly interested in the interaction between video games and their players, often dismissing game designers, the construction process and textual production, design as text, authorial agents, the historical, cultural or commercial forces that shape the narrative and the game’s narrative structure as subordinate elements. As a player and a critic, caught in the space between the overlapping worlds of enjoyment and critical engagement, as someone who spent hours following villagers around in Ocarina of Time just to get a glimpse of their lives, as someone who still struggles to

1 _{Statistics from a 2012 survey by ESA, available at http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf.} 2

See Ian Bogost, How To Do Things with Video Games (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and Corey Mead, War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict (New York: Harcourt, 2013).

2 understand all the intricacies of Chrono Trigger’s time warping narrative, I can only disagree. Though elements of interactivity and play are certainly relevant, choosing to analyze only the decoding process or only the technical aspects of game code can never result in an accurate picture of how these cultural texts are produced in a specific historical and commercial context as well as in an over-determined relationship with their players/readers. As such, any scrutiny of the discourse of video games must start with the game itself, identifying its production, structure, story and author and asking what insights can be gained.

The question, then, is how we can catalogue and analyze these elements. Clearly, games are not like film or novels. In Theory of the Novel, Georg Lukács posed that each age has its own chief narrative form. The classical ages had the epic, the medieval ages the chivalric romance and the modern age the novel.4 Modern game theorists like Espen Aarseth argue that games have evolved beyond their narrative form, that their inherent configurative nature requires not merely a new mode of narrative analysis, but an analysis beyond

narrative.5 Aarseth’s desire to break with classic narratology is built on the foundations of the postmodernist movement of the late 20th century and the changes wrought by the digital revolution. Where postmodernism shattered literary conventions such as plot, character, setting and authorship, the digital revolution muddled concepts of identity, art,

self-expression, community and cultural consumption.6 In this new fragmented cultural landscape, Aarseth’s suggestion to break with outdated theoretical concepts and analyze video games on their own terms makes perfect sense. Yet Lukács suggested that though narrative form

undergoes a transformation, its essence remained, “an absent body that we need to understand in order to interpret its adaptation.”7

Therefore, with the ghost of the novel lingering, classic narratology can and should assist in the understanding of this latest narrative form.

This balancing act between the application and expansion of classic terminology and the design of new, better fitting terms is not unique to video games. Frequently, critics of other new media forms like television and film find classic literary terminology to be devoid of meaning and have struggled to find new, unified critical theory. One example is Jason Mittell’s Complex TV, which analyzes a media form that, like video games, frequently defies

4 _{Georg Lukács, Theory of the Novel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971). See also George P. Landow, Hypertext} 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 264.

5 _{Espen Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,} 1997).

6

Stuart Sim, The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 2011).

3 traditional theoretical approaches. Mittell’s work is a mapping of the poetics of television, exploring concepts like authorship, character, genre and storytelling.

Inspired by Mittell’s approach to television, this dissertation will draft a similar framework for video games, by analyzing a game through its narrative form, drawing on a neo-formal approach, while still allowing for a model of cultural circulation. I wish to examine how a specific game works by considering how its design and narrative come together to produce an effect on the player, rather than merely debate its ideological significance or play mechanics. Using Henry Jenkins’ expansion of the concept of game narrative as a starting point, a case study of one such complex game can be used to interrogate concepts like collaborative authorship, character, genres, serialized storytelling and textual boundaries, much like Mittell’s work on television shows. Ultimately, this should underpin deeper analysis of the game in question, as well as future analysis of similarly complex games.

Choosing a game for this case study was relatively straightforward. A contemporary colossus in the gaming world, World of Warcraft (WoW) is one of the most successful video games in history. It offers players a consistent game world that has existed for almost a decade, with millions of monthly subscribers engaging with this text on a daily basis. Its serialized narrative spans not just the decade since its launch, but previous games set in the same universe as well. As such, it is a perfect candidate for poetic exploration. Though I will provide comparisons and contrasts to other games to strengthen my arguments throughout the dissertation, my research will focus on WoW.

It should be noted that applying poetic analysis to games is not a straightforward process. Games are not like literature. The text of games is often fragmented, non-linear, configurative, collaboratively produced, mediated by player agency, and in a perpetual state of conflict with game goals. As a result, this dissertation is not classically linear either, but rather comprised of a series of short chapters that should be seen as a succession of

tangentially related quests to clarify the complex narrative texture of WoW. The chapters have been named after actual in-game quests, as they are aesthetically and functionally similar: loosely connected, frequently overlapping textual journeys that collectively build towards a poetic framework upon which differential analyses can take place.8

4

1: “Encrypted Twilight Texts”

Academic engagement with video games springs from a desire to understand the role and meaning of a medium that is now ubiquitous. Though video game analysis was initially relegated to the outskirts of academia, as they were deemed “low culture,” contemporary cultural elites are increasingly happy to consume popular culture.9 In the new cultural

landscape, the class-based hierarchy of taste described by Bourdieu is being steadily displaced by Stuart Hall’s view of popular culture as the site of negotiation of meaning, value and relationships.10 As a result, games are deemed progressively worthy of academic inquiry. However, in this new field the question how to study games has taken center stage.

Literary analysis of any text is frequently a mixture of poetics, an investigation of how effects or meanings are produced, and hermeneutics, the interpretation of a text’s meaning. Some academics, like film scholar David Bordwell, argue for a hard distinction between the two, outlining a schism between form and content.11 In Making Meaning, Bordwell criticizes the practice of interpretative readings, choosing to study finished works as the result of a process of construction, which he would later describe as “a process which includes a craft component … principles according to which the work is composed, and its functions, effects and uses.”12

Similarly, recent work by Jason Mittell maps the poetics of television story-telling — taking a neo-formal approach while still allowing space for Hall’s model — at the expense of hermeneutic readings of the text.

However, despite the differences between poetics and hermeneutics, both are invested in the concept of narrative, either its construction or what it conveys to the reader. Among some modern game theorists an argument is made that games are so radically different from literature, drama or cinema that they cannot be studied using traditional techniques at all. Markku Eskelinen poses that due to games’ singularities, narratology cannot adequately analyze games, basing his argument on Espen Aarseth’s distinction between an

9

Alan Warde et al., "Understanding Cultural Omnivorousness," Cultural Sociology 1.2 (2007), 143–164. See also Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984).

10 _{Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing the 'Popular,'" in R. Samuel, People's History and Socialist Theory,} (London: Routledge, 1981), 227-40.

11

Bordwell’s arguments are rooted in the Russian formalist theory. Viktor Shklovsky and Yuri Tunianov proposed both “concrete analyses of literary works and larger explanations for how they functioned in historical contexts.” See David Bordwell, “Historical Poetics of Cinema,” in R. Barton Palmer, The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches (New York: AMS Press, 1989), 369-398.

5 “interpretative” reader role in literature, theater and film, and a “configurative” reader role in games.13 Both authors decry what they dub “narrativism,” the notion that everything is a story: what Alan Rauch calls “story fetishism.”14 Aarseth describes it as “the omnipresent influence of narrative, both as hegemonic theories of discourse and as a socially dominating aesthetic mode.”15

Eskelinen argues that games are distinct from narratives because of their reliance on goals, and obstructions that hinder the player from reaching those goals, what David Parlett succinctly calls “systems of ends and means.”16

Dismissing the primacy of narrative, Gonzalo Frasca and Aarseth plead for a new mode of analysis and propose a new term, “ludology,” to refer to a new discipline that studies game and play activities.17 Ludology distinguishes between gameplay as a set of possibilities, and narrative as a set of chained actions. Scholarship in this vein thus focuses on “ergodic,” or open and dynamic modes of play, games as configurative practices and advanced cybertext theory. In his definition of cybertext, Aarseth’s describes a feedback loop that “centers attention on the consumer, or user, of the text, as a more integrated figure than even reader-response theorists would claim.”18

Aarseth’s theory outlines textons, signs that appear in the text, and scriptons, signs extracted by the reader. A traversal function in the text functions as a “mechanism by which scriptons are revealed or generated from textons and presented to the user.”19

Ludology then, emphasizes the texture of interactivity, the primacy of choice. The concept of narrative as an authorially produced predetermined story is replaced by a configurative and interactive process, placing stories and games in oppositional structural categories.20

Some strands in academia sidestep the narratology versus ludology discussion altogether by analyzing video games through an interpretative lens of identity and ideology, dealing with gender, race, social spaces, morality, representations in hypertext, and fandom.

13

Markku Eskelinen, Cybertext Poetics: The Critical Landscape of New Media Literary Theory (New York: Continuum, 2012).

14

Quoted in Espen Aarseth, “Genre Trouble,” in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 49.

15 _{Aarseth, Cybertext, 182.} 16

David Parlett, The Oxford History of Board Games (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3. 17

Aarseth, Cybertext and Gonzalo Frasca, “Ludology Meets Narratology: Similitude and Differences." Ludology. org (1999).

18

Aarseth, Cybertext, 1 19

Ibid., 62.

6 Marsha Kinder debates misogyny, violence and representations of gender in video games.21 David J. Leonard poses that the study of games “should include inquiry into how and why games provide their primarily White creators and players the opportunity to become the other.”22 Academics like Miguel Sicart focus on issues of morality, and the ethics of players’ choices instead. In The Ethics of Computer Games, Sicart attempts to draft a theoretical framework for the discussion of the morality of play, frankly admitting that his work may be considered “too light on illustrative examples or deep discussions on notions like narrative and fiction.”23 Much is also written on cross-media video game culture and “fan-based, user-created, socially-constructed forms of cultural expression.”24 Though academic work in this vein is extremely worthwhile, it is often fragmented, incidental and narrow, only underscoring the need for a more substantial underlying theoretical base.

Academics like Henry Jenkins choose a different approach, recognizing the difficulties in mapping traditional narrative structures onto games, yet refusing to reject narratology altogether. Rather, they repurpose or expand existing modes of analysis. In Hamlet on the

Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (1997), Janet Murray argues that digital

games are a new mode of storytelling, invoking the concept of narrative art and pleading for the creation of new dramatic experiences in games, conceptualizing the narrative as central to a player’s experience of a game.25

Ted Friedman notes that the primary narrative in complex simulation games is geography, dubbing them spatial stories or cognitive maps.26 Henry Jenkins outlines new modes of narrative production that deal with spatial exploration and interactivity through the concept of “narrative architecture.”27

Marsha Kinder outlines database narratives, “whose structure exposes or thematizes the dual process of selection and combination.”28

All these scholars attempt to refashion or expand the definition of narrative as it applies to video games and digital play.

21 _{Depictions of females in video games and the gendering of game spaces are of particular note here, as well} as the ability to inhabit a video game character with an opposite gender.

22

Miguel Sicart, The Ethics of Computer Games (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 5. For an interesting recent discussion on morality in video games, see Eric Swain, “More Thoughts on a More Complex Form of Moral Choice in Video Games,” PopMatters, June 24, 2014, http://www.popmatters.com/post/183111-video-game-morality and Nick Dinicola, “Complex Moral Choices Are Best Saved for the End,” PopMatters, July 11, 2014, http://www.popmatters.com/post/183574-complex-moral-choices-are-best-saved-for-the-end.

23 _{David J. Leonard, “Not a Hater, Just Keepin' It Real: The Importance of Race- and Gender-Based Game} Studies,” Games and Culture 1.1 (2006), 86.

24

Steven E. Jones, The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies (London: Routledge, 2008), 46. 25 _{Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: Free Press, 1997).} 26

Ted Friedman, “Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality,” in S. Jones (ed.), Cybersociety: Computer Mediated Communication and Community (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 73-89. 27 _{Henry Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” in Wardrip-Fruin, First Person, 118-130.}

28

7 Postmodernism’s demolition of traditional literary concepts and the unique nature of video games have left critics searching for a theoretical model. This dissertation must be situated in the ongoing academic struggle to both classify and analyze this new medium. Ludology, and its emphasis on process and structure, failed to produce a cohesive model that accounts for complex games like World of Warcraft. A consolidated theory that explains both the inner working of games and the effects they produce on players, a poetics of gaming, is still needed. As previously stated, this dissertation is inspired by Mittell’s mapping of the poetics of television and his expansion of existing modes of analysis. Yet games are not television, and expanding classic literary concepts is not without danger, as the process is one that “blurs boundaries and muddles concepts… with any sufficiently broad definition of x, everything will be x.”29

The struggle then is to expand, reduce or adjust existing theoretical concepts, and create new models where necessary, without diluting terms to the point of emptying them of all semantic content. In this sense, ludology may serve a useful purpose as the brake on narratology rather than its counter. The rules of the game are tethered to

narrative, and the systems underlying games cannot simply be disregarded. Indeed, WoW’s mechanics and narrative are inextricably linked, at times harmoniously driving the narrative, and at times divergent or oppositional.30 To understand how games are produced and how they function, any model must take into account that games are, first and foremost, games.

Thus, this dissertation cannot simply be the application of Mittell’s model to video games. Rather, it is something entirely new, the first step towards a new poetics of video games, recognizing that games are radically different from everything that came before, and simultaneously repurposing Lukács’ ghosts — the classic concepts and terminology that linger in the post-literary world. Where Linda Hutcheon argued for a poetics of

postmodernism, to begin to unravel how we both make, and make sense of culture, I argue for the poetics of gaming, a unified theory that explores how video games are produced, how they work, how they create narrative and play and how they engage with the player.31

As stated in the preface, the journey starts with a single game, World of Warcraft. After situating this game in its cultural and technological history, as well as its genre,

subsequent chapters will attempt to locate the author(s) of WoW, discuss the boundaries of the text, deconstruct WoW’s narrative and techniques used, evaluate how game goals and

mechanics affect both narrative and player engagement, and finally, locate the characters,

29

Jesper Juul, “Games Telling Stories,” International Journal of Computer Game Research 1.1 (2001). 30 _{More on this in chapter 6.}

31

8 both those produced by the author and by the readers of the text. This will both demonstrate the value of charting the poetics of a video game as a starting point for academic research and result in a model for WoW that elucidates the game’s construction and the effects it produces in its players. Drawing the perimeters of a theoretical poetic model for WoW as a foundation for further studies ranging from hermeneutic to ideological analyses, will prevent disjointed, sectional research and build towards a broader model for the emerging — yet academically fragmented — field of game studies.32 Games are truly the new media, and this dissertation will be the first, important step to move beyond literature, and map the poetics of gaming.

32

9

2. “It’s Not About History, It’s About Power”

In order to properly catalogue the stylistic and narrative techniques used in World of Warcraft, the game must first be situated in the history of video games in general, and digital

roleplaying games in particular. The history of roleplaying games (RPGs) should be divorced from that of video games. World of Warcraft has obvious thematic and historical ties to tabletop roleplaying games that pre-date video games by centuries, as they have their own roots in tabletop miniature army games that trace back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite these classical roots, there are modern technological and social elements in

WoW that demand new modes of critical engagement. These modern elements have a history

of their own, as their foundations lay in the networked, multiplayer computer game environments that first emerged in the late seventies. The most significant of these early environments was MUD (Multi User Dungeon), which was created in 1978 by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw.33 Inspired by earlier text-based fantasy video games like Adventure (1975), MUD featured a world that was more than a mere backdrop to gameplay: it actively encouraged its players to shape their gaming universe and its narrative through roleplaying, sharing quests, loot squabbles and even the defeat of other players. Where previous “games” like Adventure were, in fact, closer to digital puzzles than digital games, MUD was a true digital multiplayer roleplaying game.34 MUD creator Bartle felt the constrained narrative format of adventure games could not work in the setting of a multi-player game. He writes: “the world had to assume dominance, not the problem solving.”35

Bartle’s blending of the setting of the game and its narrative complicated issues of authorship and ownership of the text. In MUD, the “boundaries between developers and players, producers and consumers were either non-existent or irrelevant.”36 Reaching the highest level in MUD did not simply end the player’s quest to become a witch or wizard; it made him or her an administrator as well. Through narrative world building, players became both users and creators,

simultaneously authors and readers of the text.

33

Rene Glas, Battlefields of Negotiation: Control, Agency and Ownership in World of Warcraft (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 21.

34

Puzzles are logic structures to be solved with the assistance of clues, where games are fluent, changing with the player’s actions. See Greg Costikyan, “I Have No Words & I Must Design,” in Katie Salen and Eric

Zimmerman, The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 193. 35

Richard Bartle, “From MUDs to MMORPGs: The History of Virtual Worlds.” in L. Klastrup, J. Hunsinger and M. Allen (eds.), International Handbook of Internet Research (New York: Springer, 2010), 25.

10 While mainframe-based gaming like MUD was interrogating notions of video game authorship in the late seventies, the emergence of arcade and console gaming during that time mainly revolved around the evolution of game narrative and gaming communities. The timing of these developments is directly related to technological progress. Computer games had existed since A.S. Douglas’ 1952 Tic-Tac-Toe, yet it was not until the launch of the integrated circuit in 1971 that mainframe games could truly enter the market place, both in the form of digital arcades, and home consoles.37 Home consoles and game arcades were, from the start, in an active state of war as both competed for the same player. As technology and game design took flight, this fraught relationship contributed vital elements to the development of the modern multi-player game. The first of these elements, the gaming community, has its roots in the video game arcades. Where home consoles were mainly aimed at solo gaming, arcades were not merely a place to play, but also a way to meet friends. This allowed new gamers to construct interpersonal relationships based on a shared interest in video games. The communities that developed around video games did not disappear when arcades started to lose the commercial battle versus home consoles. Rather, they found new life and expression in bulletin board systems (BBS), MUD and current online communities like those in Second

Life and World of Warcraft. Home consoles were at the root of a different element of the

modern game, the complex narrative. Arcade games were restricted to a few minutes of fast action in order to maximize profits, enticing the players to insert another coin and try again. As a result, they were limited narratively. Though early arcade games like Pac Man featured cut-scenes between its various levels, the short playing time and repetitive nature of arcade games meant there was no place for complex storylines. Home consoles, however, operated on a different profit model and had the freedom to expand the gaming world with multi-screen, multi-level strategy games with developed storylines. Creating brand loyalty and player involvement increased future sales. Thus, where arcades developed the communities that now inhabit online multiplayer games, home consoles developed the narrative

experiences that kept players coming back for more.

The birth of the micro-processor did more than simply popularize games: it shaped the future of game design. Where mainframe games like Adventure were created by a small academic crowd, and consumed by a limited number of players, the arcade and console games that followed were developed for a much broader audience. Walter Benjamin predicted that media technologies based on reproducibility would allow consumers to appropriate and

37

11 contextualize cultural forms.38 Indeed, early consoles like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1982) and the Commodore 64 (1982) used a straightforward programming language called BASIC, bringing the ability to program and design games into the homes of millions.39 As a result, the commodification of video games quickly expanded the gaming audience and subsequently lowered the threshold for programmers, eroding the distinctions between consumers and producers. Like MUD had done earlier, this narrowed the gap between the authors and players of video games.

This development, however, was temporary. The same easily accessible, basic

technology that allowed early consumer-designers to participate in the narrative limited them creatively. A flood of inferior quality games drove consumers away from home consoles and the market crashed completely. Recovery took years and came at a cost as new consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System sacrificed the earlier democratization of design. To ensure a higher quality of games, Nintendo restricted third-party developers to only five releases each year, simultaneously barring the production of similar games for other manufacturers. The subsequent rise of a limited number of competing game consoles, each with a select number of titles which were exclusively platform- and brand-tied, rendered independent game designers all but powerless.40 Big brands like Nintendo, Sega and Electronic Arts now controlled and owned the video game market. Though game design flourished in the new system, as the overall level of games greatly increased, the designers themselves were subsumed by the brands that employed them. Brands became the designers, and even now a great game author like Shigeru Miyamoto, the main creative force behind best-selling game franchises like Donkey Kong, Super Mario and Zelda, is barely known outside the gaming community.41

Against the backdrop of these trends of commercialization and company branding, multiplayer roleplaying games in the vein of MUD took flight. Where corporations had re-opened the gap between players and designers in the console world, a similar process took place during the development of these games. The development and upkeep of continuous

38

See Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968) and Ryan Moore, “Digital Reproducibility and the Culture Industry: Popular Music and the Adorno-Benjamin Debate,” Fast Capitalism 9.1 (2012).

39

Matt Fox, The Video Games Guide (Jefferson: McFarland, 2013), 357.

40 _{This trend continued for decades. Though recent games are often released on multiple platforms, many of} the iconic game franchises that were released in the eighties and nineties were exclusive to a single platform. 41

12 online games required great amounts of time and money, as well as bandwidth and server capacity. It was only the infusion of corporate funds in the nineties that allowed new

introductions to the genre to be produced in rapid succession. This accelerated development and following the releases of the first fully three-dimensional multiplayer RPGs Neverwinter

Nights (1991) and Meridian 59 (1995) came Richard Garriott’s Ultima Online (UO). UO was

a fantasy roleplaying game set in the universe previously created in Garriott’s Ultima games, and its familiar game world introduced a large number of new players to the new concept of what would be called a Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, or MMORPG. With a solid group of consumers invested in the genre, UO was quickly followed by Everquest (1999), which pushed profit-based game design to a new level. Everquest rigorously broke with the player-developer relations that MUD had introduced decades before. Rather than participants in the construction of the contents of the game, players were relegated once more to consumer status, paying a monthly fee for continued access to the game world. Everquest even monetized the gaming community as it allowed in-game assets to be traded for real money, blending real and virtual communities in a highly regulated framework.

World of Warcraft was launched in November 2004, a MMORPG set in a game

universe of which the contours had been outlined in three earlier strategy games under the

Warcraft moniker.42 Publishing company Blizzard modeled WoW after existing games like

Everquest, both in terms of game play and its subscription-based profit model.43 WoW tells a

story of a complex world, in which two rivaling factions, “the Horde” and “the Alliance” are not just fighting each other, but also have to combat a greater threat to the world of Azeroth. Players choose a new character from one of these opposing factions and, like in other RPGs, quest and fight their way to higher levels, either alone or in small groups. Reaching the maximum level requires significant time investment, after which the player can continue to improve by gaining new weapons, armor or skill points, ultimately preparing to fight the evil force threatening to destroy the world. As in Everquest, the most powerful enemies in the game cannot be defeated alone, requiring players to coordinate groups of up to forty adventurers, creating game communities that are organized in “guilds.”44

This combination of a familiar storyworld, a complex narrative, the mix of single-player and group-gaming, as

42

Though, like WoW, the first three Warcraft games all took place in the world of Azeroth, these were level-based games. Players were unable to fully explore the gameworld, with the game space limited to narrow pre-programmed boundaries.

43

WoW strongly differs from Everquest in certain areas, most importantly in its far less severe punishment for player death and its reduced “downtime,” the time of rest needed between gameplay encounters.

44

13 well as the previously successful game formula led to unparalleled instant critical and

commercial success.45

45

To illustrate the scope of WoW’s success: more than 100 million accounts were created in 244 countries in the decade since the game’s launch, with the scripted in-game text currently at around six million words. The game has grossed over ten billion dollars, making it the highest grossing video game of all time. See

14

3. “Orcs Can Write?”

The interpretative value of locating a text’s author has been the subject of much academic debate. In the Romantic model of authorship, the author is seen as an independent,

empowered, creative agent. This is tied to the concept of a text as the “voice of a single person, the author ‘confiding’ in us.”46

The concept of an autonomous, singular author has been critiqued by Roland Barthes, who sees a literary text as a vessel, a “tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture.”47

He notes that texts are not “messages from an Author-God,” but rather a “multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.”48

In “What Is an Author?” (1969) Michel Foucault announces the disappearance of the “author function.” He moves away from authorial intentionalism, instead choosing to emphasize the various modes of existence of discourse by asking

questions centering on circulation and appropriation.49 Theorists like Wolfgang Iser also shift focus away from the author as the primary source of a text’s meaning, noting that readers act as co-creators of any work by supplying the unwritten, implied parts of the text. For reader-response theorists like Iser, a text cannot be understood separately from the results it produces in its reader.50 Challenges to authorial authority seem particularly relevant to an interactive game where the narrative is, at least partially, produced by the choices players make. Barthes’ definition also fits World of Warcraft, full as it is of collaboratively produced textual

fragments, myriad pop-cultural references and various modes of play. Therefore, locating authorship in WoW facilitates comprehension of the collective authorial process, the players’ attribution of authorial agency and the over-determined relationship between players and creators in the continuous production of serialized narratives.

In his analysis of complex television shows, Jason Mittell outlines the various issues with authorial intent, nonetheless noting that “viewers use authorship as an interpretative

46

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” in Image – Music – Text (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977), 143. 47

Ibid. For more on the Romantic author and the Renaissance’s break with authorship as mimetic composition, see Andrew Bennett, The Author (London: Routledge, 2004), 58.

48

Ibid., 146. 49

Intentionalism finds authorial intent particularly relevant for the analysis of texts. Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” in Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology (New York: New Press, 1998).

50

15 framework.”51

Mittell describes various configurations of textual authorship, distinguishing between three types. First, he outlines classic literary authorship by origination, where a “singular creator devises every word.”52

A second model of authorship is linked to creative authority and responsibility, like a movie director ultimately making every final decision, from sound mixing to editing. A third variety, which Mittell links to the production of modern television shows, is authorship by management, which evokes “the leadership and oversight that managers take in business and sports teams.”53 Mittell’s proposed configurations raise the question of where WoW‘s authorial agency is located and how these configurations of

authorship apply to complex games in general.

The first hurdle in locating authorial agency in a game’s text is related to its collaborative production process. While the earliest video games were often the result of individual producers who were responsible for the game’s code, gameplay, story lines and art work, contemporary games like World of Warcraft feature unprecedented amounts of artists collaborating to create elements of animation, gameplay, music and acting. Not surprisingly, then, the original release of WoW credited a long list of authors, from an executive producer to a lead animator and a creative director. Though executive producer and Blizzard vice-president Mike Morhaine ticks many of the boxes for Mittell’s concept of authorship by management, authorship could easily be located elsewhere. Game designers Jeffrey Kaplan and Rob Pardo fit Mittell’s authorship model of creative authority, as they were chiefly responsible for the design aspects of WoW’s 2004 release. Interestingly, both Kaplan and Pardo are former Everquest players who were invited to join the design team because of their gaming expertise. Thus, as avid readers of the “prequel” to WoW, both designers have

straddled the boundary between reader and author from the very beginning. Yet Pardo himself refutes authorial agency, noting the influence of “not even just all the game designers - here at Blizzard we really try to involve as many people in the game design as we can.”54

This collaborative production subverts certain traditional notions of authorship. To illustrate, Blizzard employs several writers of game dialogue, both for the interactive quest components as well as programmed dialogue that players can catch glimpses of while passing by.

Simultaneously, however, a “lore master” tracks the broader story and sets the scene for the

51

See “Authorship” in Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, prepublication edition (MediaCommons Press, 2012).

52 _{Mittell notes that this is an obvious oversimplification of the writing process, ignoring the impact of} feedback, editing and intertextual influences.

53

Mittell, “Authorship.”

16 greater struggles, which include the conflict between Horde and Alliance races, and both factions’ uneasy alliance in an ongoing battle against a greater evil.55

This underlying

narrative of conflict is then strengthened by in-game encounters or events, be it through short quests or broader group battles, for which a lead encounter designer is responsible. There is also a lead zone designer, who is responsible for the quest and story progression in each individual world area, as well as for the look and feel of certain areas.

Perhaps as a result of this layered authorship, as well as the commercial pressures outlined in the previous chapter, the authorship of WoW is sometimes located by its players in the brand of the game’s parent company, Blizzard Entertainment, rather than in any single authorial agent. As Mittell observes, a reader’s conception of authorship shapes the process of reception and comprehension.56 This holds true for WoW, as many players participate in heated discussions regarding the storylines and general game changes that might be

implemented. Entire websites and forums are dedicated to analyzing the cryptic remarks and clues provided by Blizzard staff regarding the development of the story and the narrative of future game patches or expansions.57 In these ongoing debates, an authorial agent generally features prominently and agency is almost without exception lodged with Blizzard as a whole, rather than the individual designers or writers whose words are being parsed.58 To illustrate, in a recent discussion on MMO Champion, a major MMO fan-site, participants in a thread called “How will WoW end?” debate potential final chapters of WoW’s story.59

One player states: “considering Blizzard wrote the lore they can obviously keep churning out stories until there are none left.” Another poster adds: “Blizzard takes a lot of their Old God lore from Lovecraft.” Even more telling is another thread on the same website, which discusses an interview given by lead game designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas regarding the storylines of the upcoming WoW expansion Warlords of Draenor. There is harsh criticism of these

upcoming narrative developments and yet critical comments are directed at Blizzard, rather than game designer Hazzikostas. One poster writes: “Plot-induced stupidity. Blizzard

55

Each WoW expansion initially followed a classic fantasy narrative of players versus a world-threatening evil. In later expansions narratives become less straightforward as the authors start to explore less binary concepts. See chapters 6 and 7.

56

Mittell, “Authorship.”

57 _{The game is updated through patches and expansions. Patches are free periodic updates that either consist} of bug fixes and the tweaking of certain elements of game mechanics or the release of game content that fits within or adds to a particular expansion’s storyline. Expansions are entirely new chapters in the game that must be purchased. Expansions feature new geographical spaces (or “zones”) to explore and present new storylines. 58

Since brands are conceptually singular entities rather than collectives, Lev Manovich sees echoes of the romantic concept of the author with an emphasis on solitary genius. Lev Manovich, “Who Is the Author” at http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/models_of_authorship.doc.

59

17 overuses it a little bit too much.” Another player adds: “Has Blizzard completely forgotten their own lore or are they just doing this to completely butcher the story further?” Rather than assign fragmented authorial agency to specific designers, readers reconstruct Blizzard into an anthropomorphic character imbued with authorial agency in order to facilitate critical

engagement with the text.60

Games, it seems, move beyond Mittell’s proposed configurations for television, as authorship in WoW seems to be mostly linked to the related signifier of commercial

ownership. This corporate authorship is not exclusive to video games. Certain film studios, like Disney or MGM have subsumed the individual artists that produce their texts. Similarly, a television network like MTV constructs or augments the identity of many of its programs, taking on an authorial role in the process.61 Unlike these previous examples though, for video games the link between attributed authorship and commercial ownership is the norm, not the exception. Interestingly, though players assign authorial agency to Blizzard, they do not simply accept the author’s authority. Over the years, WoW has seen many changes to both its underlying storylines and the way the narrative unfolds during the playing process. For its third expansion, the choice was made to wipe the slate clean, modifying all the original zones of the first release of the game (lovingly dubbed “vanilla WoW” by players). This change was intended, in part, to streamline the leveling process for new players, bringing them up to speed on both the narrative and the new modes of play without forcing them to experience all of the old content. The wipe was shoehorned in narratively by a cataclysmic event taking place in the game that quite literally destroyed or disfigured many of the old game zones and storylines. This incited player backlash in the form of vocal criticism and the rise of privately-run pirated “vanilla” servers, where the game is played in its original configuration.

Further complicating the ascription of authorship are the interactive elements inherent to every video game.Espen Aarseth points out that the term “interactivity” is used in such a large variety of contexts that it is redundant in an academic debate.62 To clarify, in the context of this chapter on authorship, the term “interactivity” describes the process in which the player is involved in the construction of the narrative game experience. Clearly, player choices can significantly impact the in-game narrative, suggesting that the authorial voice in video games can at least partially be located in their players’ agency. WoW, for example, does

60 _{It is worth noting that this also allows for continuous engagement with the author. Lead designers and lore} masters may change over the years, but Blizzard remains a constant authorial force.

61

Catherine Johnson, “The Authorial Fiction of the Television Channel,” in Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson (eds.), Companion to Media Authorship (Hoboken: Wiley and Sons, 2013), 282.

62

18 not even start until the player chooses and names a character. This unavoidable player

selection of race, class, physical appearance and name has a multitude of consequences, from the player’s allies and geographical starting area to his or her in-game skills. Though many of the early game quests are similar in structure, each starting zone has a distinct landscape and each race a unique storyline. Therefore, right from the start of the game, the player’s choice for either a Horde or Alliance race determines to a great extent the content of the game’s narrative. Game designers, then, can be seen as creators of an interactive system, rather than authors of a singular text. This is a conceptualization of interactivity as the ongoing

construction of narratives by a video game’s “reader.” Mark P. Wolf succinctly summarizes this theory: rather than “merely watching the actions of the main character, as we would in a film, with every outcome of events predetermined when we enter the theater, we are given a surrogate character (the player-character) through which we can participate in and alter the events in the game’s diegetic world.”63

Wolf’s definition of interactive authorship is not without problems, though. In his analysis of the game Alan Wake (2010), Michael Fuchs rightly points out the inherent flaws in this theory, reiterating Lev Manovich’s supposition that, “before, we could read a sentence of a story or a line in a poem and think of other lines, images, memories. Now, interactive media asks us to click on a highlighted sentence to go to another sentence. In short, we are asked to follow pre-programmed, objectively existing associations.”64 Though events can be altered, all permutations are scripted into the narrative. Therefore, what some authors consider narrative freedom can just as easily be labeled pre-designed or constrained, as the game does not allow for actions that have not been coded into its very fabric. Similarly, Robert Alan Brookey notes that the player may move the narrative forward, but that his or her agency is part of the conditions of production.65 However, as will be discussed in the coming chapters, both WoW’s narrative and its reception among the game’s players are not so easily confined to a narrow interpretation.

This tension between player choice and game design touches on the broader debate between narratology and ludology that was outlined in the first chapter. Ludologists reject the primacy of narrative. Espen Aarseth argues that in computer games “there is no such thing as

63

Mark J. P. Wolf, The Medium of the Video Game (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 93. 64

See Michael Fuchs, “My Name is Alan Wake: Crafting Narrative Complexity in the Age of Transmedia Storytelling,” in Gretchen Papazian, Game On Hollywood!: Essays on the Intersection of Video Games and Cinema (Jefferson: McFarland, 2013), 144-55 and Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 61.

19 the unfolding of a predetermined story.”66

Aarseth sees games as inherently configurative, using the example of the popular first person shooter Doom to conclude that a game does not progress if the player does not play. This may be true for many games which, without player input, are no more than context, but it does not necessarily apply to WoW. By entering a game world that is always moving, a WoW reader may experience narrative even while standing completely still in a capital city. Though the player is often an essential part of the forward thrust of the game and certain parts of the narrative can only be experienced, or unlocked, after completing specific tasks, he or she does not possess full authorial agency. Thus, narrative may exist independent of the game’s players, but not all narrative can be

experienced without the players’ configurative actions. Authorship then, is a problematic term in the case of WoW, and perhaps all video games, as any conception of it threatens to both oversimplify the creative process for designers and ignore the very real involvement of the text’s “readers” in its continuous production.67

Nonetheless, these imperfect notions of authorship will help navigate the complexities of WoW as the next few chapters will take a closer look at textual boundaries and the layered discursive production of narrative.

66

Espen Aarseth, "Aporia and Epiphany in Doom and The Speaking Clock: The Temporarily of Ergodic Art," in Marie-Laure Ryan, Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 35.

67

20

4. “And Then There Were Goblins”

Establishing the boundaries of the text of video games is not a straightforward process. In the case of WoW, initial complexity can be found in the game’s intertextual setting. Even the title

World of Warcraft suggests that the roots of the game’s storyworld lie outside the game itself.

Indeed, the story of Azeroth is not simply limited to WoW, but rather told across various Blizzard-produced games, novels and films. Whether this actually expands the scope of the game’s text is the subject of some debate. Espen Aarseth argues that these aspects of the game are irrelevant to the game experience, since games are self-contained.68 In Aarseth’s view games cannot be intertextual because both the meaning of the text and the narrative cues the player may receive are independent from — and sometimes even counter to — the mechanics or goal of the game. After all, playing chess with toys or stones rather than traditional chess pieces does not change the essence of the game.69 Though these arguments are valid for a game like Tetris, WoW is infinitely more complex. The intertextual elements of the game cannot be separated from the game experience because they frequently are the game experience. In WoW, classic game elements like quests or puzzles are made up of story fragments and textual and visual references to broader Warcraft narratives. Furthermore, the completion of quests rewards the player with more than just in-game currency: it progresses the story and unlocks additional narrative. This constant narrative thrust makes particular sense in light of WoW’s subscriber model. Since Blizzard charges WoW players on a monthly basis, the text has to be designed to keep drawing the reader back in, never fully completing the game and always coming back for new quests, battles or stories. Though different players play for different reasons,70 experiencing the entirety of the story is one common reason to return. Consequently intertextuality and transmedia story telling are simply good business.71

WoW remediates classic literary genre conventions in order to tap into the player’s

existing intertextual knowledge.72 The game employs many widely known fantasy races and

68

Aarseth, “Genre Trouble.” 69

Jesper Juul, “Game Time, Event Time, Themability,” Lecture at CGDT Conference, Copenhagen, March 1, 2001. Quoted in Aarseth, “Genre Trouble.”

70

For more on various player types and reward systems, see Richard Bartle, “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs,” Journal of MUD Research 1 (1996).

71 _{Further adding to the commercial bonus of promoting a continued interest in the storyworld of WoW are the} potential sales of spin-off franchise games like the digital card game Hearthstone.

72

21 settings that will trigger an existing knowledge base in the player. Some of these cues are straightforward; orcs, dwarves, goblins and trolls, for example, have expansive literary histories, from Norse mythology to J.R.R. Tolkien. Consequently, no player will start the game unaware of at least some of these connotations. Some of the game text is therefore built on the foundations of prior extra-textual knowledge. Interestingly, this allows the creators of

WoW to play with reader expectations. Some are simply confirmed or reinforced, like the

orcs’ classic fanged looks and lust for power, the dwarves’ beards, pick-axes and obsession with building and mining, as well as the goblins’ small stature, green skin and reckless inventiveness. Other genre connotations are turned on their heads, allowing the creators to emphasize certain discordant traits. The Tauren, for example, physically resemble Homer’s classic Minotaur and their alliance with the orcs of WoW further hints at their brutal nature. Yet, the bull-like Tauren are herbalist, shaman-like creatures that get their strength from both physical attributes and their attunement to nature.73 Demonstrating how this subversion of genre conventions can rattle readers, one player comments on the WoW forums: “Blizzard knew that they needed a Horde Druid race. So Tauren suddenly cared a lot about Nature and preservation and such, essentially becoming big furry Night Elves.” 74 The Night Elves’ link to nature is more accepted among the player base, as it has a long rich literary history and neatly fits with classic fantasy genre lore. Demonstrating that these genre connotations can be so pervasive they can lead players to reject the expected mode of play, a Night Elf player with the character name Everbloom felt so strongly about the character’s link to nature that s/he reached level 85 — the maximum level at that time — without killing anything.75 Thus, the game can hint at a massive cache of existing genre discourse by a simple choice of name, color or fang, and simultaneously subvert elements of it to highlight certain narrative elements or generate additional player interest and debate, discursively producing additional game text. Intertextual discourse can also be found in WoW’s many references to popular culture. Some of these are Easter eggs, hidden messages or jokes for players willing to unearth them. There is a captain of a goblin-built submarine who is named “Jewels” Verne, and a Tuskarr named Wally with a Hozen carpenter friend on a small island in Kun Lai who recites parts of Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” Other references are to the WoW community

73

Tauren is even an anagram of nature. 74

It is worth noting that other players dispute this comment, rightly pointing out that Tauren have been pledged to their “Earth Mother” deity in all Blizzard games. Some players justify the Tauren’s controversial love of nature by alluding to a different literary convention, that of the noble-savage. See

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/9573548741.

22 itself, like the items that drop from a boss named Ordos, which feature the names of

prominent players like Anafielle, a WoW blogger and Damien, the owner of popular fan-site Icy Veins. Not all references are positive, as demonstrated by a character named Adamman the trader, a scripted, computer-controlled non-player character (or NPC) dressed in rags found in the sewers of Dalaran. Adamman is the name of a player who was stripped of his high-level equipment by Blizzard after it was discovered he cheated his way to a high rank by buying wins over other players. Some referential discourse provides additional narrative depth, or clues to what might happen. The Uldum desert zone is full of references to Indiana Jones movies, ensuring players expect snake traps, cave-ins and various statue-related puzzles. Other clues are more sinister, like tortured corpses dangling from the trees on the road to Scarlet Monastery, an area featuring inquisition type religious fanatics, or a group of children in Goldshire that stand perfectly still in the shape of a pentagram. Thus, these references can enhance or deepen the narrative or provide additional narrative pleasures for players.76

The intertextuality of WoW, though transmedia storytelling, dialogue with genre conventions and various ties to popular culture, firmly places the boundaries of the text outside the game itself. Yet the expected boundaries of WoW’s discourse are stretched within the game as well. As discussed in the previous chapter on authorship, games do more than create textual stories. Discussing a broader definition of the text of a game, Henry Jenkins notes that “game designers don’t simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces.”77

Jenkins describes a new mode of spatial or environmental storytelling, which he terms narrative architecture or spatial storytelling. He notes how spaces in a game can evoke pre-existing narrative associations. In WoW, this is ubiquitous and these associations to back-stories can be extensive. One such example is the Ruins of Lordaeron, an area right above the Undercity, capital city of the Forsaken. In Warcraft 3, players experience the fall of the flourishing human city of Lordaeron and the death of its king at the hands of his son in great detail. When this same city is entered in WoW, players in possession of memories created in

Warcraft 3 experience additional layers of narrative. For them, Lordaeron is a tragic site of

loss as the ruins are all that is left of the once thriving city they recall. As said, this is not unique to WoW. Games often take place in a broader storyworld, fleshed out through various cultural texts, allowing for transmedia narratives. Yet even for players previously unaware of

76

For more on enhanced narrative pleasures beyond simple plot exposition, see Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

77

23 Lordaeron’s tragic story and the slaying of King Terenas by his son Arthas, the space still provides embedded narrative information. Fading bells clang eerily in the entryway, as ghosts roam the ruins. Hushed whispers follow the player around the courtyard and a bloodstain near what’s left of a throne tells a chilling tale. For both experienced players and newcomers, in-game environmental cues may hint at a pre-existing story or contain references to a broader transmedia narrative.

Related to the concept of narrative architecture is the discourse found in the structural design of WoW’s zones. In a discussion of Stranglethorn Vale, a jungle zone for leveling players, Richard Bartle outlines how location drives narrative and quest progression.78 Bartle notes how one particular hunter quest chain, asking the player to kill various types of wildlife, acts as a narrative “net,” reeling in players of various levels and directing them slowly but surely southwards along the zone’s main road as the difficulty ramps up. When players have gained enough experience and strength, they are able to make the long trek to the southern-most tip of the map, where a brand new quest hub awaits. This southern area is the first real mixed zone, where players from both factions may fight each other to the death. The zone functions as a content trap, seemingly allowing players the freedom to choose their path, while still invisibly guiding them south through the zone, building up levels and confidence to prepare for the player combat that lies ahead. Additionally, the zone’s main road, a symbol of relative safety from roaming wildlife and monsters in lower level zones, is more frequently overrun by panthers, gorillas and trolls as the player moves south. Thus, the design of the area subtly informs the player that going south means leaving safety behind. It produces its own discourse, representing a turning point in the player’s overall journey, both in terms of gameplay and narrative. Seen in this light, design elements are not merely vehicles for the text, they are text themselves.

Music and sound effects also play an essential part WoW’s discourse. Each race’s starting area has a specific soundtrack, which contributes to the players’ constructed identity of the avatar. Further strengthening essentialist aspects of game music is the continuation of certain themes into the factions’ capitols. These themes, unlike hair color and character names, cannot be changed for the selected race and therefore have an instant impact on how each race is perceived by the reader.79 Where troll music features drums and Mongolian throat singing, the night elves have eerie female singers and the dwarf themes feature up-tempo horn

78

Richard Bartle, “The Hunter and the Hunted,” Qblog, May 17, 2009.

24 sections, heroic male choirs and melancholy string music. Thus, the music offers clues to the inherent character of the race without a single word being uttered. Reminiscent of the way musical instruments are used in classical compositions like Peter and the Wolf, musical elements also stand in for races, with the appearance of a particular cue like the

aforementioned drums alerting the player to the presence of trolls in a zone.80 This way, music sets the mood and tone for each individual race, zone or continent, and provides valuable information about an area before it is even fully explored. Musical themes can also link certain story elements together. For instance, classic WoW themes are used to tie newer, thematically different, zones to the older familiar content. Discussing the previous expansion,

Mists of Pandaria, senior director of audio Russell Brower explained that the soundtrack for

this new zone “needed an Asian overlay, but that the soundtrack was also an opportunity to remind us that we’re still in Azeroth. We shouldn’t go so far afield that it doesn’t feel like

Warcraft.”81 Thus the game’s music both provides its own narrative and ties textual fragments together to form a more coherent whole.

80

In Sergei Profokiev’s Peter and the Wolf each character has a particular instrument and a musical theme, with the oboe representing a duck, French horns portraying the wolf etcetera.

81

25

5. “Intercepting The Message”

The previous chapter illustrated how games produce discourse on a textual, procedural, aural and visual level. 82 Additionally, games are often tightly interwoven with contemporary culture, part of a transmedia franchise and linked to specific genres that possess inherent discursive elements. Yet the complexities of narrative analysis in video games do not end there. In the case of WoW, there are inherent configurative and interactive elements that play an important role. As Gerald Voorhees explains, the narrative of a game is partially

constructed by the player during gameplay, as he or she chooses from a catalog of discursive fragments provided by the game’s designers.83

This, combined with the multi-level discourse discussed in the previous chapter contributes to a multitude of textual elements. There is an inherent tension between the narrative that is embedded in the game by its creators, and the narrative that is configuratively produced through gameplay, what Clint Hocking terms “ludonarrative.”84

Further complicating the analysis of narrative is the presence of extra-textual discourse like fan-fiction and the additional creation of text through roleplaying. This chapter will take a closer look at some of these factors in order to clarify how supplementary discursive elements relate to the dominant narrative.

In the case of WoW, and all other MMORPGs, the game text is layered. The greater story of the game, often a story of good and evil, is told through multiple textual channels. Some of the most obvious of these texts come in the shape of quests. In WoW a player undertakes thousands of quests during the journey to the maximum level, and each of these quests offers a miniature storyline. These stories, taken collectively, add to the greater

narrative running through the game, but individual quests can be completely detached from it. At first glance, these texts are an easily identifiable source of narrative. Yet quests may offer discourse on additional levels. The first quests a player encounters set the scene, sometimes providing an origin story for the chosen race, and sometimes raising the stakes by outlining the inevitable task that lies ahead – the destruction of evil. Yet even the most simple of quests can take on greater meaning. A famous low level quest in the Barrens, called “Lost in Battle,” featured an orc called Mankrik. The quest was intended to remind the player of both the

82 _{For more on the discursive elements in the “cosmetics” of games, see Gerald Voorhees, “Discursive Games} and Gamic Discourses,” Communication+1 1.3 (2012).

83 Ibid.

26 destructive force of a pig-race called quillboars and the roots of the alliance between tauren and orcs. Mankrik asked players to find any sign of his missing wife, after sharing a chilling tale of war: “we battled in a small tauren camp when we were separated--she held three of the Bristlebacks off by herself. But the odds began to overwhelm us. I led some away only to see her overwhelmed by newcomers.” However, having appealed to the player for help after sharing this harrowing tale, Mankrik failed to provide any useful information regarding the geographical location of this tauren camp, or a description of his wife. Further complicating the search was that in-game the fallen wife can only be found by clicking on a barely visible object with the grisly name “beaten corpse.” Consequently, many players had trouble locating the object of this quest and ended up asking for directions to Mankrik’s wife in the zone’s general chat channel. These requests became so frequent that experienced players starting providing more and more elaborate answers to the Mankrik’s wife question, sometimes directing players halfway across the world. Later, “Mankrik’s wife” became a standard response to any question regarding a quest posed in general chat in any zone. Recognizing this new player meme, the game creators added references to it in a later expansion, with a ghost in an entirely different zone reminiscing about the Barrens, asking: “Hey, did anyone ever find out what happened with Mankrik's wife?” Thus, reader responses can shape the collective interpretation of even the most basic of textual elements, and invoke authorial responses, creating an over-determined relationship between author and reader. Aarseth suggests players autonomously pick a “path of traversal.”85

However, the Mankrik’s wife example demonstrates how players continuously engage with the text, negotiating the

meaning of the narrative. In turn, their responses may shape some of the future narratives that are produced by the game’s creators.86

Obviously this is not a process that is limited to games. At first glance, the evolution of “Mankrik’s wife” seems to underscore Frasca’s classification of games as sign-generating machines with the player in a central controlling position.87 Yet the over-determined

relationship at play here hews closer to classic literary reader response criticism, which emerged before the integrated circuit even saw the light of day.88 Underscoring the relevance of reader response theory at the expense of ergodic narratives in the case of WoW is the

85

According to Aarseth, this path consists of scriptons, picked from the available textons. 86

This is not unique to games. Serialized television shows have responded narratively to fan feedback in the past. In the show Lost, for example, two recently introduced characters were killed in an elaborate fashion as a direct response to fan criticism regarding their introduction.

87

Gonzalez Frasca, “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology,” in Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perrion, Video/Game/Theory (London: Routledge, 2003).

88