OPINION: Cloak of +7 Community: 'World of Warcraft' from a sociological view

Trevor Hansen

Issue date: 11/13/07 Last Updated: 11/15/07

Hi everyone. My name is Trevor. I’m a recovering gamer-hater.

Once upon a time, I decried “World of Warcraft” as a social plague. Affectionately known by the acronym "WoW," this online role-playing game seemed to be eating the lives of roughly one-third of all Whitworth students. Appalled by its pervasiveness, I sneered at players of WoW and mocked their gamer-speak. In my eyes, they were abandoning interaction with real people, membership in real community, for no better reason than to guide their character to the proverbial “Next Level.”

So there I sat, in my Seat of +10 Haughtiness, smugly secure in my judgment of WoW-heads everywhere.

The truth, my friends, is that I was wrong. I understand now my criticisms were born out of my own insecurities, and that “World of Warcraft” can, in fact, offer its players a healthy community.

At first, it was easy for me to believe that my own electronic pursuits – primarily homework and chatting with my fiancee online – were somehow a better excuse for abstaining from direct social interactions. This was a view reinforced by other non-gamers, who would tell me, “At least you have a good reason to be in front of your computer.”

Eventually, those assurances began to sound hollow. If I compared my social life to the social life of the average gamer, mine actually came out on the bottom. Because of my borderline unhealthy addiction to A's, I was missing out on more social interaction than the gamers were.

This realization lead to another: my condemnation of "World of Warcraft" was a classic example of group socialization and ingroup-outgroup conflict.

Sociologically speaking, an “ingroup” is any group to which you, as a member, are connected to in a particularly strong way – think a sports team, a youth group, or a social clique. People your group feels contempt or antagonism toward are your "outgroup."

As any intro-level Sociology text will inform you, the existence of ingroups often necessitates the existence of outgroups. This makes sense. After all, we are defined as much by who we aren't as by who we are: you can’t have guys without girls, jocks without geeks, atheists without theists.

On campus, gamers are the definitive outgroup, mocked or derided by almost every other group on campus. As a student, your social status can bump up several notches simply by avoiding the designation “gamer.” Mocking gamers is on par with choosing ugly friends just to make yourself look better by comparison: a coldly calculated social move.

Although I still don’t play “World of Warcraft,” and probably never will, I’ve gotten to know a lot of gamers over the last year. In fact, I live on Arend’s 2nd East, Whitworth’s “Gamer Hall,” so I’m practically surrounded by virtual Night Elves, Paladins, and other various pixilated minions of doom.

You want to know a secret? The gamers do have a community – and it’s thriving.

Emile Durkheim, a French theorist widely regarded as one of Sociology’s founding fathers, argued that healthy community involves two facets: regulation and integration. Regulation refers to the rules of conduct a given community puts into place; integration refers to the process through which individuals learn to function socially within a given community.

The gamer subculture has both of these facets. There are regulations governing online interactions – serious rules, against offensive material posted on forums, and a commonly accepted set of “manners,” including the general prohibition against upper-level players preying on rookies. There is also a process of integration, as gamers (and those around them) pick up on a distinct jargon that includes words like “Pwnd,” “Aggro,” and “Pyroblast.”

If all that sounds a bit technical – like I’m studying a Native Gamer Tribe in the Wild Halls of 2nd East – just think about the groups you identify yourself with. Every group, from football players to cops, from Philosophy majors to baristas, have unique regulations and a shared culture built on jargon, common experience, and camaraderie.

In Sociology, a lot is said about “ethnocentrism.” We generally use the term to describe cultural biases on an international scale. When you boil it down, though, ethnocentrism is the blind superiority felt by ingroups, at the expense of outgroups. When I sat in judgment of WoW, I was basically practicing this cultural sin.

Here’s something I’ve learned: gamers are some of the least ethnocentric people out there. Although I don’t play "World of Warcraft," I’m always welcome to join them at late night. They’re always willing to share the pizza they order during a late night raid on enemy territory, and the majority of their jokes are at their own expense, not aimed at some other group.

In short, gamers are some of the nicest people I know. Maybe this is because they vent their negative energies toward digital Orcs. Or maybe, at the bottom of the social totem pole, they just don’t care. Whatever the reason, gamers on the whole are friendlier, more accepting and less pretentious than the "jocks," the "preps," the "skaters" or any other group.

I will grant you that involvement in “World of Warcraft,” or any game, can be taken too far – but that's the case with any subculture, a fact we often lose sight of.

The truth is, gamers build community at least as well as the rest of us. Just because they interact through a computer instead of a Frisbee or a cell phone doesn’t make their community any less legitimate or functional.

So there you have it: the realizations of a recovering WoW-hater.

Thanks for listening.

Trevor Hansen is an opinions columnist and a junior majoring in sociology. Contact him at trevor.hansen@whitworthian.com.

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