Some of The Truants were gathered in Bergen 3rd and 4th of November, to work on an anthology on game research in World of Warcraft. Jill and Hilde are editing the book, which will be published in 2008, at MIT.
A guild name "The Truants" shouldn't be able to have a well-prepared workshop, but we did. It was disciplined, nice, all had taken time to write and read and gave thoughtful responses, and some even joined just because they thought it would be fun, not because they had to.
However, the moment we were off to play and raid, the discipline was blown away. For a group of very serious and professional scholars, The Truants are extremely undisciplined players. Gather them in a raid, and nobody listens to a word that's said. Everybody chooses to dance, run out in advance and get killed, or talk about something totally different. I wonder if renaming the guild "The Disicplined Players" would remake us all into smooth, calm and disciplined team players? It's almost worth trying... but not quite. I suspect the name of the guild echoed with too many of the members already at the very beginning, and a name change now will not help at all.
I was not part of the other non-serious activity, as I needed some sleep that week end, but Scott made a little film that makes us (them) look very serious and competent, at the shooting range. Here they all look dangerous, but not at all as if they are going on a raid. Nobody are dancing!
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6 comments:
It's actually remarkable, isn't it, the incongruence between our disciplined (sort of) scholarship and lack of discipline in play. Perhaps we use the game to use all those OTHER sides of ourselves.
THank you, anyway, for your longlasting patience with us all - and I hope you get a chance to play truant a bit too :)
Hi Jill
I'm currently researching gendered representations in WOW (mostly because it is my latest addiction and I want a way to play while I work lol).
I'm just wondering if you have done much research already in this area or have contacts who may have explored gendered/racial/species identities and interrealtionships
cheers
Gyps
Hello gyps
As you might notice, this is an old post, so I don't think Jill will look in and respond. However, if you check out the book a lot of the Truants contributed to, you'll find that Hilde G. Corneliussen has written of exactly this. I'll also recomment Beyond barbie and mortal combat .
Hi Torill,
thanks for getting back to me so quickly and for your book suggestions - both books look like exactly what I'm looking for!
Unfortunately neither are available in my uni library and I don't have the time before my essay is due in to buy them from the states, but I hope to do my honours and maybe postgrad studies in this area in the future and will definitely invest in the books then.
Thanks again
Just a quick note as to getting the books - check your local amazon store. I find that books arrive much faster from amazon.co.uk for instance, rather than from the states.
Also, there's an article I wrote with Hilde, and you should check if there are papers available online from the Women in games conferences.
Hi Torill,
just wanted to thank you for all the leads you sent me including the women in games site and the excellent article you co-wrote with Hilde.
I certainly found a lot of useful info in the links to cite - especially with the previous research that has been done in MMORPGs.
I appreciate and value your knowledge and expertise in the area.
cheers
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