Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories: World Creation and Rhetorics of Myth in World of Warcraft

Publication Type  Journal Article
Year of Publication  2006
Authors  Krzywinska,Tanya
Journal Title  Games and Culture
Volume  1
Pagination  383-396
Abstract  

One of the pleasures of playing in the "World" of Warcraft is becoming part of its pervasive mythology. This article argues that to understand the game's formal, aesthetic, and structural specificity, its pleasures and potential meanings, it is essential to investigate how the mythic functions. The author shows that the mythic plays a primary role in making a consistent fantasy world in terms of game play, morality, culture, time, and environment. It provides a rationale for players' actions, as well as the logic that under- pins the stylistic profile of the game, its objects, tasks, and characters. In terms of the "cultural" environments of the game, the presence of a coherent and extensive myth scheme is core to the way differences and conflicts between races are organized. And, as a form of intertextual resonance, its mythology furnishes the game with a "thickness" of meaning that promotes, for players, a sense of mythological being as well as encouraging an in-depth textual engagement.

URL  http://gac.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/4/383
0

Free Registration

Registered users have the added benefit of being able to:

  • Search/filter the bibliography to find just the article you are looking for. You can search the computer games research bibliography by author, year, keyword, title or publication type.
  • Export references from the video games bibliography to a format suitable for your own work. Options currently include tagged and XML for Endnote users and BibTex for the rest of the world.
  • Post comments to discuss the paper or alert fellow researchers to other resources.
  • Add their own references using the 'create content' -> 'biblio' option in the block on the left.
  • NEW: Use the Biblio Search box located on the right hand of the page.
  • NEW: Browse by journal title, book title, author or keyword using the new Faceted Search tool.