Yo dawg I herd you like networks

Hey guys, this is a paper I wrote for a class called "The Information Society" which I wanted to put on my blog for various reasons. I had a lot of fun writing it.

Networks within networks tangled with networks: Mechanisms of human connection in and around the World of Warcraft

In a virtual world, “importance” and “reality” are constructed in the same way they always have been—socially. So we must keep in mind that although networked computers allow the existence of these virtual worlds, it is the human networks within and surrounding these worlds that gives them their true significance. As Edward Castronova has stated, “Everything that happens in a synthetic world is the consequence of the interactions of human minds” (2005, p. 48). It can even be argued that virtual worlds are much more a “meeting of minds” than the physical world, as rather than being governed by the laws of nature, a virtual world is governed by a mind—a developer. Just as human minds are unpredictable, the networks we form online are chaotic and fractal, as one network, like those in the game World of Warcraft, can generate subnetworks and metanetworks through its importance to players.

One goal of the developers of a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG), such as World of Warcraft (WoW) is to tell a story, a story which is the world that players inhabit. Within this story—the story of Azeroth, a world invaded by demons, corrupted by malevolent influences, attacked and defended by dragons—players form social networks, often joining formal organizations called “guilds” in order to find players with similar play styles as themselves, or perhaps creating a guild in order to play with real-life acquaintances. These are formed by members of the same basic in-game network, i.e., the same realm (or server), and the same faction, Alliance or Horde. The guild is the most common persistent subnetwork found within WoW. Guild members have in-game methods of communication and incentives for grouping together rather than with strangers. As discussed by Williams et. al., guilds can generally be classified as belonging to one of four types: social, raid, PVP (player vs. player) or roleplaying (2006). In addition, guilds vary in size from very small (it is possible to have a guild with only one player) to very large (due to various game mechanics, the maximum number of players in a guild is 1,000 (McCurley, 2010)). Guilds facilitate gameplay chiefly by providing a group to play with, but their importance to players is largely social. Williams et. al. conclude that a major factor in the guild’s importance to players is as a source of social capital, similar to a civic organization where individuals may have close friends in the organization but also take advantage of a formal organizational structure to meet strangers and interact with casual acquaintances. It is, by the way, important to note that I have classified guilds as a “subnetwork” because all the characters in a guild must be a part of the same in-game network. The players, however, are connected to each other by more than just their WoW accounts; guilds often have websites with forums, use VoIP services to communicate by voice, and contact each other by email, instant messaging, or even SMS and telephones. It is also not precisely true to say that these subnetworks draw from preexisting realm/faction networks; it is not unusual for guildmates to have met in real life or elsewhere online before choosing to play WoW together, and an individual may choose a realm and faction because of a guild they want to join.

In-game, players cannot communicate with their enemy faction verbally or group up to accomplish in-game goals, and not many kinds of groups can be formed across realm boundaries. WoW players who are not necessarily able to connect in-game have connected out-of-game in a wide variety of metanetworks, whether centered in discussion forums, informative blogs, or even derivative creative works. Many of the metanetworks of World of Warcraft stem from a desire to be better at the game. For example, the forum Elitist Jerks describes itself as “a WoW discussion forum targeted towards topics regarding high-end raiding and analysis of game mechanics” (“Welcome”). It is very clear from the site’s FAQ that this is not a place to joke around and have fun; in this particular network WoW—and mostly just raiding in WoW—is serious business. Other WoW metanetworks facilitate the kinds of fandom interactions common to many popular intellectual properties, including fanfiction, webcomics, and speculation. But any game as big as WoW—with 11.1 million active players worldwide as of June 30, down from a world record maximum of 12 million (Cifaldi, 2011)—is big enough to generate what can rightly be called major online media outlets. WoW Insider, a blog about World of Warcraft, hires writers and editors to cover many aspects of WoW, from news about upcoming game content, to how to play your class, to discussions of the in-game lore (or story), to humor, to features about the fan community itself.

It could be argued that subnetworks and metanetworks come about because of game mechanics (and, in some cases, a profit motive). But there are many video games—indeed, many Massively Multiplayer Online Games—and their game mechanics don’t all generate how-to sites, let alone enough pageviews to generate ad revenue. Players who don’t care about the game world or community don’t stick around long enough to form guilds. The importance of a network to individuals is crucial to the ability of that network to successfully generate other networks. Metanetworks to WoW can even generate subnetworks. The guild AIE (Alea Iacta Est), for example, is described on its website as “a casual Horde Guild that was started by the creators/fans/friends of The Instance/ELR/Buzz out Loud/Jawbone Radio/Mahalo Daily on the Earthen Ring (RP)-US Realm of World of Warcraft” (“Charter”). (The Instance is a World of Warcraft podcast whose listeners and fan community are another WoW metanetwork.) Tracing the “network generation”: First, some guys that play WoW started a podcast. As the podcast grew in popularity, it became the focus of one WoW metanetwork. The members of this metanetwork created a WoW guild: a subnetwork. This WoW guild has in turn generated “co-networks” in other online games. The podcasts only thrive because of the importance of WoW to hosts and listeners; the guild came about because the podcasts were important to many people; and the guild became so important to its members that they not only communicate out-of-game but have created a formal mechanism to create subnetworks within other virtual environments. It’s now possible to regard AIE: Azeroth as just one subnetwork of AIE as a whole as well as a subnetwork of the World of Warcraft.

If we participate in any information society, we presume we are and will continue to be able to communicate at a distance. With the infrastructural revolutions of the network society, we have a previously unparalleled ability to communicate across human space and time. Many see this as an intellectual paradise and a breeding ground for social change. Yet amidst this tremendous potential, we are more likely to use the internet to tweet at writers we reference in our papers and kill dragons with friends in Omaha than to exchange intellectual or spiritual ideas with strangers. Some consider this a waste of the internet’s potential, but what else would we use it for? Social connection—staying connected with our loved ones, making connections with like-minded individuals—is a basic human need that has always driven the revolutions of the information society.


References

Castronova, E. (2005). Synthetic worlds: The business and culture of online games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Charter. (n.d.) Retrieved Sep. 20, 2011, from http://wiki.aie-guild.org/index.php?title=Charter

Cifaldi, F. (2011, Aug. 3). World of Warcraft Subscriptions Continue To Decline, Though More Slowly. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36351/World_of_Warcraft_Subscriptions_Continue_To_Decline_Though_More_Slowly.php

McCurley, M. (2010, Oct. 8). Cataclysm: Guild cap revised, now 1,000 members. [Weblog post.] Retrieved from http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/08/cataclysm-guild-cap-revised-now-1-000-members/

Welcome to Elitist Jerks. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://elitistjerks.com/faq.php?faq=forumrules#faq_introduction

Williams, D., Ducheneaut, N., Xiong, L., Zhang, Y., Yee, N., Nickell, E. (2006). From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture, 1, 338-361.

World of Warcraft, Fashion History, and so forth

It's been forever since I posted anything, I'm terrible I know. But I have realized recently that a lot of the comments I end up actually leaving have enough substance in them to be a "response" blog post. A couple weeks ago this nice lady Carol came over here after a comment I'd left on a blog we both read (and I really should start a series of posts on the things I discussed there), and was nice enough to be disappointed about my dearth of recent posts. And there's nothing like a total stranger believing you have something to say to make you believe you've got something to say. So I'm fleshing out a comment I recently left on WoW Insider, World of Warcraft blog I've been reading as I'm getting more and more into the game.

WoW Insider has a regular feature called "Breakfast Topic," and this morning they asked:

At what point does modern technology in World of Warcraft go too far? How far can gnomish technology really go? Is the game becoming too "steampunky?" Is that even a word?

Do you feel that introducing items from modern-day Earth into Azeroth interferes with the immersion of the game? Is it impossible to properly roleplay when someone just roared past you on what appears to be a Harley-Davidson with a sidecar attached to it? Or do you just shrug it off as gnomish eccentricity? Are the items properly introduced with a logical argument for why they exist, or are they there for the sole purpose of giving engineers something to do (and a way to make money hand over fist)? Do you personally own one of the mechanical vehicles, and, if you are a roleplayer, how do you work it into your storyline?

There was a lot of interesting discussion in the comments, with a not-insignificant number of people complaining that they didn't like to use guns as a "medieval-looking" character and so forth. I think that those people are fundamentally silly for thinking that a fantasy game somehow "has to be" medieval, so I told them so, armed with some Facts I've learned in my design classes and through my interest in design history over the years. Discussion of female underwear leans heavily on Elizabeth Ewing's Dress & Undress, a history of women's underwear in England which I'm currently devouring--highly recommended.

(Blockquote is things from my comment; non-blockquote, brackets, etc. are my attempt to explicate what I'm talking about for a non-WoW audience.)

So of course I thought of this response as soon as I left for work and didn't have time for WoW Insider at lunch . . . Anyways, my $.02 on the whole "Medieval" thing--the aesthetic of WoW is not really so much based on the actual Middle Ages here on Earth. At all. I am not a total architecture expert, but the cities and buildings we see are either completely imagined or drawn from a hodgepodge of historical times, it's not a dichotomy between medieval and steampunk. Even Stormwind, with its Gothic cathedral and crenelated walls, doesn't look much like any actual historical time/place combo.

Stormwind is the human capital city in the game. Below, a screenshot of my "main" (i.e., the character I play most), Syringe. She's a level 23 human fire mage, and yes that is her parrot. She's in Stormwind in the cap--as you can see, there's a bit of an old-timey vibe but the roofs are blue. There's also a player with googles, but that's not really anything to do with city architecture.

And if you're basing this assumption on clothes, well, speaking as a "clothes nerd" (I have the same major as aspiring fashion designers), let's just take a look at cloth-wearing human females (which I am and my main is), who wear close-fitting bodices over a natural torso--that is, we can pretty safely assume no corsetry of any kind, just some sort of bosom support. (No jiggling.)

Here we've got a nice head-to-toe shot of Syringe, in a simpler outfit because sometimes I like to dress my characters pretty, not practical. Notice that even she is not immune to the problem of blinking when her picture's being taken. She's just like me you guys! Except for she's a natural redhead. And she knows magic.

This is actually a very modern idea--the defined waist and fitted bodice first came into fashion in England in the twelfth century, but did not establish themselves firmly on the fashion landscape until the fourteenth--meaning that for most of the time period thought of as the Middle Ages, women in Western Europe (which I know is what you all mean when you say "Medieval") all wore loose-fitting robes, shifts or skirts. Because the fitted bodice was so closely associated with corsetry, it was not worn by women who needed to run or lift things--as our player characters do--for many hundreds of years after it was adopted by fashionable women. During the nineteenth century, women who performed physical labor sometimes wore restricting undergarments, but that didn't last. The "prom-dress" silhouette of a human female in a robe is very, very twentieth-century.

Look look! I'm doing magic!

As far as the combinations of armor and guns--this is a world with magic. In the real world, we don't bring a knife to a gunfight, and we stopped wearing plate because once guns are in the picture it's just too encumbering and not protective enough; also because why would you spend that much money on cannon fodder? Whereas in WoW nearly everything the players use--our guns, our knives, our armor--is enchanted. When your toon [this is another word for "character" but it takes less space to type] puts on plate armor it can actually make you MORE agile than basic, close-fitting cloth, but somehow I still wear cotton/spandex blends when I do yoga.

I've only rolled one Horde character (I'm pretty much a total n00b) so I have less to say about their areas; but in a world where the Plains Indian-styled Tauren and the quasi-medieval Humans and some goat-inspired hotties from outer space with holographic technology are all in contact with each other isn't any less medieval than a world where gnomes build awesome shit out of gears.

Phew! A lot in there definitely would have been a bit over my head just a week or two ago. So let's unpack:

This is Ysylya. She's a level 20 Draenei frost mage. (Shut up. I like playing mages.) The backstory of her race is that they are from a different planet--Outland. (Most of the game takes place on the planet Azeroth.) But as you can see, the model for the race is pretty goat-y. She's currently in a human area, but the space-shippy background she's in gives you a good idea of the spaceship interiors that are very common in lower-level Draenei areas. (I can't go to Outland yet, I need to actually level instead of blogging.)



It's a little easier to see the goat-based styling in this cap--look at the legs. Speaking of the history of underwear, wow is she working the Gibson Girl s-bend--I think it's got something to do with the way the cape interacts with the tail, but I think you'd even see the line if you took the cape off. The main difference between Ysylya and the ideal Gibson figure? The separated bosom.



And finally, my Tauren:



Not sure if I'll keep playing her--she's in a different faction (aka "side") as the other two, and can't be in the Alliance guild I play in with my boyfriend and his siblings and sister-in-law. We also all made a Horde guild but there's a limit on the number of characters you can play on any one server and at least one person was running out. Also the more literal animal-based races look kind of awful in the female form, so even if I wanted to play through all the content exclusive to that race I might want to be less scary-looking, aka I'd be a dude.

Now I'm off to go level Syringe's tailoring, and run a dungeon or two with the guild. I hope to keep up posting--I've got two jumping-off points for rambling on "women's work and the nature of making" not even COUNTING books I'm reading, I've got a lot more to say about WoW which I think would still be interesting to a non-gamer and some of which intersects with my identity as a maker, and of course if I've made quite a lot of things since last time I posted but that would require actually, you know, taking pictures.

. . . Anybody here?

I don't actually know how I'd know if anyone even reads this thing. I miss Livejournal, where commenting was the easiest thing in the world and super common . . . but anyhow, I thought I'd give NaBloPoMo a shot. Which probably makes no sense at all considering how much time I manage to waste *without* trying to blog, but eh.

Got way too much homework to do today, so here's a few flickr pics of summer knitting and I promise to whip out the camera and start telling stories soon!





This is my Colorado Ishbel. Actual color of the yarn about halfway between those two pics. First lace I actually blocked on wires, and it was such a delight I'm planning on casting on an Estonian lace scarf soon, so I can encounter some actual challenges.

A lot of stories go with the knitting of this shawlette/scarf/thing, but I don't have time to tell them at the moment. If anyone comments and asks, I'll share a few, maybe try to get some of my dad's pics of me knitting it all over Colorado, but for now, here's the notes from the project Rav page:

9/17: So I finally blocked the thing (there was this whole saga where I ordered blocking implements, patiently waited until I knew they totally should have arrived because I didn’t want to be That Customer that complains because things don’t show up immediately, only to find I’d had them shipped to the wrong address), and pictures will be forthcoming–I just realized I was wasting away my Saturday editing them when there is all this beautiful weather out. Soon!

8/7: This is my souvenir of my family vacation to Colorado! I bought the yarn on the first full day, in Boulder. I knew I was going to use the yarn for Ishbel, but thought I’d wait to get home–but when I was getting my yarn wound, I decided to buy needles (I hadn’t thought to bring any extra) and get started right away. I knit in Boulder, in the car, in Rocky Mountain National Park, in Denver, and all the way home. I had to pause when it was time to bind off–I needed a larger needle (I actually ended up using a size 10), but despite the high stitch count and the slow going needed to keep the bind-off loose it only took about an hour, and now I have a fabulous shawl/scarf! I’m ordering lace-blocking equipment to keep things classy, but this project is done!! Now to work on those projects I thought I would make headway on in CO …

Happy November, everyone! If you read this, let me know in a comment: What would you rather see, WIP posts or FO posts?

Spinning

Thinking about doing Tour de Fleece this summer. Not that I'll be watching the Tour de France, but I have two spindles and two hibernating spinning projects. How embarrassing! So my goal would either to finish both projects, or to finish the spinning for Urchin completely and achieving some good solid progress on the red fiber. Or to spin every day on those two projects as well as finishing Urchin spinning Or something. Hmm . . . I'll keep thinking about this.

Orange beret

Checked to see what sorts of posts I've left unfinished; the nucleus of this post is from June 7.

This is the story of my orange beret, shown below with incorrect color but the construction's shown off well.



My then-boyfriend (the Engineer) took me to the yarn store for Valentine's Day and told me to pick some things out for myself. He was a pretty awesome boyfriend while it lasted. We biked from campus to the yarn store, and stopped at a chocolate shop on the way. Also a RadioShack. He didn't actually buy anything there, but I get it. I go to this awesome crafty/"creativity-focused" store on my lunch break all the time, but the only time I've spent money there was on a journal over winter break.



Now I knew that the Engineer could certainly afford to buy me yarn, but he always talked bad about his exes (he probably still does, but now that I'm ex he'd rather talk about me than to me), and how it annoyed him so much when they expected him to spend more money than he could afford, but at the same time he wouldn't give me an upper limit. So I focused my search on the sale room, especially because that particular LYS had just decided to stop carrying Cherry Tree Hill and a few kinds of Noro. I actually focused pretty exclusively on the Cherry Tree Hill, which was all buy 1 get 1 free. There was some frustration, like a light fingering-weight semisolid silk which I really really wanted but would only have been affordable at 50% off. I ended up focusing on a variegated laceweight alpaca, but I find laceweight a little scary, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't like the color effects in anything I'd like the fabric for. But a yarn store lady helped me a lot in my indecision by suggesting that I'd like to double-strand it with some slightly-mottled orange worsted cotton.



I let the yarn sit around in my stash for a while; I'd already looked up worsted-weight cotton berets with some awesome fair-trade tweedy organic cotton yarn in mind, and I was leaning towards one of those patterns. But I left the yarn in skeins until about two weeks after Mardi Gras, the day after he broke up with me. The very next day, I was spending time with a good friend (the Seamstress; she gets a code name in case I ever want to blog about our affair, which is a whole nother thing) because I was hurting a lot and didn't want to be alone and sad. I'd been watching Dollhouse for a couple weeks, and convinced her watch the first episode to be my swift as I wound the laceweight. It's a good thing I chose a show with extra-long episodes; as it was, we watched through the "Grr Arg" before I could finish. I wound the cotton the next day, and promptly cast on. I didn't want the yarn to be a memento of my first "official" boyfriend and all the firsts that went with that; I wanted a hat for that.



I ended up using the Spring Beret pattern (Ravelry only) by Natalie Larson; if you want to see exactly what kind of yarn I used, here's the project on Ravelry. And all things considered, I think I'd rather have this gorgeous hat, which helped me heal, and which is associated with someone (the Seamstress) I was much happier with, and remain friends with, rather than skeins that remind me of a failed experiment and a man I unintentionally hurt. Wouldn't you?

Giveaway goodies!

I've got lots to talk about, but I suppose I'd better start out with an explanation of those random links (which were supposed to be for personal reference only and later become a foundation for this post if I ever got around to it). See, a while ago Sew, Mama, Sew sponsored a gajillion blog giveaways, and I entered most of the ones I was interested in the prizes for, even remotely. I won two: Four yards of sheer fabric from Sewing with Trudy (and her daughter Emily of Super Stitches), and a fat quarter of flowered fabric from Two Hippos.

Here's a true-color photo of the sheer fabric:



And here's me trying to show off just how sheer this is, and sort of failing, but it looks artsy anyways:



When I first found out I'd won, I thought that the print was much smaller (and the fabric less sheer) than it is, and I thought I'd like to make a shirt out of it, something Dawn might wear in Buffy Season 7 (hence the screenshots), but that feels a little bit Beyond My Skill at the moment, considering the slipperiness of the fabric. Also, I'm not sure how well a giant print will work on that sort of a design. A smaller floral would be really awesome, I do know that. But I have no idea what else I'd do with the fabric. I think perhaps it shall go marinate in the stash somewhere.

The fat quarter came in a lovely package, so of course I had to do a "process series" of opening the thing:

What a pretty envelope!



Never mind. What an ingenious use for nice paper!



A very nice note inside:



And the contents! She included some very nice squares of a different pattern, as well.



This is closer to true-color, but a little more blurry:



Now, I've been a Very Bad Blogger and hadn't yet acknowledged that I've received these lovely prizes! But I won another giveaway today, which kind of shamed me into blogging. Besides, I'm not going to SnB tonight because I've already biked way too much (a saga involving size 2 circular needles and my inability to read), so I feel like I should blog before I knit to Buffy Season 7 and Skype my Love Interest.

But, anyhow! Today I won a giveaway on Craft Gossip for a book about how to score good vintage finds and how to modify them. It looks very Not My Style, but it probably has good techniques. And if it doesn't, well . . . there's always somebody who wants it.

Shirt inspiration for sheer fabric

I meant to save this thing as a draft for personal reference but I can't even figure out how to delete the damn thing, let alone un-publish it. So. Sorry.

http://www.screencap-paradise.com/caps/displayimage.php?pid=571167&fullsize=1

http://www.screencap-paradise.com/caps/displayimage.php?pid=569293&fullsize=1

http://www.screencap-paradise.com/caps/displayimage.php?pid=570981&fullsize=1

http://www.screencap-paradise.com/caps/displayimage.php?pid=569623&fullsize=1