GAMING AS WRITING, OR, WORLD OF WARCRAFT AS WORLD OF WORDCRAFT
Edmond Y. Chang, University of Washington

"Seriousness and play, rigor and license, are mingled in every work of art..."
--Walter Benjamin, “The work of art", p. 107

ABSTRACT

In Gaming (2006), Alexander Galloway argues that "video games are actions" (p. 2), that video games "come into being when the machine is powered up and the software is executed; they exist when enacted" (p. 2). Might then this provide an opportunity to formulate a homology between gaming and writing? Might writing, in a sense, function as a kind of algorithm? The mind is powered up, critical thinking and language routines executed; writing only exists when enacted, when pen is put to paper, idea turned into word. For Galloway, gaming, playing, and acting invoke the language of writing: process, "grammars of action" (p. 4), diegetic and nondiegetic, and culture as acted document (p. 14). Moreover, gaming (like our students' writing) does have stakes: "video games render social realities into playable form" (p. 17). Therefore, this webtext is a meditation, an exploration, and a invitation to understand the contours and ways gaming is like writing and depends on usable and teachable logics: narrative, close reading, critical analysis, and ultimately, play. Using the globally popular World of Warcraft, a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, this paper will render how gaming and writing are intellectual, analytical, and critical actions.

HOW TO READ, HOW TO PLAY

Glance. Read. Click. Repeat. This "paper" is navigable in three obvious ways: those who prefer the straight and narrow can use the linear section links provided below, or, those who want it wild and wooly can follow the embedded textual links, or, those who like to have both their cake and eat it too can do as they please.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edmond Y. Chang is a Ph.D. Candidate in English at the University of Washington in Seattle. His main areas of interest are technoculture, cultural studies, queer & gender studies, film, visual rhetoric, literary nonfiction, composition, myth, role-playing games, and popular culture. He graduated from the University of Maryland with his BA in English, a BA in Classics, and his MA in English. He has taught at the university level for over ten years including writing and literature courses on diversity and multiculturalism, imagining cyberspace, fantastic literatures, and Harry Potter. In World of Warcraft, he plays a level 70 gnome mage named 'Otters' or a level 70 human priest named 'Ghosthand' on Medivh server. His email is: changed (at) u (dot) washington (dot) edu.