(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
accomplishing tasks challenges gaming scholars of the realism that virtual worlds bring about. The
sensorial incorporation of crisp video and audio facilities into the games have made it compelling to
the players (Rigby and Przybylski, 2009; Silverman and Simon, 2009). Furthermore, Chen (2009)
mentioned that for the players to kill the bosses, raiders simplify the almost real visual and audio
experience of the game to create useful forms of knowledge and skills. Furthermore, this paper also
aims to construct an understanding of the knowledge and skills acquisition in the ‘free labour’
concept exemplified by modders through its game modification and patches.
For some, virtual realities are liberating spaces where players can free themselves from the “actual”
surroundings. As Boellstorff (2008) pointed out in his anthropological study of Second Life, all
human existence is “virtual”; therefore, must be contrasted to “actual” instead of “real” because both
worlds inside and outside of the game are “real”. Although this is the case, “these two domains are in
competition with one another” (Castronova, 2007) because of the fast technological advances on
gaming programs as well as the hardware. The sensorial realism brought by these advances, in return,
results to immersion and disattachment with the actual world. Boellstorff (2008) further explained
that the “sociality of virtual worlds develops its own terms; it references the actual world but is not
simply a derivative of it” hence, it may be considered as culturally mediated and a “legitimate site of
culture” that legitimizes virtual worlds as fieldsites for scholarly research.
The study was guided with the following research questions:
RQ1: What knowledge is acquired by players of MMORPG, most specifically, during a collaborative
gaming of WoW timed-quest?
RQ2: In the motivation of modders to create mods, what consequential knowledge is formed?
2. BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
The sections below discuss the research traditions in games study and a background of the World of
Warcraft.
2.1. Studying Games
There are two perspectives on understanding games depending on the type of knowledge being
argued on. One perspective that is important to be taken into consideration is the examination of the
direct transfer of skills. Games and simulation on this perspective may be examined based on how it
can teach skills and impart knowledge to its users (Bransford & Schwartz, 2001; Gredler, 1996;
Prensky, 2000) or the impact of games on violence and aggression (Anderson & Ford, 1968; Calvert
& Tan, 1994; Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gorden, & Rodasta, 1988).
Second, games may be examined in relation to theories of situated learning and knowledge (Barab &
Duffy, 2000; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Jenkins & Squire, 2004, Squire, 2002). This research
framework analyzes how games offer new subliminal ways of learning and provide the conditional
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