Nardi, Part 2

IT'S THE AESTHETICS


Nardi opens chapter 3 with a very basic question, "Why do people like [WoW] so much?" By way of an answer, she quotes a study participant who says, "I think what drives the majority of the people is sort of goal orientation. You have goals. And so, there's this very easy goal of leveling, right? It's this numerically-defined kind of thing. You have this target. You get these rewards of experience." (39). This was an interesting answer to read, not because I disagree with it, but because it wasn't the immediate answer that I was expecting, the 'common sense' answer, if you will. First, I do agree with this answer. Having a goal to reach is a very large part of competition, and games are, at their base, a form of competition, whether it be against the game, oneself, or other players. I'm hard pressed to think of a game that isn't a form of competition, and so, the acts of defeating or surpassing or achieving in games are a form of goal acquisition. 

A screenshot of a PS3 gamer's collection of trophies.

Nardi quotes a psychology student who says that the reward of intermittent reinforcement is the driving force behind why people play games like WoW. Randomly generated rewards, he argues, are the proverbial hook in games like WoW. For proof, we need only look to the practice of gambling and how hard of a habit it is for many to quit. It seems that we are hardwired to take chances in the hope of reward, or to play games for seemingly the sole purpose of reaching the next level or attaining some kind of goal. These two answers for why people play WoW apply to why we play any game, really. The practices of working towards goals and intermittent reinforcement makes me think of the method that Sony uses on the PS3 (and Microsoft with the Xbox 360) in order to keep gamers playing videogames for longer periods of time. Trophies are quite literally that, digital trophies awarded to PS3 gamers for achieving any of a variety of special conditions (likewise for Achievements on the 360). I know some people who literally only play games for the purpose of getting every single trophy or achievement. This definitely extends the play life of games, but back to my original point: I don't think leveling up and random awards are the primary reason why people play WoW or other games.

I think the answer to Nardi's question is a lot simpler than what was presented in this chapter: people like WoW so much because it allows them to experience a wonderfully fantastical, exotic, and exciting world, a world that is arguably much more fun to live in than our real lives. Speaking personally, this has always been the biggest appeal of most videogames for me. The chance to become someone “more” than I am in real life--a ninja assassin who can dispose of a number of enemies with ease and finesse, a world renowned fighter who can hurl blue fireballs at my opponents, a master strategist and world leader who can successfully conquer the world with either technology, culture, or military might, a master of the arcane arts who can call forth various elemental effects and spells to decimate evil...videogames allow me to be the the characters that I spent my childhood pretending to be while playing with my younger brother. I’ve ALWAYS been interested in identity and the appropriation of personas. When I was 7 years old and playing Spy vs Spy with my brother, Corey, and when I was 11 years old and pretending I was a Greek god, when I was an insecure teenager who hid behind a carefully constructed facade of intellectual snobbery, and currently when I write creative narratives...I’ve been appropriating personas since I could walk and talk. And videogames are the closest thing to actually being one of the fantastic characters that I’ve often wished I could be. That's why we love videogames like WoW; they allow us to be more amazing than we usually are, they allow us to experience things that we could normally only dream about.

The familiar Xbox 360 achievement notification

When Nardi quotes Dewey, who says that an aesthetic experience is participatory, I immediately thought back to Jenkins and his observation that new media consumers are participatory. We are no longer content to just passively consume media. In the same vein, when we want to participate in our aesthetic pastimes, hence the popularity of WoW and videogames in general. Nardi states that activity is motivated by an object, and that said object is basically the materialized needs and desires of a subject. Combining this with Dewey's concept of the human element in aesthetic experiences, we can see how it is, indeed, the human being (the gamer) who makes the activity (the game) fun. When we play a game, we place certain expectations on it that are either met or not. When those expectations are met, we have fun.

photos:
http://www.vgblogger.com
http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox-achievement-unlocked-sound-almost-never-happened/