Elf Bites Man (or something)

mrlizard@gmail.com (Lizard) — Wed, 10 May 2006 11:08:27 -0700

The new World of Warcraft race, as most suspected long ago, is the Draenei. This is ordinarily something I'd probably write about on my main blog, except for one thing -- I didn't read about this on a fan site or a Usenet group or the like. I read about in the New York Times.

The New York Times does not report on new classes for D&D, new starship design rules for Traveller, or new card-drawing mechanics for Magic:The Gathering. That it reports on new races for WoW signals a fairly important watershed in the degree to which fantasy gaming has become acceptable to the American public -- provided, of course, that it involves sitting home alone in front of a computer and not sitting with friends around a kitchen table. Playing games alone is cool and acceptable; playing games with friends makes you a geek and a loser. But I digress.

The fact that an online game makes the NYT is frankly extraordinary. What is more important, though, is the assumed level of knowledge. There is no explanation in the article as to what an online game is, or what a roleplaying game is, or the way in which players control individual characters. All of this is now assumed to be bedrock knowledge any marginally well-informed American already possesses.

Thie means, frankly, that the anti-video-game movement is probably doomed. Too many Americans spend too much time playing games to be swayed by the usual rhetoric of fear and lies -- you can't lie about something people do every day. This won't keep the usual suspects from trying, of course, but it does mean they'll grow ever more frustrated and marginalized (and, in the process, scream ever more loudly that they're winning). I will enjoy this.

Journal Of Applied Misanthropology - Gaming

Elf Bites Man (or something)