My Life as a Night Elf Priest is a book that when I saw it I thought I was not going to understand it. I have never played World of Warcraft, I just have heard of people becoming addicted to this game. However, to come to think of it, I think my cousin use to play this game and I can understand that aspect of consumption and addiction. He would stay up all night, in his room, with his computer and he would stay up all night and play. I watched him once and I just did not understand it. However, after reading this book, I am little by little trying to understand the appeal for not on World of Warcraft and other multiplayer games. And I realize that I am a noob, and I have a cynical view of gaming.
As I said, I thought the book was interesting and was eye-opening to understanding, not only the world of, WOW but also all multiplayer games. My favorite section of the book is “Cultural Logics of World of Warcraft” because; to me at least, it showed the realism of playing in this fantasy world. This fantasy world is not escapist; it is place where hate, homophobia, sexism, or racism reigns. It is the real world but with fancy costumes and monsters. Nardi expresses this in her gender section, especially when she talks about the language men use in this game. They are showing their male heternormative dominance with using the words, “gay, cunt, fucker” and others. In addition, her discovery that there are men who play as female characters adds to this dominance. The reason they play as a female character is because they want to look at a girls ass for three hours.[1]To me, this is disgusting but is no different from life. However, I am confused by her other explanation on why they do it, is because they want to know what girls are really thinking and saying? Do they want to scare women out of the game and playing video games in general? They do not want to feel the pressure of masculinity anymore, but then why do they still force heternormativity? I know Nardi is trying to show how World of Warcraft both allows and destroys gender rules, but showing that both men and women do actions that blends the genders. Like a woman fight and kill monsters, and men sew and make clothes. And she keeps asking why women do not play not only just World of Warcraft but also other video games. And one of her answers that women do not have time to dedicate to this and other video games. However, I think it is a combination of harassment, sexism, and we live in a culture that looks down up videogames. Women get enough harassment in the real world, why would they want to get it in the virtual world. I know Nardi is making a point that both men and women in World of Warcraft are both following and breaking gender rules, but she needs to have a better way of explaining.
[1] Nardi, 159