The School of WoW

“I take the liberty to send you two brace of grouse, curious, because killed by a Scottish metaphysician; in other and better language they are mere ideas, shot by other ideas, out of a pure intellectual notion called a gun” (Smith, 1808)

I am a cyborg academicus. I have all the fleshy and bony bits that are sociology, but I have hardwired in me optic fibre cables, bluetooth, gfx cards and a laser tracking force feedback mouse that allow me access into the worlds that are Game Studies. I am a freak. One of my tribes resents my techy bits, while the other resents my genetically outdated bits.

Brace of grouse 1:

Classical social sciences reject Game Studies’ claim to be a (social) science and thus the majority of sociologists pay no attention to Game Studies[1]. Game Studies has moved so far from classical social sciences that it risks becoming theoretically hollow; and by walling itself in, risks becoming only relevant to itself.

Previous Hardcore columns by Mäyrä, Rehak, Kucklich and McCrea all show that there is a formative and lively process occurring within Game Studies. A field is developing its identity through constant reflection on the questions of what is our purpose? What form are we to take? And are we a proper science?

Personally, I understand this identity formation to be centred on an either/ or approach. Either I am a sub-discipline or my own field. Either I am a solid science or a machine, consistent of many studies, on its way.

Considering that we are all late-modern, if not even, postmodern thinkers, this Enlightenment project, based on modernist dichotomies, is a surprising approach to take to creating a contemporary and future framework for the construction of knowledge.

I am not suggesting Giddens’ 3rd way (1998)[2] as a model of identity formation. This, to me, would be anything but an unsatisfactory compromise between classical social science and Game Studies. Most of our energy would be wasted by pulling the emerging field either closer to classical social science – which would paralyse the field due to outdated ontological and epistemological paradigms – or towards the extreme end of what currently is Game Studies – which would result in academically inconsequential work.

I am not calling to abolish current Game Studies. I am not suggesting the repositioning of Game Studies as an alternative, soulless (philosophically and sociologically removed) oppositional discipline; neither do I want it to be enslaved as a sub-discipline. Instead I would like to see Game Studies in and as a Thirdspace.

Lefebvre provided us with the idea of Thirdspace which is based on “…his transgressive conceptualisation of lived space as an-Other world, a meta-space of radical openness where everything can be found, where the possibilities for new discoveries and political strategies are endless, but where one must always be restlessly and self-critically moving on to new sites and insights, never confined by past journeys and accomplishments, always searching for differences, an Otherness, a strategic and heretical space ‘beyond’ what is presently known and taken for granted”(Soja, 1996:34).

What I am suggesting to achieve is critical thirding-as-othering. Adapting Soja’s (1996) explanation of Lefebvre’s ideas to my exploration means that the work of Game Studies with each thirding and trialectics would become “an approximation that builds cumulatively on earlier approximations, producing a certain practical continuity of knowledge production that is an antidote to the hyperrelativism and ‘anything goes’ philosophy often associated with such radical epistemological openness” (Soja, 1996:61).

Brace of grouse 2:

One way in which Game Studies can move into Thirdspace and become a Thirdspace itself is the School of WoW.

As many readers know there are groups of researchers who use WoW as a meeting place. Some go beyond that; they use WoW as place within which to give lectures, discuss ideas, carry out research, have meetings, and much more.
In the following paragraphs I reflect on the questions of what are they? Are they a school? and Why can it be a Thirdspace?

a) A loose group of networking researchers:

Collaboration, especially inter-disciplinary collaboration has become an integral part of contemporary academic research experience. Speaking from a UK perspective most researchers work within departments and faculties that consist of academics who share research interests. However, those interested in Internet research do not generally share this experience. There are only 2 or 3 university departments that concentrate on this type of work[3]. Therefore, we see either a movement of individuals from universities to these 2-3 centres or a system that has these 3 at its centre and individual researchers at other institutions orbiting around them.

In the WoW researcher guild this latter situation is reflected. There are people who work in groups together at centres offline and there are individuals whose interests are not shared within their institution. So it appears that the WoW researcher guild is a lose network of researchers interested in collaborative research.

However, I argue, the WoW researcher guild lies beyond a lose network of opportunistic collaborative academic activity. This is because the guild is highly organised and appropriates places as forums within which to meet regularly. There is also an agenda that the group follows, which further supports my point that it is more than lose networking.

b) BSA style research group:

The British Sociological Association offers the opportunity to its members to set up research groups. In its set up policy it mirrors WoW rules on founding a guild. Namely, a certain number of people have to be signatories in order for the group / guild to be formally recognised[4].

These BSA groups consist of researchers who share interests in a particular topic and some of them have a lot of members. They can consist of researchers from around the world, they meet regularly, some have a newsletter, and they use CMC[5] to stay in touch. The purpose of these groups is to facilitate research collaboration and intellectual exchange.

There are many parallels between BSA and the WoW researcher group that are readily identifiable. However, the difference in my opinion is that of immediacy. The WoW researcher guild’s membership experience is far more immediate. The amount of interaction and theoretical thought processes that are generated move beyond anything possible in the BSA groups[6]. The other important difference is that the WoW researcher guild is independent and not part of an official program of a professional organisation.

Is it then just a sophisticated, independent researcher group or is it more?

c) A school of thought:

Reviewing the past 120 years of social science there are several institutions that have stood out. There are the School of Social Anthropology at Oxford between 1900 and 1930. The Frankfurt School in the 1920s – 1930s. The Chicago School in the 1950s-1960s. But then we stop talking about the … School. I wonder why that is. Maybe it has gone out of fashion. Maybe ‘we’ are not as good as our academic forefathers. The latter I would dispute.

One example would be Keele University where the discipline of ‘social gerontology’ was founded. Why do we not relate to the Keele School? I am sure there are other examples. Maybe, it is because of the dispersal of academics that not one single place can be identified as the ‘birthplace’ of influential thoughts.

I sense the objections to the almost blasphemous suggestion that my argument appears to lead to. Of course I am not suggesting that the WoW researcher guild is a School of Thought – yet. What I am intending to raise is the possibility that this is something that can be achieved.

I believe that to be classed a School of Thought a group of researchers has to offer a new theoretical conceptualisation and approach to a social issue, phenomenon that has a crucial impact on the way we explain the world. To be called the Chicago School the researchers who offered up these ideas were all situated within this institution.

When my earlier argument about the reason for no more Chicago Schools is correct – that researchers are too dispersed for a School of Thought to be associated with a particular institution/ space/ place. Then what if, a WoW guild was to offer a theoretical and empirical approach that was new and had a wide impact on the way we view and study the social world. Its work would then be considered a school of thought.

If we stop there, however, we would still merely draw on modernist dichotomies. We would enslave ourselves in an iron cage. We cannot, as previous Schools have done, wall and ring fence ourselves but have to remain on the edge – in Thirdspace.

We have to subscribe to “radical openness where everything can be found, where the possibilities for new discoveries and political strategies are endless, but where one must always be restlessly and self-critically moving on to new sites and insights, never confined by past journeys and accomplishments, always searching for differences, an Otherness, a strategic and heretical space ‘beyond’ what is presently known and taken for granted”(Soja, 1996:34).

The School of WoW can achieve this because it is situated in a radically new place; it has got radically new tools at its disposal; it has got the theoretical background of pretty much every field, thus in order not to fall victim to hyperrelativism has to move forward restlessly and self-critically. Last but not least I believe people within it are willing to embrace Thirdspace.

Doing this will permit the School of WoW to contribute to shifting Game Studies and classical social sciences into Thirdspace, doing away with dichotomies, 3rd ways, and hyperrelativism creating research that is truly set up for the future and can be a home to the new species cyborg academicus.

“We dare not lengthen this column much more, lest it be out of moderation and should stir up the readers’ antipathy because of its size.”

Notes

[1] Some evidence: there are no Game Studies articles in any of the high-quality mainstream Sociology Journals; there is a negligible amount of UK universities that mention or use Game Studies in their social science courses; very small number of Game Studies academics present at mainstream conferences; anecdotally, established sociologists are more interested in what they consider to be ‘real people’ and ‘real issues’.

[2] The Third Way is mainly associated with the ideas of Anthony Giddens that were enthusiastically taken up by politicians such as Blair and Clinton. It was a new way of thinking about politics and the role of the state.

[3] However, some universities appear to try and jump onto the ‘modern technologies bandwagon’. Yet, they only tend to employ one or maybe two lecturers with an interest in cyberspace and Game Studies. Whether this is tokenism or the beginning of a change remains to be seen.

[4] WoW rules: be a paid up member, find a guild master, acquire a guild charter, add 9 people to the guild charter = guild
BSA rules: be a paid up member, contact BSA group master, give group charter, add 15 people to group = study group

[5] CMC= computer-mediated-communication

[6] Particularly the uses of programs such as Teamspeak or Skype allow a constant and immense amount of ideas to be exchanged. Noteworthy is also that there are other potential Schools emerging due to academics starting new research guilds in more recently released games such as Lord of the Rings Online.

Bibliography:

Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: Renewal of Social Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press

Soja, E (1996) Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real and imagined places, Oxford: Blackwell

Christian Gerstner, PhD candidate Keele University. Thesis title “Online sociological research: methods, ethics and the law”. Interests: Online Research, Social Theory, Methodology. Teaching at Keele for 4 years now. Module Leader of lvl2 course “A Journey through Cyberspace” and lvl3 course “Stepping through the screen with Social Theory”.

Contact: christian_gerstner@yahoo.co.uk