By Bonnie A. Nardi
ISBN-10: 0472050982
ISBN-13: 9780472050987
"Ever because the creators of the lively tv exhibit South Park grew to become their lovingly sardonic gaze at the vastly multiplayer game global of Warcraft for a whole episode, WoW's prestige as an icon of electronic tradition has been safe. My existence as an evening Elf Priest digs deep underneath the skin of that icon to discover the wealthy details of the realm of Warcraft player's experience."
—Julian Dibbell, Wired
"World of Warcraft is the easiest consultant of an important new know-how, paintings shape, and quarter of society: the theme-oriented digital international. Bonnie Nardi's pioneering transnational ethnography explores this online game either sensitively and systematically utilizing the equipment of cultural anthropology and aesthetics with extensive own event as a guild member, media instructor, and magical quest Elf."
—William Sims Bainbridge, writer of The Warcraft Civilization and editor of on-line Worlds
“Nardi skillfully covers all the scorching button matters that spring to mind whilst humans reflect on games like international of Warcraft similar to video game dependancy, sexism, and violence. What supplies this publication its worth are its unforeseen gem stones of infrequent and wonderfully specified study on much less sensationalized issues of curiosity comparable to the area of Warcraft participant neighborhood in China, online game modding, the more and more blurred line among play and paintings, and the wealthy and interesting lives of gamers and participant cultures. Nardi brings global of Warcraft right down to earth for non-players and ties it to social and cultural conception for students. . . . the easiest ethnography of a unmarried digital global produced so far.”
—Lisa Nakamura, college of Illinois
World of Warcraft swiftly turned some of the most renowned on-line international video games on this planet, accumulating 11.5 million subscribers—officially making it an internet neighborhood of players that had extra population than the country of Ohio and was once virtually two times as populous as Scotland. It's a hugely multiplayer video game, or mmog in gamer jargon, the place every body controls a unmarried personality inside of a digital international, interacting with different people's characters and computer-controlled monsters, quest-givers, and merchants.
In My existence as an evening Elf Priest, Bonnie Nardi, a well known ethnographer who has released largely on how theories of what we do intersect with how we undertake and use expertise, compiles greater than 3 years of participatory examine in Warcraft play and tradition within the usa and China into this box examine of participant habit and job. She introduces us to her study approach and the historical past, constitution, and tradition of Warcraft; argues for using job idea and theories of aesthetic adventure to the learn of gaming and play; and educates us on problems with gender, tradition, and habit as a part of the play adventure. Nardi paints a compelling portrait of what drives on-line players either during this nation and in China, the place she spent a month learning gamers in web cafes.
Bonnie Nardi has given us a clean glance not just at global of Warcraft yet on the box of online game reports as a complete. one of many first in-depth reviews of a online game that has develop into an icon of electronic tradition, My existence as an evening Elf Priest will catch the curiosity of either the gamer and the ethnographer.
Bonnie A. Nardi is an anthropologist by means of education and a professor within the division of Informatics within the Donald Bren university of knowledge and computing device Sciences on the collage of California, Irvine. Her study concentration is the social implications of electronic applied sciences. She is the writer of A Small subject of Programming: views on finish person Computing and the coauthor of knowledge Ecologies: utilizing expertise with middle and appearing with expertise: job thought and interplay layout.