Making Love and War(craft)

Non-gamers: hang in there with me I have homework for you at the end of this post...

Svenn and Inno: you guys dropping by made me wonder just how many military people play World of Warcraft. There seems to be a whole lotta ya around; I know Nimira and Priestholmes have a guild that's comprised entirely of marines. According to The Daedalus Project, about 13% of the WoW population have had military experience.

Unfortunately Daedalus is dated (Death Knights aren't even in the survey!) and no one seems to be making similar efforts these days. The people who know the most is of course Blizzard but they aren't about to let their marketing secrets out. So here's a mosaic portrait of the WoW player composed from what little research available and my impression (numbers and % when included are from Daedalus research):

You are a dude. But if you aren't (16%) WoW is probably your first computer gaming experience, and you play with your boyfriend or husband (68%).

As infantile as trade chat can be, you are actually as likely to be over 35 as you are in your teens (12-17). In your defense tho, you are more civil in game than, say, while you're driving down the highway. Apparently anonymity brings out the best in us as well. Maybe this is because 37% of us feel more comfortable communicating in typed chats than live interactions.

Somehow you hold down a job, go to school or make home full time (male 87%, female 74%), have young children (20% male/28% female), while spending an average of 21 hours a week raiding or grinding achievements.

In my three years on WoW, you have chatted with me from practically every time zone on this globe, and I haven't even been on the European  or the Pacific servers yet.

If you aren't currently in school, you have had higher level education (78%). This has not translated to a higher income for you (slightly lower than US median of $35,000 as of 2005).

Now for the non-gamers: go watch The Guild. It's an award winning web-series about on-line gamers roughly based on the World of Warcraft, each episode is only a few minutes long so it's a small time investment for lots of laughs. When you have seen at least a couple episodes, take this quiz:

1) Although The Guild ruthlessly characterize WoW players as neurotic losers, it is universally adored by that population. Why? If you have seen Little Miss Sunshine, you might have the answer already.

2) Can you see Codex, Vork, and Zaboo outside the gaming context? do you know such a person in your life? Do you have her/him on your calendar this week? Last year? Where are they on your speed dial?

3) How are the supporting characters (Clara's husband, Codex's therapist, Zaboo's mom etc.) perceived by the main characters? Name three different ways the supporting cast relate to the gamers' addiction.

Extra Credit: Seasons 3 and 4 explore friendship and romance. Compare those with how you understand relationships. (Hint: try to suspend your judgment and idealism. If you still have trouble, think back to your high school years.)

Eat This Comic!

Matt recently asked me a question about Watchmen (please, for the love of Alan Moore, don't click that link until you have read the graphic novel) which induced a 4-colored flashback of my misspent youth.

Watchmen exerts its influence beyond the 9-panel pages, some consider it one of the best English novels in the last century. So much could be and has been said about its literary value, artistic integrity, and impact on the industry, but for the purpose of this space I want to talk about its voice.

We should not assume Watchmen has a message (here's an attempt by David Itzkoff of NY Times). Moore and Gibbons would say that they began with a few ideas in mind to make a really good comic, then let the story tell itself. Comics excel in exaggerations which makes it the perfect medium for parodies, subversion and political commentaries, but I am convinced none of these are the intent of the author. Each of the major characters in Watchmen had dramatically different perspectives and convictions, each of them were alloted their turn for the reader's ear, and in the end all of them earned our sympathy. If anything then, Moore's caricature is of you and me, blowing our biases, tendencies, and pathologies into cosmic proportions, and leaving us to reconcile ourselves.

I'm gonna resist the temptation to defend the above analysis. If you are interested we can go into the characters in more detail in another post. Meanwhile, go read Watchmen.

Un-Fiction, From Blair Witch to Catfish

Reality as we know it (as in secondlife.com; reality TV; virtual-reality) has acquired a mystical quality of late. The last century has shown that history, geography, even physics cannot and should not be absolutized. We take for granted now, most everything can be deconstructed and variously interpreted. Peeling away the layers of reality, we find an unknowable core.

OK that was a pretty grand introduction to what amounts to be a movie preview. The "reality thriller" Catfish tells a stranger-than-fiction story of a photographer's interaction with a Facebook fan. Whether or how much this story is contrived is not as important to us as what it tells us about the world we live in.

You could watch Catfish as a cautionary tale against the dangers of internet; critique it for how much spin can go into a supposed "documentary"; or get more evidence for how messed up people can be. For my money, I intend on enjoying the movie as the latest entry into the genre of un-fiction, telling a story neither for its factual value nor to transport the audience to an altogether alien world, but engaging the viewer by being both fiction and non-fiction.

The Name of the Rose

Observation: We no longer have the luxury of living within any specific culture, economy, or location.

Examples: Most of the things you have touched in the last 30 minutes are made in China.

You apologized last week for not having seen Slumdog Millionaire; on the same afternoon, I declared myself a bollywood fan, even though I'm not sure what it is.

You can check any one of 3 boxes on forms that ask for your "racial background". Your kids have even more options.

This Thanksgiving you will drive over 300 miles in one day, and you consider yourself lucky to have relatives so close.

Question: Who are we?

Truth is soft (so soft it bleeds when you push too hard)

Thanks to my friends in Reynosa, I just finished David Dark's book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything which talks about a characteristic of the softcore world: the need/desire to distill truth out of many sources. (Seminarians can skip down to the bottom of this post where I will geek-out a bit in our language.)

Dark's background required him to struggle against assumptions that come from being a particular brand of Christian, but his approach in overcoming those assumptions will resonate with anyone who lives in the softcore world. For Dark, the lyrics of Arcade Fire or Wilco, and episodes from The Office all offer insights into Christian truth, insights that are particularly important because they stand outside the traditions that had locked him (and others like him) into bad understandings of God and the Bible.

If you have been wondering why certain movies or bands are "just so good", look up The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.

Seminary Geeks: Dark essentially restates Grant Osborne's "hermeneutic of suspicion", the notion that any interpreter's approach to reading scripture is necessarily flawed. Although this position echoes as far back as Schleiermacher, Dark's contribution lies in his contextualizing this method in the 21st century.

Im gonna call it softcore

15-20 years ago we wondered what the internet will mean: some hoped it'd go away, some sampled and thought it might be good, others drank deeply and never considered looking back.

We now have a whole generation breast-fed by the internet. If you have managed to remain unplugged, my hat's off to you (the same hat I take off for the Amish, so the gesture probably conveys both admiration and condolence.) The rest of us now work, play, meet and think in a brave new world -- this blog is my attempt, with your help, to wrap my mind around this world.

So that we would have a shorthand --shorthands are one of the signatures of this new world, IMHO--I am going to describe our new world as "softcore":

1. As a sign of respect to both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (Microsoft + Apple; sorry to spoil your fun with explanation)

2. As a reminder of the dangers of porn addiction, although that topic is amply discussed elsewhere so let's try to abstain from boring each other with it

3, In opposition to the "hardcore world" which for better or worst is dying in its wake, the world of the printed media, face-to-face meetings, Palmer's Method, etc.

Really, anything can contribute to our discussion: personal anecdotes, links to other thoughts, criticisms both constructive and otherwise-- in fact, flaming/trolling seems to be a great way to increase blog hits. So pontificate away: my soapbox is now yours.