“The Guild” is a miniseries on Youtube which follows the lives of six players of a World of Warcraft style game. Each of the gamers are part of a guild named “The Knights of Good” in their MMO RPG world. This series of webisodes brings up several of the issues brought up in class. Issues life privacy are brought up when one member of the guild, “Zaboo”, cyber stalks and meets up with the main character, Cyd Sherman (a.k.a. “Codex”) and proceeds to court her.
In another instance, the issue of avatars and a new sense of identities arises when the guild suffers from internal problems. The healer of the group, Codex, must preserve her guild’s reputation in a player versus player battle and single handedly defeat the leader of another guild. While in the physical world Cyd Sherman is introverted, indecisive, and “twitchy”, her in game avatar “Codex” actually appears in a sort of vision and counsels her through her battle. Codex tells Cyd to play as Codex and not let Cyd’s detrimental personality traits hinder her gameplay. In many ways, this Youtube series explores the issues associated with MMO RPG’s and their players’ lives through humor while masking its deep cutting critiques.
If you have not already seen this popular web series, then you can find all three seasons at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/watchtheguild
By Surja Chakravarti
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ONYX WOULD BE PROUD.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9TEdGbvtnc
ReplyDeleteThat's a really interesting video I saw that compares the character with the actual player. It's not only a neat video; it's an interesting comparison between how the avatar and the person intersect.
It's weird to think what we would be if we acted like we do in games. One of the readings for week six came to the conclusion that people act in real life just like they do in games - we hide things, sometimes try to cheat by getting ahead some way we're not supposed to, etc. There are rules to follow, but not everyone does - and if you break the rules, you pay the price.
I thought that was a very interesting way of putting both virtual societies (and traditional ones) in perspective.