Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2006) Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests and Backstories: World Creation and Rhetorics of Myth in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture, 1 (4). pp. 383-396. ISSN 1555-4139
Abstract / Summary
One of the pleasures of playing in the “World” of Warcraft is becoming part of its pervasive mythology. This article argues that to understand the game’s formal, aesthetic, and structural specificity, its pleasures and potential meanings, it is essential to investigate how the mythic functions. The author shows that the mythic plays a primary role in making a consistent fantasy world in terms of game play, morality, culture, time, and environment. It provides a rationale for players’ actions, as well as the logic that under- pins the stylistic profile of the game, its objects, tasks, and characters. In terms of the “cultural” environments of the game, the presence of a coherent and extensive myth scheme is core to the way differences and conflicts between races are organized. And, as a form of intertextual resonance, its mythology furnishes the game with a “thickness” of meaning that promotes, for players, a sense of mythological being as well as encouraging an in-depth textual engagement.
Item Type: | Article |
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Identification Number: | 10.1177/1555412006292618 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | World of Warcraft |
ISSN: | 1555-4139 |
Subjects: | Technology > Digital Works > Digital Games |
Depositing User: | Tanya Krzywinska |
Date Deposited: | 13 Nov 2014 12:13 |
Last Modified: | 13 Oct 2017 16:04 |
URI: | https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/703 |
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