Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are a genre of computer games developed in the 1990s and made popular in the 2000s by games such as World of Warcraft. MMORPGs are characterized by virtual narrative environments in which players must create avatars and collaborate with other players to achieve goals. MMORPG is a genre that represents specific technological and social histories that often carry stigmas for gamers. The genre has inspired sustained debates about such topics as the ways in which players may become addicted to virtual communities, the economic ethics of the gaming environments, the real-world practices associated with game play, and the extent to which the genre represents “new worlds” or perpetuates existing modes of dominance. MMORPGs have inspired acute attention from researchers, who investigate the gaming environment, the technical aspects of the software, the formation of virtual communities, and the real-world experiences of players.

MMORPGs, like other digital media, have been promoted and heralded by some as “new worlds” or “frontiers” that exist simultaneously with, yet apart from, the offline world. Edward Castronova is a leading investigator of MMORPGs, arguing that the genre comprises unique new frontiers that offer participants fully developed worlds in which players [Page 201]perform complex identities. Increasingly the distinction between online and offline is becoming impossible to define, and the marketing of MMORPGs often includes promises of ownership and the ability for players to redefine reality in a virtual setting. However, as David Gunkel and Ann Hetzel Gunkel argue, programs such as Second Life perpetuate individualism and colonialist ideologies of discovery and expansionism by promising players opportunities to re-create themselves online; therefore, the gamer is hailed as an active agent with the ability to manifest whatever identity he or she chooses.