Month: March 2018

Reflecting upon my own experience of gaming, I have realized that largely what I was willing to do in-game, I would not do in my lived reality. For example, the game is very much premised on physical violence, which is not something I willingly engage in in ‘real life’. However, because the capacity for my character to advance in the game is dependent on the defeat of others’, the violence I enact on other characters feels normalized and much more justified. One instance that automatically comes to mind is something that occurred when I first started playing, and with little knowledge, killed a rabbit for no apparent reason. This act of violence did not resonate well within me, and I experienced strong feelings of guilt and disgust because I was willing to do something I would not do ‘outside’ the game simply to further my own progression in-game.

Additionally, the story of Guild Wars 2 is a colonial one in which my character, among others, partakes in the colonization of Kryta and in the genocide of the centaurs, who are Indigenous to the land. The game calls on me to actively fight against the centaurs’ attempts to regain sovereignty – something I was willing to do in-game, but felt I would not likely do ‘outside’ of the game. This is not to say that my presence as a settler on Musqueam land does not contribute in the ongoing colonial violence against Indigenous peoples, but the game’s necessitation for active participation in the centaurs’ genocide interestingly felt like something I would not be willing to do in my lived reality. The feelings of uncomfortability that these actions evoke in me are thought-provoking; the act of colonizing a land and a peoples feels so foreign despite the fact that as a settler, my capacity to write this very blog post is premised on the genocide of Indigenous First Nations, and that I partake in the dispossession of Indigenous lands and resources through my presence on these lands. For myself, I am not sure about the psychological effects that the game’s violence had on me, but I can see my enactment of colonial violence in-game reflected ‘outside’ of the game, and not necessarily in a cause-and-effect type of way.

In Guild Wars 2, I undertook a number of group events that necessitated my character to work in a team with other players because I found that it helped ease the pressure I felt while navigating the game alone. Working with other players gave me a sense of community in those brief moments; I felt an interdependence between myself and the others, and was happy with my choice as we completed the mission as a team. However, when I started playing in a party with someone I knew outside of the game, I soon became unhappy with the decision I made because I experienced feelings of frustration towards them as we explored the world together. I found myself feeling less emotion towards ‘strangers’ than people I was already familiar with – players I did not know never evoked feelings of annoyance from me but I cannot say the same about players I already knew outside of the game.

A large factor in my decision to play with someone I knew was that I had difficulty completing the first few levels and understanding the game when I initially started playing. While I did use out-of-game resources such as websites and forums, I also consulted my partner for further explanations about aspects of the game that I did not understand. Personally, I viewed resources outside of the game as helpful because as a new player, navigating the world alone in a game that lacks detailed instructions can be isolating, and the awareness of the availability of other resources contributed to the sense of community I felt while playing with others in the game. Ironically, although I sought my partner as support and as an out-of-game resource, I also rejected their assistance in certain areas because I perceived it as not ‘cheating’, but cheating me of experiencing the game in its entirety. I also experienced helpful behaviours from other players who revived my character when they were killed. As a result, I felt grateful for their assistance and wanted to reciprocate by helping them defeat their enemies. Although I had no previous relationship to those players, I think their assistance reflects a positive notion of community.

The ‘report player’ function is interesting because it invites players to report player misconduct to the authority figures in the game. Outside of the game, I would not be as tempted to involve authorities when confronted with toxicity or negativity as I am inside the game – this is largely due to the anonymity I am afforded and the anonymity that the misbehaving player is afforded as well. I understand this through Parkin’s argument that the “anonymity of the Internet” allows “the worst of ourselves to emerge;” because we cannot identify the person involved in each interaction, we feel less responsibility as players a) to behave respectably and b) to personally address or try to understand others’ behaviours.