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As someone who had never been a committed gamer prior to this course, I found the experience of playing Guild Wars 2 for the first time to be quite a challenge. When first starting out, I was excited about the prospect of being entrenched into the online community, and saw it as an opportunity to gain an inside perspective on something that seems to evoke a lot of emotion – whether positive or not – in my own relationships, as well as in those of others around me.

Through these four months of gaming, something I found significant about my experience was how difficult I found it to be. Firstly, I was shocked by my incompetency at the game. Although I had not previously been a ‘gamer,’ I considered myself to be technically skilled enough to play the game without much difficulty. Rather, even months after I started playing, I was unsure as to what my goals in the game were, and still experienced feelings of confusion and frustration trying to navigate the online world. I was also faced with the emotional effects that the game had on me. Guild Wars 2 tells a story of colonial conquest and violent war; along with the stress-inducing music that changed with the landscape, the narrative of the game evoked feelings of fear, sadness, and anxiousness that drove me away from wanting to play.

One of the greatest challenges I faced was my own lack of motivation to regularly play the game. Gaming is something that is often not seen to be of great value in Western society – it has been declared a disorder, viewed as a waste of time, and condemned for provoking aggression and violent behaviour. This perception, along with the capitalist notion that we must be doing something ‘productive’ with our time, is something that I have internalized and allowed to affect my gaming experience. Finding time to play the game was challenging because the supposedly separate work and leisure spheres were being disrupted by the fact that this was a non-‘productive’ activity that had to be done for an academic course. Because it did not feel right to game when I was supposed to be doing coursework, and gaming was not something I took up during times of leisure, there seemed to be no right time to play the game in my everyday life.

Valuable to my gaming experience were the feelings of comfort and community I felt when playing with others. The game allowed me to have a ‘party’ as well as join group events that could only be completed by players working in a team; not only were these interactions helpful in furthering my character in the game, they were also beneficial in terms of alleviating the stressful feelings I was experiencing. Although Guild Wars 2 was not a MMORPG I thoroughly enjoyed, playing it was an insightful experience as it offered me some understanding of the gaming community and the tactics used by developers to attract and engage large numbers of players, as well as to the ways that media can be used to communicate and perpetuate certain narratives or ideologies.

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.

In the early levels of the game, I felt little emotional engagement with the narrative because I was merely instructed to defend the village of Shaemoor against the attacking centaurs with no incentives or understanding of my position in the Krytan nation. However, as I witnessed my character’s death time and time again, I developed an aversion to, and even felt distress upon, encountering a centaur, despite still having minimal knowledge about the nation I was defending. The information conveyed by the Non Player Characters (NPCs) – the centaurs, the Commanders, the Lieutenants – automatically inserts my character on a ‘side’; I am to stand with the Krytan humans and defend them against the enemy centaurs and thieving bandits, made clear by the tasks I am given. Guild Wars 2 strategically uses its NCPs to influence the players’ engagement with the narrative; I, myself, began feeling emotionally connected to my own character, as well as to the NPCs, whether my emotions were positive or not.

NCPs who were not central to the story were used to create an atmosphere in the game. For example, while running through the Upper City in Divinity’s Reach, I encountered many human citizens who would convey to one another their worries about the Seraph’s ability to defend and protect the nation, evoking in me a sense of worry and creating a chaotic atmosphere. Additionally, the decisions that I was responsible for making for my character prompted my emotional investment into the narrative – I experienced feelings of stress, fear, sadness, distaste, and loyalty as I made choices that I felt dictated my character’s Living Story (whether or not my decisions actually influence the outcome of the story, I am unsure of). I felt increasingly compelled to engage with the narrative components of the game, gaining an interest in the backstory of the characters, NPCs and my own, and the land that they were living on, and I found myself researching the lore of the game.

I am torn in the problematic/unproblematic digital games debate: for one, I think the violent narrative in games like GW2 are problematic in the ways it can desensitize the player from acts of cruelty, but I also believe that digital games provide players a space to express feelings of aggression or anger that they experience prior to playing the game. However, I do think it is worthwhile to study the narrative of the game. MMORPGs like GW2 reach large numbers of people, and as digital storytellers, have to the ability to influence the way players perceive their own realities. Just as books, movies, and other forms of narrative mediums, the stories conveyed in games can work to perpetuate and reinforce certain ideologies and stereotypes that can have real-life, material consequences. For myself, the story is mostly told through visual media. Being able to see the landscape and environment that the narrative exists allows me develop a closer connection to it because it invites me to see myself in that world.

In the 2% of the map that I have explored in Guild Wars 2, I identified three landscapes – the Upper City in Divinity’s Reach, and the Shaemoor Fields and Bandithaunt Caverns in Queensdale – that in my experience, are in accordance with Michael W. Longan’s argument of the possibility for video game landscapes to “reinforce dominant ideologies,” particularly those about civilization, wilderness, and deviance. For starters, in the Upper City are great architectural structures, large statues, and uniform houses – all of which convey a sense of civility and propriety. By naming the Upper City as a place touched by or constructed for the ‘divine,’ the game’s producers’ create a space infused with refinement and holiness, which simultaneously constructs surrounding areas such as Queensdale to be in opposition: wild and uncultured. Guild Wars 2’s designation of certain landscapes and their inhabitants as needing to be civilized, saved, and/or cultured echoes colonial discourses that view Indigenous land as terra nullius and Orientalist discourses that perceive the ‘uncultured’ Other (the non-Western Other) as unprogressive.

Important to note is that the nation of Kryta, which my avatar is part of, is at war with the centaurs, who are fighting to reclaim the land stolen and settled by humans. This conflict over territory has subjected the citizens of Shaemoor to numerous centaur attacks, which is largely made possible through the construction of Queensdale as an open space with only a few buildings. In contrast to Divinity’s Reach, where the tall buildings and intricate mapping convey a sense of safety and impossibility of invasion within the city, the Shaemoor village is depicted as less protected and more vulnerable to invasion. Based on this conflict, the game’s storyline encourages one’s animosity towards the centaurs to evoke a patriotic desire to defend Kryta from the deviant Other. Dominant ideologies about Indigenous land rights are once again reflected in this construction of landscape; certain spaces are designated to certain groups based on scales of civility while the owners of the land are barred from inhabiting ‘territory’ that is rightfully theirs.

Specific landscapes in GW2 are rendered utopian/’friendly’ or dystopian/’hostile’ through visual signifiers. The Bandithaunt Caverns are constructed as a ‘hostile’ space through signifiers such as the multiplicity of wild animals in the region and the cavern’s ‘underdevelopment’ indicated by the presence of a rocky landscape, wild grass and unpaved floors and pathways. The game instructs you to hinder the inhabitants of dystopian landscapes such as this, calling on you to fight the bandits, kill their animals, and invade their spaces. On the other hand, your avatar is told to defend utopian landscapes (signalled by bright lights, tiled floor, and tamed plants) such as the Upper City against the enemy centaurs and bandits.

My experiences of the landscape in Guild Wars 2 made clear to me that space is political; control of a population is made possible through control of the environment and vice versa. The indestructibility of the game’s landscape conveyed to me an intimidating message of ‘this is the way things are and this is the way things should be,’ which served as a reminder of a video game’s capacity to perpetuate dominant ideologies through the “limit[ing] or direct[ing] the kinds of lessons…that players might learn” (Longan).

Guild Wars 2 begins with the selection of your characters’ ‘race’, or rather, humanoid species that are accompanied with specific traits and skills, as well as a background story. The race selection was one of the most important choices for me because I felt like it had the greatest effect on my role in the game, and the options that I would be offered. Given that I wanted to acquire skills and characteristics that I could imagine acquiring outside of the game, I chose to be human. Next is the ‘gender’ selection, which not only equates sex and gender, but only offers the binary options between male and female, disregarding and erasing the existence of intersex, trans and Two-Spirit folks. I, as a cisgender female woman, I chose the one I identified with most: female. Interestingly, there is no sexual orientation selection; whether that is because there will be no romantic or sexual storyline, or because the possibility of queerness is unfathomable, remains unclear.

What follows is the profession selection (I chose to be a guardian), and the body features modification. While there seems to be a broad range of ways to customize your avatar at first glance, there is, in actuality, very little variation between each option. Why Lokman et al. regard video games as a “propaganda tool” became most obvious to me during the modifications that employed sliders as the selection tool. The slider is always positioned in the middle of the scale where most ‘normal’ or ‘average’ bodies would be, and the scales’ limits suggest that although the game allows deviation from the norm, there are points where that deviation becomes unimaginable. Enmeshed in the game’s limited options is an ableist cisheteronormative ideology that is projected onto the players whether they realize it or not.

Before I began playing Guild Wars 2, I felt unsure about the character creation process: I would be given an opportunity to change who I was and how I looked, allowing me to navigate a different world with a different set of skills, privileges, and hindrances, but would I feel as connected to my character if it did not represent, as closely as the game allowed, who I am? Even during the choices that I cared little for (eye colour, head shape), I found myself feeling disappointed that even with the seemingly endless number of ways to customize my character, the game was not made for myself and many others to create characters that fully represented who they were. However, as someone who is thin, cisgender, and female, creating a character that I somewhat identify with was not too difficult, which is largely because I mostly fit within the small range/binary options that the game offered.

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