A student of James Paul Gee, Steinkuehler does a great job compiling research from other disciplines that analyze video games. Rob brought up the corrupted blood plague incident from when the instance Zul'Gurub was released, in which an extremely contagious and deadly disease (that was meant to be contained within the zone) spread outside the zone to heavily populated game cities via pets and hearthstones, but economists are also studying the markets of MMOGs, copyright lawyers are studying the sale of "virtual" goods, and other fields too are all taking a bite out of video games as a means to better understand the workings of real life.
Regarding skill in video games, I'd like to chime in as a player who has spent a lot of time competing and earning a small degree of success in the e-sports world. Matt makes a great point in showing the absolute fine motor control that many top players require--David Sirlin explains in his "Play to Win" series that players of arcade fighters need to be able to push a button within the first three one hundredths of a second. Does that match MJ? Maybe, maybe not. Okay, let's try a different tact. In addition to being able to _do_ the things required to be great, players need to _know_ when to do the things required to be great; this is true of both WoW PvP and any other sport. The difference is, I argue, that WoW PvP (and other e-sport platforms) requires far more knowledge to accurately judge/gauge the landscape. In a sport, there are the rules and then there is what a human is capable of doing within those rules in a single arena (the most that arena influences play is the difference between turf and astro-turf, which isn't negligible, but neither is it enormous). In an e-sport (especially one such as WoW), there are the rules (which are subject to change) and then there is what ten different classes, each with between one and four viable talent specializations, are capable of, in five different arenas.
I'd be curious to find some stats about how many college players get drafted into the NBA, to compare it with how many WoW PvPers that achieve 2k rating get Gladiator status (or some similar comparison). Only 0.5% of all PvPers get Gladiator status, but there is a statistic given by the developers that say how many players get above 2k out of all that try arena, and it is significantly lower (something like 0.01%).
Cody Reimer
Freshman Composition TA
St. Cloud State University
Constance Steinkuehler's work strikes me as relevant to this discussion. You can find a lot of her articles online at http://website.education.wisc.edu/steinkuehler/blog/
A student of James Paul Gee, Steinkuehler does a great job compiling research from other disciplines that analyze video games. Rob brought up the corrupted blood plague incident from when the instance Zul'Gurub was released, in which an extremely contagious and deadly disease (that was meant to be contained within the zone) spread outside the zone to heavily populated game cities via pets and hearthstones, but economists are also studying the markets of MMOGs, copyright lawyers are studying the sale of "virtual" goods, and other fields too are all taking a bite out of video games as a means to better understand the workings of real life.
Regarding skill in video games, I'd like to chime in as a player who has spent a lot of time competing and earning a small degree of success in the e-sports world. Matt makes a great point in showing the absolute fine motor control that many top players require--David Sirlin explains in his "Play to Win" series that players of arcade fighters need to be able to push a button within the first three one hundredths of a second. Does that match MJ? Maybe, maybe not. Okay, let's try a different tact. In addition to being able to _do_ the things required to be great, players need to _know_ when to do the things required to be great; this is true of both WoW PvP and any other sport. The difference is, I argue, that WoW PvP (and other e-sport platforms) requires far more knowledge to accurately judge/gauge the landscape. In a sport, there are the rules and then there is what a human is capable of doing within those rules in a single arena (the most that arena influences play is the difference between turf and astro-turf, which isn't negligible, but neither is it enormous). In an e-sport (especially one such as WoW), there are the rules (which are subject to change) and then there is what ten different classes, each with between one and four viable talent specializations, are capable of, in five different arenas.
I'd be curious to find some stats about how many college players get drafted into the NBA, to compare it with how many WoW PvPers that achieve 2k rating get Gladiator status (or some similar comparison). Only 0.5% of all PvPers get Gladiator status, but there is a statistic given by the developers that say how many players get above 2k out of all that try arena, and it is significantly lower (something like 0.01%).
Cody Reimer
Freshman Composition TA
St. Cloud State University