Abstract
Over the past four years, programmer Zoe Quinn, Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, video game critic Anita Sarkeesian, and scholar and activist Melissa Click all received death threats and experienced other forms of symbolic violence after coordinated online campaigns against them. Documenting these instances remains a critical project for feminist media studies. But the interactive context of online gaming offers examples of resistance to oppressive practices and harassment from which scholars and activists can learn. This chapter examines one such example: the struggle over online climate and culture on World of Warcraft (WoW) server Proudmoore. Through its focus on the agency people exercise within the constraints of online spaces, this chapter documents how a specific play culture was transformed and how the fantastic effectively transformed the mundane.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
See http://gambit.mit.edu/projects/hatespeech.php/need for vivid examples of these forms of harassment.
- 2.
The analysis that follows is based on nearly two decades’ combined experiences as participant observers in WoW and other online games. Stabile began playing WoW in 2006, about 18 months after the game was launched, specifically for research purposes. She subsequently played Guild Wars, The Lord of the Rings Online, and Knights of the Old Republic. Strait began playing WoW shortly after its launch in 2005, while still in high school, and later played Guild Wars, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Runescape.
- 3.
In 2006, gaymer.org creator Chris Vizzini filed to trademark the term but with help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation was denied ownership by gay gamers who had for years been using the language (Kohler 2013).
Bibliography
15 Minutes of Fame: Proudmoore Guild Plays out GLBT Pride. 2008. Engadget. Accessed July 13, 2016. https://www.engadget.com/2008/10/21/15-minutes-of-fame-proudmoore-guild-plays-out-glbt-pride/.
Bernstein, Anita. 2015. Abuse and Harassment Diminish Free Speech. Pace Law Review 35 (1): 1.
Chee, Florence M., Nicholas T. Taylor, and Suzanne de Castell. 2012. Re-Mediating Research Ethics: End-User License Agreements in Online Games. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 32 (6). https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467612469074. bst.sagepub.com . Web.
Citron, Danielle Keats, and Mary Anne Franks. 2014. Criminalizing Revenge Porn. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. papers.ssrn.com .
Consalvo. 2012. Confronting Toxic Gamer Culture: A Challenge for Feminist Game Studies Scholars. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology: n.p.
Cross, Katherine Angel. 2014. Ethics for Cyborgs: On Real Harassment in an ‘Unreal’ Place. Loading… 8 (13): n.p. journals.sfu.ca .
Daniels, Jessie. 2009. Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 37 (1–2): 101–124.
Dibbell, Julian. 1998. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Holt.
Fox, Jesse, and Wai Yen Tang. 2014. Sexism in Online Video Games: The Role of Conformity to Masculine Norms and Social Dominance Orientation. Computers in Human Behavior 33: 314–320. ScienceDirect.
Galloway, Alexander R. 2006. Gaming: Essays On Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
GAMBIT: Hate Speech Project. Accessed July 12, 2016. http://gambit.mit.edu/projects/hatespeech.php.
Help Me Choose a Realm! 2014. Wowhead. Accessed July 13, 2016. http://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=204888/help-me-choose-a-realm.
Higgin, Tanner. 2009. Blackless Fantasy: The Disappearance of Race in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. Games and Culture 4 (1): 3–26.
Imarisha, Walidah, and adrienne maree brown. 2015. Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Kohler, Will. 2013. Its Okay To Be Gay-Mer! – Battle Over the Word ‘Gaymer’ WON! Back2Stonewall. n.p., 24 August. Web. 27 October 2016.
Kolko, Beth, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert Rodman. 2013. Race in Cyberspace. Abingdon: Routledge.
Kou, Yubo, and Bonnie Nardi. 2013. Regulating Anti-Social Behavior on the Internet: The Example of League of Legends. iConference 2013 Proceedings.
Maher, Brendan. 2016. Can a Video Game Company Tame Toxic Behaviour? Nature News 531 (7596): 568. https://doi.org/10.1038/531568a.
Marwick, Alice E., and Danah Boyd. 2014. Networked Privacy: How Teenagers Negotiate Context in Social Media. New Media & Society 16 (7). https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814543995. nms.sagepub.com .
Nakamura, Lisa. 2002 Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (Hardback) – Routledge. Text. Routledge.com . n.p. Web. 12 July 2016.
———. 2008. Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 2009. Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft. Critical Studies in Media Communication 26 (2): 128–144.
Nelson, Alondra. 2011. Race After the Internet. Edited by Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White. New York: Routledge.
Nelson, Alondra, Thuy Linh N. Tu, and Alicia Headlam Hines. 2001. Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life. New York: NYU Press.
Pascoe, C.J. 2011. Dude, You’re a Fag! Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Phillips, Amanda. 2012. Laundry Day: Online Aggression. Fembot Collective, April 10. http://fembotcollective.org/blog/2012/04/10/laundry-day-online-agression/.
Profanity Filters, Homophobic Slurs, and Blizzard’s Shaky Relationship with the LGBT Community. 2012. Engadget. Accessed July 15, 2016. https://www.engadget.com/2012/01/25/profanity-filters-homophobic-slurs-and-blizzards-shaky-relati/.
Stone, Alluquere Rosanne. 1995. The War of Technology and Desire. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Taint (Proudmoore US). WoWWiki. Accessed July 15, 2016. http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Guild:Taint_(Proudmoore_US).
Taylor, T.L. 2009. Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2012. Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Print.
Ward, Mark. 2006. Gay Rights Win in Warcraft World. BBC, February 13, sec. Technology. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4700754.stm.
‘World of Warcraft’ Copes with Gay Rights Fallout. 2006. Msnbc.com , February 16. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11374783/ns/technology_and_science-games/t/world-warcraft-copes-gay-rights-fallout/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stabile, C.A., Strait, L. (2018). Out on Proudmoore: Climate Issues on an MMO. In: Harper, T., Adams, M., Taylor, N. (eds) Queerness in Play. Palgrave Games in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90542-6_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90542-6_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90541-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90542-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)