Orcs, night elves, a couple dragons, a 25-man guild raid... order some Domino’s and a bottomless cup of Jolt cola -- this is the perfect saturday evening. Well, unless you have a life and friends outside the realm of Azeroth.
This is the reality for 11.5 million World of Warcraft subscribers world wide. It wasn’t until I stumbled on this article that I realized what a huge cultural force this MMORPG is. While I’ve never played the game, I can’t help but be intrigued at the amount of attention it has garnered both on and offline.
What was once an unspoken guilty pleasure--like Zac Efron--is now a huge cultural phenomenon -- like Zac Efron. But, even Disney is jealous of Blizzard's cash cow. Selling 2.8 million copies on its release day, the latest expansion pack is the fastest selling game of all time.
Relative to its commercial success, Warcraft has been a well kept secret among the nerd community (and I say that in the most endearing way). It is worth noting that 1 in 5 WoW subscribers are female. Perhaps the largest appeal behind WoW (and most MMO games) is that it allows you to create a virtual persona that may differ from your real life counterpart.
This video from The Onion pokes fun at how eager players are to upgrade to the latest content release by Blizzard.
Behold... “The World of World of Warcraft”.
My favorite example is the South Park episode “Make Love not Warcraft”, which makes fun of the stereotypes and gaming culture itself.
South Park - Make Love, Not Warcraft DARK RIDER | MySpace Video What I find most interesting about these cultural critiques is that it seems as though the WoW community embraces this self deprecating humor. Its never been cooler to be a nerd.
No comments:
Post a Comment