Henry Jenkins

Henry Jenkins has taught at MIT for 18 years, where he is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program since 1998. He is the author and/or editor of nine books and dozens of articles on various aspects of media and popular culture, and is widely regarded as one of the most prolific minds on media.

How much of our attention does Warcraft really deserve in relation to some of its contemporaries?

Henry Jenkins: I spoke at a games studies conference earlier this summer. There was a steady track of WoW programming for the entire event -- one WoW paper after another -- many of them presented by members of a WoW guild that is composed almost entirely of game scholars. There's no question that the game deserves lots of attention -- I am not a WOW player so I went to only a few of the papers but each scholar had found something interesting to discuss within the game. I came away with a sense of the richness of the game's interface but more importantly the diversity and engagement of the fan cultures which had grown up around and through the game.

WoW deserves attention because it has so captured the imagination of gamers over the past few years. That said, I don't think it is healthy for the field of games studies, which is still emerging, to be so fixated on a single game franchise -- no matter what the franchise. A few years ago, it might have been The Sims or GTA, now it's WoW. But we need to spread out a bit more to encompass the full range of game genres and we need to be attentive to new, experimental, independent, and emerging work in the game space.

But what really made WoW into such a subscriber powerhouse? Were they lucky, in the right place at the right time, or does a lot of the credit belong to the designers in creating a more finished and seamless experience?

HJ: What interests game scholars about WOW isn't the game itself: it's the ways that players have organized socially to take advantage of the affordances of the game and it's the tools and systems they have constructed to support their complex collaborative game play activities.

In other words, the game may have succeed with fans because it was a well designed game which offered the right features to the right players at the right price at the right time but it's continuing interest has as much or more to do with what players have added to the game experience than anything that the designers put in the game. This is not a slam at the designers -- this is the nature of the multiplayer game space – it supports a rich and diverse culture or it dies. And as you note, the core gamers tend to be a diasporic community that moves in waves from one game to another.

What's in store for single player games?

HJ: I don't see them going away anytime soon. For one thing, a high percentage of casual games are single player and that's one of the most dynamic growth areas for the games industry right now. I certainly see the platform games becoming more social -- as we watch everything from the new Wii titles to Guitar Hero being designed to be played by a group of friends gathered together in someone's rumpus room.

Yet, I think there will always be creative designers generating titles which capture the imagination of individuals. I like to attend parties; I like to read; sometimes I have to chose between the two but for the most part, they hold different niches in my life. I suspect multiplayer and single player games will operate in the same ways: the same gamers may be drawn to both depending on their mood or the particular title and then there will be some people who only want to engage with one or another mode of game play.

If Warcraft collapsed today, then where would the players go? Other MMO games, single player games, the gym?

HJ: I know less about what happens when multiplayer games start to implode than I know about the migrations of television fans, which is a phenomenon that I've had a chance to observe over more than 20 years. In both cases, the holding power has to do with at least two variables: the degree to which individual members value what the franchise is giving them (including both content and corporate/community relations) and the degree to which the members feel attached to the social network which grows up around the franchise.

Typically, a bad decision or decisions by the company compromises, at some point, in the cycle the interests of the community, creating growing dis-satisfaction within the community. Certain key thought leaders in the community move elsewhere, often issuing some final message to the group, which feeds the discontent. Initially, the group may move outward in several different directions, testing new franchises to see if they offer either new pleasures or more of what attracted them to the earlier franchise.

In a networked culture, the word gets out where they went and what they thought and then there's a larger migration which can, under the right conditions, turn into a stampede. I suspect when this happens to WoW that people will be searching in several directions: some following the genre, looking for other worlds with similar elements; others will follow the game play mechanics, looking for games which either offer features they like about WOW or which fix the things that bugged them about the game; and others will follow the community, wanting to move to where-ever their friends relocate.

This whole process unfolds over several months or longer as the pieces sort themselves out. The key point here is that it is never social to the degree that other elements of the experience don't matter at all but the choice between equally satisfying experiences will frequently rest on the decisions made by the social network as a whole.

Do you anticipate the arrival of more game genres that might directly compete with MMO, Single Player, Multiplayer online, etc?

HJ: Always. I can't tell you what the new genres are going to be. If I could, I'd be on the payroll of a major company. But everything in the history of games so far suggests that whenever things start to feel too predictible, a new paradigm emerges and shakes up the box again.

If you were stranded on a desert island with only one game to last you through the long years, what would it be?

HJ: That's an easy one. Tetris. I have been playing Tetris off and on regularly for more than a decade. Its simplicity of design allows for almost infinite replay value. I keep telling myself one more game, constantly thinking I can do better. I can get into the flow of the game easily and can remain relaxed and captivated for a long time. So, if I could have only one game, I'd go for a classic that never seems to grow old. It isn't necessarily my all-time favorite game but then, my favorites tend to come and go, and this remains loyally at second or third place on my list.

Conclusion

So what’s really in store for our intrepid diaspora of gamers?

Are they locked in an ongoing migration from populous to desolate game worlds, or will the fertile valleys of one monstrous game become too utterly irresistible? How will social worlds, such as Second Life, relate to worlds like World of Warcraft, where the grind is planned and the players expect entertainment? How “Blockbuster” or sensually realistic will new MMO games have to be? Will we barrel toward huge and highly realistic games? Or at some point on our path to largest and most realistic, will these digital realities start to look like a world that we’ve had all along? Perhaps McNeill is right, and it’s real life that will start to look more like a game.

But the point of this article was not explicitly to make deep or philosophical points. It was to have conversations with the academics immersed in the research. The point of this article was not to answer questions so much as to raise them.