My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft

by Bonnie A. Nardi

"Ever since the creators of the animated television show South Park turned their lovingly sardonic gaze on the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft for an entire episode, WoW's status as an icon of digital culture has been secure. My Life as a Night Elf Priest digs deep beneath the surface of that icon to explore the rich particulars of the World of Warcraft player's experience."
—Julian Dibbell, Wired

"World of Warcraft is the best representative of a significant new technology, art form, and sector of society: the theme-oriented virtual world. Bonnie Nardi's pioneering transnational ethnography explores this game both sensitively and systematically using the methods of cultural anthropology and aesthetics with intensive personal experience as a guild member, media teacher, and magical quest Elf."
—William Sims Bainbridge, author of The Warcraft Civilization and editor of Online Worlds

 
“Nardi skillfully covers all of the hot button issues that come to mind when people think of video games like World of Warcraft such as game addiction, sexism, and violence. What gives this book its value are its unexpected gems of rare and beautifully detailed research on less sensationalized topics of interest such as the World of Warcraft player community in China, game modding, the increasingly blurred line between play and work, and the rich and fascinating lives of players and player cultures.  Nardi brings World of Warcraft down to earth for non-players and ties it to social and cultural theory for scholars.  . . . the best ethnography of a single virtual world produced so far.”
—Lisa Nakamura, University of Illinois
World of Warcraft rapidly became one of the most popular online world games on the planet, amassing 11.5 million subscribers—officially making it an online community of gamers that had more inhabitants than the state of Ohio and was almost twice as populous as Scotland. It's a massively multiplayer online game, or MMO in gamer jargon, where each person controls a single character inside a virtual world, interacting with other people's characters and computer-controlled monsters, quest-givers, and merchants.

In My Life as a Night Elf Priest, Bonnie Nardi, a well-known ethnographer who has published extensively on how theories of what we do intersect with how we adopt and use technology, compiles more than three years of participatory research in Warcraft play and culture in the United States and China into this field study of player behavior and activity. She introduces us to her research strategy and the history, structure, and culture of Warcraft; argues for applying activity theory and theories of aesthetic experience to the study of gaming and play; and educates us on issues of gender, culture, and addiction as part of the play experience. Nardi paints a compelling portrait of what drives online gamers both in this country and in China, where she spent a month studying players in Internet cafes.

Bonnie Nardi has given us a fresh look not only at World of Warcraft but at the field of game studies as a whole. One of the first in-depth studies of a game that has become an icon of digital culture, My Life as a Night Elf Priest will capture the interest of both the gamer and the ethnographer.

Bonnie A. Nardi is an anthropologist by training and a professor in the Department of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focus is the social implications of digital technologies. She is the author of A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing and the coauthor of Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart and Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design.

Cover art by Jessica Damsky

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Ethnography, Gaming, Cultural, Games, Research

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was fantastic. So many people play World of Warcraft, and those of you that do may find this boring, but that is what anthropology is like; it looks at the everyday, obvbious, and mundane. As someone who has never played WOW, and a student of anthropology, I found this account to be fresh and captivating. Reading Nardi's ethnography teaches you all the things about WOW that you wouldn't learn unless you had spent a large amount of time emersed in the game itself.

If you feel like starting to play WOW, I certainly recommend reading this. It is in essence an instruction manual and guide to all you could need to know or wonder about the community and world of the game. I particularly liked how it is written, and you feel a shared embarrassment as she fumbles through learning the ways of the game as any noob would (hopefully saving you from doing the same).

Unlike many ethnographies, this is one that will appeal to most people who play video games in any shape or form. Aside from the chapter where Nardi must explain her methodology which is sllightly boring (though required), the book is paced well and enjoyable.

[Andrea D. McCarthage · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Bottom Line - Should you read this book?
NO, UNLESS - you are specifically looking for texts on World of Warcraft (as a phenomena) for a project of your own.

An interesting premise that falls flat as the author struggles to stick to either a scientific approach or causerie writing.

[Heixiong · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting much of this book, but even my low expectation weren't met. The book isn't very well written--the author tries to straddle that line between accessible and academic with little success. Although much of the book is written in general vernacular, ostensibly to attract a large audience, the second third of the book ("Active Aesthetic Experience") bogs down in a lot of overly complex language that fails to explain or contextualize some of the theoretical points the author tries to make.

I'm sure the average reader is going to have at least a passing familiarity with the game (why else would you read this book), but I found it a little problematic that the author relied so heavily on WoW-specific slang. At one point in a later chapter, she breezily refers to a "25-man pug," which might be somewhat incomprehensible to someone who missed the reference in an earlier chapter that a "pug" is a "pickup group."

Also the chapters devoted to gender and Chinese players were embarrassingly bad. At one point the author states that: "We must also ask why women themselves have not created games that meet [these competitive] requirements . . . . It is not up to men to do this for us." p. 174. What the fuck. The onus is on the women, with no recognition of the very real societal and cultural obstacles that stand in the way of women entering STEM fields, of the stigmatization that girls receive from playing with non-gendered toys, etc etc? She also observes that there might be a higher prevalence of female players in WoW as compared to FPS because WoW is prettier (and I guess therefore inherently more feminine). Jesus.

It is also extremely apparent how little she knows about Chinese culture. Yes, it is so wonderful that we live in a global society where games like WoW can introduce European culture to the Chinese, and show them how dragons can be EVIL! For an anthropologist to seemingly not understand how unbalanced the relationship of cultural exchange is between American (and Western) culture and Chinese (non-Western) culture is so weird.

This is the first review I have ever written for GoodReads. Grats on inspiring a grudge review--my rating actually went DOWN a star in writing up all my complaints with this book.

[Alexa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this for class. There were some interesting points. I really enjoyed the chapter on gender and on an aesthetic experience, but I never would have read this for fun. I now know far more than I ever needed to about WOW

[Jonathan Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent example of seeing World of Warcraft with an ethnographer's lenses. I found Nardi's discussion of gender the most successful and absorbing take on the question of gender in online digital cultures. Her comparison of the cultures of North American players versus Chinese players was also illuminating. I would be very interested in someone like Nardi doing an updated study of WOW in 2012, since the works I've been looking at have been largely concerned with WOW in the Burning Crusade era or earlier. Quite a while ago now.

[John Carter McKnight · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is academic writing at its finest: clear, compelling, accessible, entertaining without sacrificing any theoretical strength. While I disagree significantly with Nardi's application and interpretation of her selected theories, it doesn't undermine the power of this book.

I'll definitely use it in classes and recommend it to anyone curious about the social phenomenon of WoW.

[Susan Mazur Stommen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read most of the beginning and the end before losing it to a hungry seat pocket on a flight somewhere. It is very engaging and a detailed look at the world of WOW. I am an anthropologist, but nonetheless my eyes glazed when things went into theory. Activity theory, as presented here, seemed fairly abstract and planar. It may have been more rewarding with longer exposure.

[Whimsy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was interesting to read about the game I love playing from an academic point of view. Some parts were a little too "academic" for me, but would be interesting for readers who work/study in this area.

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

虽然不是那么新的内容/理论，但是仍然非常有意思。开启两扇新大门：魔兽和game studies。

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

las gemakkelijk en was interessant maar soms rare conclusies + hoofdstuk over China was overbodig en weinig onderzocht

[Narth · Rating 2 out of 5]

An anthropologist studies Azeroth and never visits the Goldshire inn on Moonguard?! FAIL

[Topher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm currently on a non-fiction kick. This is a book by an academic, and it shows.... A sociologist/anthropologist decides they want to play WoW, and then spends a significant amount of their time thinking about it, and how it fits into the theory of leisure activity. Not quite sure what to make of it, honestly - it's a bit an the Arts side of Arts&Sciences for me, but not quite interesting enough to overcome that. There were some interesting insights into WoW, which I could appreciate as a non-player.

[Devin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My curiosity in the book doubled when I read that Nardi had actually preached against video games prior to this research. Well, the pages here are shining with the passion she has since acquired for artful, interactive, cooperative media. However, her positivity isn’t complacent, and she channels it into enlightening dark spots within modern work/play dynamics and in video game culture itself.

Furthermore, activity theory was new to me and this book was a stellar introduction to it, and to John Dewey’s “aesthetic” philosophy.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid work that falls into the standard WoW trap: it's too big to study without a laser-like critical focus. Nardi definitely shows flashes of the necessary focus, and it keeps the book moving along at a steady pace; but the need (legitimate or not) for a work like this to justify itself to both an academic audience and the experienced WoW-playing audience keeps it hovering between both.

[Dacarter1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book for anyone interested in Anthropology. It reads almost like a research paper and can be rather dull around certain subjects, but it did make me think a lot more about cultural followings

[Chris O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started this last summer. Then just finished recently. It re-emphasized for me how profoundly these types of games are. I still haven't taken the plunge, however, and signed up to try World of Warcraft. I'm worried it will indeed suck me in.

[♥ Unaeve ♥]

This will be an interesting read,considering i played a night elf and a priest for years in this game:)(and playing still sometimes)

[Bettina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for an anthropological study.