Träning och tävling online: Raidkultur i World of Warcraft

Sammanfattning: Competitive gaming, or the growing sport like scene around computer games, has not been studied much in the academic field of Games Studies. Drawing on ethnographic and interview work both inside and outside the game this thesis examines player-produced culture around raids in the Massive Multiplayer Online Game World of Warcraft. Competitive elements in WoW, such as races to be the “World First” to beat a raid encounter, have become more dominant and mainstream during WoWs five year history. Today, famous guilds can get much attention outside the game, and get invited to play in front of audiences on big LAN like “Dream Hack” in Jönköping Sweden. With theoretical inspiration from phenomenological culture analysis and Bruno Latour the study discuss how players coordinate and monitor both their own, and other player’s game play in cooperative team play. By acknowledging the audience as a part of the game culture the author also argues that new ways of looking at games and play in contemporary culture can be reach.