"Warcraft and Utopia," an essay on the politics of play by Duke album Alexander Galloway.

World of Warcraft evokes a pre-modern hodgepodge of technologies and narrative scenarios (given time, one might cognitively map the historical fantasy of the game's narrative -- trace when exactly the blunderbuss was invented, or the introduction of certain kinds of armor, for example, all the while knowing that such a pursuit could never be "fixed" or arrived at with any degree of precision), overtly participating in the "utopia for the before," imagining life before capitalism. However, the functionality of the game is pure software culture, suggesting that perhaps the more one tries to strip utopia of its machinic core, by cloaking it in any manner of pure fantasy or pre-modern worlds ("dungeons and dragons," "swords and sorcery," etc.), the more informatic and algorithmic it becomes, reverting to the software equivalent of twenty-sided dice. Indeed dice are repurposed in World of Warcraft: into the various logics of software code; random number generation; action statistics; and particularly in terms of how identity is defined as a set of mathematical variables such as stamina, agility, health, and so on.

Crazy demographic of the day: In today’s America, there are more World of Warcraft players than farmers. Via Paul Krugman by way of an email from Steve.

There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Burea of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of these "What does America think about culture" pieces comes on, do I ever see a mid-30's software engineer onscreen bitching about having to download BitTorrents of "The IT Crowd"? Fuck and no.

Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:

ANDERSON: We stopped by the gates of Ogrimmar in Durotar, on the east coast of Kalimdor, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to the level-grinding life.

UNIDENTIFIED ORC: They've never been back here, questing Razormane or Drygulch Ravine, y'know ... or farming for Peacebloom and Silverleaf. They're out of touch.

No. No I do not.