World of Warcraft and Hearthstone BY PIERLUIGI ADREANI
World of Warcraft and Hearthstone BY PIERLUIGI ADREANI AND ALESSANDRO MARCHESINI
Thesis statement With the popularization of videogames the industry have been through the same process that other art forms have experienced in the past century; we are going to demonstrate it using theories of some members of the Frankfurt School.
Content: Introduction: The producer/Kind of game/Wow story/Game modes. Body: Disciplinary power (Micheal Foucault) hyper-reality (Jean Baudrillard) Bridge from Wow to Hearthstone: Wrath of the lich king
The producer • Founded in 1991. Based in Irvine, California (Creation of games ports for other studios) • 1993 they started to create their own software. • Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch.
The game and the story • Wow is a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Role-Playing Game) • More then 10 m players from all over the world. • Races/classes
Game modes: PVE
Michael foucault: Disciplinary power Foucault uses an adaptation of Jeremy Bentham's idea of the panopticon to demonstrate the impact that constant surveillance has not only on an individual in an institution such as prison, but also on society as a whole. The point of the panopticon is that control is achieved through what Foucault calls 'disciplinary power', a form of power that is constant, unnoticeable and internalized.
Jean Baudrillard: Hyperreality Simulacra and Simulation: our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality. Representations of things come to replace things being represented, and that the representations become more important than the ‘real thing’. The massed collection of these simulations has resulted in the condition of hyperreality, where we only experience prepared realities such as edited war footage or reality TV and the distinction between the ‘real’ and simulations has collapsed.
Content: Introduction: Body: What Is Hearth. Stone? Hearthstone in culture industry and fetish of the commodity in Hearthstone Conclusion
How the game present itself
How it feels like
How the game works
Heroes List
Actual Gameplay
Economic aspect
Hearthstone and the culture industry “ALL FILMS HAVE BECOME SIMILAR IN THEIR BASIC FORM. THEY ARE SHAPED TO REFLECT FACTS OF REALITY AS CLOSELY AS POSSIBLE. EVEN FANTASY FILMS, WHICH CLAIM TO NOT REFLECT SUCH REALITY, DON'T REALLY LIVE UP TO WHAT THEY CLAIM TO BE”. THEODOR W. ADORNO
How Hearthstone presents characterics of theories of Adorno • The game is form without substance. • The game presents no plot. • The player thinks without reflecting. • The player that doesn’t invest money on the game is force in a state of alienation, and exclusion. • In the “free to play” game the process of commodification is complete and brought to an extent that Adorno could have not predicted.
Hearthstone and the commodity fetishism “the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. ” Karl Marx
Conclusion This two videogames reflect the development of the videogame industry in the past 15 years. Any casual gamer can testify how videogames are becoming less and less creative and more profit driven losing what Walter Benjamin described as “Aura”.
- Slides: 25