The Body under the Mask: Unveiling the corporeal practice of gamersAfdækningen af computerspilleres kropslige praksis

 In reality, I should be doing something else. I should be analyzing the discourse and communication of World of Warcraft gamers playing together in groups and guilds. I should be doing conversational analysis and writing papers on the syntactical structure, semantic meaning, and pragmatic use of gamers’ communication while they raid, quest, and hang out. Instead, I find myself consistently writing and talking about the bodily experience of gaming, the fingers sensuous ‘feel’ of the game, the quality and meaning of locomotion, the rhythm of gaming, and the deeply meaningful corporeal practice of gamers. How did this come to pass? It began by observing my brother partake in high end raiding with his guild in World of Warcraft. I was logging the group’s textual and verbal communication when I realized that the communication taking place wasn’t much about make-believe, identity-construction, visual meaning-making, or social structures. Days later, while chewing on this, I was passing my 6 year old daughter’s room while she was playing the bull running Flash-game Power Pamplona, concentrating on making her avatar jump obstacles and staying ahead of the stampeding bull. My attention was caught by a rhythmic, chanting murmuring. I poked my head into the room and saw her tightened body, intently focused but at the same time hypnotic distant eyes, and her moving lips chanting: “and...now...and...now...and...now” while pressing the spacebar in concordance with the games pulse (and pulsating music), rocking her body back and forth to stay in the rhythm. Was there a deeper meaning hiding here? – This certainly wasn’t conversation but more like a sensuous corporeal dance. It unexpectedly reminded me of the raid-communication of my brother’s World of Warcraft guild. I suddenly envisaged the entire group sitting at their material interfaces, their fingers dancing on the keyboard while moving their mice in figure skating patterns, rhythmic waves of key-taps and mouse-clicks ascended as a kind of corporeal music. Suddenly I saw their communication in a new light, not as ‘conversation’ or ‘discourse,’ but as a symphonic coordination of corporeal acts as the gamers simultaneously played their own idiorhythmic part and flowed with the polyrhythm of the group. This vision was additionally strengthened when I woke up one night as my brother and my husband were playing Left 4 Dead 2 above my head (on the first floor). I could hear them screaming for help, cursing, banging their fists in the table, jumping around in their chairs, cheering and laughing. – This definitely wasn’t conversation either, more like bursts and waves of corporeal thrills and adrenaline rushes. All this was only reinforced as I began to play World of Warcraft in my working hours and Rock Band with my daughter and mother in my spare time. When I went to bed my body echoed with my fingers dance on keyboards, mice, and guitars while my head echoed with calls for assistance, instructions for proper corporeal interaction, cheers in joy and cries in alarm. But nothing stayed imprinted so powerfully on my mind as my first group-instance in World of Warcraft: My dry mouth, shaking hands, nervous outbursts, throbbing heart, adrenaline rushed body, and narrowing visual field. Afterwards, I was unable to sleep for several hours, laying in the dark, as I tried to calm my racing heart and jittering body. And profoundly startled, when I realized that my corporeal sensations were identical to the first time I was in a kumite-fight at a karate tournament.

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