Device: Laptop
Time: 1 hour
Location: Bedroom
During this session, I accidentally entered another world. I clicked on a glowing object that looked interesting and translocated to a place called Shermoon City. It was a bright, happy orange and populated mainly by blood elves. I noticed that the chat section was more active than I’d previously seen. Players were trying to find guilds or looking for recruits that could join and play at certain times a week. When I interacted with the elves, they greeted and said goodbye in English as well as their own language. After speaking to a Tauren and an orc, I noticed that they didn’t have a secondary language. I wonder if World of Warcraft elevates certain races among others through language.
It made me think of how J. R. R. Tolkien spent a lot of time crafting the language of the elves into something flowing and beautiful while the orc tongue received much less attention. The Blackless Fantasy article by Higgin discusses the treatment of Black characters in multiplayer role-playing games and the treatment of race in Lord of the Rings. Those books present the conflict between stark white (dwarves, elves, men) versus black races (orcs, South Men of the Mountains). Ultimately, the white races win. But how does World of Warcraft treat race?
The humans, dwarves, and elves all have a standard light skin tone which can be altered by the player. However, the skin tones only darken to a tan. It has a limited range, which unfortunately excludes representation for Black players. They can’t recreate themselves in an avatar other than the non-humanoid races through appearance. White dominance affects the more humanoid races, such as the elves and the dwarves rather than the Tuaren or the wolf-like creatures. The skin color detail within customization marginalizes Black representation even though there are several race options since it’s such a constructed, inculcated identifier of race in society. That construction of race also appears in this game world.
I noticed that the game developers borrowed accents and dances from specific cultures for the various races. For example, the Taurans express a similar relationship to the earth as Native Americans do and that doesn’t seem ethical. The game developers gave a race with mostly animal features the same beliefs as a marginalized race. Does representing them in this way as a race in the multiplayer video game empower the culture they appropriated from or simplify it? I think an argument can be made for both sides.