Is WoW a Caillois-complete game?

If that name looks unfamiliar to you, don't worry; I didn't know who the man was myself until a week or two ago. Roger Caillois was a French philosopher who wrote a book called Les Jeux et Les Hommes, which traslates to English as Men, Play and Games. In this book, Caillois discussed games and what truly constitutes a game, and he came up with six points about what makes a game a game. For a game to be a "Caillois-complete" game, it must fit all six of these points, or else it is just not a game. It might be an interesting tool or an entertaining diversion, nonetheless, but it is not a game. For a game to be Caillois-complete, it must be:

-Free: “in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion.”
-Separate: “circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.”
-Uncertain: “the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand; and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative.”
-Unproductive: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game.”
-Governed by Rules: “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.”
-Make-Believe: “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality, or of a free unreality, as against real life.”
(transcribed from a post on the blog "Cope")

What I would like to look at today is whether World of Warcraft is a Caillois-complete game, i.e. whether WoW counts as a game. Now, astute readers will remember my post, Is WoW "just a game"?, in which I concluded that, in some instances, WoW was more than a game. However, I did end the post by saying, "WoW is not just a game, but it is still a game," so I can still examine whether it is a Caillois-complete game. Besides, even if I had concluded that WoW was not "just a game", it would not prevent me from examining whether WoW is a Caillois-complete game, for one could not conclude that WoW not being a game means it isn't a Caillois-complete game. That would be a "converse error", a logical fallacy in which you assume that if one fact implies another, and that if the second fact is true, then the first one must also be true. In this case, the implication is that if WoW is not a Caillois-complete game, then it isn't a game. If I had concluded that WoW isn't a game, it would be a converse error to assume that that means it isn't a Caillois-complete game.

Right, so now that your lesson in logic is over, let's get to the examination.

Free: “in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion.”

Interestingly, WoW is one of the few games that actually has a mechanism in place to encourage players to play less and rewards players who do not play as if they are required to play; that mechanism is rested state, which you gain when you log out and which doubles the experience you gain from killing enemies. Of course, once you hit the level cap, rested state is no longer useful to you, so this point no longer necessarily applies. Thus we must ask; at level-cap content, it playing obligatory? Are players at a disadvantage if they take a break from playing?

I would say that in the days of Burning Crusade, that answer to this question was a definite "yes". I tried to get into raiding back then, but I was behind in gearing up, and the guild I was in didn't have the time to run me through older content to help me catch up. Now, granted, this lack of gear was a result of trying to start raiding too late, rather than a result of me taking a break, but the end product would have been the same either way. Fortunately, in today's WoW, we have the emblem system, which allows people to get gear in heroics that is good enough for them to go right into the current tier of raiding. Thus players are able to take a break from raiding, and if their gear falls behind, it's easier for them to catch up without their guild needing to drag them through old content. This was a big step for making WoW a more Caillois-complete game, in addition to a more casual-friendly game.

For progression guilds filled with hard-core players, however, the situation is likely not the same. After all, if you are doing cutting-edge content, you need to get as much gear as you can get your hands on so you can gain that much of an edge, and if you take a break and fall behind your guild, even if the difference is small, it could be enough of a disadvantage that your guild will leave you out in favor of someone who is more geared than you. And all that practice you missed? Not to mention needing to make it to raids on time or else being replaced and being less likely to be picked for a future raid. Of course, that content isn't going anywhere, so if you do take a break, you can always find a group of people who are at your current skill and gear level and run with them, instead. Suffice it to say that the design of WoW is Caillois-complete in the sense of being "free", but the social structures and obligations created by the players sometimes make it otherwise.

Separate: “circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.”

Well, it's certainly safe to say that WoW and the real world are separate entities... objectively, at least. But as I said above, when you look at the ways hard-core players approach WoW, the line between WoW and the real world gets blurry quite fast. When I was in a raiding guild, it wasn't uncommon for one guild member to call another guild member when we were trying to form a raid and were short one person. If that isn't WoW bleeding into the real world, I don't know what is. So, again, WoW is only as separate as its players want it to be.

Uncertain: “the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand; and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative.”

On the surface, this one seems much harder to defend than the others. After all, think of all of the raiders who do dailies for the money to enchant and gem their new gear, as well as pay the repair bills that endless wipes will lead to. Why do they run these dailies? Because they know exactly how much money they will get from those dailies, and they know it's enough to pay the bills. Think, also, of the raiders who run a heroic each day for the extra Emblems of Frost to get their tier gear that much faster. They know exactly what is going to happens in those heroics, and because of their gear, they know that failure just isn't a possibility. In other words, the outcome of dailies and heroics is certain, and thus they are not a Caillois-complete part of the game.

Of course, players only do these chores (let's call them what they really are) because they feel they have to, but the game doesn't require them to enchant and gem all their gear, and the money from the raid enemies themselves is usually enough to pay the repair bills if you don't wipe. And there are even ways to earn the money for gems and enchantments that are uncertain, and thus are a Caillois-complete part of the game. After all, one of my favorite parts of the game is fishing, and fishing is a great way to make money. The out-come is still uncertain, though; you don't know how much of the profitable fish you are going to get, and you don't know whether people will actually buy your fish. Still, it is a great way to make money, and the same facts apply to all gathering professions (except perhaps skinning). Thus, once again, dailies and heroics are only a Caillois-incomplete part of the game because players chose to continue to do them when they become chores.

Unproductive: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game.”

Two words come to mind when I see this rule: gold sellers. Where it not for the trade of in-game currency for real-world currency and the hacking that takes place as a result, this point would apply to WoW without exception. But gold sellers exist, and their presence means that WoW can be a productive activity, and thus not a game. Of course, their presence is only made possible by players who buy the gold those gold sellers sell steal, so yet again, the only reason this point doesn't apply to WoW is because the players don't let it.

Governed by Rules: “under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.”

WoW certainly suspends ordinary laws and establishes new legislation. The fact that a human being can drop down in Goldshire and throw fire at a wolf, or the fact that the Undead Forsaken exist is enough proof that the game makes its own rules of what is possible. The game also makes new rules that are less fantastic and are still feasible by real world sensibilities, like the fact that we are literally unable to directly kill anyone on our side. The key to this point, however, is that the game establishes new rules to replace the old rules, and only those new rules matter. This means that none of our real-world rules bleed into the game unless we want to them to. Well, as a social game, it's likely that the rules we have for social interactions in the real world are going to become a part of WoW, but its safe to say that we want that to happen. WoW is just more fun when people act civilly around one another.

But what about when a player doesn't want that to happen? I'm talking about trolls, griefers, and people who generally make other players' experiences miserable. Where do we get the idea that their activities are to be frowned upon? Why, from the real world of course. If WoW somehow punished griefing and trolling in some way other than players reporting trolls and griefers to GMs, this wouldn't be the case. However, there currently exist no in-game mechanics (and thus no "new legislation") to discourage this kind of behavior, so because the players bring with them their sensibilities of what is and isn't allowed in social interaction, WoW doesn't fit this point.

Make-Believe: “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality, or of a free unreality, as against real life.”

I think you can see the pattern developing. While WoW certainly can invoke a second reality for us players, that reality is tainted by all of the exceptions brought up in the previous points. It's difficult to acknowledge WoW as a second reality when there are consequences for not entering that reality regularly, when players contact each other outside the game to ask each other to enter that new reality, when we know how exactly how some of our interactions with that reality will end, when financial transactions take place in which currency within that reality is exchanged for currency in real life, and when our rules for social interaction in our reality bleed into our second reality. Suffice it to say that because of the players themselves, WoW doesn't create a second reality, or an unreality against real life.

So it seems that the general trend is that WoW is an objectively Caillois-complete game, but not a subjectively complete one. In other words, once players actually start playing, the Caillois-completeness of the game breaks down. I wouldn't say that this is WoW's fault, though. Perhaps with a smaller, more intimate playerbase, these issues wouldn't arise the way they do now. Because there would be fewer raiders to pick from, the raiding guilds would be happy to help guildies who took a break gear up again. With fewer potential customers, the gold-selling business wouldn't be as lucrative. With a more intimate playerbase, it's less likely that trolls would necessitate the infusion of real-world social rules into the game. Maybe WoW isn't a Caillois-complete game because it's playerbase is just too big.

Or perhaps we don't want WoW to be just a game, so we try to make it more than just a game, subconsciously or otherwise, and thus is loses some of what makes it a game in the process. That's an issue too big for me to consider in this post, though. Maybe next time.