Korean WoW Gamers’ Competitive Game Culture and Excessive Game Labor

ABSTRACT

This study uses thematic analysis of online forum posts to examine the Korean World of Warcraft (WoW) raiders’ motivation for voluntary engagement in excessive gaming, or game nogada, from a sociocultural and ideological perspective. The concept of excessive game labor is introduced to explain game nogada and explore the game culture and ideological background that affect this gaming practice. I argue that Korean WoW raiders’ voluntary engagement in excessive game labor is driven by a desire for higher status in the winner-centric game community, which rationalizes the hierarchical relationship and structural inequality among raiders by a neoliberal meritocracy.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Game nogada differs from gamer loyalty, or gamers’ tendency to repeatedly play a particular game (Choi & Kim, 2004). Rather, game nogada refers to engaging in the same in-game activity within a game (e.g., consistently hunting the same monsters for gold).

² Korean raiders use the English term “Try” to refer to the retry of a raid combat after a failed prior attempt.

³ “Spec” (short for “specification”) is a neologism widely used in Korea to mean “the ability to perform a specific job” (Kim et al., 2019, p. 85). “Spec” often refers to qualifications that are necessary for young job seekers in Korea to be hired, such as certificates, degrees, extracurricular activities, awards, and TOEIC scores.

⁴ For example, the number of game characters who succeeded in hunting the first boss monster of Ny’alotha, the Waking City in Mythic mode (the dungeon’s highest difficulty level), was 3,502 (Warcraft Logs), or 2.6% of the total number of activated game characters.

⁵ Examination of in-game chat channels, where gamers participate in dynamic communication (see Banks & Martey, 2018), might have afforded additional insights. Nevertheless, collection of both datasets was beyond the constraints of my resources and capabilities.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Younsong Lee

Younsong Lee earned his Ph.D. from the School of Journalism and Communication at University of Oregon in 2021 and is currently a part-time instructor of the Graduate School of Media & Communication at Sogang University, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include media cultural studies, political economy, game studies, and game cultural studies.