WoW Players

I believe Second Skin was, unfortunately, a misrepresentation of the gaming community behind WoW.

My brother and I both started playing MMOs with Everquest. Games like this always seemed to suck my brother and I into their virtual wolds. We both seemed to be invested for different reasons, however. For me, I was the exploratory type. I enjoyed seeing what the developers spent their time creating in forms of music, vast landscapes, and even game mechanics. I would spend hours "wall climbing" (a term coined by WoW players to describe moving your character in such a way to climb walls not meant to be climbed) to areas around major cities and interesting places on the map. So because I spent my time doing this and not leveling my character, I would be far behind. My brother on the other hand was interested in the competitive aspect of play. He knew the stats for his gear well and knew what he needed to quest for to finish the set that would give him the slightest edge in PvP (player versus player).

The point is, both of these gameplay styles can end up costing the player hours to achieve their goals. As a player, it was easy for me to log off and forget about the game because I wouldn't be losing anything when I logged off. For my brother, any hour he was offline, other players would be strengthening their characters or finding that rare drop off a boss. So I became less invested in the game. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I wasn't immersed, but it didn't hold as much value to me as it did for my brother.

I make this distinction because it was always a fight between my mother and us about the amount of time we spent playing. She would start sounding like the one woman who lost her son (not NEARLY as crazy though) and even quoted that story to us once. It just didn't make as much sense to us because even though we spent hours on the game, being immersed in its design or its gameplay mechanics, we weren't as invested in it.

I think the majority of online gamers, especially mmorpg players are more similar to both of us than they are to those in the film. Players who enjoy parts of the game for one reason or the other and spend a lot of time on it, but aren't emotionally, physically, economically invested in it.