Feature: 'Soapbox Responses: WoW Teaches The Wrong Things'

Following game designer David Sirlin's extremely widely-disseminated Soapbox on World Of Warcraft's message, posted on Gamasutra last week, a large number of game professionals and other respondents took time to write Letters To The Editor commenting on Sirlin's piece, and reprinted in one of today's main features. Regular design columnist Ernest Adams had some particularly interesting comments in regard to Sirlin's Soapbox, suggesting: "I loudly second David Sirlin's objection that group play is privileged over solo play in World of Warcraft. I'm less sure about some of his other concerns, but he hit the nail on the head when he wrote, "As an introvert, I'm pretty outraged that this game is marginalizing my entire personality type... playing by yourself in MMO is perfectly valid thing to do." I play computer games to escape -- to leave the real world and enter one where terrorists do not commit mass murder, leaders don't lie to justify their warmongering, and people don't try to take 25 items through the 8-items-or-less line at the supermarket. I want to enter a fabulous world of fantasy that amazes and delights me. But I'm not, by temperament, a joiner of clubs. I don't want to have to get into some "guild" or "clan" or whatever an MMOG cares to call its particular brand of einsatzgruppen, just to be able to get along. I've observed small-group politics close-up for some time now, and they're never pretty; the only thing uglier is large-group politics. Leave me out." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including an extremely large number of other well thought out replies to Sirlin's piece (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).