Moral Cognition Empowers Spiritual Experience in Chinese World of Warcraft

Explaining Time Spent in Multiplayer Online Games

“…This article has attempted to supplement game studies’ analytical toolkit with material causal perspectives on time spent in a popular MMO game, WoW . Many C WoW players cite positive in-game moral experiences as impetus for playing the game (Hornbeck, 2012). In this article, by connecting testimonial and survey data to moral foundations theory expounded by Haidt and Joseph (2004), I have shown that there is persuasive evidence to suggest that playing WoW does indeed activate moral reasoning systems.…”

“…The following quotations, for example, were included among 93 testimonials I collected from random WoW players in Wuhan Internet cafes early in my research. 1 (Most of the following testimonials, each denoted with a “T” and numbered, are translated from Chinese and are available in full in Hornbeck, 2012. )…”

“…But why? I have elsewhere discussed how a “mangle” of factors common to participants’ off-line experiences, including rapidly changing moral norms, spatial, and temporal confinements in schools, China’s “one-child policy,” and pressure from parents, teachers, and media to stop playing WoW , seem to have informed this moral response to WoW gameplay (Hornbeck, 2012). Here I wish to introduce a suite of cognitive mechanisms to this mangle and suggest that formal properties of in-game sensoria may also play a causal role in motivating these experiences.…”

“…Finally, a note on the illustrations: Figures 1 and 2 are styled in a steampunk aesthetic, which I discuss (Hornbeck, 2014) as a "playful" aid to interdisciplinary discourse. This aesthetic is intended to ward from the text any imputations of objectivity or hard realism and, accordingly, to acknowledge that the causal concepts outlined here are themselves (1) man-made, cultural creations, (2) bricolages of limited functionality, awaiting replacement by superior models, and (3) products of rather crude scientific technologies.…”

“…I argue that the WoW gameworld is atypically rich in stimuli that have a strong, or supernormal, capacity to activate the moral cognition reasoning systems identified by Haidt and Joseph’s “moral foundations theory.” Testimonial data gathered during long-term fieldwork in Wuhan, China, and data from a survey of 545 Chinese WoW players, wherein combat role (healer, tank) predicts frequency and type of in-game moral experience, are presented in support of this argument. Finally, the causal perspectives outlined in this article are styled in a steampunk aesthetic (Hornbeck, 2014), which I use as “playful” aid to interdisciplinary discourse.…”