We call ourselves players– as opposed to “gamers,” a herd of junkies doing rather well squandering their time.

We see no connection between truly exhilarating flow and the cunning and calculation of the profiteers.

We consider the psychological Euro-American MMO-reward drama weighed down with needy apparitions and childhood greed– an absurdity.

To the synthetic frontier with its showy geography and to the mythification of Tolkien lore the players say thanks for the rapid territory transitions and the quests. Good … but disorderly, not based on precise study of locality and immersion. A cut above the psychological raid drama, but still lacking in foundation. A cliché. A copy of a replicant.

“Seeing these technoloiges and practices over and over in our popular culture, and particularly in cinema, we witness a scorn for the boundaries between the public and the private, between the interior and the exterior. And in doing so popular culture has created the sense that surveillance is normal–the aesthetic accompaniment to the end of privacy. Films that feature surveillance as a vehicle for spectacle, suspense, and violence demonstrate how we are no longer affected or unsettled by the video gaze or bodily intrusion. They have become ordinary images.”
-John Turner

Since the birth of cinema, film and cultural critics have noted the emergence of the spectacle as a challenge to traditional rituals of art – especially concerning the medium’s capacity to “distract” the masses. In 1936 Walter Benjamin famously warned of the loss of artwork’s so called “aura” in the age of technological reproducibility

Blizzard Denies RMT Profitability, eBaying continues

“The Spectacle steals every experience and sells it back to us, but only symbolically, so that we are never satisfied: via this mechanism we support the machine of endless consumption over and over.”
-Laura Marz

More than a medium is at stake, but the very fabric of nation and cultural formation. In the wake of Blizzcon 2007, RMT resistance continues under the guise that the sanctity of American play is under attack by Asian trends in the MMO sphere.

MDY INDUSTRIES vs. BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT
A Primer

 If Blizzard bans me, ah well, time to go out and get another CD key and start it all over again, not like I lost a lot of hard work.
-WowGlider customer

The EULA will again be front and center as Blizzard and MDY prepare to square off in litigation that will seemingly have to address the state of play, the nature of MMORPGs, contracts, and intellectual property. In light of recent reports by WoWInsider (1) (2) that Blizzard has filed countersuit against Michael Donnelly, owner and founder of MDY Industries (maker of WoWGlider, popular but highly controversial automation software for World of Warcraft), I thought it would be a good opportunity to examine some of the compelling issues surrounding this case set to begin initial proceedings in Federal Court early this spring. Donnelly asserts that his business has in no way violated any rights owned by Blizzard who has in fact created “an actual controversy” through accusatory “threats and actions” (See claim).