Last week, I wondered why World of Warcraft had decided to sponsor TNT's NBA playoffs coverage. We're used to sneaker companies, food peddlers and ... well, the Navy sponsoring our basketball. Not computer games featuring elves and orcs. It seemed like a really odd fit.But lo! it's not that odd of a fit after all. In the comments and via e-mail, a horde of Warcraft-playing NBA fans piped up. My misconception that keeping up in WoW is the equivalent of a full-time job was debunked. Some similarities (such as the important of efficiency over volume) in strategy were pressed. After the jump you'll find one of these conversations with someone uniquely qualified to discuss the WoW-NBA connection. (Also, a confession form yours truly.)
Patrick Sullivan works at Upper Deck, where he's on the R&D team for the World of Warcraft Miniatures Game. This means he's actually a professional gamer, designing and tweaking to create the best experience possible. He also contributes basketball articles to the sports side of the company at UpperDeckBlog.com, giving him unique insight into this crossover between genres.
TZ: Obviously a lot of hardcore gamers follow sports hardcore ... but you tend to think of these gamers more in the Halo, Guitar Hero/Rock Band, Madden realm -- not so much the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) side. Is there a major overlap between MMORPG fans and other gamers? I've always quarantined them in my mind, based on the notorious time commitment something like WoW takes. (Though I have been corrected on this by casual WoWers like yourself.)
PS: I think there is a huge overlap. At least, I know a lot of serious MMORPG players who dabble in the games you mentioned (or others), and it probably goes more in that direction than a serious Rock Band player who dabbles in WoW. But who knows? A lot of my friends who are WoW people you would never peg as being WoW players (or gamers in general) if you met them in a bar or at a Lakers game. It really takes all kinds, and people who spend a lot of time gaming have their fingers in a bunch of different pies, as it were.
TZ: Is there anything about WoW that matches well with the NBA in particular? I mean, would we also find a big Everquest-NBA cohabitation, or City of Heroes? (I have no idea if those are still popular.)
PS: I think that there are two things you can point to that they have in common compared to other games. The first is the visual element. WoW is very visually immersive, from the starting zones all the way through the end of the game. All the areas have their own distinct flavor, the races all have a unique look, basically every part of the game is visually engaging. Basketball is very similar. The court is small (relatively speaking), the ball is large and there are very few players on the court. That means, as a fan, you get to see everything as it's happening. Contrast that to watching football on TV, where you basically miss everything that's happening in the secondary until it's replayed. The game is presented to you in segmented versions (i.e., here's what was happening on the line, this is what was happening in the backfield, the secondary, etc.) because there's just too much going on to present in its entirety. The players are another big part of it. They wear less clothing than athletes in the other major sports, so you get to really see every grimace, tattoo, everything. I think this does a lot to add personality to the players for people watching at home.
The other major thing is the ease with which you can learn the games. WoW is very easy to learn how to play. I am shockingly computer illiterate for a 27-year-old, and I'm traditionally a gamer much more in the Madden/Rock Band mold. I've watched other people play other MMORPGs and it seemed like there was too much going on to really play unless you were committed. But I gave WoW a shot, and I was able to teach myself how to play. The game does an exceptional job of slowly teaching you what you need to know about the game, and they're careful not to overwhelm you with too much stuff before you're ready.
I think of the major sports, basketball is the most casual and fan friendly. The premise is pretty intuitive – put the ball in the hole – so you don't have these horribly arcane rules like illegal formations that a first-time viewer won't understand. In my opinion, the only confusing rule for a first time fan is Illegal defense. But the action is constant and I think that's why basketball has gotten more global traction than either baseball or football. As Americans, we've been raised with these sports so we appreciate the complicated rules as part of the charm and history. But for someone watching for the first time? Generally, they want a game they can understand easily while they're watching it. Both WoW and basketball can provide engaging experiences to a wide audience on the first sampling, which is rare for entertainment products.
Personally, the reasons I enjoy making/playing games and writing about/watching basketball are very similar. I get to flex my analytical muscles; how does this card interact with that card? Or how do Chris Paul and Chauncey Billups match up against one another? So you get to think about things on an abstract level, trying to work things out in your own head, and I find that aspect very cool. The other side of that is the pure visceral thrill of some lucky sequence or tight victory, or watching Josh Smith throw down some absurd reserve jam off a half-court lob. In that way, both gaming and basketball satisfy these two very different things for me.
TZ: Is the presence of the NBA-WoW cross-section more proof of WoW's universality, or the NBA's?
PS: I guess it would be a cop-out to say "both", so I'll say WoW because it's already assumed that the NBA is a universally accepted product. I work the annual Blizzcon show, which is a convention Blizzard holds every year to showcase their products. What surprises me the most about the show is the wide range of people who are devoted to their games, WoW in particular. You get a fair amount of people that you might typecast as your average gamer (white guy, early to mid 20's, shirt with a dragon on it), but the overwhelming majority fall outside of that category, so much so that it's not fair to typecast anyone as an "average gamer." Obviously you see the same thing when you attend an NBA game. And there are more women playing WoW than you think, as well as people 40 and older who play WoW. There are more (insert non-traditional Gaming Demographic X) playing WoW than you think. I think these ads show that Blizzard is confident that their game transcends more than who traditional MMORPGs target. And I think the numbers back them up.
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Many thanks to Patrick for answering our burning questions. Be sure to check out The Upper Deck Blog. It's choice.
I guess we can update our Venn diagram now.
And now, a confession: I failed to mention in my initial post that while I do not play World of Warcraft (or any video game but Bubble Bobble, Call of Duty or Marvel vs. Capcom II, actually) I was once a Warcraft III diehard. Like, I used to play the crap out of DotA. And Tower Defense. And I even skipped some classes in college to play in ladder tournaments! I sucked. Really sucked. But in between fretting about Chris Webber's knee, Rick Adelman's Ambien habit and Peja Stojakovic's soul, I spent hours trying to creep camp in order to level my Priestess of the Moon up to six to get Starfall.
We as NBA fans, we are all people, man. Spike Lee, Clipper Darryl, President Obama, Orgrimm Doomhammer. All just people.
