A tribute to Mad skill: expert amateur visuality and world of Warcraft Machinima

Authors:
Tyler Pace;Austin Toombs;Shad Gross;Tony Pattin;Jeffrey Bardzell;Shaowen Bardzell
Affiliations:
Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA;Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA;Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA;Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA;Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA;Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2013

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Abstract

In this paper, we look at the prominent World of Warcraft machinima community as an expert amateur online com-munity and present a multi-part study of a canon of the most successful works (i.e., machinima videos) produced by this community. By focusing our study on its roughly 300 most successful examples, the determination of which we explain in the paper, we are able to highlight the evolv-ing visual practices, tools, and aesthetic sensibilities of the community. Chiefly, our study identifies how creativity support tools and visual practices are inextricably linked and mutually support the in-kind development of the other. For WoW machinima and its producers, the affordance of creativity tools and the cultivation of visual skill synced at key moments and in powerful ways to support the rapid growth, experimentation, and refinement of amateur exper-tise at the individual and community levels.