ABSTRACT
This study deals with issues of control over the production and distribution of player-produced creative material in and around the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, played by millions around the world. 1 The particular form of creative material investigated here is known as “machinima”, which can be described as a combination of film-making techniques, animation production and game engine manipulation. The creative productions under discussion in this case study display free rather than instrumental play in its most outspoken form: players do not play the game to beat its goal-oriented content, but instead seek ways to expand or in other ways manipulate the fictional world, or try to find the edges of what is possible in the game’s design in terms of the coded rules and boundaries. These productions do not always conform to what the designers – and other players – consider acceptable forms of appropriation of the virtual world and its fiction. It makes this case study as much a discussion on fan creation as one on game design exploitation, both of which can lead to creative and in some cases legal differences between players and World of Warcraft’s developer, Blizzard Entertainment. 2
