Pedagogy, as related to teaching technical communication, can benefit from adapting based on the needs of the user, and one way to understand this is through “massively multiplayer online role-playing games,” or “MMoRPGs,” such as World of Warcraft (WoW).  Video games that bring forth so much online culture, like WoW, result in plenty of technical discourse both in and out of the video game interface. Understanding how technical discourse is generated by users to become cultural producers, and technical communicators in their own right. 

I’ve been doing a lot of research over the course of the semester, hoping to propose a new pedagogy to teaching technical communication to students and how a “one-size-fits-all” approach doesn’t work for all students. I’m going to try and best summarize a somewhat complex topic in this post as best I can. Throughout this research, I’ve identified examples of technical communication both in and out of the game.  As Kimbell suggests. “everyone who enjoys access to the internet is now a potential technical communicator, sharing what they know about technology with the entire world,” (Kimball 1-2).

Technical communication takes place outside of the game and during gameplay to better enhance users’ experiences. But first, studying and recognizing the technical communication that takes place outside of the game will help us understand WoW as a topic that users already willingly practice technical communication with. Once we understand the technical discourse that takes place in these external sites, studying and recognizing technical communication that takes place within the game will help us to understand how the people who play WoW become technical communicators in their own way, by teaching other users how to best play and maneuver the game. An MMoRPG such as WoW can simulate the pedagogical experience of teaching technical communication and give us an idea as to how versatility in our teaching methods will make our students better technical communicators. 

Since the developers of World of Warcraft have stopped creating official user guides to help players throughout the game, the responsibility has fallen on the users themselves to create such guides. These user-created resources include sites such as WoWhead, WoWWiki, YouTube Tutorials, etc and “The World of Warcraft community has “achieved the feat of ‘creating the single largest wiki after Wikipedia,’ known as WoWWiki, with over a quarter-million articles sharing collective wisdom (McGonigal, 20ll, p.2).” (Mason 228). 

One example of technical communication within the game is the chat box. The chat box is the primary form of internal communication that consists of many channels that all serve different purposes.  The text bar itself allows players to type their communications into a text bar that filters messages into specific channels, which include: ‘whispers’ or ‘tells’ (private player-to-player messaging), group chat, raid chat, guild chat, ‘spatial’ chat (messages visible to players within a certain range of the writer’s avatar), and ‘zone’ chat (which is further subdivided into several channels based on communication content including: general, trade, local defense, looking for group, and so on. Players use these channels to find groups, purchase items, call out actions, etc. 

Strategies of Teaching Technical Communication in the Classroom

Now that we have recognized a few types of technical communication both in and out of the game, I want to bring attention to a specific study I found where a professor uses the game to teach technical communication to her students. In the essay, How World of Warcraft Could Save your Classroom: Teaching Technical Communication through the Social Practice of MMoRPGs,” by Melissa Bianchi and Kyle Bohunikey, their goal is to help familiarize students with how genre ecologies operate with regard to technical communication and used WoW as an organizational model.

Students were first divided in half and each group was assigned two avatars and one of two lower level dungeons to participate in. Once in a dungeon group with non-student players, each group needed to request instructions for defeating the dungeon’s bosses from other players in the party. 

“The students switching groups were asked to write instructions to their peers explaining how to defeat the game’s bosses before entering the dungeon. // Once the students complete the dungeon, the class was asked to compare and contrast the writing style, tone, and practices of writing in the game to those outside of it. // For students unfamiliar with the game’s writing genre, the first part of the exercise was challenging as they had to pick up on many of the game’s specific writing practices, such as abbreviations, acronyms, and terms,” (Bianchi and Bohunicky 242).

Another assignment to familiarize students with resume writing and the contingency of genres, was to create a resume directed towards the leaders of a specific guild that not only exhibited the skills and accomplishments of the in-game character, but also was persuasive in its request for entry of the guild. This was an interesting and effective practice because not all guilds in WoW are looking for the same things in their members. Some guilds require you to be available on certain times and days in order to run raids. Other guilds are much more casual leveling guilds.

By integrating the use of MMoRPGs in the classrooms of these higher education institutions, instructors can show students how to communicate and collaborate with individuals outside the typical classroom setting and away from the conventional pedagogies. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the only medium used for teaching technical communication, but it is good to recognize these other methods in which instructors can teach technical communication and how it is important to adapt the ways we teach to assume that one size does not fit all. 

The How World of Warcraft Could Save your Classroom: Teaching Technical Communication through the Social Practice of MMoRPGs,” essay by Melissa Bianchi and Kyle Bohunikey can be found here!

-Cameron