For many gamers, the MMORPG – “massively multiplayer online role playing game” – World of Warcraft is a way of life. They spend hours-upon-hours within the realms of Azeroth as members of either the Alliance or Horde factions while completing quests, socializing in village markets, exploring the countryside, and forging communal relationships.
Although being both fiction and fantasy, World of Warcraft also contains qualities and challenges from the world-at-large and thus allows for philosophical dissertation in much the same way that Ancient Greece served as the catalyst for Socrates and Plato.
The fictitious Cyd “Codex” Sherman, lead character of the online web series The Guild, is a perfect example. The series – created by actress Felicia Day – follows Sherman and a group of fellow World of Warcraft-like gamers as they attempt to balance their faux personas with those of the real world. Life outside the game is a struggle but they inevitably find valuable and useful wisdom online during each season that is relatable to their everyday lives.
“I’ve never really felt like I had any control over my life,” Cyd Sherman confesses in an early episode of the web series. “I think that’s why I like video games. It is so much easier to measure life in experience points.”
Understanding life and measuring the value of existence are likewise a major cornerstone of philosophy, and the 2009 book World of Warcraft and Philosophy: Wrath of the Philosopher King contains a number of analogies between the works of John Stuart Mills, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, and Niccolo Machiavelli and the online world of WoW.
In his essay “A Meaningless World… of Warcraft,” for instance, Luke Cuddy explores nihilism and Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Overman from a World of Warcraft perspective. Although he does not specifically mention The Guild, Cuddy’s essay also parallels the journey of Cyd Sherman and her group of online gamers nonetheless.
“In the existential school of philosophy, nihilism is often described as a feeling of endless pointlessness,” Cuddy writes. “Has your life ever felt that way? You wake up to an alarm, you go to work or school (or both), you come home, you level up your Night Elf Druid for a few hours, you go to sleep, then you wake up and do it again, and again, and again.”
According to the comic book prequel to The Guild – published in 2010 by Dark Horse – Cyd Sherman was herself once living a nihilistic life. “I’m depressed,” she admits on the very first page. “I’m always depressed. I know it’s irrational. Life is good. I have a job in an orchestra. My boyfriend Trevor used to be in the orchestra with me, but now he has a band. He’s way cooler now. I have all the tools to live life to the fullest. As soon as I get happy, I’m raring to go!”
That feeling of happiness never arrives, however, and Sherman’s life only becomes worse when she realizes her boyfriend is actually gay, sets fire to his $100,000 cello, and is fired from her job in the aftermath. But it was also around this time that she discovers “the game,” which has a transforming effect on her.
“The world is constantly throwing me for a loop,” she reflects to herself. “I think that’s why I like playing the game. The rules are clear. I mean, literally. They’re printed up in a book.”
Although she is unaware, Cyd Sherman has just entered the “Magic Circle,” a term coined by the Dutch thinker Johan Huizinga to describe a playing field with its own set of rules and directives. It also serves as the second step in the Nietzschean path to a full affirmation of life.
“When you step into the Magic Circle, a special thing happens – you accept the rules and order of the gameworld,” Luke Cuddy writes in Wrath of the Philosopher King. “This acceptance can be incredibly refreshing. If the meaninglessness of the real world bears down on you, if you appreciate the insignificance of human life to the rest of the universe, then you can always enter WoW’s Magic Circle.”
According to Nietzsche, once an individual has accepted the Magic Circle, the next step is to find the Magic Circle meaningless. This happens when the circle is broken and the rules that were established are no longer applicable. For Cyd Sherman, this event occurs in the first season of The Guild when fellow gamer Zaboo shows up at her doorstep and confesses his love for the fictional healer.
The feeling is unreciprocated, and Sherman responds to the overture by enlisting the other members of her Guild, which further breaks down the circle when the group meets at a local restaurant. A main part of role-playing games is remaining “in character” and keeping one’s personal identity separate from their online persona. By meeting outside of the game, the illusion is consequently dissolved between the members.
“What if the player begins to create an analogy between his playing WoW and living his life outside of the game world?” Luke Cuddy asks. “He might start to wonder about the real world equivalent of a maxed-out Death Knight. How can you max yourself out in the real world? Nietzsche thought that the Overman would rise above the nihilistic stage of life and create his own values. The Overman would affirm his existence, say ‘Yes!’ to life.”
This is also the case for Cyd Sherman. Early in the first season of The Guild, she says, “I just don’t cope well. With anything. I mean, there’s always a lot of drama in the game, but at the end of the night you can always just log off. You can’t log off from your life.”
Near the end of the season, however, she tells her fellow Guild members, “We can do this, OK? With just a few of us we can take down a ten-man dungeon. Life can’t be that much harder.” Thus through the course of that initial season, Cyd Sherman transforms from an isolated individual living a nihilistic and meaningless life to the personification of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Overman.
“The gamer has to use what he’s learned in the gameworld back in the real world,” Cuddy observes. “If you can create yourself in WoW in the face of the meaninglessness of the game, why can’t you create yourself in real life in the face of the meaninglessness of life outside of the game?”
Although The Guild has more than its fair share of references to the online world – and the game itself is central to the overall narrative – it is “life outside of the game” that’s the centerpiece of the web series. Cyd Sherman and her fellow gamers have a multitude of idiosyncrasies that inevitably make them socially inept, yet they continually overcome these obstacles by relying on the lessons learned online.
“The expansion to our game is coming out,” Sherman remarks at the start of season three. “New continent, new powers. I’m hoping it will help heal some of the wounds in the Guild. Make us focus on what matters. It’s about the game, not each other. Dumb humans.”
Of course, Cyd Sherman has it wrong. Despite the meaninglessness she once found in the outside world prior to entering the Magic Circle of gaming, the walls of nihilism broke down during her time with the Guild and ultimately allowed her to find meaning within her real life as a result.
Cyd Sherman may still struggle at times but just like the Overman of Friedrich Nietzsche, she has found purpose in the outside world and even formed her own belief system and sense of values in the process – a philosophy known as The Guild.
Anthony Letizia