Play hard, work harder: Workification of gaming in a Swedish World of Warcraft Classic guild

Introduction

It is commonly assumed that work and play are inherently dichotomous concepts (Yee, 2006). Indeed, at first glance, playing and working appear to share few characteristics. Goggin (2011: 357) argues that ‘play’ has long been associated with notions such as buoyancy, gratuity, and voluntarism, and it is opposed to a symmetrical set of definitive characteristics that supposedly distinguished ‘“work” as being purpose-driven, profit-motivated, and obligatory’. The defining characteristics of working typically include the application of effort or exertion towards a task or goal, usually with the expectation of achieving a result or outcome (Lund, 2014). In contrast to play, work is often assumed to require a specific aim or purpose and is typically associated with bureaucratic organizations characterized by well-defined hierarchies, explicit regulations, and established norms and values (Scott, 2008). Playing, then, generally refers to the act of engaging in an activity – such as a game – for enjoyment, entertainment, and recreational purposes. Huizinga (1938) sees play as the antithesis of ‘seriousness’, providing a source of pleasure that offers a respite from the burdens and challenges of everyday life. While Huizinga, as well as Steindl-Rast (1984), emphasize the cultural and social benefits of play, most people engage in playful activities simply to have fun (Lazarro, 2004). While the two spheres have never been fully separated, as shown by Mollick and Rothbard (2014), digitalization has in some contexts blurred the lines between them to the extent that they may be considered indistinguishable (Zimmerman, 2015; Mäyrä, 2017; Vesa et al., 2017; Boczkowski and Mitchelstein, 2021). This is evident in research introducing concepts such as ‘playbour’ and ‘gamification’ (Kücklich, 2005; Dymek and Zackariasson, 2016), and in phenomena such as professional esport and video game streaming (Johnson and Woodcock, 2021).

In this paper, we aim to contribute to an ongoing discussion about the integration of work and online gaming by problematizing and further developing the concept of ‘workification’ (Rauch, 2016), a relatively unexplored concept often used to describe the occurrence of work-like activities in gaming contexts (cf. Deterding et al., 2011). We also aim to uncover the implications of the concept for organizing more generally, to provide insight into how and why work-related behaviors and attitudes are infused into leisure activities, and how workification shapes the experiences of the individuals involved. In the following, we first describe the concept in existing literature before further developing the concept based on observations of and interviews with players in leading positions (i.e. ‘officers’) of a Swedish World of Warcraft (WoW) Classic ‘guild’ (i.e. in-game organization) called ‘Northwind’.

WoW Classic is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in which players organize among themselves, primarily to engage in ‘raiding’. Raiding refers to a type of cooperative gameplay in which a group of players, typically between 25 and 40 in number, work together to defeat powerful in-game bosses and acquire valuable ‘loot’, namely extraordinary weapons, armor, and trinkets (Williams et al., 2006; Chen, 2009; Williams and Kirschner, 2012; Cockshut, 2012). In our empirical inquiry, we observed how members of the guild were affected by workification when principles and practices traditionally associated with work were implemented in the organization to overcome certain game-related challenges. Drawing on the perspective of dominant logic (Prahalad and Bettis, 1986), we show how work-like shared mental models, values, structures, and practices emerge and evolve over time within the organization (Engelmann et al., 2020). By doing so, we show how organizations change in response to an unstable environment, and how actors within the organization prompt further changes in the direction that management wants. Dissent appears to act as a catalyst for formalizing the organizational structure, which results in members placing themselves within increasingly strict boundaries that are intended to prevent behaviors that deviate from the organization’s core values.

The study concludes that workification of gaming is a far more complex phenomenon than commonly perceived. Stemming from design decisions by game developers, workification is often understood as a set of in-game practices that are often understood as meaningless, exploitative, or monotonous (Rauch, 2016). However, in our conceptualization, we argue that many of the in-game practices often referred to as being ‘work-like’ do not resemble work in any sense, which results in a narrower definition of the phenomenon. We also broaden the concept to include meta-game practices (i.e. work-like practices that occur outside of the game itself). In doing so, we arrive at a definition of workification that highlights the actual work-like tasks players engage with (both inside and outside the game) in order to keep having fun with the game. This definition stands in contrast to the ‘soul-crushing’ chores referred to in the original formulation of workification and demonstrates that whether or not workification is ‘fun’ (or affords ‘fun’) is subjective. From our analysis, it is clear that workification can function both as a means to an end and as an end in itself, thus contributing to sustainable, long-term enjoyment of the gaming experience.

From gamification of work to workification of gaming

For several decades now, research has shown how managers in conventional workplaces have started to ‘revitalize employees by creating a corporate environment that is conducive to fun, humor, and play’ (Fleming, 2005: 285) through informal dress codes, office parties and games. As Fleming (2005) states, the ‘culture of fun’ appears to have outlasted the typically brief management fad life cycle, not least with the introduction of ‘gamification of work’ in the early 2000s. Gamification is commonly understood as the introduction of game elements into a non-gaming context (Deterding et al., 2011; Nicholson, 2015). Gamification of work, then, often refers to managerial strategies that incorporate elements like achievements, badges, and leaderboards into traditional work activities like email correspondence, sales tasks, and learning (Dymek and Zackariasson, 2016). The overall aim of gamification in workplaces is often to improve efficiency (Edery and Mollick, 2009), but also to promote other positive outcomes such as wellness and wellbeing (Cederström and Spicer, 2015; Hammedi et al., 2021) and sustainability (Fors and Lennerfors, 2016). Gamification of work is often criticized, not least since it ‘transforms games from employee-generated spontaneous play created to improve affective experiences at work into well-intentioned, but managerially imposed, “fun”’ (Mollik and Rothbard, 2014: 4). 

Gamification of work is well-established in research and practice. However, there is a notable gap in the exploration of how elements of work infiltrate gaming environments, i.e. how ‘emergent forms of labor [are] conducted in traditionally playful settings’ (Goggin, 2011: 358). Examples including streaming (Fietkiewicz et al., 2018; Woodcock and Johnson, 2021), electronic sports (esports) (Bányai et al., 2020), and activities like ‘boosting’[1] accounts or characters and engaging in in-game currency farming within MMORPGs (Nakamura, 2009; Goggin, 2011). Another related stream of research explores the concept of playbour, which is often related to ‘modding’, the practice of producing new content for existing video games (Kücklich, 2005). Such research often frames labor within playful settings as exploitation, since the work carried out is often unpaid while video game developers and publishers reap the profits (Goggin, 2011). 

Forms of labor can also emerge in a video game setting by design. The most prominent illustrations of this phenomenon include games explicitly designed to simulate work, such as Job Simulator (Owlchemy Labs, 2016) and Farmville (Zynga, 2009). In addition, conventional games often incorporate professions – such as enchanting, leatherworking, and blacksmithing – that players can learn and engage with. Furthermore, as shown in a series of essays by Rauch (2016), many contemporary games can be fully experienced only through ‘grinding’, i.e. by carrying out monotonous, ‘work-like’ tasks. Soft-locking achievements, areas, and items behind time-consuming ‘work’ is a deliberate business strategy deployed by game companies in order to keep players busy: ‘Work has colonized, and in many places supplanted, play in [the] contemporary imagination of video games’ (Rauch, 2016). Yee (2006: 70) writes that many video games ‘are advertised as worlds to escape to after coming home from work, but they too make us work and burn us out’. While some players eventually grasp and learn to enjoy ‘the underlying nature of this digital treadmill’, the problem is that many games, according to Yee (2006: 70), gradually transition from ‘enjoyable’ to ‘just work’. An extreme illustration can be found in the WoW achievement known as ‘the Insane’, which requires players to dedicate around 300 hours to various monotonous tasks, including the daunting feat of killing 37,000 pirates.[2] 

In contrast to the prevailing trend in contemporary AAA games where players are often compelled to engage in tasks resembling work, MMORPGs stand out due to their exceptional demand on players to develop high levels of communication, collaboration, organization, and leadership skills in order to progress. Studies have shown that the structure and dynamics of ‘guilds’ (i.e. player-formed communities or organizations within the game, typically united by common objectives, shared interests, and a desire to collaborate in in-game activities) closely resemble those of traditional organizations (Williams et al., 2006; Chen, 2009; Silva and Mousavidin, 2015). While some guilds are loosely organized and managed by people with mainly symbolic titles and positions (Guillot, 2015), other guilds are structured as authoritarian, hierarchical organizations with clear ranks, roles and responsibilities (Malone, 2007). Williams et al. (2006) show how core aspects of guild management resemble traditional work: leading others, enforcing ethical codes, resolving disputes, coordinating schedules, and recruiting members. While there are different reasons for why players decide to organize in this way within MMORPGs, the main reason is because of how these games are designed. In order to progress to the end-game content, players must engage in challenging ‘raids’ in dungeons filled with formidable enemies and raid bosses. Once these enemies and bosses are defeated, the players have a chance of retrieving high-quality gear and other valuable items. As previous research has established, raiding is an activity that demands meticulous preparation and precise execution (Nardi and Harris, 2006).

Chen (2009) specifically looks at raiding as an in-game activity and shows how it is characterized by a clear division of labor. In particular, each participant fulfills a distinct and crucial role in order to boost the effectiveness of the raid team. Guilds are forced to perform well in raids not only to progress to the next raid tier and receive the extraordinary loot dropped by the bosses, but also to maintain some level of stability within the organization. Guilds are often characterized by low barriers to entry and exit, with a high turnover of players. Consequently, guilds that consistently excel and maintain consistency in raids have the opportunity to attract and retain dedicated, highly skilled players (Williams et al., 2006; Ducheneaut et al., 2006). In addition, Cockshut (2012) demonstrates that guilds can vary in their objectives, purposes, and overall atmosphere. The success and longevity of guilds therefore also hinge on their ability to effectively identify and communicate their fundamental values. Rapp (2020) shows how newcomers within guilds, unlike within more conventional organizations (Waldeck et al., 2004), have to subscribe to a predetermined set of norms, values, and expected behaviors without being provided any agency to negotiate these factors. Vesa (2013) discusses various managerial practices that occur in guilds to run and sustain them. A core insight is that, as guilds grow more organizationally complex, managerial practices take over, replacing ‘fellowship collaboration’ with ‘selfish co-activity’. 

In light of this review, it is safe to say that the boundaries of work and play have been increasingly blurred, especially since the introduction of digital games. Still, the two spheres are not yet completely indistinguishable (Boczkowski and Mitchelstein, 2021). Extensive research has delved into the relation between work and play from different perspectives, focusing either on the problems or potential of bringing more fun and games into the workplace, or on bringing central aspects of work into games. Unsurprisingly, much of the literature that looks at the latter phenomenon describes this phenomenon in negative terms: players become workaholics (Rauch, 2016), they burn out (Yee, 2006), find themselves exploited (Kücklich, 2005; Levine, 2008), or are forced to assimilate themselves into authoritarian and toxic organizations in their pursuit of loot (Rapp, 2020; Malone, 2007). In the following pages, this one-sided discourse will be nuanced by studying organizational change, specifically the process of ‘workification’, in a Swedish WoW Classic guild. 

Analytical framework

We are looking at how gaming organizations organize themselves and how strategies, hierarchies, structures, tools, and ideological control (see Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996) emerge to further the collective goals of the organization. Dominant logic (DL) is a useful framework in the study of a single organization as it looks at how both cognitive and material aspects of a logic grow from within the organization in relation to the outside business environment (Engelmann et al. 2020). The DL of an organization has been described as an ‘organizational knowledge structure’ (Crilly and Sloan, 2012: 1177), or an organization’s DNA (Bettis and Prahalad, 1995), which underlies organizational activities and decision making. In their initial introduction of the concept, Prahalad and Bettis (1986) saw it as the shared mental models of the dominant coalition (top management) that develop as it conducts the core business of the organization. Similarly, DiMaggio and Powell (1983: 148) write that ‘in the long run, organizational actors making rational decisions construct around themselves an environment that constrains their ability to change further in later years’. The decisions taken lock the organization into a path which helps determine future actor behavior and which the organization in turn will act upon.  

In an extensive review of the concept, Engelmann et al. (2020) argue that the DL of an organization consists of four dimensions: values and decisions premises; shared mental models; organizing structures; and organizational practices. The values of the organization, the why of it, serve ‘as – mostly unconscious – decision making premises’, according to Engelmann et al. (2020: 342). They afford management with a goal, something to strive towards, and decisions that it makes will in turn further these values, whether they be growth, persistence, fairness, sustainability, fun and/or games, etc. Collins and Porras (2005: 73) have defined the DLs as the ‘central and enduring tenets of the organization’. They serve, then, as a sort of information filter (Bettis and Prahalad, 1995), a quick and easy way for actors within the organization to analyze the importance of incoming data. The organizing structures are simply the way the organization is organized, summarized by Prahalad and Bettis (1986: 491) as ‘the administrative tools to accomplish goals and make decisions’. This includes the formation of hierarchies, specialization, structural or configurational arrangements which emerge in an organization (Engelmann et al., 2020). Lastly, the organizational practices of the organization concern how things are done in the organization. They are ‘habitual modes of functioning’ (Engelmann et al. 2020: 328) or the recurring actions of the organization and its members, including processes, procedures, and routines. As we will see in this case, all of these dimensions influence and are influenced by each other within an organization. On the one hand, new ways of working will require the reworking of the structure of the organization, which will in turn change what information is regarded as relevant. On the other hand, the emergence of new values, or a change in the interpretation of existing ones, will require practices and structures which can accommodate the change. 

Methodology

The empirical context of the study is the WoW Classic guild Northwind that operated on the server Razorgore between 2019 and 2021. The empirical material was generated through autoethnography, a methodology that combines the characteristics of autobiography and ethnography (Ellis et al., 2011; Morgan-Trimmer and Wood, 2016; Pink, 2016) in order to provide alternatives to dominant, taken-for-granted understandings and narratives in terms of cultural scripts, stories, and stereotypes (Adams et al., 2017). The bulk of the empirical material was collected by the second author through virtual participant observations of organization-related activities as an officer in said guild between 2019 and 2020. During those years, the second author spent hundreds of hours both in-game and on various (external) digital platforms such as Discord, Google Drive, and Warcraftlogs, participating in planning, executing, and evaluating in-game activities – mainly raiding. Between December 8 2019 and January 7 2021, the second author participated in 134 raiding events (spanning from 15 minutes to over four hours), resulting in a cumulative total of 957 boss kills.

In addition, interviews were conducted with seven players with various managerial responsibilities, who were chosen using a criterion sampling method and selected based on their leadership role within the guild. These interviews were conducted in April of 2021. Concerning the initial analysis of the material, ethnographic field notes and interview transcripts were first translated into statements of situations, drawing on the techniques ‘showing’ and ‘telling’, in order to make the personal experiences meaningful and engaging for readers unfamiliar to the social context of organized gaming (Ellis et al., 2011). These statements were subsequently color-coded in accordance with the four dimensions posited by the theoretical framework (Engelmann et al., 2020). The result of the analysis showcases the values which were deemed as important, how they were interpreted through the mental models, how structures developed to be able to achieve these values, and how practices formed around the structures and interpretations as the gameplay was workified.

Workification of gaming in a Swedish World of Warcraft Classic guild

Prologue

In August 2019, WoW Classic made a triumphant return when Blizzard Entertainment decided to breathe new life into the original WoW that was released back in 2004. I, the second author of the paper, played the original WoW when it first came out and have only fond memories from that time, but I was not immediately captivated by the idea of revisiting the game since I thought it might spoil these good memories. However, a few months before its release, an invitation to a Facebook group for WoW Classic players landed in my notifications, courtesy of old friends yearning to relive the adventures of Azeroth’s original incarnation. Near the release of the game, the group grew increasingly active, and friends that I had not seen in years shared old WoW-related video clips, ‘memes’, and news articles. I made the decision to give the game a shot, primarily driven by nostalgia, but I assured myself that it would be only a brief visit. On the release day, I created a character on the agreed-upon faction and server, and was invited to the guild that the administrators of the Facebook group had created, called ‘Horde i Magen’ (HiM).[3]

A couple of months later, despite my initial vow, I was still playing the game on a regular basis. However, many of those who I started playing with had quit the game and the guild chat had become increasingly deserted. Most of those who still played had by then reached the max level (60) and were eager to start engaging in the end-game content, mainly raiding. As mentioned earlier, raiding in WoW Classic demands a coordinated effort from a group of up to 40 players, each of whom takes on a specific role and class. Unfortunately, our guild was far from having enough members to assemble such a sizable raiding team. One evening we played casually with people from another Swedish guild called Northwind that was in the exact same position, and after a few days of discussions we decided to merge with them to be able to pursue raids. In the merger, a few people from HiM, including myself, were asked to join the guild as ‘officers,’ meaning that we would be responsible for how the guild was organized and managed.

We began raiding two days per week in late November 2019 and slowly progressed through the first two raid instances (Onyxia’s Lair and Molten Core). We immediately realized that raiding was unlike anything else in the game, not least since it required deep knowledge about game mechanics and extraordinary levels of preparation and communication. In the beginning we implemented the bare minimum of measures to prepare for and execute these raid nights. A few formal roles were assigned, such as a raid leader (RL) and master looter (ML), responsible for tactics and loot distribution respectively, and established an external portal for raid sign-ups and loot tracking. 

After finally completing the two first raid instances with some level of planning and more organized execution, a prevailing sentiment began to spread within the guild. It was believed that our team lacked the experience and skill to handle the more challenging raid tiers that were yet to come. Fearing that our top performing players would soon start looking to join better performing guilds, we recognized the necessity of adopting a more dedicated approach to raiding if we wanted to experience all the game had to offer. However, it was essential to balance this newfound seriousness with the friendly and relaxed atmosphere that had initially attracted many members to the guild. Striving to maintain this dual perspective proved to be a difficult challenge moving forward.

Performing better in WoW Classic raids

The success of a guild in raids is determined by a multitude of factors, which can be roughly categorized into individual and collective preparation, execution, and continuous improvements. Individual preparation involves, among other things, bringing optimal gear, consumable items, and worldbuffs to the raid. Gear refers to the armor, weapons, and trinkets brought to the raid instance, and in most cases, RLs expect players to bring their Best-In-Slot (BIS) items that can be found not only in raids but can be acquired through questing or crafting. Consumable items such as potions and flasks that enhance damage, healing, or tanking abilities are equally important, and require farming for crafting materials in-between raids. Worldbuffs are essentially status effects that boost the damage or healing output of the character who is affected by them. These can be obtained in specific locations through completing quests, and generally last up to two hours but are lost upon death. Gathering worldbuffs is a tedious process, mainly because the opportunities to get them are limited to a few times per day and because there is a risk of dying to players of the opposite faction. This means that players who manage to gather these buffs generally log out for several days in order to save them in anticipation for an upcoming raid where they will be put to use. This is often referred to as ‘raid logging’. Individual preparation also means having a thorough understanding of boss mechanics and the optimal ‘skill rotation’ for each fight, namely, what skills should be used, when, and in what order. Since we found it near impossible to make sure that our more casual players came optimally prepared for every single raid, we devised guidelines outlining the minimum requirements for participation in raids with regard to these three aspects.

Collective preparation involves ensuring that each player knows their role in the raid group, which typically consists of damage dealers (DPS), healers (characters who restore health to the raid team when they are damaged), and at least one tank (characters who wear heavy armor and through threat generation make sure that the boss attacks him or her throughout the encounter). However, some encounters are designed in such ways so that players need to take on additional or different roles, and this needs to be communicated by the guild management team before each new content phase. The guild management team is also responsible for preparing the raid team for each new tier by creating guides that outline the optimal gear, consumables, ‘spec’ (which determines which skills and abilities the character can use), and strategies. In Northwind, every member was provided with extensive, somewhat individualized, guides that summarized how each encounter should be handled.

Execution is another critical aspect of raiding in WoW Classic. Although WoW Classic is a mechanically simple game, each boss encounter requires proper movement, resource management (including mana, health, and energy), consumable item usage, and threat management. Furthermore, many bosses have abilities that, if not properly addressed, can result in a raid wipe, such as spells requiring players to spread out or move away from certain areas of the battlefield. To improve execution, the RL is expected to review tactics and assignments before each encounter and monitor players’ performance in real time using addons such as threat, healing, and damage meters. The RL also checks that players are using mandatory consumable items on time and may need to adjust predetermined strategies if they are not effective. While adjustments can be made during raids to improve performance, most of the work with continuous improvements are done in-between raids by the officers, with the help of different digital tools. Perhaps new strategies need to be developed, or individual players need to review their execution or preparation. In Northwind, players were never punished for performing badly, but inadequate preparation could lead to players losing their raid member status, meaning they would no longer have a guaranteed spot in the raid team.

Digital tools for organizing and optimizing

Organizing in WoW Classic is highly dependent on the use of digital technologies, most of them external to the game itself. Communication mainly takes place on Discord, which is a voice and text chat platform. On the Northwind guild server, there were separate text and voice channels for raids, LFG (Looking For Group), worldbuff coordination, role and class channels, and PvP (Player-vs-Player), among others. There were also channels where officers posted updates and instructions, and others where members could provide feedback or critique. Other channels were only visible to the officers. Here, we held meetings, crafted theories and strategies, and shared documents (see Figure 1). Discord was used not only for internal coordination and communication within the guild management team, but also among different guilds in the same realm. On hidden Discord servers, officers from different guilds could coordinate raids, share strategies and raid-setups, exchange loot priority lists, and more. Such alliances also assisted with recruitment, since we could warn other guilds about toxic or incompetent players.

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Figure 1: Various tools and documents used by Northwind for organizing, such as Warcraftlogs, loot systems, meeting protocols and more.

As mentioned, Northwind also used an external web portal for raid signup and to distribute resources such as strategies, guidelines, and priority lists, but more importantly to organize the loot system, namely, how items dropped from bosses would be distributed among the raiders. The portal supported the use of Dragon Killing Points (DKP), where participants would earn DKP for each raid they attended. To promote participation and contribution to the raids, DKP was also awarded to those who signed up in time and to those who helped with necessary preparation, such as gathering consumables and materials needed for gear. DKP could then be spent within the game to acquire various items that were found during raid nights. While the system was supposed to promote a fair distribution of loot, people soon realized that the system was flawed and could be exploited in order to gain individual advantages. For example, some people started to hoard DKP in order to get the most sought-after items before everyone else. The system was therefore modified, initially by implementing a weekly, percentage-based decay of accumulated DKP to prevent hoarding. 

Another category of digital tools used for organizing is addons, that is, software extensions to the game itself that add additional features or functions. One such example is Deadly Boss Mods (DBM), a raid addon that provides players with additional information in raids, such as whether players are affected by a curse or whether the boss is vulnerable to a specific school of magic. There are also other addons that help with loot distribution, consumable items usage, threat management, healing assignments, and more.

Another central digital tool is Warcraftlogs. Here, players can track their performance in raids, visualized in graphs and timelines on an external webpage. Northwind officers regularly used Warcraftlogs in order to monitor the performance of the raid and its individual players in order to find ways to improve. The tool can also compare raid and individual performance with other guilds and players. Using Warcraftlogs, it was possible to pinpoint mistakes to individual players, such as missing a healing spell, using inappropriate skills, or wearing suboptimal gear.

The dual objective of casualness and competitiveness

Although we saw the implementation of these management practices as necessary to keep progressing in the game, it also brought along its own set of challenges. First and foremost, officers found it difficult to find a good balance between striving for perfection and competitiveness on the one hand and maintaining a relaxed and social atmosphere on the other – in other words, ‘finding solutions so that the guild can progress, but without people leaving’ (Jungleroar). Indeed, Iqbefriad argues that the most difficult – but also the most important – challenge about being an officer is ‘to make sure that everyone is as happy as possible’. Striving for perfection entails mandatory preparations that demand significant time commitments, often several hours prior to each raid night. Unfortunately, such demanding requirements can lead to player burnout, thereby exacerbating the challenges faced by the guild. At the same time, low level of ambition can result in the guild not clearing the raids, causing immense frustration for those who want to experience all the content the game has to offer and for those who aim for competitive clear times and parses. Clear times refers to how long it takes for the guild to kill every boss in a raid instance and a parse is a somewhat arbitrary, individual, percentage on Warcraftlogs that represents ‘the amount of damage you do to enemies or how successfully you heal your teammates during a boss encounter’ (Iqbefriad) compared with other characters on the server. Regardless of individual ambitions, most raiding guilds that consistently fail to clear raid instances will eventually disband. However, the widespread use of Warcraftlogs among both officers and members exacerbated the divide between casual and competitive players. Many competitive players who spent time studying logs in order to improve their performance saw it as their main objective to not only clear raids and get loot, but also to get good parses. While players who are fixated on their parses tend to be more valuable to the raid than those who are not, these players may sometimes prioritize their parses over optimal play, which can make them ‘appear more skilled in the logs’ (Bigsilly). In a sense, such players are more focused on the ‘meta-game’ than the game itself.

The end of Northwind in WoW Classic

Ultimately, it turned out that our dual approach to guild management did not suffice to successfully clear the last raid of the game, Naxxramas. After several weeks of failed attempts, some players began to leave for more successful guilds, and we soon realized that our only option – if we wanted to continue playing together throughout this last raid tier – was through another merger. After many late-night discussions with another Swedish-speaking guild with similar ambitions, we ‘developed a blueprint for a merger, including a new loot system’ (Iqbefriad). Departing from our previous emphasis on balancing seriousness with a relaxed, social atmosphere, we made the decision to hand-pick the most high-performing players for our new raid team. This calculated move paid off handsomely, as we achieved a full clear in our very first attempt, effectively ‘beating the game’. Despite this success, conflicts arose due to internal disagreements over loot distribution, team composition, and the gradual loss of interest among certain players, leading to the ultimate demise of the guild soon after.

Epilogue

What is clear from this story is that WoW Classic, and certainly many other MMORPGs, are designed in ways that force guilds to manage their members through practices that closely resemble managerial practices in companies and other conventional organizations. The above narrative demonstrates the emergence of organizational and managerial practices within a playful context, shedding light on how and why they emerge. It also highlights the inherent tensions and challenges that arise from the process of ‘workification’. In line with previous research, the prevalence of workification was a major turnoff for some members who were there only to ‘have fun’. Such players created expectations for officers who were initially drawn to WoW Classic by the promise of exploring a vast virtual world, only to find themselves compelled to exchange this immersive experience for spreadsheets and performance data analyses. Doktorn, for example, had to step down from the guild management team because other players expected him to carry out work-like tasks for the guild in addition to his real work or spending time with his family. Other officers voiced their concerns about how the game occasionally hindered them from pursuing other activities that they would rather be doing. Despite this, the officers we spoke to – and this is also in line with my own personal experiences – claimed that such in-game work-like activities can also be fun and rewarding in and of themselves. Workification therefore is not only a means to an end, that is, of having fun in the game; it can also be an end in itself. Bigsilly, for example, states that ‘even though it sounds weird to have “an additional job” in my spare time, it actually brings much value to the game for me’. Iqbefriad relates his daily job to the in-game experience and finds that the work-like aspects of WoW Classic make the time spent in the game feel more meaningful and valuable. On a personal level, after making the decision to step down from my position once the next expansion was launched and our old guild reassembled, I gradually lost interest and eventually made the choice to quit the game altogether. Naturally, players find enjoyment from different aspects of the game they engage with. Some enjoy exploration and role playing while others enjoy gathering gear, weapons, and mounts. Yet others, like me and the majority of the other officers in the guild, mainly enjoyed the competitive, social, and managerial aspects of the meta-game. Thus, even though ‘workification’ was to some extent afforded by the game by design, it was also a deliberate strategy from the officers to ensure their own continued enjoyment, and to enable as many guild members as possible to experience the same.

Analysis: Fun is not all fun and games 

Values and decision premises

The values and decision premises of an organization explain what the purpose of an organization is and what it is trying to do (Engelmann et al., 2020). In the studied organization, three values were identified: 1) Fun is the supreme value mentioned by the respondents. However, in order to have fun they must 2) focus on improvement in order to accomplish their tasks and 3) strive towards fairness in their operations and reward schemes. Both fairness and improvement are values which are seen as subordinate to the main value of fun. Yet as they are deemed necessary in order to achieve the supreme value, they take a more equal position in relation to fun. In other words, the organization routinely sacrifices fun now in order to achieve more fun later. To keep up with changing market demands in the form of the rising difficulty of raids, the organization had to organize accordingly.

As the guild was ‘semi-casual’, meaning it contained multitudes of perspectives on how ‘fun’ should be achieved, the management team had to create specific guidelines and tools. The management team wanted to be fair and so it kept open discussions and voting in order to allow members to communicate what they thought would be the best decision. The question of what fair is, of course, is not easy to answer. Several interpretations of fairness were discussed by management, but ultimately it had to be balanced towards the other values, establishing a system that was both fun for the members and which strived towards improving the organization as a whole. To be clear, the supreme value of fun is always present. But what happens in any organization with several, sometimes conflicting, values is the performance of a balancing act. How the values are weighed up in relation to each other is determined by how the organizational actors interpret information, make sense of their world, and arrive at decisions – that is, through the application of shared mental models (Engelmann et al., 2020; Prahalad and Bettis, 1995).

Shared mental models 

In order to achieve the goals of the organization, management in the guild viewed it as essential to organize 25-40 people for training so they were prepared for the task at hand. A certain number of people had to perform at an expected level to continue the operations of the organization. Consequently, when management discussed reprimanding players who worked against the organization’s goals, it implied that individual perceptions of fun needed to be sacrificed in favor of collectively agreed on interpretations: the balance of values shifted from the individual to the collective. The DL shifts and emerges while management experiences the ongoing operations of the organization (Prahalad and Bettis, 1986) and they start to see the world differently. 

The value of improvement thus seems to force into being certain thinking patterns as management saw organization, attendance, preparation and performance as the way towards improvement. However, the information filter of the members of the management team, what they considered relevant, was formed by the tools at hand (Bettis and Prahalad, 1995). For instance, Warcraftlogs monitor specific quantitative performance metrics while overlooking other, equally important qualitative aspects. Attendance quotas are another source of quantitative data that was used as the basis for decision making. Since organization members did not share the same objective, management recognized the necessity of compromise to maintain the interest of their diverse member base. In order to keep the number of players needed for the ongoing operations while still keeping the organization improving over time, it was essential to appease all members and foster an acceptance of each other’s presence. The value of both fun and fairness were present in the view of management, if for no other reason than to keep the guild together.

If organizing is deemed important in order to keep having fun, someone needs to organize. This too can help explain the managerial mindset and how the management team viewed the organization. As it made sacrifices to ensure the continuous operation of the organization, the management team asked the same from the guild members. To ensure that the members would subordinate their own goals to that of the organization, however, structures had to be put in place.

Organizational structures 

The structures of an organization consist of both the form of the organization (Engelmann et al., 2020) as well as the administrative tools to oversee that form (Prahalad and Bettis, 1986). Throughout the case, as the management team formed new structures to further the values of the organization, the individual members of the organization also reacted and changed their behavior to fit the new regime. DKP was introduced to achieve fairness, but members exploited the new system for their own goals and management had to react. In this case, structures emerged from dissent in the player-base. Management introduced changes that they assume will fulfill set goals; however, players sought to achieve their own goals within the confines of the organization – even though these goals differed from the collectively agreed on goals. The ideological control (see Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996) is not total but, as dissent proliferates, the organization needed to apply more and more structure in order to reach its various goals. 

Warcraftlogs offered management clear KPIs to monitor players’ performance, serving as the foundation for subsequent (informal) meetings where management provided coaching to players on how to enhance their skills. However, like DKP, warcraftlogs changed the way players engaged with the game’s content. Some players started to strive towards improving their individual parses to the detriment of the performance of the organization as a whole. What is interesting to note is that one of the desired end states – namely, improvement – required the organization to implement structures in order to ensure obedience from members. But as there were a lot of different individual goals for players, management had to balance its demands on the players to ensure they would keep playing. While fun remained a core value, it tempered the value of improvement and enforced the need for compromises.

Organizational practices

One of the key findings is how individual practices in the organization are affected by and in turn affect the structures, shared mental models, and even the balance of values within the organization. As new structures emerged, both intentionally and unintentionally, the players adapted their practices and forced the creation of new structures to rein them in. As discussed above, it is this dissent that underlies the increasing organizing within the guild. The DKP decay, the individual follow-up meetings, the plans for which gear you should obtain – all of these activities underlie the value of improvement, of the guild getting better, of a goal that requires the subordination of the individual in favor of the collective. Fairness and fun can, in theory at least, be achieved without acknowledging the organizational practices, but improvement requires the members to strive towards a common goal.

Gaming, then, is not all fun and games. Our respondents mentioned that part of playing the game involved attending guild meetings, studying class tactics, grinding for consumables, and so on. For the organization to prosper, its key members were required to invest effort, in terms of both resources and active participation. Management used the measurement tools at its disposal to have evaluation meetings with individual members and give them pointers for the future. The structures of the organization thus affected the practices of the individual members as they adapted their playstyle to the tools used to measure them. Reciprocally, these changes in practices created the need to adapt the structures to further the organizational goals.

Concluding discussion 

In this paper, we have problematized and further developed the concept of workification of gaming by showing how organization unfolds in a Swedish WoW Classic guild through the use of an analytical framework based on DL (Prahalad and Bettis, 1986). Previous research on the topic of workification (and ‘playbour’) focused on how the thrill and enjoyment of gaming frequently transitions into, or coexists with, forms of exploitation when work-related elements are introduced into game contexts. However, our analysis shows that the commonly agreed upon superior value of ‘fun’ underpins workification despite the fact that, in practice, having fun is explicitly considered subordinate to enhancing performance and maintaining fairness. These different values – how they were interpreted and their corresponding structures and practices – evolved during the life of the studied organization. At its core, organizing is an effect of what the members themselves wanted to achieve with the time and effort spent in-game. As the barriers of entry and exit are low and players can, in theory, easily leave for other organizations (see Williams et al., 2006; Ducheneaut et al., 2007), they had to be partially on-board for the goals of the organization, but the organization also had to accommodate the wants and needs of its members in order to maintain some level of stability. 

While it might sound contradictory, we see that the management of this type of semi-casual guild can require more workification to achieve its underlying values than in a high-performing (‘hardcore’) guild. Purely high-performing guilds recruit players who are fully aware of what is expected from them, what choices to make for their character, who should have what equipment, and how to play their character. This affords a hands-off approach in terms of management and organization. In our case, we show how management and organization emerge from a need to get everyone to pull in the same direction and to disincentivize egotistical play, to clear the raids, and to promote fairness. While fun was the governing value, being the raison d’être of the organization, the other values were the driving force behind workification. As such, organizing to promote fun necessitated the development of activities with work-like connotations, such as the development of KPIs, planning, and performance monitoring. The answer to the question of whether these activities themselves can be considered ‘fun’ was ambiguous.

One objective of this study has been to problematize the common understanding of workification as it appears in the literature. Rauch (2016) describes workification of gaming mainly as the implementation of monotonous, work-like elements (such as grinding) in games. Other researchers, such as Yee (2006) and Levine (2008), present similar findings and show how the inherent design of the game and its organization can lead to exploitation and burnouts in the pursuit of loot and achievements (Malone, 2005). Playbour is another related concept that describes how committed gamers carry out unpaid labor that software developers and publishers profit from (Kücklich, 2007; Goggin, 2011). However, while efforts to accumulate gold, resources, and reputation in a game may be experienced as work-like chores, viewed objectively, few in-game activities in WoW Classic actually resemble contemporary work. Needless to say, very few of us actually collaborate with enchanters or kill pirates at work, and – in contrast to clear and achievable in-game objectives – work equivalents are often unclear and unattainable. Furthermore, while it is possible to accurately predict the consequences of one’s actions in-game, this is often not the case in real life, and in the case of knowledge workers and academics, work is neither monotonous nor repetitive. Instead, we argue that monotonous in-game activities rather resemble fantasies about work or perhaps gamified work-like tasks, such as we find in Job Simulator (Owlchemy Labs, 2016).

If we take a more direct analogue to gamification, workification of gaming according to our conceptualization is the introduction of work-like activities to increase efficiency and performance in the game, which serves to keep the game fun and interesting for a prolonged period of time. Organizing in games is workification because it blends elements of play, the game itself, with elements of work. Work, in this case, is thought of not as the repetitive tasks of grinding for resources but rather the practices related to organizing. Workification, therefore, is the mimicking of work-like structures which are perpetuated in a play environment, and which changes the way that people act, behave, and expect others to act and behave. When you are ‘just’ playing the game – for example, casually completing quests or exploring – performance, participation, and engagement matter little, but when an organization relies on you to fulfil your role in a raid team, such aspects suddenly become significant. Therefore, simply grinding for experience, materials, or other resources should not be classified as workification. Instead, play becomes workified once you do these things to fulfill an organizational quota. Clearing the same raid instances week after week is not necessarily workification; but once you start doing it to maintain your place in a formalized raid team and achieve your minimum required raid attendance, these activities are workified. 

Organizing in-game results in workification. Yet participation in a workified game environment remains voluntary and, in its unique way, serves the greater purpose of fun by enabling certain activities and experiences that would otherwise be impossible. Our concept of workification therefore responds to Goggin’s (2011) thinking on play, yet it takes place in a hierarchy with rules, norms, and values, attributes related to work according to Scott (2008). Boczkowski and Mitchelstein (2021) thus correctly argue that the distinction between work and play is blurred – not in terms of the in-game activities in and of themselves, but in terms of the meta-game activities that afford a specific type of play and for a specific, pre-defined purpose. Vesa et al. (2017: 281) point out that, while games are one of the oldest forms of organizing, play’s theoretical underpinnings ‘stand in stark contrast’ to those of modern organizational and management theory, so that even though the blurring exists we might sometimes fail to see it. We can note that Williams (2006) claimed that guild management resembles traditional work practices; Malone (2007) argued that loot-distribution systems legitimize the hierarchy of the guild; and Nardi and Harris (2006) explained that, to experience certain aspects of the game, players have to organize in one way or another. This is also true in our case. More importantly, workification is becoming increasingly important for groups of players who want to both experience the social aspects of the game and the more challenging high-level content, particularly as guilds grow and include players with varying goals and levels of ambition. 

Despite the presence of repetitive, labor-intensive tasks in WoW Classic by design, such as grinding or farming (Rauch, 2016), our respondents did not extensively discuss such tasks in the context of workification. Instead of talking about the chores of a fantasy world, they talked about their engagement in management and organization, reminiscent of contemporary office work. The organization which we have been following through its ordeals is in many ways similar to other non-profit organizations, such as a local sports club. In that context, too, we witness members dedicating their time, resources, and effort to contribute beyond their personal interests and extending their support to causes beyond their professional spheres. Yet, as opposed to many of those types of organizations, the ‘business environment’ – the game world which Blizzard had created in WoW – drove much of the changes we saw in the guild. When updates and expansions were released, changing the landscape of the game, the guild had to adapt and ever more organizing and structure was needed. When an organization is simultaneously influenced by external forces and internally motivated to improve, the frequency of changes and reactions to those responses is likely to increase. The volatility of this semi-casual approach seems to have driven management towards a more authoritarian stance, leading to repercussions for those who challenged its vision. Even in an organization built on purely frivolous grounds, the ‘fast-paced business environment’ led to the creation of a hierarchical organization, albeit one with many egalitarian mechanisms. 

Acknowledgements

We want to thank all officers and Guild Masters from the Swedish WoW Classic guilds Northwind and Horde i Magen (previously on the server Razorgore) for contributing to this study as respondents. Special thanks to Iqbefriad, Bigsilly, Doktorn, Jungleroar and Rezznor.

[1] In a video game context, ‘boosting’ refers to the act of assisting someone in overcoming challenging obstacles, achieving sought-after gear, or leveling up quickly, often for a fee.

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/320sge/gamers_what_is_the_worst_grindingfarming_youve/

[3] A wordplay that alludes to one of the two in-game ‘factions’, The Horde, and the Swedish expression ‘hård i magen’, which translates to ‘constipated’ in English.