Of all the WoW machinemas I watched on Youtube, I think the one I found called “Achievement Wh0re” describes perfectly the appeal the game has to its players.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM8TAMythsM&feature=related
It relates closely to chapter eight of Digital Culture, Play, and Identity. For most non-gamers (like myself before this class), the idea of sitting and playing a videogame for hours seems like a complete waste of time. However, seeing that many of the characteristics of WoW reflect our own world, I think it’s important to see what the game tells us about ourselves.
In Warcraft you advance by completing various tasks and collecting little awards along the way that will help you in the future. This isn’t very different from what our own society teaches us from before the sandbox days. With each passing grade in school you are allowed to go onto the next grade. After reaching certain levels in the game you get an achievement, which is simultaneous to someone graduating high school or college. But there is always something more to work towards: your bachelor’s, your master’s, your PhD, a Nobel prize. The same is true in the game. With achievement comes more power.
In the section of the chapter dealing with deferral, Retteberg writes that “ WoW is evidence that we humans have finally succeeded in creating something that we can desire endlessly, have entirely, and never consume.”
I believe the motivation of gamers to succeed in the game can mirror the levels of motivation of people to succeed in the real word. For example, you have the people who are okay with doing the minimum they need to do to pass, and then you have the extremists who have the Pokémon attitude. They have to have it all: the degrees, the money, fame, power etc, and they will stop at nothing to reach their goal, at which point they make a new goal. We usually like to call them workaholics, or better said, achievement whores.