Too long layovers (and a bit on WoW)

Exhausted in the Copenhagen airport. Waiting forever for a connecting flight to Tampere. Scouring the airport for power.
It's a skillset all its own, finding the elusive (unoccupied) power outlet. I just scored one near a seat, so I don't even have to sit on the floor. Happy day.

I was just going through my notes from summer fieldwork, looking for good snippets from interviews with gamers for my talk tomorrow. Probably the most interesting thing that emerged is the way games serve as the main impetus for public space gatherings. Even in Uzbekistan, which is arguably the most private of the countries in the region, young people gather to talk about games. In some cases, it's the only public discourse of which they're part.

And I have to admit I am riveted by the stories of the city-wide LANs for playing World of Warcraft.

If you're a WOW player, you can imagine what it would be like to have your experience of that game and its world shaped by a playing environment where, on a busy night, the server hosts about 100 players. Sounds like a pretty lonely version of Azeroth. No wonder they schedule playing time with their friends. Not much chance of a pick-up group under those circumstances. But I think that the small population must change all kinds of game dynamics, from auction house activities to guild formation and instances.

And just trying to navigate between Russian/Uzbek terminology for the game and English teminology was a research problem all its own....how do you translate griefing??