The corporeal-locomotive craftsman: Gaming in World of Warcraft

This article investigates the significance of three neglected dimensions within research on fine motor computer games1: corporeality, locomotion and craftsmanship. By demonstrating the existence and relevance of these dimensions and the lack of scholarly attention to them within one of the most researched computer games, World of Warcraft serves as a paradigmatic example in the article’s argumentation for the importance of the perspective of the corporeal-locomotive craftsman within game research and the necessity to embrace this perspective in order to fully understand gamers playing fine motor computer games. This new viewpoint implies that gaming (to a greater or lesser extent) is experienced as a corporeal activity in which gamers are corporeally engaged and which depends on their corporeal interaction to make sense. The article asserts that corporeal digitality, locomotion and craftsmanship are not peripheral to but at the very heart of the gaming activity and experience.