Farmers and Warcraft players in the US of A
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 22nd 2007 at 4:00PM
This blog post is careening around the blogsphere at large, and it probably behooves us to mention it here on WoW Insider, considering the points it makes about WoW players. It's a variation on the red state/blue state argument, in that it points out that there are actually more Warcraft players in the United States today than there are professional farmers. And so, says the piece, when someone, be they politician or pundit or newscaster, says that "the real America" is rural farmland where people are more likely to be milking cows than running Karazhan, they're wrong.There are a few problems with this argument, of course, one of which is admitted to in the article: farming and World of Warcraft-playing are hardly mutually exclusive. Just because you read blogs and play MMOs doesn't mean you're not a person who wakes up in the morning and gets your eggs out from under chickens. The other issue is that if you're going to start fighting nostalgia, you're going to lose. Every generation looks at the future (or in this case, the rapidly approaching present) and compares it unfavorably to the past. I've always thought it amazing that someday we will have someone in the White House who knows how to get 30 extra lives in Contra, and that person will probably look at the new holo-vid-games that come out in 2016 and say "when we were young, we played with buttons and thumbsticks!"
But back to the issue at hand: it's true-- America is becoming a technological, urban country, and whether you like it or not (politics completely aside, because I know how much you guys like those on this gaming blog), it's a fact that a person on the street is more likely to know what day Brewfest starts rather than when the summer solstice hits. Sure, we're not seeing the latest class changes on the evening news, but we are seeing Warcraft selling trucks, and whether newscasters and politicians are recognizing it or not, the MMO culture is becoming more and more massive every day.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Smurk Oct 22nd 2007 4:26PM
Uh... huh. This is one of the odder posts I've seen here. More people know game holidays than the start of the seasons? I don't think so. Blog posts from 18 months ago?
I have pretty much no idea what you're on about.
Sylythn Oct 22nd 2007 4:26PM
Yes, but does it take into account the number of farmers playing WoW? :)
Philo Oct 22nd 2007 4:29PM
Politicians are calling farmers "real" American because farming remains the basis of the US economy. It's not about there being more of them, it's about the importance of their role in the economy and the production of essential goods.
Playing WoW produces nothing. You're basically spending hours moving bits around on a networked drive. You might contribute other things to society, namely in the way that you acquire money to pay for your WoW account... But the act of playing WoW itself is certainly not part of the fabric of the US economy.
Matt Oct 23rd 2007 4:16PM
Regardless of farmers and whatnot, the moment that the magnitude of WoW struck me was when I was watching the Pats-Cowboys game and I saw a commercial with a dude driving a truck through Azshara to kill a dragon. The fact that it is NOT a commercial for WoW blows my mind.
redxiii Oct 22nd 2007 4:58PM
@3 Nope, agriculture receives (as in Europe) extremely high subsidies. It costs more wealth than it produces. Their role in the economy is marginal.
The CIA Factbook does have these numbers for the U.S.:
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 0.9%
industry: 20.9%
services: 78.2% (2006 est.)
Farmers are neither the "basis" of any western countries economy, nor do the play an important role.
A change in the heads of the people would be desirable.
Bearback Oct 22nd 2007 5:01PM
This post screams, WOW insider needs a editor, or at least a gate keeper from being simply the scree of imbeciles.
Yeah nice work digging up that blog post from Friday, March 03, 2006.
Richard Oct 22nd 2007 5:00PM
LOL @3 calling farming the basis of the US economy.
I repeat: LOL.
The United States doesn't even consider manufacturing the basis of the economy anymore (which surpassed farming decades upon decades ago).
The US economy is service-based now. By a WIIIIIDE margin.
L2MacroEconomics
Richard Oct 22nd 2007 5:01PM
@5 sorry, red, didn't see you already beat me to it.
vanillakilla Oct 22nd 2007 5:05PM
what i got from the article anyway was that gaming isn't a standalone pastime.
for example tonight i'll go bowhunting, chew my Cope, and then run around as a warlock.
not a lot of folks seeing me sitting in a tree decked out in camo and facepaint would probably figure that i spend a few hours each evening playing some online game as a shapeshifting cow or a elf that has a really scantily dressed sidekick.
gamers don't fit the stereotype anymore. thats what i got from this anyway.
Enix Oct 22nd 2007 6:21PM
Mike - the presence of any farmers who play WoW doesn't negate KF Monkey's point. It's simply a clever comparison.
As for nostalgia, ever heard anyone who grew up on a farm get all wistful above moving back to the stench of cow crap, the threat of tornados and the long stretches of solitude and isolation? It's the same reason why most folks no longer play side-scrollers or Space Invaders: 'cause it *wasn't* better in the good olden days.
Mike Schramm Oct 22nd 2007 6:25PM
Whoah careful now. Your first point is a good one, Enix, but I play side scrollers (Symphony of Night on XBLA) and old arcade games all the time.
I'm not all about nostalgia, but don't completely diss the past-- we had a lot of fun back then, both on the farm and at the arcade.
Pook Oct 23rd 2007 12:44AM
Anyway, the people we think of as farmers, there arte very few of them left and there input to the food supply is very marginal...
Most farms are run by giant companies, more in common with GM than farmer giles..
TheMinority Oct 23rd 2007 10:30AM
That picture scares me...
It's like he's peering into my soul...
Hexile Oct 23rd 2007 10:46AM
[But why in the name of John Deere's Blood-Soaked Wood-Chipper Gears, every time I hear a news report on what "real Americans" think do I wind up watching some farmer in their fifties and sixties bitch as they survey the blasted plains landscape behind them, and not only that, somehow their cultural observations are assumed to have more relevance than anyone else's?]
Simple. Because otherwise it would be racist due to the amount of profiling necessary to make it anywhere near compelling on a large scale.
He suggests New Yorkers drinking coffee. So which of them gets picked for the interview? If you ask the same questions of the farmhand to someone in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Fran, Miami, you would have to extensively profile who you pick as to avoid someone who wouldn't cut it as "the average american".
Is "Raj" living in New York, driving a cab, considered the average american?
Would Xiang, the Los Angeles dry cleaner fit the bill?
In Altanta, would Deshawn Sanders, a lawfirm partner and black republican be considered "Joe Average"?
KFM does have a point. Farmer Brown is *NOT* the average american. However, what he is suggesting isn't just less credible, it's unworkable.
Wolfstalker Oct 23rd 2007 11:36AM
Just as much land gets farmed now as always did, and more is produced.
The difference is one person can farm 50,000 acres of land now instead of 500 acres, and produce more doing it, because of technological advancement.
Nothing to see here.
gozerthagozerian Oct 23rd 2007 12:28PM
Sorry, but playing an MMO doesn't have the same political cachet as farming fields, in terms of the carefully constructed patriotism and cross-demographic appeal politicians have to aim for when they give their speeches.
Are there more MMO players than farmers in the United States? Yeah, probably. Would a politician stand to benefit at all by name-dropping MMO players in favor of farmers? No, and it would likely lead to marginalization by the punditry. (Remember Howard Dean?)
And that's besides the fact that there are still some 280 million people who don't play MMOs in this country. Farming is something everyone can relate to, at least mentally, while MMOs are still very much a fringe thing when we're talking about the overall voter demographic, especially when young people are consistently the most absent would-be voters. Being pro-agriculture is like being anti-pedophile -- it's an easy stance politicians can use to score points with voters while avoiding taking any controversial stance. Can't say the same about MMOs.
Tom Oct 23rd 2007 9:35PM
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, start.
:P
Freejack Oct 23rd 2007 9:02PM
In my day, we only had one stick and one button; and we died...A LOT! And we LIKED IT!