Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in <I>World of Warcraft</I> (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies)
«‘Leet Noobs’ addresses key issues in new literacy studies from a unique position. As both a gamer and a sophisticated thinker about technology, games, and learning, Mark Chen is able to trace the ongoing successes and failures of a high-end raiding guild in ‘World of Warcraft’ from multiple perspectives, and draws the reader in to the fraught and uncertain process of raiding. Chen shows us the critical importance of the possibility of failure in players’ ongoing process of gaining social and cultural capital, along with how access to that expertise is always embedded in the social and the technological. ‘Leet Noobs’ will be an important resource for thinking about learning and games for years to come.» (Thomas M. Malaby, Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)«Through fantastic attention to detail, Mark Chen shows the complexity of gaming practice and provides critical insight into the formation of expertise. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the rich forms of action, and interaction, in multiplayer spaces.» (T. L. Taylor, Associate Professor in the Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen)