Do You Fish IRL? In Real Life. I dislike the phrase, because it implies that everything else is unreal. Yet many virtual environments trigger the same human emotions as the physical world. Very real indeed.

If you search US Google for the term “fishing guide“, the first result may surprise you. It doesn’t help to catch any of the 30,000 species of fish found on planet earth. And its author has bright pink hair.

This isn’t just a neat party trick. Nor an indication that I should write a real fishing guide. Nor a failing of Google’s search index: Google is directing such a generic search to a game-specific website because the search engine thinks that the majority of people searching for a “fishing guide” are looking for a World of Warcraft fishing guide. (The box below provides evidence.)

Perhaps, within the online sphere, virtual fishing is as important as conventional fishing? The caveat, “within the online sphere”, is crucial: Physical world anglers generally aren’t sat in front of a computer screen, while World of Warcraft anglers are. However, the internet is still widely used to find information about offline pursuits: The US Angler Survey found that 42% of those surveyed primarily learn about fishing from websites – more popular than print media. (The survey is presumably biased, because anglers that use the internet are more likely to complete an online survey – but still indicates the internet is a fairly important source of information for physical world anglers.) Of course far more people search for generic terms like “fishing” than anything WoW or guide-related. So game-related search does not dominate as much as it may first seem.

Searches for “fishing guide” are not the only way online anglin’ is merging with offline.

As the remainder of this article demonstrates, World of Warcraft anglers are up to 3 times more likely to fish in the physical world than the wider population: If you enjoy fishing “for real”, you are more likely to fish virtually than other players. This implies that the fishing activity transfers directly between the physical and virtual worlds.

Box: Google Isn’t Stupid
This graph shows Google search volumes (y-axis) for 2 different terms over time (x-axis): “fishing guide” (in blue) and “wow fishing” (in red). People prefixing a search with “wow” will always be looking for World of Warcraft-specific information. In the middle of 2007, the 2 lines vary: There is a visible increase in people searching for a “fishing guide” during the Northern hemisphere’s summer. By the end of 2008, the 2 lines mirror one another. A huge spike occurs for both lines. Both lines then more-or-less mirror each other through to a second spike in April 2009. Did physical world angling suddenly become twice as popular? In November? No. A new WoW expansion was launched – with a lot of new fish! And the second spike? That’s WoW’s patch 3.1, which introduced a lot of fishing changes. So, by the end of 2008, a very high proportion of all searches for “fishing guide” were actually looking for a World of Warcraft fishing guide. And that’s the result Google gave them. Note that El’s Extreme Anglin’ does not rank #1 for the most generic search term “fishing” – although it can be found in the top 20 results.

On this page:

• A Question
• Countries
• United States
• Germany
• Nordic
• Transferability
• Culture

Also in this series:

• Where We Fish – Where players fish in the game World of Warcraft.
• Favorite Fishing Places – The favourite fishing locations of World of Warcraft anglers. Both where and why.

A Question

In February 2008, readers of El’s Extreme Anglin’ were asked a simple question: Do You Fish in Real Life? The question was intended to refer to recreational (“sport”) anglers (not those working in the commercial fishing industry).

El’s Anglin’ is a website dedicated to fishing in World of Warcraft (WoW). Fishing in the game is a simple process: Find some water, cast, wait for a bite, reel in. Players do not need to refer to a website to understand the basic principles. El’s Anglin’ tends to attract anglers who want to improve their skills, or want information about where to catch certain fish. The 2007 Retrospective provides an audience profile.

The important point is that El’s Anglin’ is read by people who fish in the game. Players that don’t fish, have no reason to read it. A survey of El’s readers is a survey of WoW anglers, not a survey of all players.

5,299 individual people responded, selecting one of 4 options:

World of Warcraft Anglers: Do You Fish in Real Life?

Percentages are the proportion of all responses given for each answer.

Roughly a third are active physical world anglers (answering either “yes, often” or “yes, occasionally”). 3/4 either fish, or have fished in the past (all responses except, “never caught a real fish”).

“Often” and “occasionally” are entirely subjective (based on the personal opinion of the respondent). The difference between “occasionally” and “not any more” may be interpreted in slightly different ways. Equivalent surveys of physical world anglers tend to ask “how long ago” a person fished. Typically, only those that fished within the last 12 months would be considered active anglers. Unfortunately, this survey was conducted in the depths of the Northern hemisphere’s winter, when outdoor activities like recreational fishing are least popular. So the results from a question that defined “often” and “occasionally”, would also be misleading.

Countries

The IP (internet communications protocol) address of each response was recorded. MaxMind data was used to cross-reference IP addresses to their country of origin. This allows us to separate and analyse responses by country.

The table below shows the number of responses from the top 10 countries:

The proportion of responses broadly reflects the balance of El’s Anglin’ readers. The figure for Germany is slightly higher than expected based on readership, and the German response is also higher for this survey than for other polls conducted during 2007 (5% is more typical). One explanation for this quirk is that the game’s patch 2.4 was in testing at the time of the survey: El tends to explore and document new game content before non-English language sources, so often attracts additional readers with a more limited understanding of English during these periods. At the time of the survey, WoW was only played in 3 European languages – English, French and German. French players not only have Deedoohangus’ Le guide de la pêche, but (for cultural reasons) seem to be less likely to refer to English-language websites than other Northern Europeans.

United States

The 2,407 responses by US WoW anglers provide a reasonably robust statistical sample for further analysis. There is also a wealth of statistical and survey information on physical world anglers in the US, published by organisations like the American Sportfishing Association and government agencies. I am grateful to Rob Southwick for helping me navigate through this information.

The table below shows the proportion of all responses by US WoW anglers to each option, alongside the proportion for all countries.

43% of US respondents are active physical world anglers. And 87% either fish now, or have fished in the past.

While fishing is a popular recreational activity in the United State, it’s not that popular: There are “nearly” 40 million active anglers in the US [Sportfishing in America] – 13% of the population.

Individual people tend to drop in and out of the activity from year-to-year – the “churn rate” is high. This means that far more people have fished at some point in their lives – 119 million US citizens, which is 39% of the population [2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Table B-4].

WoW’s US anglers are 3.3 times more likely than the overall US population to be active recreational anglers. They are 2.2 times more likely to know how to really fish than the overall US population.

The second 2.2 multiplier is a slight under-estimate: The 39% figure (of the US population that have fished at some stage in their lives) reflects the full demographic structure of US. However, WoW’s underlying demographic structure is biased towards younger age groups – particularly ages 15-35. While many (physical world) fishermen and women learn to fish when young, some will not learn until they are older. Those people would answer that they have not caught a fish in the survey, but would still fall into the 39% proportion.

Perhaps World of Warcraft’s customers simply tend to be more likely to be physical world anglers than the rest of the population? Statistically it is possible: There are more anglers than WoW players. But seems unlikely: WoW is not a “fishing game”. Fishing is a fringe activity, not core to the design. WoW is not even an outdoor pursuit. Unfortunately I cannot easily survey WoW players who do not fish in-game.

Definitions: Several terms are used throughout this article, such as “angler” and “active”. The precise definitions for these terms can vary slightly between sources. Hopefully they don’t vary enough to invalidate comparison.

Germany

It is possible that the survey was biased. Perhaps physical world anglers were more likely to respond to the survey than others? Analysis of responses from Germany suggests this is not the case.

There were 934 responses by WoW anglers based in Germany. A less reliable sample than the US, but still large enough to probe in detail.

German WoW anglers have a far lower level of involvement in physical world fishing than the Americans: Just 15% of German WoW anglers are also active physical world anglers. 44% either fish now, or have fished in the past.

The number of recreational fishers in Germany is estimated to be between 3.3 and 5.8 million people [PICOS]. Crudely averaging those figures gives 4.6 million people, which is 5% of the German population. (I have not managed to find (in English) statistics for the proportion of the German population that have fished at some point in their lives.)

So, WoW’s German anglers are also 3 times more likely than the overall German population to be active recreational anglers. Almost the same multiplier as the United States, but with a completely different balance of responses.

Box: Why Germans Don’t Fish
Why is recreational (physical world) angling so much less popular in Germany than countries like Norway? One explanation may be regulation: “German laws forbid angling for children under 10 years and later a quite demanding angling exam is mandatory” [European Anglers Alliance]. The same source shows a strong tendency for people (in other European countries) to learn to fish when young, something which German law limits. Another explanation may be geographic: Germany has a shorter coastline per head of population than most other countries in Northern Europe. That’s not simply a practical factor (Germany still has plenty of inland water). Rather, a historic cultural issue: A weaker maritime heritage than Atlantic-facing Europe, with less historic dependency on fishing for survival.

Nordic

Nordic countries (defined here as Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) often have high proportions of their population engaged in physical world fishing. These are also among the most “wired” (internet-savy) nations in Europe, making them home to many MMOG players. The strong bias towards conventional recreational fishing in these countries makes a comparison to WoW worth examining, even if the sample size is rather small: There were 492 responses by WoW anglers from the 5 Nordic countries in total.

The Nordic pattern is similar to the United States: 42% of Nordic respondents are active physical world anglers. And 86% either fish now, or have fished in the past.

There are 6.6 million active (in the previous 12 months) physical world anglers spread across these 5 Nordic countries [European Anglers Alliance PDF] – 27% of the population.

WoW’s Nordic anglers are only 1.6 times more likely than the overall Nordic population to be active recreational anglers. There is still a clear tendency for physical world anglers to be more likely to fish virtually. But the relationship is not a simple multiplier.

I have not found any information about the proportion of the Nordic population that will fish at some stage during their lives. Assume the pattern is the same as the US: Lifetime involvement in fishing = 3x current involvement. Apply that formula to the Nordic countries, and a staggering 80% of the Nordic population will fish at some stage during their lives. That’s on the verge of becoming a defining characteristic of those nations – something embedded deep within the culture. Obviously if such a high proportion of the population know how to fish, multipliers as high as 2 or 3 cannot be achieved: The proportion of WoW anglers that fish or know how to fish, cannot be exceed 100%!

Transferability

The conclusion: That being (or having been) a physical world angler make you far more likely to be a virtual angler. It appears that the underlying emotional desire to fish tends to transfer between the physical and virtual worlds.

Readers who implicitly understand how humans interact with these virtual worlds will not be surprised by this result. Although it is unusual to be able to demonstrate it empirically.

Understanding the ease by which human activities transfer from physical to virtual environments, is key to applying this technology outside of its current gaming niche. And I’m fascinated with the notion that existing resource-intensive human activities (from [driving to] work, to shopping for the latest fashions) can thrive within a virtual environment that is not so resource-intensive.

It is easy to conclude that we can learn nothing from these persistent online game environments: That MMOG players as unusual people, “broken toys” looking for life’s “escape hatch” (to use Scott Jennings‘ terminology). Or become confused about the true motivation for killing dragons. But unlike slaughtering dragons, fishing is a lot easier for non-gamers to understand. The underlying process is the same in the game as in the physical world – one merely moves the computer’s mouse instead of casting with a pole. It’s almost plausible that the same people might enjoy both.

Yet if some activities transfer, do all activities transfer? What, if any, are the limitations?

Culture

What isn’t clear from this research is whether cultural differences also transfer: Do Nordic players fish more in World of Warcraft than German players? A pattern that would reflect the differences in participation in physical world angling between those territories.

If yes, it would suggest that cultural “conditioning” also transfers directly across into the virtual sphere.

If not, perhaps online fishing meets different personal objectives in different territories?

Unfortunately I do not (yet) have enough information to answer that question. Hopefully a future article will examine the proportion of WoW’s total player population that are engaged in fishing. It should be possible to identify players that play on German-speaking realms (most of whom are German) and compare them to players on North American realms (most of whom live in the United States).

This article explores the desire to travel – to make economically irrational transport journeys. It ponders the apparently unnecessary role of travel in virtual worlds. It considers how travel contributes to immersion within the world, and how such travel can be substituted. Finally, the article addresses some of the difficulties in bringing lessons from the virtual back into the physical world.

On this page:

• Means to an End
• Emotional Transport
• Travel
• Virtual Transport
• Why Move Virtually?
• Immersion
• Substituting Transport
• Acknowledging Emotions
• Substituting Travel
• Beyond Gaming
• Book of Internet Sites
• Slow Down!

Means to an End

Economists tend to view transport as a “means to an end”. In the introduction to his textbook on the subject, “Transport Economics”, Kenneth Button explains:

“People wish, in general, to travel so that some benefit can be obtained at the final destination.”

Rationally, you drive to work because you need to move to your workplace to earn money, not because you enjoy the drive.

Economic theory therefore seeks to minimise the costs of transportation. Time, money, annoyance. Theoretically, we’re trying to accommodate a state of “hyper-mobility”. The creation of a transportation network where everybody (and everything) can move instantaneous, while miraculously using no energy or resources.

A TARDIS-like solution may seem to belong in the realms of Science Fiction. But we already have some very efficient transport networks, that we don’t tend to think of as “transport”:

• The Internet. This article took almost a second to travel to you, wherever you are on the planet earth. The cost of that transport was probably a cent.
• Drinking water. In the developed world, one does not wait for water to be delivered – just turn on the tap! And the cost is minor to.

Unfortunately we are not able to transport everything over networks like these. We don’t pipe groceries into homes. Yet. And paradoxically, the internet may increase the demand for physical individual movement, by creating social groups across larger geographic areas than before. Linden Labs (developers of the virtual world, Second Life) neatly highlights the limitations of current technologies: Their United Kingdom staff used to (and presumably still do) fly out to California simply to “hang out” and get to know US-based staff.

Emotional Transport

But if we could eliminate the transport component from our daily lives, would we want to?

Rationally this is a “no brainer”: For example, around 10% of United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP – a measure of the economic output) [BEA] and almost a fifth of domestic household expenditure [BTS] is transportation-related. Proportions are similar for other “Western” economies.

Unfortunately for economists, the human race is not always rational. We do things that don’t make economic sense. We’re to emotional. And consequently transport is full of apparently irrational decision making.

Box: The Irrational Value of Cars
The basic “drives from A to B” function of a private car typically accounts for the minority of the car’s cost. For example, before the current economic difficulties (and near-collapse of car sales) the average new US car cost about $30,000, while the cheapest new cars cost as little as $10,000. Such comparison is clearly simplistic. But very crudely, over half of the typical purchase cost is in excess of the pure “transportation function” of the vehicle. And at the extreme of the market (luxury Sports Utility Vehicles, and similar), one is effectively purchasing a symbol of status, that just happens to have wheels.

Travel

When London’s orbital motorway (freeway) was first completed, some people would take coach tours around the full circuit of the “M25″. 120 miles (190 km) later, they’d end up back where they started, having done nothing except look out of the coach windows. This was once explained to me as, “travel, not transport”. As if travel was a completely different sector of the economy, that fell outside the remit of transport economics.

So, I define travel as the emotional (“irrational”) component of transport.

While few economists would deny the existence of “travel”, most (like Button) would dismiss it as a minor, and move on.

The problem is simple: What if travel isn’t minor? What if the whole personal transport system reflects the value of cars (see box above), and the irrational component was actually the major part? Sure, we’d all agree you need to get to your workplace in order to work. But perhaps getting to work is actually a secondary consideration to factors like enjoying the drive? Or having one’s sex appeal “bolstered” by being enclosed in a shiny new gas-guzzler? I never did understand that.

This is not a purely academic dilemma. The principles of transport economics underpin many of the models (simulations) and processes used to manage and develop transport infrastructure. Or at least, in theory they do. In practice there are still a lot of irrational “political” decisions made.

Economics has helped evolve those processes away from engineering (“cars need highways”), towards an understanding of demand (“people need to move”). Later techniques, such as accessibility planning (“people need access to services”), have improved our comprehension of that demand. But the process remains starkly rational. And that might help to explain why political decision-making can still diverge from the “professional” analysis: Could there be significant aspects of human behaviour we’re not considering?

Virtual Transport

Transport in virtual worlds is intriguing, because technically it can be made to be instant: An avatar or view can have its coordinates (X, Y, Z location) changed, immediately rendering a different place or experience within the world. Instantaneous, almost cost-free.

Transport in this context is the movement between different activities, not the movement required to perform the activity. For example, an avatar might run for 10 minutes to reach a dungeon, and then walks through the dungeon, constantly fighting goblins. The transport component is running to the dungeon. Walking through the dungeon fighting is the activity at the destination. In practice there are some overlaps: For example, while running to the dungeon there might be a small chance of encountering the proverbial wandering goblin.

Some virtual worlds do allow unlimited “teleporting” – instant transportation. Second Life’s SLurl is a good example. Simply type in a location, and you’re there. Of course more conventional modes of transport are also available, such as flight or boats. These vehicles seem more likely to be used for tourism of the world itself, rather than actually getting anywhere you know you want to go.

More game-like worlds tend to use far less teleportation. And where teleportation is allowed, it is more likely to allow you to teleport back to where you were, not teleport you forward to a new destination. For example, the only teleportation in the original Jumpgate (an early space-based MMOG) was for your corpse: When your ship was lost (destroyed in combat or due to careless piloting), a pod containing the pilot was instantly returned to a friendly space station. World of Warcraft offers players a “hearthstone”, which they can use to teleport back to the town or village they had previously visited.

Why Move Virtually?

Has Tolkien’s influence on these worlds accentuated “the journey” to much?

Transportation is an important game mechanic for discovery and exploration. Finding something new often involves travelling to somewhere new. The journey over a physical landscape (or even a series of regions of space connected by wormholes) imposes limitations on what is likely to be discovered, and in what order. It gives the game’s designers some control over the players’ experience, rather than presenting the player with an almost infinite number of possible activities.

If discovery was the only reason for transport in these worlds, the avatar would always be able to instantly move to any location they had previously visited. This mechanic is used in some “single player” games, for example, Oblivion. But it is not used in most online games.

Cynical players used to refer to transport components of play as “time sinks”. The term was used in a derogatory manner, to imply that a simple activity at the destination was being needlessly extended in time, simply because there was not enough alternative content available to keep players entertained. The “time sink” is a relative of “the grind” – the apparently mindless repetition of the same activity in pursuit of a wider goal: The activity is not without purpose, but occupies far more time than it could do.

Immersion

Let’s examine the World of Warcraft achievement, For The Alliance! It is easy to dismiss this environment as “just a game”. However in order to be a successful game that people enjoy, it has to cater for a wide range of human desires.

“For The Alliance” requires a player’s character to slay all 4 leaders of the opposing player faction. Before one can kill the leader, one needs to fight through the streets of their city, a city often full of other (hostile) players.

In practice, the achievement is completed by large groups of players. Since assembling a group large enough to kill the leader of one city requires substantial prior organisation, it is common for the same party of players to attempt all 4 leaders in sequence. Killing the leaders is therefore quite an intense, active, collaborative experience.

Each of the 4 cities has poor transport links for the attackers. Rapid modes of transport (such as flight or magic portals) are not available inside hostile territory. Instead attackers are forced to ride their own land mounts (commonly an animal or mechanical device). The process of movement between cities therefore takes quite a long time. While travelling, players have an opportunity to start to relax. To talk. To think. To be. To do something other than frantically kill stuff. The pace of the game momentarily evolves and slows.

This subconscious transition between play-styles is key to allowing players to remain in the world for long periods of time. To immerse themselves within it: The game world needs to be able accommodate the changing mental demands of the humans behind the avatars. And it seems that transport, or more correctly, travel, contributes to that immersion.

Substituting Transport

Initial investigation of the impact of Information Communication Technology (ICT) on transportation reaches an unexpected conclusion: Workers that stay at home to work, and therefore do not need to transport themselves to their workplace, make more journeys, not less. This partly reflects the fact that higher-income groups are more likely to work from home, and those groups make more journeys. More detailed study suggests that for each individual there is a net reduction in transport, but new journeys do replace some former work-related journeys. It points to the conclusion that transport is not simply a “means to an end”.

In the last 10 years what Patricia Mokhtarian termed “undirected travel”, started to interest academics. She defines this as, “cases in which travel is not a by-product of the activity but itself constitutes the activity”.

This subsequently evolved into 2 distinct forms of “utility” (the term economists use to describe the value someone places on something):

1. The pure emotional value of transportation, often associated with recreational tourism.
2. Activities conducted while travelling, such as talking or working on a laptop computer.

Acknowledging Emotions

Sadly it is easy to promptly dismiss the emotional component as “travel” (that is, tourism), and start constructing complex cost-benefit analyses of the value of Wi-Fi and power sockets on trains. Or something. (A cost-benefit analysis is the process of assigning monetary values to things without monetary value, like “time”, and then using that analysis as a basis to compare different development/investment proposals.)

Which risks misunderstanding the underlying emotional component: The economic approach tends to view humans as machines – “convert the time you travel into work time, and you become economically more efficient”.

Yet as the “For The Alliance!” example suggests, our desire (and perhaps ability) to keep on doing one thing is limited, and actually we seem to need to spend some of our time being unproductive. In Warcraft’s case, it keeps us immersed in the game. In transport’s case, perhaps it keeps us immersed in life?

Substituting Travel

The need and speed of moving within World of Warcraft has gradually changed over the game’s history (see box for examples). Transport is still required to complete many newly added activities, so has not yet been completely abandoned by the game’s designers.

Box: Azerothian Transportation Trends
Personal modes of transport have become faster: Not only have faster vehicles been introduced in the form of flying mounts, but an ever-increasingly earning potential has reduced the “real” cost of faster mounts. Changes have also been made to reduce the transport required to undertake an activity: When first introduced, players had to travel to a single point in the world to enter a battleground. Later players would merely have to visit one of several Battlemaster characters. Finally, players were able to enter a battleground from anywhere, by clicking a button on the user interface. Quests (one of the main activities in the early and middle stages of the game) now require less transport: For example, the original game included a 13-part quest chain based around Linken, which involved over an hour of travelling. More recent “Northrend” quests are designed as a series of geographic clusters (“quest hubs”), often with fast transport links between clusters.

It is difficult to show that alternative sources of immersion have replaced transportation directly. And it might even be argued that the changes have merely diluted the rational (demand-based) element of transportation (the part we all agreed is best avoided). But there certainly are other ways to provide immersion within games, beyond travel, and some of those have been developed to try and make them more popular among the player-base.

For example, in “The Battle for Azeroth“, Scott Cuthbertson argues that fishing is a key source of immersion within World of Warcraft – a simple, relaxing activity, that allows players to mentally rest and socialise within the game.

The notion that one might be able to replace travel’s immersion with something else might be important outside of a gaming context.

Beyond Gaming

In The Unbearable Likeness of Being, Nick Yee recently wrote:

“Everyone keeps looking for the killer app for virtual worlds, and the only one we know that works so far is gaming. And perhaps the reason for this is because it’s the only application in which slowing people down is a good thing. If you were using a virtual world for work, why on earth would you want people to walk to places, open virtual file drawers, be blocked by virtual walls, or have to figure out what to put on in the morning?”

Why, indeed?

Book of Internet Sites

Don’t laugh! About 15 years ago there was a demand for books listing websites. New consumer users of the internet struggled to find information, so fell back to the methods and reference sources they were familiar with. In this case, paper books. With hindsight we can see that Google provides a much better solution.

In the early (transitional) phases between technologies it is perhaps inevitable that people will try to apply established methods directly to the new environment. Culturally it may even be a requirement for acceptance. But gradually, more appropriate methods evolve. Methods that use the technology more optimally.

Which is why the “tween” worlds are so intriguing. The children and young adults now growing up in these worlds do not carry with them our established methods of how to interact using this technology. They are more likely to solve problems with reference to the problem, not with reference to a method optimised for a prior technology.

Ultimately, if their method is more effective than ours, their generation will rapidly become more economically productive that their parents. Just look at transport: Avoiding transportation costs could make a business 10-20% more profitable. Or cause a lot of traditional competitors to become unprofitable.

Slow Down!

Slowing down is counter-intuitive. For our transport economist, the aim is to minimise the time and cost spent travelling. Why on earth would anyone want to slow down? Perhaps attempts to apply virtual worlds in a business context are similarly blinkered? We might see “raiding” (groups of players working together to progress through a dungeon) as a successful model for virtual teamwork, and isolate it, without truly understanding the role of the “wasted” time and activities that make up the wider immersive experience.

We could perhaps go one step further, and argue that the reason the technology is successful in the gaming sphere, is because it has slowed down. Or more correctly, managed the balance between fast and slow.

Perhaps if we knew what they were, these latent desires might be substituted. Just as game immersion can come from sources other than travel. And so in future we might not find ourselves travelling, even when we had nowhere to go.