Hello and good morning,
As part of a seminar on virtual property (final year of law school), I'm looking for dedicated (how you define dedicated is completely up to you) WoW players who would be willing to give a written interview (via whatever viable medium they prefer). The interview will only use the name of the WoW character provided (nothing else - no names, no email/facebook/etc), and will focus on the Personhood Perspective and Labor Theory, i.e. how players view their characters (who as we know, technically belong to Blizzard), who they think the characters should belong to and why, and how they would feel if they were stripped of those characters.
The interview won't be long - I assume it would take about 15-20 minutes to answer the questions.
Oh, and of course the reason - I will be claiming that the players themselves should be the owners of the virtual property (in this case the account and all its characters), since the work that is put in along with the "relationship" they have with the characters dictate so. Having the interviews would go a long way towards helping me ascertain this claim.
Those who are interested can PM me here to work out a method of communication.
Thanks in advance (firstly for reading, then some more if you choose to assist)
Liara
Edit - As per Gimlix's suggestion, here are the questions (if you respond, please provide the name (no armory links needed) of your character of choice - otherwise I'll use the MMOChamp username by default):
1. How many hours have you put into your characters (overall and roughly)?
2. Do you feel there's more to the connection between you and your characters than just "puppeteer" and "puppet"?
3. Who do you think should be the legal owner of the characters (i.e. the current situation where Blizzard owns all accounts, should the player be the owner, etc.)? Why?
4. If you were to receive a message that your account has been deactivated due to *random reason*, would you feel as though your work was taken?
5. If you were to receive a message that your account has been deactivated due to *random reason*, would you feel as though a small part of you has gone missing?
6. How do you view your characters? (e.g. an extension of yourself / a product you have worked on / etc.)
Thanks again to all who choose to assist!