On Voice

Voice. When you think about writing at first, many just imagine words on a page. The words themselves carry meaning that are strung together to convey purpose and understanding to readers. However, words carry more meaning than what you would find in a dictionary. An author’s choice of words carries as much weight as the words themselves, and from that we derive a writer’s voice.

Voice can give a character to an otherwise lifeless page of words. For instance, Hardcore Casual uses a fairly colloquial form of writing that seems as though the author is speaking directly to his audience. In his Letter to Blizzard post, he types out his thoughts on the various changes to the game that have occurred over the years since launch:

Okay, okay. I'm no game developer. I have no idea how hard it is to balance a game of this scale. Fair enough. However, FOUR years after release, you're telling me you STILL don't have a handle on Paladin tanking?

The use of short broken sentences like, “okay, okay” and “fair enough” give a less serious tone to the post. Even admitting that he may not be an expert on the balancing of MMOs, he still does have an opinion of the matter. This gesture is both inviting and reassuring that the writer does acknowledge the limits of his knowledge.

He also tends to use capitals on specific words to create emphasis in his writing. In the previous quote, he capitalizes “still” and in the following quote, “you” and “forums”. While it is a subtle change, when read, the capital words come across with more force and carry some attitude. When paired in the same sentence, it also highlights the two words and sets up a contrast between the developer’s opinions versus the player’s opinions.

However, somewhere along the way, you stopped developing the game YOU wanted, and started developing the game the FORUMS wanted. I do not like this change in direction.

Another technique that he uses in his posts that adds a choppy liveliness to his posts is his one line turnarounds. In this post, he adds one line paragraphs that add things like dramatic tension, humor, or other emotions to his posts. “Then, it happened.” Or “Or, I could take over Bound by Honor!” are placed in-between longer paragraphs in his posts. This appears to be a common theme throughout his blog.

I find that this sort of writing style that breaks semi-frequently and employs bold text for emphasis mimics patterns of everyday speech. People write very differently from when they speak. Most likely because people have more time to craft and hone the meanings of their sentences on paper. When speaking, we rarely have the time to snip off errors and therefore have to correct in realtime and interject our own sentences with disclaimers and explanations.

So. How does this style affect the blog itself?

Seeing as the style of writing has a more homely tone to it, I would say that it certainly helps the blog. Hardcore Casual is a blog about the game itself. World of Warcraft is played by millions of individuals and a large portion of them have created blogs about the game itself. Everyone has their own opinion of the game and no two blogs are the same. However, as a fellow player of WoW, I would have to say this sort of casual voice that is constantly changing mimics the casual gameplay of WoW. The World of Warcraft environment is filled with many players and just as in life, changes at a moments notice.