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Through more than five years of extensive, participatory research the writer became a fully integrated member of the World of Warcraft community he set out to study. By actually living the grounded practices that constitute the everyday life he concludes that the mundane, often repetitive practice has very little to do with the cyber-utopian claim that one can flee the body and become who they want on the Internet. Instead this doctoral thesis argues that the constant transitions of the borders between offline and online, virtual and real, body and avatar, play and work, player and producer are best described with the concept of leakage. Using leakage to describe the perforated borders that surrounds the game not only allows an understanding of World of Warcraft as a powerful site for production of meaning and culture but also places it far from the traditional understandings of separated fun, play and games. Play as an activity has traditionally been described with three intrinsic features: it is separable from everyday life, in particular from work; it is safe, meaning that it isn’t productive nor does it carry consequence and finally that play is pleasurable or fun. World of Warcraft doesn’t easily admit to these features and should not be understood as neither innocent utopia nor as a devoured mimesis, but rather as an expansion of the life space where players repeatedly and deliberately stretch beyond the producer’s intentions and create a world consisting of work, unwritten social norms, creativity and friendship. Players are social laborers that produce the core of what makes World of Warcraft what it is: a serious game.

The digital age has re-shaped the landscape of creative writing. One example of the changes that have taken place is the way in which millions of young people, globally, now write and share stories as online fanfiction. This is an out-of-school leisure pastime that can also help improve language skills (Aragon & Davis, 2019; Black, 2008). English taught as a second language (i.e. L2) in schools can be less authentic, less motivational and engaging than English used in free-time situations (extramural English, Sundqvist, 2009); thus, there is a need to “bridge the gap” between the English taught in the formal setting of school and the English encountered in informal settings (Swedish Schools Inspectorate, 2011). This licentiate thesis focuses on extramural English creative writing and aims to raise understanding about the ways it can motivate and engage. Also, the issue of L2 English is addressed in relation to pupils’ perspectives of their informal learning as well as their insights into creative writing and challenge in the school subject of English. The participants in the study were thirteen teenage pupils of Swedish secondary and upper-secondary schools who write creatively in English in their free time. Their writing included stories, comics, poems and songs, and some of this work was published online. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews, and it was analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings confirm that writing can be closely related to reading, as participants were motivated by stories they wished to imitate and adapt. Also, the results show how teenage creative writers were able to use networked communication to access a large global readership. There was a strong motivation to write for pleasure – for oneself – and this writing, and enjoyment, could subsequently be shared with others. The free-time writing activity was fun, playful and imaginative, and also aided understanding of the participants’ own experiences and emotions. The state of flow (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990) was an aspect of the pupils’ engagement with creative writing as well. The activity was rewarding as it brought praise, enabled role-play, involved social contacts, and opened the way to new affiliations and friendships. Moreover, the pupils considered that their language learning was enriched through their free-time creative writing. Finally, the participants offered valuable insights into aspects of English as a school subject: there was some creative writing in English lessons, but there was a need for both more creative writing and more challenge.