Creating Communities through Gaming & Social Gaming (week 10)
Admittedly, I donât have very much experience or prior knowledge of the gaming world, so I found this weekâs lecture and readings quite intriguing to learn more about the ways in which gaming fosters digital communities. Taylor Hardwick researches inclusion within video game communities, and gave a fascinating presentation featuring a range of definitions of social gaming and deconstructed a number of common myths surrounding gaming.
According to Taylor Hardwick, whilst the notion of playing games is most commonly associated with young children, âplay transcends age, gender and cultural boundariesâ and can be considered an essential aspect of the human condition (Hardwick 2020). Similarly, philosopher Bernard Suits, describes playing games as âthe voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstaclesâ (Suits 1978, p. 41). Gaming is often perceived as a world of its own, with myriads of intense gamers, typically anti-social men, commonly referred to as âthe lone gamerâ, who play violent video games and troll each other online.
A key element of games is that theyâre âinherently socialâ (Hardwick 2020) because they always involve people in some shape or form, and are based around interaction and engagement. Taylor Hardwick describes social gaming as a âgenre of games that revolves around social networking sitesâ, which became popularized in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Social games are played online and utilize existing social networks to foster interactivity and connection (Hardwick 2020). For instance, well-established game producers âZyngaâ (Farmville) and âKingâ (Candy Crush) were arguably the first to tap into the user-base and networked structure of social networking sites. Whilst Facebook, and now Facebook Gaming, is a well-known social media platform, it is only one example of social network and mobile games. Some other popular platforms include âGillespieâ, âSteamâ and âDiscordâ, which is an extremely popular communications platform created by gamers for gamers as a way to communicate with friends while playing games online. Therefore, social games has ultimately led to the diversification of the demographics of people who play video games, and formed a participatory culture involving active social communities based on particular games, as well as an âassemblage of smaller communities that players flow betweenâ (Hardwick 2020).
Continuing on from the idea of the formation of digital communities through games, American media scholar, Henry Jenkins, proposes the concept of âknowledge communitiesâ (Jenkins 2006, p.25). Jenkins believes âknowledge communitiesâ are âheld together through the mutual production and reciprocal exchange of knowledgeâ (Jenkins 2006, p.136). Put simply, this is when players and game developers create external spaces to post additional gaming-related information and content, which can be shared through wikis, blogs, forums, fan-pages and walk-throughs. Ultimately, Hardwick contends that âknowledge communitiesâ allow players to experience games in a multitude of ways and âgrow the game world into something that is external to the game itselfâ (Hardwick 2020).
âModdingâ is another aspect of the video gaming community that further highlights the interactive and collaborative nature of gaming. âModâ is short for the modification of a video game, and is a form of player production that involves top-tier gamers experimenting with games to create a âmodifiedâ version of the game. Therefore, âmoddingâ is an example of Axel Bruns notion of the âprosumerâ (Bruns 2009), whereby commercial operators (gaming developers and companies) are allowing âprodusage communitiesâ (gamers) to participate in the production process and contribute their skills and talents to develop innovative games (Bruns 2012, p. 817).
Prior to the advent of modern video games such as Xbox, console, interactive apps and virtual reality headsets; social games can be traced back to arcade games, which reintroduced the idea that adults could âplayâ, local multiplayer, and the online multiplayer; which ultimately developed to include social media, mobile games and the online streaming platforms many people know and love today. Fast-forward to the present day, where there are now a number of video game streaming platforms used by gamers focused around spectatorship, including âTwitchâ, YouTube, Facebook Gaming and Microsoft Mixer. âTwitchâ is arguably one of the most popular of these platforms, and is focused on the ârhetoric around community and creating a space for funâ (Hardwick 2020). Whereas, YouTube Gaming has recently made the decision to focus their platform on investing in creators, such as the incredibly famous Swedish YouTuber, âPewDiePieâ, and intends to make itself a strong streaming platform competition to âTwitchâ.
Therefore, it is evident that video games arenât simply a fun pass-time for bored and anti-social teenage boys. In fact, the gaming industry, particularly social gaming, is much more complex and multi-faceted, and a cutting-edge digital landscape which continues to create online spaces for everyday people, in the form of gamers, to express themselves, interact and engage with others, and work together to develop the games they enjoy playing even further.
Image Source: Unknown via Pinterest
Bruns, A 2012, âReconciling community and commerce?â, Information, Communication & Society, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 815-835.
Gialouris, C 2017, âSocial gaming: Itâs bigger than you thinkâ, The Drop, 6 November, viewed 23 May 2020, <https://the-drop.com.au/social-gaming-its-bigger-than-you-think/>.
Hardwick, T 2020, âLecture 10. Gaming communities, social gaming and live streamingâ, MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning material via Canvas, Swinburne University of Technology, 20 May, viewed 20 May 2020.
Jenkins, H 2006, Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide, New York University Press, New York.
Sinha, R 2018, â15 biggest Fortnite controversies that shocked players (maybe)â, Gaming Bolt, 27 September, viewed 23 May 2020, <https://gamingbolt.com/15-biggest-fortnite-controversies-that-shocked-players-maybe>.
Suits, B 1978, The Grasshopper: Games, life and utopia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Taylor, TL 2018, Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, Princeton University Press, Princeton.