Communication
Like people in general, the gaming community has various modes of communication and since this is a global phenomenon, there are countless languages people use to communicate. These days, communication typically happens over the Internet, as the majority of people who play together don't always know the people they play with in the real world. Therefore, phone numbers aren't often exchanged. Rather usernames or email addresses are used. Gamers use these to talk to each other and arrange for times to play together or discuss game tactics. Sometimes gamers even talk to each other about their real world lives, discussing anything from what stresses them out to what they enjoy doing outside of gaming. The way they talk to each other can definitely differ from how they would in real life. Ask most gamers and they can attest to hearing the sound of someone belittling others for their lack of skill while playing Call of Duty or hearing a child's voice on the microphone talking trash to others who are twice their age. They can also attest to gamers who hide behind their usernames or gamer tags so that they can say whatever they want with little to no consequences. This type of behavior annoys many gamers, forcing some to mute the in game communication or making them stop utilizing the multiplayer feature of games altogether.
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Tony, one of the people I interviewed, said, “I prefer to play single player games because most people online tend to be ass-holes. I don’t like the anonymity of online games because people feel they can say whatever they want”. This behavior, while very common, isn’t enough to push all gamers away from online matches though.
Many still enjoy playing with friends and others, working together to accomplish a task. When I asked Barth, who plays World of Warcraft almost religiously, why he still gets online to play, he replied, “I continue to get online mainly because it’s fun, but also because I enjoy catching up with people like my brother, who I don’t see often while I’m in school. I also enjoy the social aspect and the challenge that comes with it. When you get ten guys in a room, none of who know each other, every one has to be able to communicate. The team with the best communication wins the match.” For Barth, this communication is part of what makes games so interesting. He’s been a part of online groups called guilds, which exist solely for the purpose of getting together and playing the game they love. |
When it comes to actually meeting these people in the real world though, he said he wouldn’t go out of his way to do so. He likes playing with them online, but that’s as far as he cares to go. “But if for some reason we ran into each other on the street, that’d be cool”, he mentioned. Even for gamers like Barth, who play upwards of 50 hours per week of video games, they still separate the fictional world from the real one. In one study that looked at gaming as literacy, Jaea was observed playing World of Warcraft. What the authors reported was “The player’s ability to navigate within these different spaces and be successful in the game demonstrates a level of literacy, as the player must possess considerable information literacy as well as the traditional literacy of reading in order to interact with the information available around the game”(Merchant & Gillen, 234). So you see, it’s not all games after all.
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