About 4-5 years ago, during my high school years, I was very involved in an online community surrounding an online PlayStation 2 video game. This community is a great example of a social network as discussed in Haythornwaite’s paper on the topic. One very interesting aspect of the community is that Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society) were applicable on multiple levels. One might think of the people who play this game as the Gemeinschaft and the rest of society as the Gesellschaft, however, one could also look at the specific community that I was involved in as the Gemeinschaft and the group of the people who play the game as the Gesellschaft. There were distinct aspects to this smaller community, which made it unique within the group of all players of the game and therefore made the idea of a community within a community true.
(I feel it is important to explain why I chose to categorize the group of all people who played the game as a society versus the group of people connected in this smaller subset as the community. First, the group of all players was significantly large: millions of individuals, of which only a few thousand belonged to the smaller community. Secondly, despite the fact that individuals were placed on teams within the game, if players were not with any acquaintances they would often work only for their own benefit, rather than for the good of their team.)
The small community that I took part in was a website discussion board that was dedicated to connecting individuals and groups (clans) who played the game. Active members visited the forum daily and quickly made friends and gained reputations. The interactions within the community formed relationships, which caused more frequent interactions. Reciprocity among members went beyond the web site. One feature of the game that we all played was the ability to keep a list of friends in game so we could find them and play together. On a daily basis members of this forum would gather to play the game with each other; often multiple separate groups of members could be found together working towards the game objectives. The common ground that brought people to this community was the interest in the game that we all played, however members often found other common ground to connect with other members. Discussions included the game, other games, politics and anything else that any member wanted to discuss.
This community was based in CMC, both in game and out of game on discussion boards. However, there were a few cases of groups of individuals from within the community meeting in real-life. The online/offline synergy was very interesting in these cases. Often people of different races, cultural groups and ideologies who would not generally associate with each other in real-life found that pre-existing friendships through CMC broke the barriers that would have kept them apart.
Comments:
7.1 | The Secret Life of Mac Users
7: Get ready for your eurotrip!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hey Scott,
Great post! I find it interesting that even though online games were originally intended to be nothing more than entertainment and side distractions, they still develop complex relationship and allow individual communities, with distinct qualities, to emerge.
The frequency of interaction between players, as you indicated, is noticeable and the relationships were sufficiently strong to extend communications beyond just game-related chat. And what's more interesting is that, as you said, sometimes the relationships are powerful enough to overcome real life issues such as social, cultural, and ideological differences.
Interesting Post!
Your point about fewer stigmas online is very true. With reduced nonverbal cues available on a CMC environment, there is a removal of gating features that allows friendships to spring up where they may not have in FtF interactions. While these characteristics are not immediately apparent, do you feel that over time, you get to learn the particulars of a gamer, or is interaction limited to the initially observed characteristics? It’s also interesting that you noticed your community worked towards a common goal supportively, whereas independent gamers may act to the detriment of their team. Maybe the level of accountability felt is tied to how close you are with your team.
Great job,
Christina
Post a Comment