Week 10: Social gaming: playing the crowd
I play online games, mostly ddo (Dungeons & Dragons Online) although my connection speed makes it a painful experience on occasion.
I have also introduced the kids to a collaborative online came called Arcane Legends to try and get them used to the concept of working together instead of alone, so far so good, although they still prefer Minecraft (which is fine, it is a good platform for demonstrating expression through construction). They also think it is funny to say that their dad kicks ass on Lego Play Station games that I play with them.
One of the things that they are developing through their guided journey in a MMORPG with my assistance, is when to spot trolling and time wasters, and who to respond to and who to ignore. If anyone contacts the littlest one (who is 7) she gives me the ipad to read the comment and I decide if it needs blocking etc, and I explain what and why I have decided to either allow communication or block it. I hope that this is helping them to develop their own sense of how to navigate an online environment.
Humphries and de Zwart cite an argument of Pargman and Jakobsson (2014 p. 5) where gamers move between frames while communicating, from an individual player, to an embodied person (that has physical needs) to being âin characterâ as a role playing toon or avatar. This is the case, however, the individuals doing so are not born knowing how to socialise through these scenarios, they are socialised into an online gaming paradigm, through learning and experience, different and separate from face to face physical reality.
This is an argument that I have made pretty much the entire unit duration (sorry if I am boring my public!), that socialisation, dealing with trolls and bullies online, crowdsourcing information and participation in providing data are learned social activities that require guidance and experience to navigate, not government regulation or protection.Â
A reinforcing point that seems to be lacking in discourse surrounding other online behaviour is the identification of the fact that individuals bring their own ethnocentric ideals and behaviour to the games and online interaction as well as âtheir cultural background, their education levels, their gender, their age and their own individual moral compass.â (de Zwart & Humphries 2014, p. 17).
Here is an interesting twist on RPG that has, I believe, just been released.
Online games provide a brilliant resource for other online fields to study established communities that have already experienced the problems that mainstream networked communities are only just starting to experience. Funnily though, up until recently gamers were ignored or thought of as aberrant due to their commitment to the gaming worlds.
References de Zwart, M & Humphreys, S 2014,â The Lawless Frontier of Deep Space: Code as Law in EVE Onlineâ, Cultural Studies Review, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 77-99.
Suzor, N & Woodford, D 2013, âEvaluating consent and legitimacy amongst shifting community norms: An EVE Online case studyâ, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 1-14.
I found it funny that your kids play Lego video games - I can remember the Indiana Jones one that I used to play and I was about 19 at the time! In saying that, I think your blog shows that online gaming communities are open to all ages. Whenever Iâm playing online I seem to get a vast spread of ages, which is great! I donât see online gaming as a problem and I think it teaches kids (especially) to notice/value the skills of others, especially when theyâre working as part of a team!
