Essay

How the Internet has Affected Video Game Culture

Video gaming online has been around since the 1970's but has evolved and advanced so much over the past ten to fifteen years.

What was video gaming like before the internet?

Before the internet became available to video games, gaming was a very unsociable thing to do, mostly attracting the common "nerd" who would isolate themselves for hours playing by themselves on a simple yet amazing form of virtual entertainment. The extent to which the activity was social would be limited to arranging a friend to come over to your house and even then it was limited to two player gaming. It was much different to today, where video gaming is viewed as a serious industry comparable to the movie industry or the music industry. News outlets cover video game console releases in the same manner as they cover the release of a highly-anticipated movie.[1] Because of this video games were less popular with most people and playing outside with friends was a more widely used source of entertainment. Also video games were geared to the younger audience rather than adults. If an adult were to spend their day playing video games they would be looked upon as being childish and wasting their time.

How gaming become more social through the Internet

In the past ten to twenty years the internet has revolutionized gaming completely and transformed into an amazing social experience. Bringing the internet to gaming has made it possible to talk to people all over the world who you might never talk to otherwise. Most people even create strong friendships with people all over the world without even meeting them, for the simple fact that they can talk all day everyday without any problem. On most modern consoles such as Xbox 360 you do not even have to be playing a game to be talking to anyone from anywhere in the world.

The internet has made it possible to play with anyone worldwide without actually being by their side. Gamers in these online worlds participate in many-to-many forms of communication and one-to-one correspondence. The games are not only massive; they are also "intimate and social". [2] It has created the chance to play games with much more people than ever before. Some online games you can even be playing with thousands or millions of other people all at the same time. This has also created Competitive gaming, where a group of real life or online friends can create a Clan and compete against other Clans around the world to prove who is the best at the certain game and sometimes even win prizes or money. Overall the internet has made it much easier to be social when gaming which has made millions more people around the world interested in video gaming.

How Internet gaming has changed the lifestyles of younger people

Gaming on the internet has vastly changed the lifestyle of younger people for the good and bad. It has obviously made it easier for them to be social with friends and making new friends whilst doing it. It has also increased the creativity of a lot of younger people, and influenced them to use the games in other ways. Although these are good things, internet gaming has also caused many younger people to substitute internet gaming for going out and socializing in the real world. It has given them the mindset that if they can socialize with all of their friends from home and have a good time whilst doing it, why should they bother going out and taking part in activities such as going to the cinema or going to a museum.

Not only has it caused some younger people to go outside less, but it has caused a large amount of addiction in certain people from certain types of games. There has been an increasing rise in the prevalence of gamers living together to save costs through sharing utilities and physical resources. Whether they are apart of a clan, guild, or other online association costs can be shared so that more time can be spent gaming. [3] One of the main types of games for this addiction are role playing games. To be more specific there have been many cases of addiction from a role playing game called World of Warcraft. People develop major addiction and their games become a form of escapism because the idea of the game is so close to real life, although you have much more control over what happens in your characters life. Addiction is very easily created because people can get so hooked up in their characters world that it becomes a better alternative to them than their real life. People would rather wake up in the morning and kill a dragon as their character than wake up in the morning and go to a job that they hate for the day.

How internet sites have helped gaming as a whole

Many websites have helped gaming extremely well in the past few years, one of the main sites being YouTube. YouTube has only been around for around seven years and gaming on YouTube only started appearing around four years ago, but it has boomed in that short space of time. It has greatly helped out game companies by giving them free advertising by way of people uploading videos of their game.  This is the main reason that game companies are happy for people to upload footage of the games. Not only does it help game companies in that way, but by people uploading glitches and faults games, it gives them an easy source of research which they can act from to fix these problems.

Since people started uploading gaming videos onto YouTube a strong gaming community has been created, encouraging gamers to be more creative with their games and also giving them the chance to make money from their videos depending on how successful they are. The YouTube gaming community also has many small communities within, each as creative as each other. One of the main communities are Commentators, who review games, share their thoughts about certain topics and share stories of their life and others as a source of entertainment for the viewers. The gameplay is used more as something for the viewer to watch as they listen. Another main community within the gaming community are the Montage makers. Creating a Montage is a great way for video game players to show off their skills in the game, but at the same time giving a set idea and footage for people interested in video editing and animation to work from.

Aside from the fact that sites can help promote gamers and help the designers find faults in their game, websites like facebook which are running social games have brought a huge amount of regular people into the gaming world in the past few years aswell. Facebook games attract more than 56 million people a year in america alone, so its no wonder that they are amongst the most popular games played in the world, with several products with tens of millions of players. [5]

Has the internet made video gaming better or worse?

I think that the Internet has made video gaming an extremely useful tool and has definitely changed it for the good. I think how it gives you the option to talk to anyone across the world is amazing and has made it one of the best social tools of today. I also think that internet gaming has really brought out the creative minds in people that might not have known previously how creative they could be. It has also generated a large stable community where gamers can interact with each other easily and share interests. This wasn’t possible before the internet and I really think it was needed.

Although I agree that the internet has improved gaming, I can see why some people do not. It has definitely made the excuse for more people to stay in all day playing online rather than socializing and experiencing things in the real world. It has been said that certain violence in games can lead to violence in the real world. Fox News reported that a Montreal shooting case in Canada was carried out by the criminal Kimveer Gill, who is a player of Super Columbine Massacre, whose narrative attaches with strong violence sense. [4] Although i can see how they linked the playing of a violent game to violence in the real world, i do this that said human being must have some sort of mental issue to go with it, to cause such an event to occur. It has also brought forward the problem of people enjoying online gaming too much and spending too long in front of the screen, sometimes resulting in physical damage such as blood clots and seizures.

This being said I believe that it is up to the gamers themselves to control their use of internet gaming and remember that real life should be the priority.




Bibliography

1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture

2 - Marshall, D in Turner, G & Cunningham, S, 2006, 'The Media & Communications in Australia' in 'Computer Games', Allen & Unwin, Sydney, pp. 279–300.

3 - www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/k0kdm/confirmed_team_solo_mid_moving_into_gaming_house

4 - Foxnews (2006)

5 - "Social network games catch the eye of computer giants" by Zoe Kleinman from BBC News (Nov. 2009)