Exegesis

For my assignment, I opted to do blog because it is a medium I have never used before and I thought it would be interesting to try something different while undertaking this assignment. I also thought that considering this is a course on digital technologies and I was writing about digital communities, that it was worth trying to use one.

The purpose of the blog was to explore the world of online gaming and subjects associated with it. Online gaming is a digital technology, and society that I was interested in studying and finding out more about. As Asia is a hub for online gaming I thought it would be an appropriate subject to do my assignment on.

I intended to make a blog that was more than just words on a page and wanted to incorporate other media aspects including videos and photos, which I was able to do. I thought that by including some case studies in my blog as well as analysing some aspects of online gaming, I would be able to communicate what I had learnt in the subject. I tried to use a more entertaining writing style than an essay style to keep the blog interesting, but also include some essay style writing to help get a point across, or link points to aspects of the course.

I feel that overall, the blog turned out pretty well, although I could have better looked around at what I could do to change up the content of the blog. However, having not really read any blogs before this year and never having made one myself, I think I did an alright job at incorporating interesting things in to my blog…but the layout perhaps could have done with more work.

girl gamers and the broadening of gaming demographics

A common stereotype of an online gamer would be as portrayed in the South Park post below: a male, nerdy, overweight teenager with greasy skin etc. However, this is rapidly changing. As online gaming spreads to the mainstream, reaching a wider audience, a greater spread of people are playing online games.

Proof of this is in demographics of those playing PC game Kart Rider, which, according to sales numbers, 1 in 4 Koreans play.

According to Nexon Corporation, (the distributor Kart Rider), 3 in 10 users are female. The game is also attracting female professional gamers, who enjoy equal success to many male counterparts.

On to of this, a survey in 2005 showed that the worldwide distribution of gamers was 57% male and 43% female, which is coming very close to equal.

In fact, according to a Reuter’s article, “From January through August of 2008 females ages 18 to 45 made up 28 percent of the total industry revenue, ranking second to males ages 18 to 45, who made up 37 percent. Not only does this challenge the gender stereotype but also the age assumption, as the main users of video games are those who were children when the original PC and Nintendo and Sega games were developed.

Video games and online gaming in particular are a growing industry. By expanding from just teenagers and children to adults, and gaining more female users, this digital technology is becoming a larger and larger part of many peoples’ lives. This proves that internet gaming is becoming an increasingly popular way for many people to communicate and interact socially.

In this way, the internet and online gaming are changing the way that people interact, it is up to the individual to decide whether this will have a positive or negative effect on society, but the fact remains that online games are holding an increasingly large part of peoples’ lives.

SlayerS_'Boxer', gaming superstar

When you type his name into Google, Lim Yo-Hwan produces over 127,000 results, including many pictures. He is one of the most famous and regarded as one of the best professional Starcraft competitors of all time.

His earnings from gaming tournaments are within the six-figure range (US dollars) each year, and also earns almost $100,000US from endorsements each year.

Yo-Hwan is nicknamed in the Starcraft fraternity as ‘the legendary Boxer and even has his own international fan site. On this website are shown multiple South Korean news articles which have been written about him and numerous interviews. According to his website, as of 2006, Yo-Hwan had a fan club of just under 600,000 people, which was second in Korea only to boy band H.O.T. He also is the first programmer to command an annual salary of over $200,000US.

Considered an ‘e-sports’ superstar, his salary is of equal value to that of a top end AFL or NRL star. It shows how DCT’s are playing a larger and larger role in todays society, not only for communication and business (although commanding a salary such as the one above through gaming could be considered one a business) but also for leisure and free time.

http://boxerforever.com/

Going for Gold

Given the worldspread popularity of online gaming it is not suprising that a world cup of sorts has emerged. 2001 was the first year of the World Gaming Championship (WGC) in which competitors from countries around the world come together to compete in a selection of fames for their country. Not surprisingly, South Korea hosted the event for the first 3 years and are currently 1^st in the world rankings. This year’s event is being held in Los Angeles. This kind of event shows the expanding popularity of online gaming and is a prime example of the use of DCTs to create online communities, and emerging from this face to face communities.

Below is the link to the WGC website

http://www.wcg.com/6th/main.asp

Friends

With recent developments in online gaming, stereotypes of what constitutes an online gaming are being challenged more and more every day. Arguments are also being raised over whether online gaming is a social affair…or not.

With the release in the past few years of the Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Playstation3 consoles, online gaming has become more and more available to people who otherwise would not play games online. I believe that this means online gaming is becoming more and more social, as there are increased abilities (using headsets) for players to communicate with others around the world that they have and have not met before. However, this leaves one question, can friends made by playing online games be considered real friends?

For the majority this answer would be no. But, there are still many cases where friends are made through online gaming.

Without having made a friend online myself, I find the idea of it hard to grasp. I find it difficult how people can become (sometimes close) friends without having seen each other in person. However I do understand that more many people this is possible.

Through gaming online an immediate common interest (the game being played) can be formed and this obviously helps lead to friendship. In some cases, online friends do meet up in person. An example of this is at a World of Warcraft convention. At these meetings, players from the same clan, meet up in person, however from researching this it often seems that this is a rare time that they do meet in person. However, if a person spends a considerable amount of time online playing, than the people they play with would be the people they communicate most with. Under these circumstances, I believe that friends of importance can be made online.

To conclude, it obviously is possible to make friends via online gaming, but whether it is possible to from lasting friendships is something that depends on the individual. I personally don’t think I would be able to form lasting friendships through online gaming, but at the same time it is something relatively social to do with existing friends.

The video below is of the 2008 World of Warcraft convention being held in Paris, which involved everything from a costume contest to live performances of the game’s soundtrack.

A little more light hearted

Please note the last 10 seconds of the video are quite graphic

Creators of South Park Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in the episode Make Love Not Warcraft, paint a humerous picture of the stereotypes people make of the world of online gaming and poke fun at how important online games are to some people. In the video above the main characters (Stan, Cartman, Kyle and Kenny), after extensive periods of online gaming, have transformed from their usual selves in to obese, sweaty and pimply gamers: the stereotype of your average online gamer. In the clip Cartman doesn’t even leave the computer to go to the toilet, satirising the extent to which some people are addicted to online gaming.

Unfortunately, this stereotype is true the world

over, especially in areas such as Korea (as seen in previous posts) where video

gaming is far more than just a pastime.

*NB The title of

the blog “live to win” comes from a corny motivational song of the same title by Paul Stanley, which appears on this episode when the boys are training on World of Warcraft.

kick the habit

An excerpt from Virtual Addiction: The Dangers of Online gaming a blog by girly_girl09 describing game addiction:

“You wake up groggy. The clock next to your bed reads 7:04 am. You were only able to sleep 3 hours since you went to bed at 4 am. You’re scheduled to go in to work at 8:30. Since you have about an hour before going in, you rush over to your computer and start playing EverQuest. It’s now 8:01 am; you’re making so much progress, killing characters and gathering objects that you decide you really would rather game then go to work. You call your boss and tell him that you woke up very sick this morning. “Again?” he asks, “One more sick day from you, and I’m going to have to let you go!”. You go back to your computer and continue to play. A glance at the clock on your computer desk brings you back to reality. It is now 2:38 pm. Oops. What meant to be an hour or two of gaming has yet again turned into another binge”

Recent studies have qualified video gaming addiction as a disease, in the same way one can be addicted to alcohol or drugs. While the addiction causes no physical harm, it is claimed that the disease poses a threat to the mental health of gamers. Some are described in the above excerpt: grogginess, a lack of motivation and a loss of reality. But video game addiction is also claimed to cause more severe side effects such as depression and anxiety.

In Korea, video gaming addiction has become a large public health issue, due to the popularity of games such as Starcraft (in 2000, 1 in 45 Koreans owned a copy of the game). This pretty much answers the question asked in my last posy: NO. While in an online game one can create an alternate identity and live your life more confidently, due to anonymity, and in a deceivingly more interesting fashion, the side effects from gaming too much (social isolation, depression, anxiety, dependence etc) are obviously not healthy.

To further illustrate this point, there have been deaths that can be attributed to gaming addiction:

- In 2005 a Korean man went in to cardiac arrest and died in hospital after playing Starcraft for 50 hours straight

- In 2007 a Chinese man died after playing online games consistently for 15 days

These are just two of multiple examples.

To counter video game addiction, countries such as China have implemented video gaming rehabilitation camps, where patients are not allowed to game at all.

An example of one of these camps is in the below video