Week 16: Gaming Cultures

The lecture which we had on Wednesday enlightened me into a lot more thing that go on in the world of gaming which i was totally unaware of. Things such as the GameCity convention and IntoThe Pixel thing Ian spoke about. What intrigued me most however, is that you cannot truly define a game, I mean, you can of course yes, but each persons definition will be different. I was also made to think about the comment by Constance Steinkuehler (i think i spelt that right??) " Games aren’t replacing literacy. Games are literacy", as Ian pointed out, What games? What literacy? and What game cultures do exist? It really did make me think.

Many different game cultures exist, and in many different forms. Are you an online gamer? a part of the Playstation game culture? or even xBox maybe? Do you belong to a brain training culture, or maybe a Mario culture? There are so many cultures, which we could all fall into, probably multiple ones. Its not a small thing. There’s plenty of options, something for everybody.

For some people, games take up their entire life. They will put gaming before work, washing, eating, sleeping and all sorts of things, But then, this is completely dependant on the person, You dont have to be part of every culture and have games take over your life to enjoy them and be serious about playing or designing them or anything. Personally myself, i play games when i have the spare time. Dont get me wrong, i do love games, but if i have other things to do, i will do them. Games are usually my weekend and late night saviors when i cant sleep or want a break from working. I dont really play online games, although i am partial to the online poker culture (fake money of course......wouldnt dream of using real money!!) I enjoy playing it and risking lots of money, and learning to play the game better (does me well when i win my entire family money pots every year when we play with money at family gatherings! you know, as you do).

Gaming cultures can also run through applications such as MSN and Yahoo! Messenger. Each has games which you can play within conversations. These conversations can run between people you personally know, and complete random strangers. One of the questions in this weeks blog task was ' Do you have people you know only through MSN for example? and my answer is yes, i do have people whom i dont know personally, but speak to on MSN but i wouldn’t call them friends. More like people whom i share an interest with, and talk to occasionally. To be honest, half of the random people i have on my MSN, i wouldn’t really care if i never spoke to them again.

Gaming cultures is a very broad subject. We cannot simply define what a game means. We cannot simple define what a game is, or what literacy it might cover. There are many things we can and cannot do in this current time, However, later on, these questions may certainly be answered.