Final rational

Social Change and Gaming.
Dan Byrne

The rise of the internet has brought about a lot of social changes within the modern world. By
analysing recent history we see huge development in technology, where the rise of the internet
has allowed information and data to be accessed incredibly easily and and even more recently
sub cultures have developed for the online environment. Gaming technology has evolved
immensely over the past 30 years and has now become a subculture within the online
environment. Games have always been an effective medium to entertain, and game consoles like
the playstation and Nintendo revolutionized the gaming world allowing games to feature graphics that seemed more lifelike and realistic and it is this realism that made the games more appealing.Now that we have online gaming environments; where players can interact with other people playing all over the world, we see exponential growth in realism within gaming, in the graphics, but more so with the social interaction between users. With this technological and change we see that gaming has changed from more than just a linear form of entertainment to a second life.


Thirty years ago computer gaming technology was very minimal. Game designer David Perry
talks briefly about gaming in the 1970s and 1980s and remarks; “To play a game in those days
you had to have an imagination.” (Perry, 2008). In 1981 a man known now as the “Father of
Video gaming” (Perry 2008) Clive Sinclair, released the “Sinclair ZX 81” a home personal
computer which was intended for the high end income earners but almost immediately, people started programming games for it. It had a hard drive of 1 kilobyte and so the games that could be played on it were very simplistic and minimalist. As technology continues to evolve we continue to see a huge increase in the popularity of gaming. In the year 2000 thegaming industry retail sales had reached $7.98 Billion USD. In 2009 sales in the gaming industry
had exceeded $19 Billion USD. “In ten years, the industry has changed dramatically in many
ways, but most importantly it was grown over those years by more than 250 percent at retail
alone.” (Frazier 2009).

There is no doubt that over the last ten years, the gaming industry has grown exponentially in
terms of retail sales, however in 2009 there was a $1Billion USD drop in sales. Considering there
are many new sources of revenue including subscriptions and digital distribution, industry growth is even more impressive.” (Frazier 2009) The fact that there is a decline of retail sales, speaks a lot about the large amount of people who are now turning the internet for their gaming needs. Games like World of Warcraft and Second Life are known as MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role playing games) and use principles of participatory culture where users can continuallyinteract with each other.


Web 2.0 has been coined to term how we perceive today’s Internet capabilities. The term “Web
2.0” (2004–present) is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive
information sharing, inoperability, user centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide
Web. Open source guru and the man responsible for the term Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly states; “It is
becoming increasingly clear that the internet is becoming not just a platform, but an operating
system, an operating system that manages access by devices such as personal computers,
phones, and other personal electronics to cloud subsystems ranging from computation, storage,
and communications to location, identity, social graph, search, and payment.” (O’Reilly. 2010)


“We are using participation as a term that cuts across educational practices (and) creative
processes” (Jenkins 2009) Jenkins goes on to say “Many young people are already part of this
process through:
Affiliations — memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, messageboards, metagaming, game clans, orMySpace).
Expressions — producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning and modding,
fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups).
Collaborative Problem-solving — working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete
tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming,
spoiling).
Circulations — Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging)”

The MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game); Hobowars is a text based
massively multiplayer online game. Thousands of people play it daily and within the game you are in control of your hobo, which is your avatar within the online environment Firstly; there is a huge sense of accomplishment when you set particular milestones for your avatar and then accomplish them. Its a simplistic accomplishment that can be seen by all players within the game, i.e. level gains, attribute values etc. You can sit on this game all day, "training" your hobo. The social side of Hobowars is probably the biggest part of the game. Hobos within the game can post onto various boards and talk about anything. This game provides more than an acquired
accomplishment within a linear, story based game, everything that each player does is unique
and different. Even though its a text based game that you are playing at a computer screen on
your own you know that nearly everything within the game is generated from other real people
playing the game as well. It also draws very real parallels to the real world, it had its own
economy that goes up and down depending on certain variables within the game.

Games like Hobowars show that we see games coming through that are more like real life, in
their graphics, but more so in the social aspects of the game. This makes for an online game that
is so much more engaging and exciting. “An avatar is an interactive social representation of a
user”. (Meadows, 2008) Through the avatar a user can become somebody that they are not in
their own life. It can become an escape from their own life, not to say that their own life is dull or
depressing but the fact that a person can immerse themselves into a whole new world makes for
an incredibly entertaining experience. Phillip Rosendale, the creator of the popular MMORPG;
Second Life states, “We are moved by the idea of virtual worlds, because like space, they allow
us to reinvent ourselves and they contain anything and everything, and probably anything can
happen there.” (Rosendale 2008) Within the visual communication I wanted to create an Ad for a billboard that would express the immersive qualities that online gaming has in a positive light. The man in the foreground is changing into his online avatar and entering a beautiful digital world, a metaphor for the online gaming environment. The different creatures on the island and the floating piece of earth that the man is standing on refer to the small piece of copy on the ad,
“Anything and Everything”. A reference to Rosendales quote, reinforcing the idea that the ability
to create an avatar and accessing a virtual reality means that the same laws within the real world
do not apply. Gaming has changed and evolved into a second reality that has strong parallels to
real life but with the continuing development of technology, gaming is becoming a more
entertaining and engaging medium.

poster design

These are some cool images of "digital worlds" to represent the online environment.

In a virtual world I can do things I cant do in real life. If I want to spontaneously jump off a cliff, In a virtual world I can. If I want to start a gang, In a virtual world, I can. I can potentially live a live that is more full than a life that anybody has ever really lived. There are no laws of physics. There are no real life changing repercussions for choices made, only repercussions within the virtual world.

Hobowars

As part of my research for my major project, I signed up to a community based web game called hobowars.
Hobowars is a text based massively multiplayer online game. Thousands of people play it daily and within the game you are in control of your hobo, which is your avatar within the online environment who you can equip weapons to and strengthen for different purposes, fighting and begging.s within the game than you can build up within the game (strength, speed, intelligence) which you can build up at different centres (library for intelligence, and the dojo for strength and speed.) I found out 1st hand that this game is incredibly addictive for a number of reasons. Firstly; There is a huge sense of accomplishment when you set particular milestones for your avatar and then accomplish them. Its a simplistic accomplishment that can be seen by all players within the game, ie level gains, attribute values etc. You can sit on this game all day, "training" your hobo. to complete actions and tasks within the game it uses up time, which regenerates every ten minutes. Therefore the more time you spend playing this game, the stronger your hobo will become.

The boards

The social side of hobowars is probably the biggest part of the game. Hobos within the game can post onto various boards (allocated by themes such as "whos smokin who") and talk about anything. You can get help from more experienced players. This game initially seems simple because its a text based game but in actual fact there are many complexities to it and ways to make your hobo stronger, ways that could only be worked out by a master mathematician! Its an interesting thing, posting on a board that hundreds of people see and comment on daily.

Gangs
Once your hobo is strong enough you can apply to become part of a gang, which is just a collective of hobos that have their own posting board, perks and "battle chamber", a group of the top ten fighting hobos who can battle against other gangs battle chambers. Gangs also provide its members with better weapons and "security" ie if somebody attacks you multiple times, a stronger member of the gang will go and attack that hobo for you!

Personal Experience

Once I had played for a month or so my hobo was strong enough to be part of a gang. There is a lot to be said about the sense of accomplishment and excitement this had for me personally, it was more than an aquired accomplishment within a linear, story based game where many individuals before myself had already accomplished the exact same thing, this was unique to me, its just a very real sense of accomplishment. Even though its a text based game that you are playing at a computer screen on your own you know that nearly everything within the game is generated from other real people playing the game as well.

I then started using the boards and this was a whole new revelation. I started posting my own threads that were intended to be humourous; I would basically talk about how I was the most powerful hobo in hobowars and how everyone else was inferior to me.It was amazingly fun seeing the responses I'd get. Most of it was negative, and I quickly became one of the most hated hobos on hobowars! however Id developed a name for myself which meant I had fame among this select group of people. I also developed a small following of people who knew I was using the boards as a joke and eventually got offered the chance to become a co leader for a small gang. Hobowars has a very real worldly feal to it, the only metaphor I can think of is its like climbing the career ladder, just within a game. Social status is a big thing within the hoboworld and as I continued to post more controversial posts I became an enemy of the "staff" of hobowars. I enjoyed the very loose but humorously real parallels that hobowars had to the real world, it had its own economy that would go up and down depending on demand for certain weapons etc. Eventually the "staff" sent me to jail within the game for a year for stealing millions of hobo dollars from another gang!

Even though my hobo came to a sad and shameful demise, I really enjoyed the time I spent playing the game and came to realise that with the evolving nature of games, we see games coming through that are more like real life, not in their graphics, but in the social aspects of the game. this makes for an online game that is so much more engaging and exciting. I can live an exciting life within the game and take risks that I would never take in real life, say and do things that I wouldnt say and do in real life. Through the avatar, I could become whoever I wanted and that is a pretty awesome experience.

The demotivational poster

This is a very simplistic design aesthetic for a popular online poster that parodies motivational posters like the "Hang in there" poster created in the 60s with a kitten holding onto a branch. These "demotivational posters" use sarcasm as a form of humour. Some of these are very funny!
http://verydemotivational.com/

The avatar

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10wwln-guest-t.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=avatar&st=cse&oref=login

Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life, defines avatar in the gaming sense as “the representation of your chosen embodied appearance to other people in a virtual world.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/the_inspiration_of_second_life.html - Philip Rosendale talking about 2nd life and the reasoning behind it...
Compares 2nd life to space travel - the human truth of wanting to explore new worlds - start again. (When venturing into space) "Its going to be so different than here on earth, that anything is going to be possible"

"We are moved by the idea of virtual worlds, because like space, they allow us to reinvent ourselves and they contain anything and everything, and probably anything can happen there."

World of world of warcraft! parody- http://www.theonion.com/video/warcraft-sequel-lets-gamers-play-a-character-playi,14240/