Gaming As a Platform For Socialization

Video game culture is a global new media culture developed by video game players. As video games have grown in popularity over the years, they’ve had an important impact on societal culture. Video game culture has evolved with the rise of online gaming and the growing popularity of cell phones and handheld devices that can easily be used to play games. Gaming conventions and trade shows allow the game industry to showcase and advertise its products and services to a wide audience. Many games companies seek representation at these events so that their game characters may be better known to the public. 

  • Game players are typically grouped into two main categories according to gender.
  • Most popular among this group are women.

The demographics of this gaming culture are usually younger than the average age of men, which has helped to fuel the rise of girl gamers as a popular sub-group within the gaming community. In fact, girl gamers outnumber boy gamers four to one. These factors and others such as socialization and interaction with other like-minded individuals have helped to shape the very nature of the relationship between game players.

Video Games Community

Game players can create a community or “mature” video games community or engage in a more “child” oriented and social networking environment. This social structure is what helps to define how adult video game players interact with each other and what effects it has on gaming culture. For example, there are some social norms that surround video games that are geared towards families. Family friendly games and ones that involve playing together as a family are often marketed toward this type of gamer community. 

Gaming Culture

This connection between family and gaming culture is especially apparent when you consider that many parents now play video games themselves. It is not uncommon to see entire family packs sitting down together and playing video games together. Many of these video game players are also fathers and mothers who feel that playing video games can help to keep their children’s attention.

  • The impact of gaming culture on the world at large can be seen in how the video game industry is able to reach out to so many different demographics.
  • This demographic has the largest average age of any group of people in the US.
  • Many teens and younger children are starting to become obsessed with these virtual worlds and enjoy the challenges and adventures that they provide.
  • While this appeal is certainly traditional for most Americans, it has also spread into the mainstream culture in a way that most people had never imagined.

Perhaps the greatest influence of gaming culture on society is the impact it has had on educational institutions. In the past, most parents found it difficult to motivate their children to play games because the games were not considered socially relevant or engaging. However, due to the socialization and interactive nature of video games, this assessment no longer holds true. Today, millions of kids are playing games that are socially relevant and actively engaged, which has led to an increase in the number of educational opportunities available through gamification.

Gamification

Gamification has expanded beyond video games to include all of the major mediums of entertainment and commerce. Today, video games are regularly used in school and college courses. Gamification techniques are being used to create and shape relationships in sports, politics, business, and other areas of mainstream culture. This means that if you want your child to become more intelligent, ambitious, or socially aware, you need to be encouraging them to play a variety of games that allow them to take on several roles and explore many aspects of life.

Traditional Academic Disciplines

This main article has shown that the impact of gaming on society can be seen in the forms of increased leisure time and greater levels of achievement in traditional academic disciplines. There is no doubt that there has been a sea change in the manner in which traditionalists have approached video games over the last few decades. However, this does not mean that all gamers are equal. If your child loves to play games but doesn’t feel that they are having any real social interaction, this is very different from those who have active engagement in gaming and online communities. The next article in this series will explore how video games can be used as a tool for social interaction for those who do play games.

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