Wednesday 24 February 2010

Gaming Culture

Games have always had the tag of being something for social recluses and the geeky kids who stay in their bedrooms and cower at the sight of sunshine when their curtains are opened. Gaming has totally changed since the home console was first introduced, arcades used to be a place of social interaction where friends would hang out and try and beat each others high scores on space invaders or asteroids. But since the introduction of the home consoles people stopped that side of social gaming until games started to become large money making industry. Yes a lot of games had multiplayer if you wanted to compete against your friends at home but you never knew where you would stand against the rest of the world.

Now we have online capabilities that have yet again enclosed people in their rooms, though gaming has evolved due to the interest from advertising and other companies sponsoring gamers to compete in competition. This is where the arcades had a rebirth (mainly in Japan) as games such as tekken and street fighter then challenged gamers to play agianst each other and become the best. This pushed gaming culture and pulled people to events to compete to be the best and win cash prizes, limited edition merchandise and of course notoriety amongst the gaming community. These competitions are held all over the world and allow the more bedroom orientated to get and experience the world for real rather just viewing pictures of it on google.

Huge LAN gaming tournaments and invitationals are also very popular especially amongst first person shooters where teams are made up of the best from countries or cities and can meet up and make friends or meet people they already know from online gaming sessions. Games are becoming increasingly more popular and have started to build huge communities on and offline and with the increases in technology and how people can communicate through digital media it seems that gaming culture and its social aspect can only get bigger.