Friday, January 6, 2017

LI Ming Tak Kearny, SID: 10614044, Blog Post 2.

Gaming to change the world? An Extend of Gaming Consumption.

Gaming in a sense, is a necessary devil. The shifting forms of gaming consumption consequently leading to an up-raise level of complexity, largely extended practicality and induced level of mobility as well as the improvement of imbalanced gender coverage.

In comparison to the last decades. Gamers are usually young males, as the overall gaming community can be considered as “build by man; build for man”. In other words, it is a male oriented community. And female can often be “excluded” and “unrelated”. However, there are female figures emerging lately. Sees female oriented games emerged to the market; feministic elements were introduced to the gaming community. Greatly extended the gender coverage, and the imbalanced gender gaming consumption. Such facts echoing Watkins (2009) discusses, gamers nowadays are not only young men.

With the introduction of smartphones, mobile gaming transcended the means consumption of gaming to another level. Pushed the consuming condition from in-door only to out-door everywhere and anywhere. Completely altered the mode of how we play games. “Pokemon Go” is one of the greatest examples, this is essentially a “shot in the dark” conceptual game from Nintendo. But it is undeniably a smart way to brought in-door gamers outside, as this game require players to go out and explore, grouping up a community, creating the “social-lubricant” and “social-glue” that Watkins (2009) discusses. For gamers to extend and maintain their social web.

Gamers now like games which resembled reality. As it resemble things that were unable to accomplish in real life. But it is a bridge to the dream. Hence many simulation games – simulators emerge in the recent decades. The complexity of such simulators are so closely resemble reality, and can be certified to be used in training. A research [1] stated a racing simulator was introduced to real life racing drivers during their training. For instance, Formula one drivers uses simulated data to make improvement to their cars and its development; and acclimatization of new tracks and layouts. An online article [2] suggests real life pilot training simulator system is based on an existing flight simulator game. Such means of training greatly reduces the risk and cost of flight training.

The shifting consumption changed the overall gaming community. Gaming is no-longer “a waste of time” but practical meaningful parts of our life. It help us to gather around and keep our dream close and even making dream comes true. Why would we not just “use” game in a better way, utilize it and assemble the bridge to our dream? We can change our world by gaming, just do it.

Refereneces:

Watkins, S. C. (2009). We Play: The Allure of Social Games, Synthetic Worlds, and Second Lives. The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social-Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future. Boston: Beacon Press.



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