There is no such thing as a gaming community

[wulf3n]

People just don't want to be considered part of a community when someone from this community does something bad.

Wikipedia defines community as a usually small, social unit of any size that shares common values. It could be argued that if a person supposedly within a community does something considered by the rest to be "bad" they've demonstrated differing values and can no longer be considered part of the community.

But that definition raises further points. Gamers don't share common values, as shown by the numerous "discussions" shown here on the Escapist. No, Gamers share only one value, an interest in games.

I personally don't think that makes a community.

Now the other definition a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment. This doesn't apply to Gamers in general but it can apply to say us here at the Escapist. Like it or not, being active here makes on a part of the "Community" however I doubt the Escapist is in the forefront of the Journalists minds when they talk gaming community.

 

[144_v1legacy]

But there IS a gaming a community. They discuss games. I like the JRPS's and advneture games.
... the other day, I talked about controllers, and why a mouse and keyboard works better for some games and not for others.
And there IS a sporting community. They discuss sports. I like the American Football and figure skating (shut up).
... the other day, I talked about why soccer is boring because too often after an over 2 hour game the score is 1-1.
There is also a medical community. They discuss health. Such as dentistry and neurology.
... the other day, my doctor aunt and another specialist doctor (a virologist and a different kind) discussed my problems.
There is also an art community. They discuss art. A number will discuss traditional arts, or may ponder what art really is.
... the other day, I wondered to what degree architecture could be considered an art, as opposed to the David or something.

But you successfully got attention. From a number of people here, on the Escapist, a website for the gaming community.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

But that definition raises further points. Gamers don't share common values, as shown by the numerous "discussions" shown here on the Escapist. No, Gamers share only one value, an interest in games.

I personally don't think that makes a community.

Now the other definition a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment. This doesn't apply to Gamers in general but it can apply to say us here at the Escapist. Like it or not, being active here makes on a part of the "Community" however I doubt the Escapist is in the forefront of the Journalists minds when they talk gaming community.

I'm wondering if we're not confusing terms here. What you say is the other definition for "community" is in actuality a specified definition. The common interest for people who share a populated environment, like a town or city, have a common interest in what goes on with that town. Decisions that are made that effect that town effect the individual to a certain degree. Everyone who lives in that town all share that single, common value: what is beneficial for the town. The members of the town can disagree with each other on many subjects, what branch of the town's function is most important, what part of the town should be given more attention, how every action of the town's leaders effect the town as a whole, whether the decisions that are made for the town have a positive or negative effect on the culture of the town. Despite all these different views and disagreements, what makes it a community is that single value, the interest in the well-being of the town.

The same can be said for the gaming community. Like you said, everyone part of the gaming community has only one value in common: an interest in games. Now, we as gamers can disagree with each other on many subjects, what genre of games is most important, what part of gameplay should be given more attention, how every action of the big publishers effect gaming culture as a whole, whether decisions that are made by gaming developers have a positive or negative effect on gaming culture. Here on the internet and in real life, we as gamers all talk, discuss, and argue with one another about these topics, each of us more concerned with a different part of the gaming industry and culture. However, just like the town, despite all these different views and disagreements, what makes gaming a community is that single value we all share, the interest in the games that we play.

We as gamers are a community. Now, whether a town is responsible for the acts of a single individual is a different matter all together...

 

[Mersadeon]

Ok, apart from all the overemotional talk here: Yes, there is a gaming community. You know why? Because there are people calling themselves the gaming community. Who are you to say they aren't?
I can get a group of people together and if we all agree that we are the "professional hot dog eater community" then we are, because nobody can come around and say "hey, this community YOU are part of? Yeah, It's not real BECAUSE I DON'T THINK IT IS".

This is not how social groups work, people. No matter how much you like or dislike the term or what it stands for, a group of people can call themselves the community of X and just because someone says "no you are not" doesn't mean they arent.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

...there is a unified sports community. Various fans of clubs fight amongst themselves, but they're all interested in sport, and I am not, so it's a pretty easy distinction to see. There is one gaming community and it's people who are into games as opposed to people who are not. The interest is shared, not the views.

EDIT: And if someone only plays games on the iPhone, that's irrelevant. If they play a few casual games and don't go any further with their interest, I wouldn't consider them a 'member' of the gaming community. Which isn't to say they can't be, but without input to the contrary on their part, it's like the people who watch a sports game because a friend had to give away free tickets - it's not a product of interest but of situation.

 

[Hagi]

As far as I'm concerned there's certainly no gaming community (nor a gay community, African American community etc.) and even this website isn't a community, at least not one that I'm a part of. Neither in good times when we get mentioned in Time Magazine's 50 best website nor in the bad times when there's yet another thread going up in flames.

English doesn't have a great word for it but I consider all of these associations, gezelschappen, gesellschaften. Groups of people who do something together.

They are not communities, gemeenschappen, gemeinschaften. Groups of people who think alike.

We, as gamers, as members of the Escapist, as RPG-fans, as PC master race, are an association. We do things together. We do not think alike and as such are not a community.

My family is a community. My work place is a community. Some user groups here may be communities. Gamers are not. The Escapist is not.

 

[COMaestro]

Look at a horribly dysfunctional family. The parents are divorced, the siblings don't get along, grandpa's been in jail for years, etc. Are they still a family? Technically, by blood, yes, they are. That's how I see the gaming community. In our case, our interest in games is the blood that would connect the family. We can argue about which console is better, or that the PC is better than any of them, or which genre of game is the best, or whether COD should die, etc. but it's all from our interest in games. That interest unifies us as a community.

But just because we are a community in the grand scheme of things does not mean that we are at all organized or can moderate the community. Especially with the anonymity the internet provides. Sure, we can call someone a dick if they are being dickish, but beyond that, there's not much we can do except refuse to play games with a person like that. And often, you weren't playing with them in the first place, so that limits how you can respond anyway.

 

[Therumancer]

Its a myth i tell ya! Told by internet personalities and game journalists alike as an easy to use strawman!

Lately i have seen more and more people talk about "the gaming community this... the gaming community that" and it allways somehow rubbed me the wrong way...

See the problem with claiming that such a singular community exist would be the same as saying that there is one unified sports community. And this is where it falls apart...

Just like in sports where you have fandoms for soccer, football, tennis, golf etc. so exists different sub-communities for the gaming world.

You have your e-sports, your mmo players, your FPS nuts, your casual gamers, people who frequent 4chan, console gamers, the PC masterrace, i-phone fanatics etc.

And each of these communities are entities for themselves.. now a person can be part of multiple but i have yet to see a person be part of ALL of them.

Why do i bring this up?

Because people keep reffering to gamers as one huge community when it simply isnt true at all especialy when something negative happens thats somehow connected to gaming in general people are quick to blame "the gaming community".

Once again its like if the sportsnews is reporting about hooligans during a soccer game beating up a police officer and then blaming ALL sportsfans of ALL forms of sport no matter what sport they actually are a fan of and telling them that they have to "change" the sports community. It doesnt work that way.

Yet in gaming it seems to be all the rage to say that when something bad happens that is connected that its the "community". That the "community" has to work to change.. that the "community" needs to do something. How is said mythic being known as the community capable of doing it when it doesnt exist to begin with?

Because a couple of nujobs from 4chan are spouting sexist phrases at someone I am somehow responsible for changing their behavior? I dont count myselfe to the 4chan community nor do i have much of an interest of joining them. But because they play games and I play games im somehow responsible for their actions? And to top it off it is somehow my job to change their behavior?

This goes especialy out to all those internet personalities and reviewers/critics who keep pointing their fingers at their cameras and blaming their own viewerships for all the bad stuff that happens. NEWSFLASH: The people who are watching your shows and reading your articles are most likely not the ones involved in the incidents you talk about and have ZERO meanings of changing anyones behavior nor are they even part of the same subcommunity.

Anyways... what are your thoughts on the matter of "the gaming community"

The thing here is that you, like many other people, don't really understand sociology. The first thing you look at here is not so much the differences, but what all of these people have in common. When you think about it there isn't a lot of difference between them, with sports fans for example you find that they all root for their team, criticize the way coverage is done (oftentimes for the same thing), and buy specific kinds of merch like T-shirts and the like. With fanatics you see the "crazy people" doing largely the same kinds of stuff to show their devotion, like showing up in a G-string with their body painted in team colors or whatever. Depending on what your doing and how far "back" your business is and the larger a net your casting the easier it is to lump people into a group and exploit it. For example companies producing sports merchandise oftentimes don't just deal with one specific sport, rather that produce stuff for pretty much every sport they can, and try and produce products that will sell to everyone where all they really have to do is slap different logos onto it. Broadcasting companies in addition want to try and standardize their material as much as possible, as a result you'll find most sports related shows follow very similar formats based on what it's been shown sports fans expect and react to. It sounds simple, but really it's not, especially when you get into the science and research that can go into this kind of thing, and making even minor changes in reaction to the community.

With gamers consider that as a group we've spawned entire, easily defined types of games which wind up appearing and re-appearing on different consoles. Generes, sub-generes, etc... we've got things like "Shooters", "Infinite Runners", "Brawlers", "Fighting Games", and similar things which all are easily recognizable. Thus in approaching gamers if you tell people "we're working on a practical survival horror game for android devices" you can pretty much ensure that anyone within the broad group of gamers knows this. Likewise as things go increasingly multi-platform you see developers aiming at things that will be accepted by gamers in general and will translate well between a lot of different devices. Things have become a lot more communal because right from the beginning companies are thinking about how a game could be made to function both on the PC and Consoles for example, and general gamer appeal within it's genere, rather than being set up for one or the other and then ported to another device. Likewise you increasingly see people caring more about what happens on systems they might not use, due to the inevitability of a port, gaming news is gaming news, if something is developed for one system you can virtually guarantee that no matter what is said nowadays there is going to be a version of it for a platform you DO use at some point.

The thing about communities is that not everyone within them agrees all the time, and there is internal arguments and strife. With gamers for example we have our "which platform is best" arguments, and brawls between fans of specific generes of games. That does not change the fact that it can be addressed as a community when your casting a big enough net, especially by companies like game publishers that are producing products for everyone, as opposed to being focused on one particular piece of hardware or smaller niche demographic.

On a lot of levels this is where a lot of the anger against the corporate mentality comes from. Companies realize that there are less hardcore RPG gamers out there than there are people that play shooters. Meaning a hardcore RPG might make a lot of money if it succeeds, but not as much as a shooter will. What's more an RPG takes more work due to the high bar that has been set, compared to shooters where a degree of "poop out the sequel" stagnation is expected by the fan base to begin with. By playing the numbers and viewing gamers as a community it knows it's going to move more units, and take less dev time, to produce specific kinds of games than others. It also knows that by say conceding to put some RPG-like mechanics into various products it can increase those numbers even further by dipping into another aspect of things. Viewing things this way as opposed to taking a specific sub-group and producing specifically for them is simply how corporations do business... playing the numbers with as large a group of people as you can find similarities with.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Congratulations OP, you've the millionth internet pedant who has pointed out a phrase that isn't entirely accurate to what it attempts to describe. And it's every bit as pointless as it was the previous 999,999 times someone pointed it out.

You don't need to "disprove" the existence of a singular gaming community to disprove a Gross Generalization.
It's a fallacy, it disproves itself.

 

[Karadalis]

But there IS a gaming a community. They discuss games. I like the JRPS's and advneture games.
... the other day, I talked about controllers, and why a mouse and keyboard works better for some games and not for others.
And there IS a sporting community. They discuss sports. I like the American Football and figure skating (shut up).
... the other day, I talked about why soccer is boring because too often after an over 2 hour game the score is 1-1.
There is also a medical community. They discuss health. Such as dentistry and neurology.
... the other day, my doctor aunt and another specialist doctor (a virologist and a different kind) discussed my problems.
There is also an art community. They discuss art. A number will discuss traditional arts, or may ponder what art really is.
... the other day, I wondered to what degree architecture could be considered an art, as opposed to the David or something.

But you successfully got attention. From a number of people here, on the Escapist, a website for the gaming community.

First of all.. nothing wrong with figure skating... it can be quite a dangerous sport to do...

Heres the thing thought:

You discuss these topics not with THE gaming community or THE sports community. You discuss these things on forums that have their own communities or with your friends and people you know.

You cant claim to be discussing it with the one singular gaming/sports community when not everyone thats playing games / fan of sports partakes in said discussion or even visits the same places you do to discuss these things.

Many people in this thread claim that the escapist represents the gaming community somehow.

When in truth its just a tiny fraction of all gamers and more importantly the escapist is its own little community with its own small viewership (small compared to the number of people who enjoy gaming).

Now ofcourse you can be part of more then one community, heck im part of more then one. But that doesnt give me the right to claim that i belong to ALL of them like some people here do by claiming they are part of THE gaming community.

Look the idea of one unified gaming community might be apealing to some people but the truth is that gaming is so fractured into endless independant communities that there is no common consense on anything, nor are people from different communities able to influence anything that goes on in other communities when they arent part of them.

For example:

When was the last time that people that played EVE online had any influence over the behavior of people that play World of warcract? Same is true vice versa.

Or how about the influence on the FPS shooter crowd comming from people that play games like candy crush saga or farm vile?

Yeah im sure those dudes can do alot of good to change the toxic waste that online shooters are for the better right? I mean they are one big community with alot of common interests like "gaming" (a term so broad you could wrap it around an elefant)

There are communities like the escapist out there that might talk about all things gaming but these are their own independant communities in of itself.

Nothing you say or do here on the escapist is going to influence or have any effect on stuff that happens outside the escapist, and even on here the effect could be described as minimal or non existant at best.

Someone that strictly only visits the escapist wont somehow magically be able to change the behavior of IGN forum goers for the better now will he?

Congratulations OP, you've the millionth internet pedant who has pointed out a phrase that isn't entirely accurate to what it attempts to describe. And it's every bit as pointless as it was the previous 999,999 times someone pointed it out.

You don't need to "disprove" the existence of a singular gaming community to disprove a Gross Generalization.
It's a fallacy, it disproves itself.

How about you tell that to movie bob and jim and all the other internet personalities that dont get tired about telling people off for being such a bad gaming community and how we as a community need to change.

I guess they havent gotten the memo yet. And as you can see right here in the topic the belief that there is such a singular entity of a gaming community that spans the entirety of gaming and that everyone participates in is still very strong.

Ofcourse its a gross generalization and ofcourse it should be self explanatory. And ofcourse i choose a title and word my posts to ruffle someones fur because aparantly alot of people believe that nonsense.

But here we are people arguing that such a gaming community does infact exist just cause they happen to have more then one interest when it comes to gaming. Not only that but for a singular gaming community to exist there would need to be a place thats allmost mandatory to even get into gaming to go. One single website you would have to log into no matter if youre on pc or any of the consoles. Only then when such a mandatory thing exist could one claim to be part of "the" gaming community.

So no.. not pointless aslong as social justice warriors use the "gaming community" trump card to shift the blame onto everyone not involved in bad incidents. Its like claiming sports fans are responsible for the actions of hooligans.. no one does that but yet when it has anything to do with gaming it somehow is the "communities" responsibility. Frankly im sick and tired of being blamed for the actions of a degenerated minority of hatefull people that happen to like playing games. The only common nominator between me and these people is playing games... i dont know these people, we dont even necesary have the same motivation to play games, we dont visit the same websites or even partake in discussions together but somehow i am part of their community and they are part of mine because we happen to like games? Not to mention all the influences that come from outside gaming.

Like someone being part of the KKK and now i am somehow responsible for changing these people for the better and somehow stop them from spouting racist BS when they play online? (not that i as a player even have the power or tools to do so)

I wouldnt make such a big thing about it if i didnt walk straight into this issue each time i turn around a corner in the internet and being accused of making things worse because i dont see myselfe responsible for the actions of other people.

 

[Atmos Duality]

So no.. not pointless aslong as social justice warriors use the "gaming community" trump card to shift the blame onto everyone not involved in bad incidents. Its like claiming sports fans are responsible for the actions of hooligans.. no one does that but yet when it has anything to do with gaming it somehow is the "communities" responsibility. Frankly im sick and tired of being blamed for the actions of a degenerated minority of hatefull people that happen to like playing games.

Dunno what to tell you.
If you take that much offense to someone trying to wield "Guilt by association" against you on the internet, well, get used to undue stress.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s, where games of all kinds were LITERALLY demonized. As in, described as actual works of the Devil: On TV, before Congress, even in my sodding school at a few points. At some point, I just stopped giving a shit because it wasn't difficult to show how those people were ignorant or nuts (or both).

So what if some social justice white knight sounds his horn like an ignorant bastard? Condescending self-righteous assholes are a dime a dozen online. We already have the tools to dismantle their shitty logic when pressed, and can even get a haughty laugh in the process. But attacking the concept of "community" just seems like a defensive overreaction.

Mainly because "communities", like the "gaming community" do in fact exist.
BUT (READ THIS BEFORE REPLYING) they exist only the same way any level of organized human civilization exists: as a small part of some other whole with factions and cliques and even factions within factions; From the global scale down to 2 person relationships. They do exist, and that's fine. We're having a discussion on a gaming community right now.

Some folks here can be saints. Some can be assholes. Most fall somewhere in between.
That's not final judgment, it's just how things are, and why I don't blindly damn or praise the whole site for either.

The way I see it, the average person in the developed world has a greater opportunity than ever to identify as so many things simultaneously, that any sort of sweeping condemnation is inherently ridiculous.
(Save possibly for organized extremist action but even that doesn't always stick; I don't curse all Muslims when some psycho straps himself up with Semtex and blows himself up for his God).

 

[Branovices]

It is general, but it's still there. There is a gaming community as much as there is gay community. Just this one feature doesn't define either group of people in their entirety, and the people within that group can have vastly different opinions... but they are still united by some common threads. You can make pretty good guesses as to what will anger both "communities," too.

At any rate, it's a useful term for discussion. I don't see why a person would be offended by being called a part of a gaming community but not, say.. "British," or "American." Both terms are decided by a small facet of who you are, but are useful in discussing the larger group to which you belong.