Episode 8 of Social Change Technology explores the social aspects of so-called social games with Dr Mia Consalvo of Concordia University and Ron Miners of Electronic Arts.
In the episode Ren, Mia, and Ron talk about what we mean by ’social games’ and the social conventions and norms that are emerging from them. For example the common practice of gift giving has been adopted by main games as a key part of the play mechanic. However, in some social games this voluntary action has morphed into a social obligation on our socially-networked co-players; a process which in turn has been automated to such a degree that it has almost lost touch with the notion of gift giving that inspired it.
The podcast also covers the relationship between our social / family identity, as expressed in Facebook, and our our gamer identity. Do our social relations constrain our game actions? Do our game actions re-construct our social world? For example, in games that have ‘relationship’ options, are people prepared to have an in-game partner who is not an out-of-game partner, are people prepared to play a different gender or sexuality – all to achieve game play goals?
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Show Links
- Mia Consalvo
- Academia.edu profile
- Twitter: @MiaC
- Ron Meiners
- Linked-in Profile
- Blog: Virtual Cultures
- Twitter: @ronchanel
- Background
- Further Reading
- Nicole Lazzaro – XEODesign
- Zinga
- Tripple Town
- TL Taylor
- (with Mikael Jakobsson): The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Socialization Processes in Massively Multiuser Games
- Listen to TL talk about e-Sports on Episode 10 of Social Change Technology
- Ray Mazza’s 2012 GDC (Game Developers Conference) Sims Social talk
- Nick Yee’s data on ‘gender bending’ in MMOs
- Wikipedia entry on the Blizzard / World of Warcraft RealID controversy
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Podcast music: “For the Horde” kindly provided by 100 Robots.