Main Theme:
채팅, 보이스채팅, 이모티콘 등 오늘날의 디지털게임에는 게임 규칙의 바깥에 있으면서도 필수불가결한 커뮤니케이션 수단들이 포함되어 있다. 규칙 밖의 상호작용이면서도 규칙에 개입하고, 때로는 현실과 가상을 연결하는 역할을 수행하는 이들에 관한 이야기를 살펴본다.
Cortney Blamey
Games are inherently social. In the wake of MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) in the late 1970s to MMORPGs in the early 90s, playing games has been heralded as an opportunity to socialise and be social - antithetical to the usual “loner” gamer stereotype that is so pervasive in popular media. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, games offered a pre-existing framework for keeping in touch and hanging out with friends when regions in Canada and the U.S. were facing mandatory lockdowns and curfews to stem the infection rates. Many turned to their headsets and keyboards to play games and catch up with friends when they could not see them face-to-face. However, a caveat to being a social space, is the potential for anti-social behaviours. This is not formed in the lack of socialising, a typical tenant of being anti-social, but rather in the deploying of modes of communication to have a different kind of social “fun”.