Week 16 Task

Games culture is as varied as any other kind of media. I personally am a member of several types of game culture including basically any kind of multiplayer gaming culture with my favourite type of games being cooperative ones. Before I came to uni I played Final Fantasy XI (a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG)) on a more than regular basis. It was the closest thing I had to a social life as my home is a village on the boarder of Wiltshire and Oxfordshire with closest town being Swindon and my nearest friend being a decent drive away. If I wasn’t doing work or helping out around the house (or even on the odd occasion spending time with a friend/friends) I was playing FFXI. I made a good number of friends online who I’ve never met, most of which live in America and many I was introduced to by some of my real life friends who live in various places around England (most of which live several hours away by whatever form of transport you use).

What little social life I had that didn’t consist of FFXI involved me going over a friend’s house for a day or so or vice versa. The occasional small LAN party also occurred on the rare occasions when I could get more than one friend with a computer in the same place at once and would involve long FPS(first person shooter) or RTS(real time strategy) games. Failing having enough computers wed play Xbox and Gamecube games till the sun came up or enough people felt the need to pass out.

Since I’ve come to uni I’ve hardly played FFXI, partly because I somehow never seem to have time and partly because I’ve discovered what a real social life is like and I simply prioritise spending time with real people rather than their virtual avatars. I still keep in touch with friends from FFXI by means of MSN messenger while I’m doing work or something but these days I do most of my gaming where I can see the other players.