ahh yes the culture of games

Over my entire gaming life I think it’s safe to say that I’ve almost been part of every gaming culture that you can spawn out of your head, ignoring the wonderful dogma of sports games that is.

It’s easy enough to consider the fact that there is a large gamming culture of vampic teenagers, hunched in front of a screen for days at a time, rhythmically rattling away on their key boards. But as real as that is, especially in my case, gaming culture doesn’t end here. It’s exponential growth over the past decade has caused it to pour out into the rest of society. Whether it be games for educational purposes, sports sponsorship or the promotion of other products games are pouring out from the constraints of a dank bedroom .

From my own experience games have also brought about massive social changes. It takes a very dedicated gamer to pack up and carry around all their gear every time and travel (sometimes hundreds of miles) to a LAN. LANs can be a fun and highly social event and participants show a level of commitment to gaming that is rarely seen by outsiders of game culture. It's a whole lot of fun to spend time with like-minded people who share your passion and enthusiasm for video games. And lastly, it fosters a strong sense of community amongst gamers when they meet face-to-face.

MMOs. Although I’ve grown out it, well I say I’ve grown out of it. Rather I’m scared that if I play them again I’ll become addicted, I’ve been a massive fan of MMORPGs. Once upon a time when Thomas was young and MMOs were relatively new, MMO culture scrambled out of gamming culture and into a part of his life. As cheesy as this is going to sound, I used to play an MMO called MapleStory every day with the same group of people, some of them I knew in RL and most I didn’t. One in particular I enjoyed spending more time with than all the others and we became friends outside of the game. She was from America and in time she became my pen pal and, I went over to visit and holiday several times and now...nearly 6 years later, I love all the friends I’ve made over there and we still keep in touch.

Aside from gaining real friends, people speak, rather type has also changed from gaming culture. Weather people are aware of it or not, a lot of the abbreviations and acronyms people use are Leet or have developed from Leet. Some of our favorites include: Noob, Owned/Pwned, and the most annoying... ‘Lag’!!!