Dornath

Good chost

Goddamn it,

an old GW2 buddy and I were chatting for a bit the other week and now I've gone and reinstalled it and bought the most recent expansion. I didn't even finish the last one, and yet here I am because this game has a hold on me due to the original being one of the greatest video games of all time in my estimation.

Anyways, anyone on Cohost a Guild Warrior and want to play with an old player returning to the game? I hear they let you get a siege turtle mount now, that's the good shit.

The rise of educational technology in the last few years has largely mirrored the rise of platform capitalism, and in many cases is being driven by the same companies. Microsoft and Google, big players in the space of classroom management software through their Teams and Classroom platforms respectively, have integrated themselves deeply into the public school systems of Canada and elsewhere in the world. Students are becoming more familiar with these platforms, and are learning at an earlier age to link their physical and digital existences. To pretend that the digital realm is different from the physical realm is to engage in denial about how the world of humans functions.

We've been meshing our 'meatspace' lives with the digital for decades. Stories abound about the people who have lived entire lives digitally in spaces like the Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs or MMOs for short) World of Warcraft, EVE Online, or Final Fantasy XIV. There have been marriages, funerals, lifelong friendships, and bitter enmity -- some of which has often blurred between the two realms. The recent rise of interest in a 'metaverse' reflects a reality that has long been solved by some of these game worlds. Gabe Newell, head of the massive gaming marketplace Steam & company Valve was quick to point out that these are "solved problems" in a recent interview when discussing how the corporate metaverse concept seems to mostly be worse versions of character creators that exist in MMOs today. EVE Online in particular is an interesting case study. To put it very bluntly, EVE is for crazy people. A quick search on Google reveals tips for joining a 'corporation', a collection of players that play together, that reads very similar to tips to succeed at a job interview. Andrew Groen's Empires of Eve uses narrative research to show how the game has become much, much more than just that. Players have used the skills they developed as administration for an EVE Corp to land 'real' jobs, showing that the 'soft' skills they have learned at play have become essential to their careers. Others have had threats to cut power lines to their physical homes in order to win important battles in a space war (I've been unable to determine if the power lines were actually cut or if this was simply a threat). EVE is an interesting case specifically because you can purchase a currency that is used to extend your subscription to the game, and the currency is a digital item that can be destroyed, which has led to the ability to apply some creative mathematics to determine the real world cost of some of these battles in terms of space ships destroyed. It is a fascinating digital space to watch, although I will never have the inclination to take more of an active role in the galaxy of EVE online I find plenty of stories that show how what we can learn in a digital world.

References

Fenlon, W. (2022, February 25). Gabe Newell: 'most of the people talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they're talking about'. pcgamer. Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-metaverse/

Fenwick, T. (2017, February 5). Space popes, judges, scientists: Meet the people obsessed with 'eve online'. VICE. Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://www.vice.com/en/article/78yeaz/space-popes-judges-scientists-meet-the-people-obsessed-with-eve-online

NightCrawler_85 (NightCrawler 85), Sabriz_Adoudel (Sabriz Adoudel), Xercodo (Xercodo), yellow_parasol (yellow parasol), Dan_Morvis (Dan Morvis), Staberinde (Staberinde), DeMichael_Crimson (DeMichael Crimson), TK421_Kelly (TK421 Kelly), Alincer_Trossereides (Alincer Trossereides), Alexander_Ore (Alexander Ore), Anathema_Device (Anathema Device), & Merovee (Merovee). (2017, June 20). How to find the Corp that is right for you. EVE Online Forums. Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://forums.eveonline.com/t/how-to-find-the-corp-that-is-right-for-you/4451

Stanton, R. (2021, May 26). The University of Iceland is starting a course on eve as a 'friendship machine'. pcgamer. Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://www.pcgamer.com/the-university-of-iceland-is-starting-a-course-on-eve-as-a-friendship-machine/

The more I thought about this post as I was reading through the assigned articles for this week the more I came back to a semi-serious thought that video games, and online multiplayer games in particular are the best social media that we have created so far. The more I think about it, the more I believe the statement is true, despite all the various caveats that go along with the declaration.

Video games as a social media have a prohibitive cost to access (The hardware, the utilities of power & internet, the cost of the software, etc). There are serious cultural issues as well, some of which are outlined in a 2015 study on sexism that found male players of an online shooting video game were more likely to behave with hostility towards a female-coded voice compared with a male-coded voice player on their own team (Kasumovic & Kuznekoff). The results of this study are very in line with the popular perception of the culture that online game players exist in -- there is a reason the cultural zeitgeist has so many references to the pre-pubescent boys who say vulgar things about everyone's mother on Xbox Live after all. I would hesitate to ever present a space like this without making the weaknesses of the form and culture very clear. I mean, if we look at the negative comments made about interactions on Facebook from the Clark, Algroe, & Green article and connect that to the constant nightmares that are seen in whatever Meta is trying to do now with their Meta Horizon Worlds platform ( I had to look up what this was even called.) we can see that you cannot simply make an online platform and be met with immediate success at having people form genuine connections. Clark, Algroe, & Green make the explicit call to improve social interaction with active social engagement, with an intent to increase intimate connections (2018).

What I am suggesting, tongue firmly in my cheek, is that Clark, Algroe, & Green hit the nail squarely on the head when they claim that MUD awareness is down and this is clearly the reason modern social media is bad.

MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV, online cooperative games like Monster Hunter, massively popular shooters like Fornite or Call of Duty, and the like are the modern day MUD. Sony has shipped over 32 million Playstation 5 units in the 2+ years since the device launched (Porter, 2023). Several tracking websites lists the monthly active user count for Final Fantasy XIV to be consistently more than 18 million players. And importantly, these online media products function as a space to allow people to congregate and take part in activities. To follow the suggestions laid out by Seidler et al., positive outcomes from social media stem from joining communities of shared interest and actively contributing online may lead to an increase in comfort for engaging in emotionally rich conversations, which may hopefully decrease the social problem of male loneliness (2020). I posit that it is impossible to feel lonely when participating in a massive 40-player raid in Final Fantasy XIV or a focused 6-person raid in Destiny 2. These are social experiences that employ game mechanics that require collaboration, and strong communication skills to succeed, and come with their own reward structures inside of the social media space of the game while also building strong emotional connections between people.

While these spaces are clearly not perfect, given how popular video games are and how many people turned to these online spaces to maintain their social gatherings during the first few years of the COVID-19 pandemic it would feel strange to me to leave them out of this discussion on social media & interpersonal connections.

References

Clark, J. L., Algoe, S. B., & Green, M. C. (2018). Social network sites and well-being: The role of social connection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(1), 32-37. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417730833

Final Fantasy 14 Active Monthly Players. (2022, November 6). Final Fantasy XIV. The Game Statistics Authority : ActivePlayer.io. https://activeplayer.io/final-fantasy-xiv/ (Accessed Feb 26, 2023)

Kasumovic, M. M., & Kuznekoff, J. H. (2015). Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0131613. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131613

Porter, J. (2023, February 2). Sony’s PS5 just had its biggest quarter of sales since release. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/2/23582579/ps5-sony-q3-2022-earnings-console-sales-chip-shortage (Accessed Feb 26, 2023)

Seidler, Z. E., Wilson, M. T., Rice, S. M., Kealy, D., Oliffe, J. L., & Ogrodniczuk, J. S. (2020). Virtual connection, real support? A study of loneliness, time on social media and psychological distress among men. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 68(2), 288–293. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020983836