Becoming a Cyborg through Social Gaming

Social media, blogging and many types of new media forms allow for an increase in connectivity between people across the globe, with video game platforms becoming apart of our reliance on online interactivity. Gaming was once a medium with the sole purpose of entertainment and escaping into an virtual world, but this line between real and fictional has become increasingly blurred. Is there any true fun to be had outside of these virtual realities in the age of the Internet?

The Mobility of the Mainstream

With the creation of smartphone technology and its exponential rise over the past decade, boredom can be alleviated anywhere at anytime, but at what cost? With the demand of gaming on these mobile, smartphones increasing through the technological improvements of audio and visual enhancements as well as the “improving ability of wireless networks to handle broadband transmission”, video games had the potential to transcend domestic consoles and become available to anyone with a modern phone (Soh & Tan 2008). The mainstream was becoming part of the gaming community, blending their social media apps and game applications with the ability to post and share links to their friends list about these mobile games. Through servers available on mobile devices, games could be published and downloaded directly through a virtual store on a smartphone, some apps free and others paid, allowing for simple distribution and consumption without any need for physical discs or inconvenience (Soh & Tan 2008). But is too much connection a loss of connection? Had these “phones” just become gaming devices, with opportunities for exploitation through addiction and monetisation, direct to almost every human on the globe?

As mobile devices become an indispensable component of everyday life, the market for mobile gaming is likely to continue to increase well into the future.

The Investment of MMOs

Even with the surge of simple, mobile gaming in the video game industry, there are still always communities dedicated to the complexity of console and computer gaming systems, with these passions becoming easier to share with others through networked communities. ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Games’ (MMOs) have become one of the most popularised genres of PC gaming that aligned with the rise of the Internet, with games such as Eve Online providing a “laissez-faire regulatory approach” to its systems, even allowing for scamming against players without consequence (Suzor & Woodford 2013, p. 5). But when real-world money becomes apart of these virtual worlds, players subject to fraud become victims of a social world with too much resemblance to reality. This “massive scale” of thousands of players in an environment at once constructs a “quick evolution of social norms in online communities”, almost as if users had to begin in this world just like a baby of the real-world, with legitimate wins and loses to learn from (Suzor & Woodford 2013, p. 10). Why do humans always feel a need for escaping reality, even when, in actuality, these virtual worlds are not too different to reality? MMOs have become investments in the gaming community, splitting identities between dual worlds and existences... but it’s all fun and games – right?

The need for escapism has become easier than ever due to the options of mobility and accessibility, as well as the platforms that promote and reward dedication in realities that parallel our own. It has proven almost impossible to avoid becoming part man and machine in an inescapable medium that loves to trigger enjoyment in people and communities in any way possible. The opportunities for enjoyment in contemporary existence will no doubt become more and more a part of the technologies and virtual worlds created and consumed by cyborgs of our future.

References

Soh, J. & Tan, B. (2008). Mobile gaming, Communications of the ACM, pp. 35-39. Retrieved from https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/1325555.1325563.

Suzor, N. & Woodford, D. (2013). Evaluating Consent and Legitimacy amongst Shifting Community Norms: an EVE Online Case Study, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. Retrieved from https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/index.php/jvwr/article/view/6409/6325.