''HOMO LUDENS'', A VIEW OF OUR CULTURE THROUGH VIDEO GAMES

One of the most controversial features that came On 20 April 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, both high school students, entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and killed thirteen people. Apparently, one of them had been involved in developing a level of the famous action computer game named ‘Doom’.

Until which extent is the wide-spread video/virtual games industry related to a hypothetical raise of violence in our modern society? Is it so dangerous for our society to expose children to this kind of entertainment? On the other hand, what logic is behind and what elements compose this phenomenon? Is it relevant to understand nowadays the culture in our modern societies?

These are just few of the questions that Siapera tries to answer in the 11^th chapter ‘’Games and Gaming’’ of her book ‘’Understanding New Media’’. Starting off from the relation stated by Johan Huizinga in his book ‘’Homo Ludens’’ between culture and games, she develops her analysis focusing on how new media has transformed games, and so cultural transmission patterns.

On her first analysis, the stage the author finds games nowadays is a huge industry rather influenced by the economic force of a business that moved $35 billion in 2008. Games became a product, just as any other product produced in the capitalist era. Profit making is the base of the business, as any other. Because of this the industry is experimenting an integration at all levels, at the production process to cut costs, and at the ownership element which of course leads the market industry into a monopoly industry. In this sense videogames represent the ideal-typical of this phase of capitalism. Just as cars at the Fordism era, the called informational capitalism could use virtual-gaming as its ideal-typical item.

The second element of analysis is the actual content of games. Apart from the genre the game belongs to, Siapera and previous authors that researched this topic found that there are common characteristics to them: the war-context narrative line (military-industrial complex inspiration), the representation of complex situations or events as simple, for example on the good/evil line and the ability of players to manipulate (interaction).

 It is quite noticeable how violent the content of virtual games usually are, but excluding this hypothetical negative characteristic because of the lack of evidence (few and not robust methodology to develop research of the real affects on a long-term basis), Siapera focuses on the actual logic and process in which the game takes place, to be able to analyze from a multi perspective view, differently from the narrative analysis of a flat text. Studying this whole interactive logic leads the author to highlight the participatory element of these games, in which the player plays a different role from the traditional one. The interaction in many ways, for instance the ‘’modding’’ case, but also among players in virtual gamers communities (guilds) is seen as a real process of creation, possession and accumulation of capital (Bourdieu’s concept).

It seems as the modern society is transforming the form but not the content, the internal logic. This participatory culture is seen by some authors as a positive element. But does it have the power necessary to change the whole game logic? The point of Siapera was to research weather the game structure and characteristics had changed with the new virtual platform. In my opinion it has not only kept the culture construction process the same, but this is being reinforced by establishing and setting the traditional societal patterns in a stronger way, in a way people can not escape as easily as a reader could from reading a book. We may not be able to state cause-effect proof to say virtual gaming is spreading violence, or at least violence-tolerance, but it is clear that: these games are not real life (although many people may only socialize through them), their industry moves a lot of money, and looking for maximizing profit, they turned gaming into a private commodity, and finally, they perpetuate the traditional and hegemonic ideology and values. The virtual world once again shows us that, as we created it, there is no such difference we are looking for with the real world or traditional life course. The tools are different, but the patterns and logic are almost exactly the same, and the people who run all,which is the most important element, are the same: the powerful, the producers and the consumers. It is just another phase of capitalism we are facing here.

Human relationships in the virtual sphere: an ethnographic approach

DENISE CARTER 'LIVING IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IN CYBERSPACE'

Denise Carter exposes the results obtained from her research on the relationships in a ''cybercontext'', from an ethnographic perspective, and through a field study consisting on the use of diverse methods, as participant observation, collection of qualitative and quantitative data, and the application for analysis of such data through a filter of theories, which actually correspond to the theories used previously for other authors in traditional relationship studies.

‘’Living in virtual communities:  an ethnography of human relationships in cyberspace’’ approaches the new circumstance in which society finds itself in the twenty first century:  the presence of an online sphere, result from the emergence of the new media technologies and the Internet world wide web. This virtual reality, different from the traditional reality, qualifies people to set up relationships, but are these relationships based on the same schemes and patterns as the face-to-face traditional relationships?

The research field study is made in a virtual community called Cybercity, and it is carried out by Denise Carter participating on the community and trying to find the mechanisms that operate when making friendships and having relationships in the online world.

First of all, she realized that the online members of the community, considered this virtual sphere as an integral part of their everyday life, which means it is not separated from the real world, as long as they considered that space just like any other place to meet people. This could be confirmed by the fact that many of this relationships often moved to the offline world, as Carter checked. What the author states from this is that the relationship networks are being extended, not changed.

These relationships have similar characteristics to the traditional relationships, as they are usually informal, personal and private, and based on elements of trust, which eventually bring up disclosure to flow up intimacy to the relationship. But the mechanisms may be different, although the elements are similar, because, as Giddens points too: in cyber-relationships, the logic of the interaction is from the inside to the outside, since the participants don’t have the face-to-face barriers, the external social factors which appear first in the offline world relationships and make them ‘’colder’’. In the virtual world it is easier to set up a free-floating relationship, different to the traditional one.

As Carter understands online and offline relationship logic, it appears that this model shows two paradoxes: first, the pure-relationships that lack the external social influences, and that flows from the inside personality of the person without the face-to-face barriers, eventually may move to an offline relationship. In this case, the meeting in real life brings up again the traditional character to the friendship, because the visual contact makes appear the social categories, which without them it was possible to have a pure online relationship.

Second, as the author experiences this online-to-offline step, she notices the need to trust without external referents is balanced by the desire to externally validate the truth. ‘’Trust can be maintained even when external validation has failed’’, is how Carter explains the relationship was pure, because of the inside-outside logic, and the external validation may be only a matter of instinct.

In one way it seems the new technologies enlarged the relationship networks among people, and the virtual world is offering a scene where there are no geographical barriers, where the social stigma of the image and appearance is saved, and where it is possible to build up consistent friendships based on other reasons apart from the space or social need, which means based on personal and not institutional reasons.

Space for social interaction has been enlarged, but the same people use these spaces. Virtual communities may enlarge or complement the old fashion social networks, but as it is only an extension, and the external validation in real life is anyway present, I do not think this online context will be able to change the nature of relationships in reality, as well as society’s nature, but it will only complicate and enrich the social communication which compounds our society.