The real and the simulation: the promotion of digital gaming as community. Insights from the first-person shooter video gamer.
| dc.contributor.author | Munro, Ana M. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-05-20T22:37:53Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-05-20T22:37:53Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis examines the suggestion that the digital gaming community is the simulation of a real community. I argue that the digital game community is more than a mode of relations and shared circumstances, it is a recognisable place of community culture. I analyse my own socio-anthropological engagement as a first-person shooter video game player to examine the concept of the video game community and apply thematic analysis to survey responses from a group of digital game players regarding their thoughts on community. I use Jean Baudrillard’s (1981/1994) theory of communication to argue that massive, online-only digital gaming is more than a hyperreal form of market logic. Participation as a community is the central theme of video game play; the forms of participation are not static but fluid due to the frequent shifts in technology. Therefore, emerging technologies and their adoption into practice are central to how we understand the ways in which the gaming community manifest and are then normalised through our use of this technology. Although digital gaming is a space where the commercial mediation of textual and semiotic imagery occurs, digital gaming engages the social gaze of the player, as well as the time factor of participation together in activities and importantly, it is also a place of verbal intimacy. I do not find that participation in the digital game community is inclusive, but rather, reflects the embodied world in themes of exclusion, stereotypes, and toxicity. The sociality experienced therefore is not equal for everyone. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10092/107079 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.26021/15349 | |
| dc.language | English | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://canterbury.libguides.com/rights/theses | |
| dc.title | The real and the simulation: the promotion of digital gaming as community. Insights from the first-person shooter video gamer. | |
| dc.type | Theses / Dissertations | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Sociology | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Canterbury | |
| thesis.degree.level | Masters | |
| thesis.degree.name | Master of Arts | |
| uc.college | Faculty of Arts |