Culture of Gaming

• Gaming Communities:  New emerging culture?
  • Extreme Gaming / The New ‘Sport’ of Gaming, new digital heroes, the new ‘culture’ of video gaming- what is this ‘culture’, who are the heroes / role models, how it will grow in the 21^st century

Introduction to General Area:

Game Theory:

Game Theory foundations:  Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (von Neumann, 1944)
- blends mathematics and economic principles:  can analyze political races, strategies, expressed in / using formulas

Basics of Game Theory (rational thinkers making strategic decisions):  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~osborne/cgt/INTRO.HTM
- we treat game theory not as a branch of mathematics but as a social science whose aim is to understand the behavior of interacting decision-makers; we do not elaborate on points of mathematical interest. From our point of view the mathematical results are interesting only if they are confirmed by intuition.

Games involve players that are given perfect or imperfect information, and use it to strategize solutions they are presented- and can be one player (non-cooperative) or collaborative (cooperative).

Theory of Competitive Equilibrium:  (economics) players take into account other players' behavior when strategizing
- competitive reasoning:  the idea that player only strategizing based on environmental parameters

Specific Areas of Interest:

The culture of gaming:  need to get 60 minutes videos from CBS- 1/22/06 (LAN parties, digital heroes / cyber athletes- like 'Fatal1ty', the Michael Jordan of gaming) - Watch
- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/19/60minutes/main1220146.shtml

Questions I want to Investigate:

Research Methods to use when Investigating:

- naturalistic observation?  qualitative / subjective study?

Faculty at UH that could support this topic:

no idea

Who are the big players in this field, and what topics are they researching?

...

Video Games:  I could write for hours on the culture behind these.  What defines the culture of video gamers?  How does this culture interact with traditional cultures?

Why PC is better than Macs for gaming:  creativity / customizability of the hardware, specific for the application (such as gaming / gamers).

LAN parties:  looks crazy!  But this is an emerging culture of the 21^st century.

Need to get the 60 minutes from 1/22/06.

Idea why Nintendo may have failed:  Nintendo was king of the video game market in the 80s when I grew up.  However, they have consistently tried to keep a ‘kids’ audience with a ‘G’ rating on their games.  Gamers have spread further than the ‘child’ audience as it once was- now gamers of all ages play (avg. age of 30 as said on 60 minutes) and want to push their senses to the extreme.  This is why Grand Theft Auto is more successful than Mario Kart.