Videogame Studies Part 2: Game Studies, Digital Games and their players

When playing video games there are many boundaries that we have to stick too, we are in a chosen environment for example a shopping mall or a school, sticking to chosen rules, creating areas for each players. When playing games, players have a selection of decisions to make before starting, for example whether they are playing in single of multiplayer, and whether you decide to purchase the newest Xbox or PlayStation and if you are going to take it on or offline.

When playing games, many of you are in the "zone" and it could take a long time for you to snap out of it. Tension grows as the game gets harder, and adrenaline always begins to rush. Gamers often use manuals or the internet for hints to complete their games quicker, an idea I have not really understood.

We then get the people that decide to cheat and ruin the whole target of the game, and sometimes ruin it for others also, usually for the pure fact that they have become bored. They can do this by either:

• Friendly Fire: You will go around shooting people on their own team.
• Hacking: They will usually go into other peoples account, and generally make the game a misery for that other poor person. 
• Keyboard Warriors: People that may also call them selves "trolls" and spend alot of time sending unpleasant messages to innocent players.

Because during gaming you have a certain amount of power that does not usually affect your outside life, alot of players will generally end up doing whatever they please. 

Glitch Hunters are another type of gamer, who spend there time hunting round the game to find out various problems within the game and then going on to fix them. 

"In video games, a glitch is a programming error which results in behavior not intended by the programmers. Glitches may include incorrectly displayed graphics, collision detection errors, game freezes/crashes, sound issues, and other issues. Some glitches are potentially dangerous to the game save data"- Wikipedia.


Emergant Game Play- "play strategies that have not been foreseen by the designers. Allowing the player character to scale sheer walls, proximity mine climbing brings with a realization of the arbitrariness of the game’s topological constraints and an understanding of the discontinuity of game space.” -p.119 - - Wallhacks and Aimbots, Kucklich in Space, Time, Play

I remember whilst playing my James Bond games, that there would be times where I would be able to jump through walls, and fall down escalators, which I'm pretty sure was not meant to happen during the game.

http://youtu.be/s6E3CjR2qUE <- This link is to a video which shows various glitches within games.

Gaming and the gamer is now key to our culture and is without a doubt deffinately going to be sticking around for a very long time.