TASK 16: Culture...

Gaming culture is one of those things which I started to understand when I first started playing MMO games, probably the best example of this culture. World Of Warcraft (yes, it's made it into my blog yet again) sticks out more than than the others to me, especially when you consider that a few people have actually died because they became far too engrossed in the experience.
One of the people to have died from this game was playing it non-stop for 3 days and ended up expiring from exhaustion. In-Game his guild-mates held a funeral for their lost friend.

It's odd how friends and even full-blown relationships can be formed in these lands made from polygons. People even get married in-game and then continue to live normal, un-married lives in the real world to then return after work to their online "spouse". Personally, I've made a few friends purely from online games but generally they're they seem little more than acquaintances. However, I met one of my best friends on DeviantArt. We've never actually met as she lives in America so MSN and MySpace are the communication methods of choice. Obviously the online art culture is a different culture to gaming but the fact we met online makes it similar.

Going in a different direction a bit, I guess some game cultures can take up a lot of time. WoW used to take up a fair amount, but luckily I had friends that always insisted that I went out with them so I wasn't sat in front of a screen all day. (I'm telling the truth!)
A lot of gaming cultures also involve the creation of fan-fiction and art. I think the best for fiction that I know of would probably be from Eve online's fan base, the stories created for that are some of the best that I've read. Very strong stuff there.

I was honestly surprised at how vast gaming culture actually is on Wednesday, but it's a fun culture to be involved in and it seems as though I'm involved in more gaming culture than I originally realised!