Community is essential to life for any student. People find community through sports, work or even classes, but community can also be found through the digital world of video games—a world where every person is defined by the avatar they use in each game, and differences are thrown out for the common goal of trying to win for your team.
Real life implications
Students find community through video games and bond together through fighting friends in Super Smash Bros. or by battling other clans from around the world in League of Legends. The gamer community can bring people together or divide people and cause conflict between friends and family. It is not always a digital nirvana, sometimes conflict in the digital world can exit the screen and explode in real life.
“I’ve seen some people get really angry, over-competitive at times, and it is tough seeing my friends or people I respect not in their most coherent state of mind,” said Arthur Saldana, junior psychology major. “There have been four or five times where people have gotten really mad and called someone a name or just started being super loud and angry.”
Video games are equal to sports in that people get passionate and driven to succeed no matter the cost. Emotions go into the game at hand, and victory is the only option for some people — so when a winner is crowned and a loser is decided, it can be hard to hold back the emotions of the loss.
Although losing is hard, for some gamers the point of video games is not to rest solely on individual success, but on the success of the team in battle.
Joy and laughter
“They achieve completing levels, they gain gaming experience, there’s a lot you can achieve by using teamwork in games, as long as you cooperate with each other and have a fun time playing,” said Steven Johnsen, junior accounting major and president of the Smash Bros. Club.
Friday night in the Business Building, room 102, the Smash Bros. Club explodes with sounds of joy and laughter complemented by clicks from console controllers and cheers from the digital crowd on screen. These sights and sounds displayed the joy between gamers in the room. Though they may be in current conflict with one another in the gaming world, they bond together in the real world.
“Video games are a really great way to bring people together, especially people I don’t have anything in common with. Games open the door to hang out with people, and the more you hang out with someone the more you start to love and care about them,” said Osama Abasi, senior political science major.
Bridging the gap
Games can also create a bridge between two friends on opposite ends of the nation, connecting them together through a digital community.
“One of my best friends moved across the country to Florida, met a bunch of people from Cuba, started playing League of Legends with them and that’s how I hung out with him and met a bunch of other people who I still talk to and have met up with in person and found out they’re awesome,” Abasi said.
The true beauty of video games is not shown in the graphics or story of a game. It is shown in the players. It brings people together to accomplish one goal and it brings together groups of people that would never hang out for a mutual hobby.
