This is being written in response to (yet another) .Examiner post here on Destructoid entitled "The Rise of Video Game Communities" that I won't link to because frankly the blog sucks. In it he states that these communites are springing up and we should give them a try. Gaming communities are NOT new.

Gaming communities were among the first to exist on the internet and have existed for many, many years initially in the form of MUD's (Multi User Dungeon) or MOOs (MUD, object oriented). This was when the internet was still text based and a "video card" was something yet to be invented or imagined (and I still remember that lovely glowing green text on the black screen of my handy Tandy computer!). With the growth of PC games and console games, gaming has always remained in some ways connected to the internet and gaming communities have always existed.

Often gaming communities were based around a specific game and consisted of little more than IRC chat rooms or forums. With the growth of the internet a vast array of options sprang up - magazine based gaming sites, social networking based gaming sites, console based forum sites, clan sites, personal sites... the range of options is overwhelming. Unfortunately, these vast options have led to profit based sites where the intimacy of those early communities became lost in the quest to get more people, more hits and more advertising dollars. Many of these larger sites have grown out of control where the average gamer is lost among professional writers, advertisements, and just the masses of so many people.

.. which brings me to Destructoid... while the news on the front page are stories or articles, meant to inform... the c-blogs or "community blogs" are blogs. They're meant to be people's thoughts on gaming... what they play, what they are anticipating, odd drunken thoughts or well crafted arguments. When reading somebody's blog... you get a bit of a sense of "who" that person is. Anyone who has read the mere 9 blogs I've posted on this site so far already knows that I'm female, old, married, have pets, no children, that I have young nephews, and that I like shooter games on a PS3. If they've seen my comments on other blogs... they likely have the impression of someone who types way too many words to say so little! Overall, people get an impression of "who" I am. It's the active participation that creates the "community" in community blogs. While people are learning about me... I'm also learning about them from their blogs, their comments. Blogging can be a great tool for forming and building a community... but as it grows it can soon start to attract that "profit" factor that seems the downfall of so very many gaming communities. The existing community soon becomes a target for people hoping to make money in some fashion be it selling the ubiquitous penile enhancement drugs or more insidious like gaming blogs meant to attract people to another site where the writer is paid for each hit. Again, the popularity of a community site begins to grow beyond "community" and soon it becomes difficult to find out about the individual members - who they are, and to form the relationships needed to maintain a "community" rather than being just another gaming site.

There are things that sites can do to maintain the community aspect... they can require a certain number of comments before allowing people to post a blog, they can use a community voting system to elevate community blogs and vote down blogs that they don't feel contribute to the community, they can use reputation systems, invite only systems for membership... many different techniques exist or can be created to maintain the community aspect of a community - but unfortunately problems often lie with the various solutions and in the end it comes down to what the site owner wants and not what the community wants.

The "rise" of video gaming communities was historically based on gamers. People sharing a passion for gaming. The "fall" of video gaming communities I think can be laid at the feet of people like our friends from .examiner - people looking to profit from our passion for gaming. My first experiences with internet communities were the old chat rooms... later it was small forums often devoted to only one game. For the last number of years I've been hidden away in a private site sponsored by Sony, but left out on it's own... untended and neglected and surviving based on the people and sense of community alone. It's sad in many ways... but I think that the true height of video gaming "communities" has now passed - finding a place where you know everybody and everybody knows you... these places rarely exist anymore. It's not just gaming sites though... it's life in general. The mom and pop store where they knew you is either slowly put out of business by the big box stores... or they grow to the point where they become a big box store.

I'm still fairly new to this community... and I looked at a lot of big cities and towns first before deciding to try settling down in this little village. It seems it's become a dog eat dog world out there... but it's nice to see that there are still a few dobermans in this community left to tear a chunk out of the ass of that predator walking around offering candy to the children. :)

It's an odd feeling for me. I know that people want to make a living, or a few extra dollars... and increasingly the internet is providing a medium for that - but I think in many ways it makes it so much more difficult to recapture that true sense of "community" of those early internet days when such a thing as "profit" just didn't exist.

Eh.. I'm old. I feel like I'm yelling at kids to git outta my yard.