Meaning Creation and Social Interaction in Video Games

• In Event: ECREA-Panel: The Future of Digital Games Research: New Phenomena, New Methods, New Theories

Abstract

Contemporary video games offer a virtual environment where the meaning making process of players socializing behaviors were constructed differently from real life social behaviors. Earlier game research has addressed social circles in games primarily by adopting existing social-cultural framework. With the advent and increasing popularity of online video games that have embraced different format of storytelling (e.g. Emergent Narrative story in Minecraft) and gaming technologies (e.g. Occulus Rift), social interactions among players and their takeaway from these experiences are radically transformed. Game play experiences are now not unilaterally defined by the code in the video game, but are formed through the intermingling of both the player’s expectation and the context of the game. In order to advance our understanding of online or in-game social life, new frameworks are urgently needed to investigate how video game players interact with new gaming technologies, how gaming environment affects players’ decision making, how such ‘future games’ change the way players interact socially, how players negotiate their goals and identity in online social interaction and build social network via games.

Author

• Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen, Nanyang Technological U