Player Culture

Neilson's Chapter 7 titled "player culture," explores the social side of games, game communities, and metaculture. Neilson says "Gamer culture testifies to the desires of theses players to be active creators rather than passive consumers." Early in the chapter Neilson looks into the reasoning for playing, then goes onto explain game communities and metaculture, which are similar besides the fact that one is within the game and one is beyond the game. Then the text looks into Tom Erickson's characteristics of a virtual community. Lastly Neilson talks about gender and video games.

I personally was intrigued by the idea of Metaculture. the chapter goes into great detail about the language that is involved within these communities, and how the language can be seen as a "social stratification tool." I find this to be true with my friends who play Halo. When they speak to each other about the game i have no clue what they're talking about, even though i play other first person shooter games, they seem to have a language of their own when it comes to Halo. Neilson then goes onto explain poaching.

It seems as though most popular games that last long with its players and are seen as timeless, have a consistent following and groups of people who enjoy playing the game. This is what defines a successful game, these communities and metaculture that are created based around these games are vital to the longevity of the game. This leads me to the point that "There is no game without its players."

Question: How important do you see Metacluture and Gaming Communities to video games? And How do you use them?