Young Men Line Up to Participate in Virtual World

The reading begins with a problem. The television viewers who are young men are dropping very seriously. They found the reason why viewing among young men fell more than 10 percent. They were more likely to do online leisure such as facebooking, watching videos and playing video games.

The game became already big part of entertainment,  and general manager at Nielsen entertainment predict that it will continue to get larger, and bring a impact on contemporary culture.

"As games continue to increase its share of entertainment leisure time, it's quite possible playing video games will assume a significant role as a common cultural experience in the way that movies and televisions do today."(Watkins, Pg105)

I totally agree with this. It is quite true that the game industry will  grow very largely. The more people start enjoying games, the less time people spend watching, and movies.  And as we discussed about Mimetic interface game, broader audience including senior, females, will get involved in playing games.  As games become common concept to people, people will be more likely to think of game as common culture that they can replace watching TV, and movies with.

Writer asked some gamers to choose which one (TV, games) they prefer. Most of them chose game predictably for reasons such as they might feel accomplishing a goal,  talking, hanging out with friends and participating in a certain narratives instead of wasting of time watching lots of commercial, and the plot happen. And they realize that the one of the most important part in gaming is social connection among players. and Nintendo Wii was good enough to show how playing game could be social interaction.

Writer do some researches on how they react to certain avatars, and find the difference between attractive, or tall, and unattractive, and short avatar. And He even interviewed WoW players to get more detailed information. Writer found that game has special bond that bring gamers together very closely or even closer than physical-world people.

"people have developed ties in virtual world that they consider just as strong and valid as the relationship……...39 percent of males and 53 percent of females believe that their in-game friends are comparable or better than their physical-world friends."(Watkins, Pg124)

I believe that some gamers who are really into playing game have strong bond with other players. They might spend more time playing on-line games with other gamers than hanging out with friends in real world. So they might believe that they  are more intimate with online friends, than real world friends. Also Once player get involved into a guild, he or she has chance to meet lots of people for certain time until the guild will be broken. The more time players spend with others, the stronger relationship they can have with others.

Here's my question to you guys. Have you ever had online game friends who were more intimate than real world friends? If so, do you still keep in touch with them?