By Brian Haas on January 16, 2019
Mobile games have been around since a version of Tetris was pre-installed on the Hagenuk MT-2000 mobile phone in 1994. For the first 2 decades or so, mobile games were mostly an individual experience, but with the advancement of mobile technology, games have become increasingly more social. Companies know that if you can create social connections within a game you will retain more players, and thus make more money. Many of the most successful games have communication tools built into the game, and if they do not, they do have features that make it easy to share what you have done with others outside the game.
Here are two brief examples of Mobile Gaming Culture:
Clash Royale is a game that can be played on a mobile device or a tablet. It was released March 2nd, 2016 by mobile gaming giant Supercell and is one of the most popular mobile games in the world. The game is a combination of elements from collectible card games, real time strategy games, tower defense games and multiplayer battle arena games.
Within the game players are organized into clans. As a clan, you complete wars together with the aim of winning in game rewards and global prestige for the whole group. A clan chat within in the game keeps players connected with each other and encourages the development of a clan culture. The more popular/successful clans use social media and the gaming communication app Discord to organize, communicate and move players between feeder clans. The game is fun, but I think the social commitment and culture keep many playing.
Pokémon Go is another example of a mobile game that has at its core the development of a culture. Though it is true a player could do much of what is offered solo, the top tier activities within the game require players to coordinate and gather together. The game developers, Niantic, host community days where players are encouraged to go out all at once together. In most cities during these events you will see large numbers of players roaming the streets playing the game and socializing.
Take 3 minutes and search for either of these games (and any other current popular mobile game) and you will find hundreds of websites dedicated to the game which support the cultures developed around them. Mobile gaming culture is a thing in 2019, and it’s a trend that will not be going away any time soon.
There is so much to talk about gaming culture. There is a huge gaming community out there, who share information about playing the game, the techniques, their expectation, etc. Talking about Pokemon Go, I’ve seen groups of strangers getting all together at a certain spot just to get that pokemon. All need to “join forces” as to be able to get the pokemon. That shows how gaming can incentives us to do things.
In this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aQAgAjTozk Gee talks about the principles of gaming. Basically, these principles are divided into Principles for Empowering learners, Principles for Problem Solving and Principles for Deep Understanding
Pokemon Go can be regarded as a phenomenal game that has changed many lives. Gaming communities are quite educational, according to James Paul Gee’s research (2007, 2013). Since people in a specific game community generally aim to a shared goal: play the game well. Such a shared goal can make a collective learning community within which people share, learn and teach knowledge. Gee has concluded many feathers of such communities comparing to traditional approaches of schooling in his book published in 2013. I am curious about the difference between the cultures of desktop games and mobile games.
Reference:
Gee, J. (2007). Semiotic Domains: Is playing video games a “waste of time?” In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy (pp.12-49). New York: Palgrave and Macmillian. Kindle Edition
Gee, J. P. (2013). Good video games + good learning: Collected essays on video games, learning and literacy. New York: Peter Lang.