Going through the questionnaire results and the video tape from the vox pops (i will put them up here as soon as i've figured out to embed .flvs into the MT blog!) made me think about the motivations for gaming amongst teenagers and what the social drivers were for their behaviours. It also made me consider how gaming was perceived.
Teenagers are an interesting and diverse group to study, since the
changes that go on between 13-19 are more vast than most other times in
your life. It can be quite a tumultous period and teens often look to
their immediate peer group for help, advice, validation and
re-affirmation. Danah Boyd has spoken recently about "teen socialization practices in networked publics". She talks about how friends also influence your behaviour, attitudes and
interests. Another thing they do is introduce new cultural artifacts.
One such artifact, I would argue is games.
The following two quotes help to
illustrate how games enable you to re-affirm your status within your
'inner circle' of friends and work as a social validation mechanism.
Q. Do you prefer to play games with other people or would you rather play then on your own?
It's not the same when you play it alone it's not as fun and you can't play the same games also you dont have that competitiveness if it's just you.
[Female, 15, Yorkshire]
All of the games i prefer playing with other people because and i enjoy the social and competitive side to the games when played with friends.
[Male, 16, London]
It's amazing the amount of social stigma attached to games as perceived by
teenagers themselves. Something great that Nintendo seem to have done
is remove the stigma from gaming. Playing on the Wii is playing a game
but it's not seen as being 'sad'. It's actually a cool thing to do.
A 19yr old student from Sheffield University who we did a short vox pop with, when asked about his (former) love for Unreal Tournament
"I was addicted to Unreal and i knew all the cheats."
How often did you play it?
"All the time!"
And why did you stop playing it?
"I grew up! [laughs]"
[Male, 19, Yorkshire]
Yet whenever this participant goes home for his holidays from
university, he says he stills picks up the game and plays it. Of
course there are probably a huge range of reasons why he only plays it
at home and not at university - time, hardware resources and constraints and so on.
When he is at university, he plays the Nintendo Wii in his house a lot. It's an enjoyable experience for him and his friends - is this because he is
influenced by his housemates to play it and because everyone feels the
need to re-affirm their social status amongst their peer group? Would he go back to the less cool and non-grown up Unreal again if he had the choice?
What's interesting here is two things. Firstly that the Wii is perceived to be more "grown up" and consequently gains a higher social value. Secondly that the influence of the immediate peer group is seemingly very important, not only in determining what is and isn't 'cool' but also in heightening the social significance of a certain game. I do wonder, how much peer pressure comes into the equation. And if not pressure per se, but influence. How much influence does his peer group have? Is the Wii considered more grown up because his friends think so? Does the pure existence of a peer group game network almost make you want to play the game even more?
These are issues i want to explore more of. Food for thought!
Leave a comment