Social Gaming Spaces for Generation Y

In this blog i want to discuss my experiences with social gaming spaces which seem to me to be characteristic of Generation Y (born roughly between 1987-2000) as opposed to Generation X (born roughly between 1950- 1986) although experiences are of coarse not mutually exclusive.

Reading Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble: An Archaeology of Arcade Gaming brought to my attention a large changes in the social context of video gaming spaces that have occurred since my birth in 1991. The reading highlighted the 'Arcade' as a place of great social gaming, something which I never really came across in my lifetime. The concept of a young male hanging out infront of an arcade machine, boasting the highest pinball score, in an attempt to gain some female attention, and it being given, seems like a very foreign one at that to me. I could honestly care less if I got a highscore on an arcade game, I didn't know who there the other high score holders, so I assumed they were exactly the same. I would be lying if I said that I had never been to an arcade before, however, they tended to be at movie theaters or at the airport, not something that really appealed to me. It seemed that as I grew up in the mid-nineties, Arcades were being phased out. Apart from the odd Street Fighter game at local takeaway stores, I never really saw arcade games around.

I think that Generation Y began to drift away these social spaces, not only due to home console gaming as mentioned in class, but also due to the growth of portable gaming consoles which I myself was well versed in. Nintendo's portable games like Donkey Kong and later the Gameboy allowed shared interation in private spaces without the need for television, and was not reserved to one location which I think has gone relatively under analysed.

As mentioned in class, I also do not think that gaming has become less social due to its drift from arcades to the home, I just think that it is a characteristic of our Generation. Our generation has become one which has developed a new side to life, a virtual one. We have account names and profiles throughout the virtual world which need to maintained and taken care of, just like our physical appearance. The technology that has been available to us has enhanced our virtual lifestyles as we seem to have less face to face interactions and more virtual ones at an increasing rate. This brings me back as to why we have drifted away from physical social gaming spaces. We have only moved our social gaming spaces from physical ones to virtual ones. Whether or not this is an issue I am not going to comment but I think that it is an interesting development anyway.

Anyway, gotta go. Just received some free poker chips from my friend on Facebook.