I came across this article about a new multiplayer online game that involves the territorial conquest of colleges and universities. Students make teams and recruit people in the real world, in order to play in the virtual world. It is a new way for networking between students around campus and is apparently going to grow into a huge phenomenon around every campus… maybe even Middlebury.
A quote from the article about social networking:
“No one is claiming this is the next Facebook, the social networking phenomenon that began on the Harvard campus. But GoCrossCampus represents the new kind of online games that unite the participants of real-world communities in a common online cause.”
Here’s the link to the article:
That article was very thought provoking. For me, the morst compelling aspect of the game is its ability to create affinity groups outside of game’s “virtual dimensions.” Essentially it works in the same way that facebook used to. It creates a micro-network of students from various universities and allows them to interact with each other across traditional boundaries. It serves as an example as to how games can be used to strengthen solidarity within an existing community. Since succeeding in the game-world depends on a teams ability to recruit students who are not yet interacting within it, this game is effective on a social level that to my knowledge has not yet been explored (except by America’s Army). In a way similar to the growth of political movements, it influences people to actively campaign for voluntary group membership.
In an age when many aspects of our culture are dictated by well established media frames, it has become increasingly tough for marginalized groups to generate concern among individuals operating in the mainstream. “I love bees” shows that MMOWs have the ability to make people re-consider already processed information on a decentralized, massive collaborative scale. “GoCrossCampus”shows that games can also forge affinity groups that can exists and function completely outside of a virtual reality. Games can be designed to succeed in achieving a combination of these phenomenons. I just hope that in the future they are conceived to achieve something more meaningful for society then recruiting soldiers.
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