Participatory Culture
Online gaming hosts its own form of participatory culture from creating costumes, entering contest specifically geared by game creators, making their own videos with footage from the game, and even making live footage of what happened in the game. Participatory culture is part of a generation of convergence where everyone participates some gaining a degree of status whether it be through the industry itself or just an online sensation (Jenkins, pg 137 ) Some of the first well known forms of this are Goerge Lucas's Star Wars much like George Lucas the gaming industry embraces the creativity of its users and sometimes even realises on its users to help create publicity and also affect in game items, like having contests to design new mounts, clothes, or weapons. (pg 135)
Above are two examples of players from both WoW and EQ showing their creativity towards the game. The first video is the actual video of WoW Cataclysm advertisement with a user adding his own lyrics/song to represent what is going on. The second video is from EverQuest where a user recorded his character with his horse on an adventure and input the "My Lovely Horse" Song.
Cosplay
One form of participatory culture when it comes to online gaming is cosplay. Cosplay is short for costume play, normally people will dress up from popular cartoons, books, games, animes, etc and wear them to conventions or for photography purposes. ("What is Cosplay:: COSPLAY HOUSE") Cosplay can be seen even for online gaming, people will either make, buy, or custom order their outfits and wear them for different occasions, whether it be Conventions or L.A.R.Ping, see below for more information on both. Here are some examples of cosplay for both Everquest and World of Warcraft
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Priest from "World of Warcraft" |
Among our Group Blu is known for cosplaying, mainly from video games and animes she does so for photography, and conventions. Her costumes are made by her and a small group of friends who sew. Cosplay is a way for people to show their liking for whatever they are supporting, show their own personal creativity and sometimes even influence others to watch, read, or play what they are dressed up from.
Game Creators
Sometimes the game creators will open up discussions and contests to allow players to have more input . In this article it shows the creators of EverQuest at a convention showing screen shots from EverQuest II and finding the opinions of the players to help shape the new layouts of the game. ("EQ Wire")
Conventions
This is a part of social interaction, people from game will meet up in real life at the conventions, sometimes to discuss faction/guild business or simply just getting to know and meet each other in person. Sort of putting the voice to a face.
Blizzard, the creators of World of Warcraft have a convention once a year known as Blizz-con, this convention is solely dedicated to everything dealing with the game, to large updates, any new releases, and anything having to do with the game.
EverQuest, branched from Wizards of the Coasts, have their fans go to a LAs Vegas convention called SOE Fan Faire where they do the same thing but relating to EverQuest.
Cosplay, and sometimes even L.A.R.Ping can be seen at conventions.
Check out these links for information on Blizz-con and SOE Fan Faire
L.A.R.PING
L.A.R.P.ing is a live action role play.( "Larp Alliance Meetup Group") This is a way for people involved in games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft to be more involved. People come together to bring their MMO's to life, often dressing up as their characters to fight and keeping true to the characters stats, history, and things they can or cannot do. This is normally for people very involved in MMO's though some people who L.A.R.P play table top games or just enjoy the epic battles and fight scenes.
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