The importance of "gamer-talk"

Communication is key. How may time have you heard that cliché? Well, that’s because it’s true.  It’s common knowledge that communication is vital to community; they even share the same etymological lineage.

The importance of communication is so obvious, that we often take it for granted. Hopefully, by the end of this blog I will have articulated something worthwhile about communication and its relation to video games.

So, the purpose of communication is to transfer info from one entity to another. I use the word “entity” instead of “person” because the number of people sending or receiving the information can vary.  I’m sure I don’t have to describe the different possible scenarios.

Most humans love to transfer information from one entity to another; People love to communicate, and we have created many innovative ways to do so, but we’ll get to that on another post. The question I want to address is what do people love to “communicate” about? (Even though it’s doesn’t accurately encompass the meaning, I will now be using “talk” interchangeably with “communicate”.)

Common topics of conversation include the weather, work, politics, sports, and movies. Out of these examples, I would say that some people get genuinely excited when discussing sports, movies, or even celebrity gossip.

 A good political discussion can be very stimulating, but most of these are negative in nature, revolve around complaints or disagreements about an administration, party, or politician, and usually create a divide between people. Politics are a necessary evil; video games exist out of their own merit.

Arguably, conversations about video games are the most exciting, passionate, and engaging kinds of conversation. Just yesterday, some co-workers and I were in a conference room waiting for a meeting to start, and the subject of video games came up. We discussed everything from FPS’ to RPG’s, we reminisced on the days of Street Fighter II, and we lamented the fact that our busy lives hindered the amount of time we could spend with our favorite games.

I’m reminded of the Pringles slogan whenever video games come up in conversation. (Once you pop, you can’t stop)

I was browsing Reddit after work, and I was surprised to see that the very same Street Fighter match we talked about before the staff meeting had been posted on the site and was sitting pretty on the front page. This was a huge coincidence, but another thing that was huge was the amount of communication that this one link was generating.

Over 1,500 people voted on the submission, and 447 comments were posted at the time of this writing. This video is 3 years old. Man, people really do LOVE talking about video games.

A good example of what most video game conversations look like can be seen here. (notice the twinkle in their eyes as they speak fondly of their favorite past time)

IN CONCLUSION, the strength of the gaming community relies heavily on the fact that gamers love to talk about games.

In my next blog, I’ll make a list of the different topics that gamers talk about, and the different ways they do so. J/K, I forgot I needed to talk about common goals first ;D