Kyle A. Loftus
Steven Kapela
English 1510
October 31, 2012
MW3: A Gamers Discourse Community
Imagine a world where war never ends and nobody is safe. This is a world where animated limbs and blood splatters can be found in every square pixel of your screen. Millions die every day in this world but wait it gets better… Everyone receives multiple weapons of choice along with equipment accessories (grenades, flash bangs, knives, scopes, heat sensors, night vision etc.). Not only this but no matter how many times your killed you always come back to life usually in between instantaneously and a matter of fifteen seconds. This world is known across the globe as Modern Warfare 3. This community has an exponentially large set of members all of which have learned and acquire skills to communicate and understand the languages and lexis. These gamers also have the same set of goals in which they attempt to accomplish through participatory and communicative mechanisms. Modern Warfare 3 is a community with two genres “the game” and “the online game”. Venture Inside this world of gaming to fathom the different genres, the ways in which members are inducted or removed, and to understand the means in which Modern Warfare 3 is a discourse community.
Modern Warfare 3, the online experience…it is something you may interact through but you cannot act upon without induction. One element needed to be a discourse community according to John Swales in The Concept of Discourse Community is “Discourse communities have changing memberships; individuals enter as apprentices and leave by death or in other less involuntary ways. However, survival of the community depends on reasonable ratio between novices and experts (Swales pg.473).” In order to be inducted into the realm of Modern Warfare 3 you must first purchase the game. Then after purchase you must apply and confirm your account with Xbox live. This allows the discourse to place a threshold on the number of members allowed in. In order to be inducted you must be at least seventeen years of age as well as have a certified payment method. This payment method is key as it is what allows you to interact and communicate with all other members in the discourse community. These requirements are important as they keep out those who don’t have expertise in this gaming field. They also help to keep all the components of the game relevant because all the players have relatively similar gaming intellect.
Modern Warfare 3 involves a shared gaming intellect but more so a shared set of common goals. These goals are all dependent on what you seek out of the community. This is called engagement and alignment, both subjects Elizabeth Wardle discusses in Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces. In this article Wardle says ‘“Engagement entails defining a “common enterprise” that newcomers and old-timers pursue together to develop “interpersonal relationships”…Alignment entails “negotiating perspectives, finding common ground…defining broad visions and aspirations (Wardle pg.524).”’ This means that they all play this game in a common pursuit. Through researching gamers by interacting in the community myself I have developed a list of gamer types. The gamer types are different groups in the overall discourse and are known as competitive players, recreational players, and glitch players. If you don’t know what glitching is, it is a process in which you discover and/or develop issues in an online games coding. This then in turn allows you to do weird and unpredictable things in the game. Regardless to all that, these types of gamers all have a specific goal in mind when they play this game. The competitors strive to be ranked the best in the world, win tournaments or just simply win the game. Recreational gamers tend to play for the fun of the game and opportunity to interact with others online. Lastly, the glitches are also in a sense recreational as they find it fun to find these gaps in the games development. In order to share these goals they have to be able to share information.
This discourse community thrives on what is called Xbox live for without this element the ability to communicate and participate with other members would be nearly impossible. In his article The Concept of Discourse Community John Swales discusses the importance of community members sharing mechanisms of intercommunication and participating. Swales says “A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback (Swales pg.472).” This communication and participation is extremely important for gamers because it helps them further their specific goals in being a member of the community. As discussed earlier these goals differ depending on the gamer type but they all share the common goals of playing the game and being able to communicate in the process. Although this is true they more specifically use information to increase their skills or get better scores. These are two common goals all members want to reach regardless of gamer type. Also it is through this communication/participation that they can exchange their information for advancement in level of skill and subject rankings. They use two forms of communication among members one of which is messaging. This form isn’t common among many as it is only used when one is without a headset. The other form is live communication through these headsets. They are used by gamers because they allow you to have conversations with your friends, teammates and sometimes even competitors. This communication could not be possible without an understanding of the different lexis and languages.
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