“Gamers don’t die. They respawn!”
This time it’s all about gamers • and their social media self.
In a moment we are about to see in details the profile of a gamer, everything about his gaming activities, how he acts in social media himself and if and how these two, games and social media, are connected in his life.
Now, here comes the gamer chosen for this particular interview! His name is Aggelos and he 21 years old. He is not currently studying or working but he is going to study shortly, in Brussels. Right now he is having some English lessons. Besides being a gamer, he is a man of sports as he plays football and basketball and he is also interested in martial arts.
Firstly, we are going to learn as much as we can about his gaming self !
He plays a lot of games. League of Legends, aka lol, a really popular one, is one of them. He also plays Counter Strike, a war-like game, and Dota 2. He plays games daily, at least 4 or 5 hours a day and mostly when he has free time, and he is doing so because that way he feels closer to his friends. While playing games they communicate with each other in order to get the best game performance they can. And guess what, he is a competitive one, as he prefers playing online and not LAN. His preference for online gaming has to do with the bigger competition in it, as the amount of players he can play against is a huge one. According to him, gaming has the role of an entertainment activity in his life. He plays to have fun and to communicate with his friends..or foes. So yes, he believes gaming is a form of communication. “Communication is actually the cornerstone of gaming”, he said, and that gaming is based on communication which sometimes leads to arguments or to more desired results among the players.
And we will continue with some information on his social media use! Aggelos uses, of course, social media platforms like the majority of people. To be more specific, he uses Facebook and Snapchat the most. One platform he also uses a lot is Twitch TV. In that one he watches streams, where lol players that are professional gamers are live-streaming. He watches them in order to improve his own skills. His favorite social media platform is Facebook !
He became an active social media member years ago, when this trend was just starting. What made him create a Facebook account then was the easy way of communication it provided. He still uses it all day long, for that reason, in order to be in touch all the time with his friends and family. His own activity on social media includes liking pages he is interested in (a lot of these pages are filled with gaming-related stuff)or poking his friends. And the content he uploads is mostly songs that fit his music taste. He also thinks that his home page is filled with artistic and music content too. Moreover, he admits that he gets a lot of insights on fashion and music trends, and that’s the kind of influence social media have on him.
When it comes to his profile, it is a personal one. But that is only because his professional life has yet to begin. And all his social media accounts are private ones too due to the personal stuff he chooses to upload. By looking at his profile someone could get an idea of what his character is like, he believes. In addition to private profiles, Aggelos is also selective with whom he accepts as a friend on social media. He has to personally know someone in order to become his Facebook friend or at least have a lot of interests in common with him. Aggelos made it pretty clear that he doesn’t believe a social media friend is actually a real-life friend as well. And, unlike many of us, he easily accepts a family member as a friend. In fact, it helps him a lot because his father lives abroad so thanks to being friends in social media their communication is easier and more frequent.
He stated that whatever he wants to upload, he uploads.
He doesn’t care what others might think, he uploads his stuff anyway and then he gladly receives any comment, positive or not. He claims he won’t be affected by their opinion and that he could easily go with the flow if he wanted, or just irritate others on purpose!
As for the opportunities presented by social media, Aggelos thinks that these are mainly opportunities of meeting many new and interesting people.
It seems that his behavior is not easily affected by social media. He likes to set trends instead of following them.
We get to take a look inside his smartphone too! Right now he has the following applications downloaded: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitch TV. He used to have his phone as a gaming tool, playing Hearthstone on it, but now the only gaming-related activity happening through that smartphone is the streams that Aggelos watches. Being able to use social media through his smartphone is really important for him, because he doesn’t own a computer. According to him, he uses his smartphone daily to scroll up and down through his Facebook homepage, to chat with his friends, to watch streams and to listen to music. Sometimes he takes photos too. But he is not that close with his mobile phone, even though he uses it for all these things. He is surely not addicted to it and he would probably do most of this stuff on a PC, if he had one. He could even leave the house without his phone, as he doesn’t feel the need to carry it with him, despite the fact that he uses it every day.
With Aggelos we also discussed some things about the collaborative activities in gaming .Collaboration is a must when you play this kind of games. And this collaboration can only be achieved through productive communication! As teammates, players usually communicate with a code, use strategies and everyone plays his part, and that is really important.(They use Skype calls for that a lot !) Social media help to further promote these collaborative activities on their part.
So we have come to the conclusion that : Gaming affects his social media life and vice versa social media affect his gaming life as well ! As Aggelos said himself, social media have done a fine job when it comes to spreading the gaming knowledge. The knowledge level of gamers is being updated thanks to social media. Aggelos too, posts some gaming advice for his friends to see. And as a gamer he applies everything he learns through articles and videos.
And this was an article, based on the interview Aggelos gave us, for a project in our class “Mobile Reputation Collaborative Consumption in Sharing Economy” in Panteion University.
