How online gaming has facilitated social interaction

There is community connection on the other side of a screen, something gamers have long known but that the general public is only now beginning to realize.

Mid-March, my buddies made a joke about how "our whole lives have been leading up to this."

I was sitting in my cramped New York City apartment, feeling panicked and accepting the possibility that I would be stuck there for weeks or even months. But as lifelong fans of video games, my pals told me that the notion of lounging on a couch in front of a TV for an extended period of time would be simple. After all, gamers like me already spend a significant amount of time in front of screens.

However, despite spending hours alone, gamers aren't always lonely. Frequently, far from it. With the emergence of social media, gamers, especially those in Generation Z, have mastered the art of community development in and around the gaming industry. Gamers build real, enduring connections as well as rivalries with strangers online.

Gamers have long had a tool that is now providing some respite to others who have never picked up a controller before in this age of extended social distance and mental-health strains. A new avenue for much-needed connection amid isolation has been found by many, as evidenced by the phenomenal expansion of gaming throughout the pandemic.

Millions of people all throughout the world used tech-driven distractions like Netflix Party movie viewings, Zoom chats, and video games to stay in touch with family and friends when shelter-in-place orders were lifted.

The space saboteur smartphone game Among Us (which 100 million people have downloaded) and the Jackbox games, which combine video chatting and components of classics like Pictionary, have served as substitutes for actual happy hours. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is arguably the most well-known. Players are dropped in a little tropical village full of chatty anthropomorphic animal neighbors who assist them design their home, capture butterflies, and grow fruit trees in Nintendo's record-breaking Switch game, which was released in March and tripled the company's revenues.

During the epidemic, gaming has become much more popular, reaching people who previously ignored it altogether or only sometimes played. According to a recent study by the American business-research firm NPD, four out of every five customers in one survey in the US alone who participated in the past six months played video games. And while many businesses are struggling, videogame sales are growing at the moment. $175 billion (£130 billion) in global revenue is anticipated to increase 20% this year.

Although the idea of socialization in a game may be novel to some, gamers have long used technology like this to form relationships online and remain in touch.

A lot of people may be unfamiliar with the idea of social interaction in video games, but gamers have long used similar technology to form relationships online and maintain connections.

Professor Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University has studied the socialization of video games for several years and has written about gaming friendships in the epidemic. He published a study in 2003 that revealed that for one-fourth of 11,000 participants of the online role-playing game Everquest, social interaction was their favorite aspect of the game. The study, according to him, was an early and clear debunking of the myth that playing video games makes players antisocial and alone (even though those early pandemic memes jokingly played off those stereotypes). A 2007 investigation that he conducted revealed the "very socially engaging" nature of the online gaming environment by looking at 912 users of massively multiplayer online (MMO) role-playing games from 45 different nations who played on average about 22 hours each week.

He claims that 10% of survey participants actually ended up dating people outside of the game. It is nothing new to socialize while playing a game. In 2020, Griffiths claims that when lockdowns started and people had little to do, "maybe they're gaming for the first time, and they realized this was an outlet you can naturally socialize in,"

In Animal Crossing, for instance, users can travel to the towns of both friends and strangers who have shared their village codes online. As he continues to distance himself from Washington, DC, and we miss family gatherings, our 2020 routine entails taking a virtual seaplane into my brother's hamlet, which is populated by amiable koalas. Additionally, I pay visits to friends who are dispersed throughout the globe, including one from high school whom I haven't seen since 2000.

Animal Crossing has helped some people celebrate their birthdays this year, go on dates, and even marry some couples who had to postpone their marriages due to Covid-19. Nookazon is a fan-created online market place where gamers join to exchange fruits and expensive furnishings. Players of Animal Crossing are invited to gatherings and quiz evenings on the website.

According to Daniel Luu, the creator of Nookazon and an avid gamer based in Washington, DC, the pandemic "really opened a lot of people's eyes to what gaming can do to bring people together." He claims that a 50-year-old woman who has "never played video games in her entire life" is one of the most well-liked top sales on his website. "I believe that the fact that anyone may play Animal Crossing is the reason for its popularity. There are numerous adorable goods, entertaining characters, and customization options, he claims. "It really showed that video games aren't only like Call of Duty," the author said.

At the University of Albany in New York, Lin Zhu is a psychology graduate student. She authored a paper on Animal Crossing and the pandemic in September, which was then published in the journal Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies. According to Zhu, Animal Crossing in particular offers calm sense of security during these unsettling times and offers laid-back escapism, both of which have attracted new players to the activity. The pandemic has decreased opportunities for face-to-face engagement but also increased awareness of gaming as a cutting-edge medium for social interaction.

Twitch, which is owned by Amazon and allows users to watch other people play video games live while interacting with the broadcaster and other users in real time, saw five billion hours of content viewed in just the second quarter of 2020. The engagement is up 83% from the previous year. This sets a new record.

The company's director of community and creator marketing, Erin Wayne, claims that they have been doing this for years. She began by playing the all-time most popular video game, Minecraft, while streaming on the website. It's the same game where, because to Covid-19, an elementary school in Japan decided to hold a virtual graduation instead of a physical one. The fundamental strategy for bringing together gamers and streamers "hasn't altered because Diseases

In particular under social-distancing limits in 2020, Wayne notes that Twitch has broadened its audience as it has grown in popularity. Following the gamer-streamer trend, writers of books, musicians, and even drag queens are organizing book launches, concerts, and live performances. On the website, new gaming communities have also emerged, including those for LGBTQ gamers and gamers with military experience.

The gaming community is not immune to negativity and toxic behavior. But when London-based gamer Jay-Ann Lopez created the Black Girl Gamers closed Facebook group in 2015 as a welcoming environment in the face of racism and sexism in the gaming world, she was able to create a flourishing community that has since spread to other platforms like Twitch. It even organized a summit of just black female professionals in the long-white male-dominated field this summer.

According to Lopez, playing video games has kept players of all ages "connected, social, and sane" throughout the pandemic. For a very long time, people have either despised it or dubbed gamers 'strange,' but now people and businesses want to understand how to maintain groups and relationships online. People can access it more easily.

Therefore, even while more people staring at screens may seem like a bad habit, the World Health Organization thinks it could be essential to fostering our relationships with others. It introduced #PlayApartTogether earlier this year. The immediate psychological and social benefits of gaming across generations are even starting to be discovered by mental health specialists, who frequently emphasize the value of relationships, connections, and community in today's world.

Gaming is still a surprise lifeline for millions of people throughout the world as the pandemic spreads and they face months of social isolation. Even once they are permitted to interact with others in person, those new gamers might continue playing video games. 40% of new gamers, according to a Google survey, say they're likely to keep playing video games after the pandemic.

Currently, it has only recently entered the mainstream. The ability of gaming to unite communities has long been known, adds Nookazon's Luu. Now, more people are beginning to understand this. It has existed for a long time.