Fiveshot is an avid poster to YouTube —visit his channel gregory06— and also a World of Warcraft player. Through his activity in MMO games — such as WoW, League of Legends, Modern Warfare 3, and others — he has made use of YouTube to deliver a cross-section of his experience and others.
The interview highlights the social aspects of MMO gaming but also reveals how YouTube changes or enhances that experience. He has gained quite a following and many of his videos reveal a great deal of comments. These are individuals who may play only one or two of the games that he takes footage from; but they’re all coming together on YouTube to comment.
Community-wise, games like WoW and such do not have a forum for video so YouTube becomes its proxy by allowing footage to be taken from these virtual worlds and transplanted here for commentary.
Through understanding how YouTube and MMO games interact in this fashion we can gain a better analysis of the emerging use of rich media by players to connect with the world beyond the internal cultures within the games themselves and their immediate community.
Link, via MMO Anthropology on YouTube.
Wow, I love the concept of combining online gaming with anthropology! That’s pretty much right up my alley!!!
I don’t know how I feel though about YouTube commenting being the forum for the gaming community, though. It’s generally a wastelands of social commentary, at its best…
Welcome @Spyral, I would argue that my interest in the YouTube community isn’t about the comments so much as it is the rich media and videos produced by the players to address the community. The comments themselves work as a gauge of discussion and conversation but I see them as only ancillary to the videos themselves.