Affinity Space #3: A Reddit Group
Observation.
I’m participating in the Reddit Sub-group: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/. The group has defined themselves as a group “For topics related to the design of rule-sets for interactive entertainment systems - video games, board games, tabletop RPGs, or any other type. /r/GameDesign is not a subreddit about general game development, nor is it a programming subreddit. This is a place to talk about crafting rules.” This is essential a “socio-technical engineering” space, or a space to think about and create good interactions between people and technology (if its technology), through the most important basis of a game which is its rules.
The group as about 25,738 readers and the post were current and interactive, which is one reason I chose this group. I also chose this group because of the type of questions posted and the types of interactions. I chose this group because of the reflective nature of conversation. One of the first post I saw was “How to make dialogue the player won't skip through? (self.gamedesign) submitted 20 days ago by th3shark”. Even more astonishing was the post had 18 comments. Meaning other participants were actively engaged with this topic. I viewed the post because after recently playing Mortal Kombat X, I did notice the game would not allow you to skip through their long narratives (which were great the first time but not so much the second time around). I remember from pervious gaming experience that such narratives used to be skip-able. According to th3shark the best way to prevent skipping is to make the dialogue necessary for the progression of the game, not something outside the game, but integral to the game.
In my initial observations I notice that this group tries to answer or address everyone’s posts, very few posts has zero comments. This illustrates a highly recipriocal nature. Seeing that others have taken the time to respond to the discussions, makes me want to read the posts to see what the interest or appeal is and answer if I can, it is “meaning production” at its greatest. The level of engagement from the group reminds me of the article by Herro & Clark (2012), who state “our educational institutions have not adapated to the world of knowing, making, and playing that learners freely enter to construct knowledge in contexts which are present focused” (p.19). This group’s concept demonstrates a world of “knowing and making” and the space allows for the participant/learner to enter freely to construct knowledge for themselves or for others, on topics/interests that are current. In my opinion for a higher education institution to have this level of success, it would need to open the discuss to a larger audience than the college itself but maybe regional or national, if not international.
Also my observation the group does seem to have “situated langague”. I can tell I’m not as familiar with their “complex and technical ways of thinking” not because of the words used, but because I have a limited base of simulations in which to run my experiences in order to understand new things or even respond (Gee 2004). The participants seems to have an “identity toolkit” as mentioned by Games (---). He defines an “identity toolkit” as representing the ways of doing, communicating, thinking, and interacting with the material world that people use to demarcate an identity to others. I often will not comment because I don’t feel I’ve reached the “expert” level to make an educated contribution to the topic. Although the group itself doesn’t discriminate between specialist or general knowledge, as both are encouraged. This one response showed me that the group is an “idea nurturing affinity space” (Gee & Hayes 2008).
2. Contribution
After reading enough posts I decided to jump in a make a real contribution. I noticed that lost of the post were on the design concepts of a new game that participants were planning to design and would ask the group for their input. This reminded me of a game I thought of years ago that would have titled “I’ve Got an App for That”. So I posted my initial concept of the game and asked for any feedback. I must admit I was a bit nervous on what the group would think of my post, if anyone would respond, and if was “appropriate” for this group. After about 12 hours I did receive my first comment, the participant added new idea for how the use the game.
