Lab Exercise 13

Lab exercise 13: Game communities.

Do ethnographic research on virtual communities of video gamers. Look for places online where gamers self-identify as a culture or subculture (e.g., women, people of color, gays and lesbians, immigrants, or another minority group), and for whom video games are a meaningful part of their lives. Select one gamer site that you do not ordinarily visit. Identify three discussion threads on the site where questions of personal identity and gaming are thematized explicitly. For each discussion thread, address whether or not the discussion is moderated by a forum moderator. Then summarize the topic question or debate for each discussion thread. Then, identify at least three positions on each topic question or debate taken by posters in each thread. Address the question, what is this debate about, and what are the main points of contention? Where does agreement emerge in the discussion? What contentious points remain unresolved?

Lab resources: http://www.racialicious.com/category/video-games/,
gaymer.org, www.fragdolls.com.