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FE ATURE
ALISON LAMONT
Lecturer in sociology
and criminology at
the University of
Roehampton.PROFILE because they don’t know you that
well, but you might know 100 people
who all chip in £1.”
Ultimately, the benefits of online
communities of all kinds in the
modern world outweigh the
drawbacks, something we should
remember. As Dr Burnett tells me,
they are “giving people a sense of
community, a sense of status, a sense
of appreciation, friends... These are
fundamentally important parts of
what the human brain requires. I
think hopefully, through [the
pandemic] will be a reappraisal of
whether online relationships or
online connections are valid or not,
because clearly they are keeping
people afloat and that should be
acknowledged in the future”.had, and you would have modders be
like, ‘Oh, I’ll do that for you.’”
Although they get lost in amongst
the headline-grabbing negativity,
gaming communities are dotted with
little acts of kindness like this all over,
which can even extend to more
meaningful help such as with medical
bills. The positive, as with the
negative, can be explained in
sociological terms. As Dr Lamont
explains, “With the emergence of this
always-on interconnectivity comes
the possibility to have an awful lot of
weak social ties with lots and lots of
different people,” she says. “You can
pull a lot of energy and resources
through that ... [if] you’re tapping
into your gamer connections
nobody’s going to donate, say, £100,course will be the first of many such
initiatives to come.
Despite the negativity and often
terrible consequences, there’s still a
positive side to game communities,
something that everybody I spoke to
was keen to emphasise. James, in
fact, provided one example that stood
out to me. It’s his belief that niche
games are more likely to foster
positive communities, something that
he saw with Spintires: MudRunner.
TRUCKING AROUND
“[People like to] drive their own
trucks [which they own in real life].
You would have people come into the
group and say ‘Hey, I’d like to buy
Spintires: MudRunner, but I noticed it
doesn’t have...’ whatever truck they