Oxford Game Network

Last tweet-up Graeme Hunter approached me with the suggestion of creating a sort of framework for gamers in Oxford. The idea behind it being that it’s akin to a tweet-up, and if it’s possible to gather people in one space to talk about social media, why could the same concept not be applied to video games? I’ve already dipped my toes into this kind of thing, here’s extracts of a proposal I submitted to some fellow students regarding setting up a ‘Gaming Society’:

We are an autonomous association of people who share an enthusiasm for gaming. We are not a clan. We meet regularly every week after school in a central location. Our aim is to introduce people to new games, we do this by allowing a platform for the free exchange of games amongst ourselves. We would also encourage members to talk on aspects of game design, their thoughts on some games and announce anything major happening in gaming news that week.
In playing together we’d have to consider 4-player multiplayer games: Halo 3, Modern Warfare 2, Left4Dead 2 and things on the Wii, and on the PS3, that would require someone bringing in their own game console. And if we have too many people I suggest a rota, after each death the controller is passed on, this way we can accommodate up to 8 people.
It would also be a framework for other events, matches which would take place, we would swap gamertags, Steam IDs and whatever Wii-users and PS3-users use to locate their friends.

The proposal was rejected on the succinct grounds that “people from our school are wankers”. It’s a legitimate concern that such a group would be overcome with divisions between fans of different consoles, games or genres which could tear it apart. Though most players are respectable there’s the odd few who always ruin the game for everyone. I’m hoping that this would be overcome by the mature adult nature of a group.

I used the term ‘autonomous association’ from having learned about Anarchy. There’s some similarity between the organisational structure of BarCamp unconferences and that of anarchist gatherings. They both have as little central leadership as possible and rely on decisions arising from participants of the group. The tweet-ups appear to rely on that structure as well. It does all seem brilliant, but I’m not sure how it would exist in the context of playing and talking about games. People are irrational and will no doubt surprise me by creating something unexpected.

I note that we do not want to be a clan. This means that we don’t play together as a necessity; we play together because it is a shared social experience. It also means we don’t rage on the ‘noobs’ those of the group who don’t play as well as the rest. We should teach and support them.

Next is developing the practicalities: we potentially have a room to occupy 8 to 10 gamers on desks, we don’t know how much that would cost to rent for two hours. Our equipment capacity is unknown as it relies on members to bring in their own consoles plus spare controllers for those who don’t have any. This is something we’d have to work out in the first meeting. The minimum necessary equipment for a match of Halo 3 multiplayer is 2 Xboxes, 8 controllers (at least 4 of which are wireless), 2 screens, an ethernet cable and of course two copies of Halo 3. I’m unaware of the capabilities of the PS3 or the Wii so if there’s possibly a setup for as many gamers which uses less equipment let me know.

Also Graeme’s written a good explanation of communication theory, which will probably come in handy.