Essay 5 - David Speidel - Virtual Transnationality

        As the discussion and observation of globalization continues to grow, our understanding of the atmosphere around us changes.  This is no different for the virtual worlds of online gaming and the people who participate in these environments.  As I discussed in earlier essays, we can view these worlds as having a sense of place and also having an impact on people's lives in the real world.  Continuing on those ideals is this sense of transnationality and how it is felt in the online gaming community as a general population base as well as how it forms the idea of clans or guilds.
        The virtual worlds of the internet, by nature, are affected by all those who can access them.  The advantage of these places is that they have no boundaries that limit people from each other, when you meet another user; rarely will you know where they are from or how they identify themselves.  Thus, in analyzing these worlds, we find they are on a different scale and smaller transnational social networks than nations, as Mitchell suggested (2003).  The population bases of these communities are all linked together through this medium.  They are common places where people find similar goals and achievements, yet have the freedom to experience these events in their own perspective.  These worlds act as the "container" in which people from various nations find commonality.  (Kennedy & Roudometof, 2002, p. 6)  Those inside worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, find themselves forming similar social relationships as they would anywhere and thus developing their senses of community in ways that they can all feel a part of.
       One phenomenon inside these worlds, I feel, is important to understand in the context of social interaction, and that is the formation of guilds or clans.  The idea of these guilds is one where people join together under a label, sort of a club, where they spend time with the same people.  Many of these guilds are created inside games like World of Warcraft, which not only promotes their creation but also creates services designed specifically for these groups to communicate, such as voice communication software (Dabri, 2007).  They might meet in the virtual world and talk through text or even using voice communication software over the net.  From my personal experience inside one of these guilds for over four years, you might find yourself talking about your experience inside the games with a person from another state, Canada, or even China and other parts of Asia.  The groups themselves, generally have no defining nationality, rather they are enriched by the perspectives of these other peoples that come together to form their own small groups within the larger community.  These social networks don't always end when people stop playing the games either, as in my own experience, these people feel a common bond and might meet each other in real life and become friends in the physical world or at least trade emails or phone numbers in order to continue interaction over time.  These interactions are examples of those virtual communities that share the same themes and forms of traditional ethnological research (Ito, 1999).  This phenomenon is important because it speaks not only about people sharing common goals, but meeting people who are part of lifelong networks that are no more or less important than those shared through commonalities in the physical world.
        The existence of transnationality is felt very strongly in the virtual community.  Online gaming itself exists as an example of ideas formed inside no single boundary or nation.  The worlds create themselves from previous ideas of virtual space and are experienced every day by those who identify themselves with different physical places.  Yet the medium acts as a container in which those who would never meet otherwise can share experiences and dreams.  Thus the social networks create themselves and lead to enriched relationships in which people hold lifelong bonds.

References:

Dabri, S (2007, May 17). Games for Windows Interview Suggests New Features Post-2.1. Retrieved June 22, 2007, from Warcry's World of Warcraft Web site: http://wow.warcry.com/news/view/71813-Games-for-Windows-Interview-Suggests-New-Features-Post-2-1

Ito, M. (1999). Network Localities: Identity, Place, and Digital Media. Paper presented at the Meetings of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, San Diego. URL: http://www.itofisher.com/PEOPLE/mito/locality.pdf

Mitchell, Katharyne (2003). Cultural Geographies of Transnationality. In K. Anderson, Kay. et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Cultural Geography. London: SAGE Publications, pp. 74-87.

Kennedy, P. and Roudometof, V. (2002). Transnationalism in a global age. In P. Kennedy and V. Roudometof (Eds.), Communities across borders: New immigrants and transnational cultures, pp. 1-26. London and New York: Routledge.

Posted at 12:14PM Jun 22, 2007 by SPEIDEL, DAVID in General  |  Comments[2]