Communities also form outside games, through Web sites and even face-to-face gatherings dedicated to electronic gaming in its many forms. This is similar to when online and in-person groups form to discuss other mass media like movies, TV shows, and books. These communities extend beyond gameplay, enhancing the social experience gained through the games.

Collective Intelligence

Mass media productions are almost always collaborative efforts, as is evident in the credits for movies, television shows, and music recordings. The same goes for digital games. But what is unusual about game developers and the game industry is their interest in listening to gamers and their communities to gather new ideas and constructive criticism, and to gauge popularity. Gamers, too, collaborate with each other to share shortcuts and “cheats” to solving tasks and quests, and to create their own modifications to games. This sharing of knowledge and ideas is an excellent example of collective intelligence. French professor Pierre Lévy coined the term collective intelligence in 1997 to describe the Internet, “this new dimension of communication,” and its ability to “enable us to share our knowledge and acknowledge it to others.”¹⁵ In the world of gaming, where users are active participants (more than in any other medium), the collective intelligence of players informs the entire game environment.

For example, collective intelligence (and action) is necessary to work through levels of many games. In World of Warcraft, collective intelligence is highly recommended. According to the beginner’s guide, “if you want to take on the greatest challenges World of Warcraft has to offer, you will need allies to fight by your side against the tides of darkness.”¹⁶ Players form guilds and use their play experience and characters’ skills to complete quests and move to higher levels. Gamers also share ideas through chats and wikis, and those looking for tips and cheats provided by fellow players need only Google what they want. The largest of the sites devoted to sharing collective intelligence is the World of Warcraft wiki (http://wowwiki.com). Similar user-generated sites are dedicated to a range of digital games including Age of Conan, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Mario, Metal Gear, Pokémon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Spore.

The most advanced form of collective intelligence in gaming is modding, slang for “modifying game software or hardware.” In many mass communication industries, modifying hardware or content would land someone in a copyright lawsuit. In gaming, modding is often encouraged, as it is yet another way players become more deeply invested in a game, and can improve the game for others. For example, Counter-Strike, a popular first-person shooter game, is a mod of the game Half-Life. Half-Life is a critically acclaimed science-fiction first-person shooter game (a physicist fighting aliens) released by Valve Corporation in 1998 for PCs, and later PlayStation. The developers of Half-Life encouraged mods by including software development tools with it. By 1999, Counter-Strike, in which counterterrorists fight terrorists, emerged as the most popular of many mods, and Valve formed a partnership with the game’s developers. Counter-Strike was released to retailers as a PC game in 2000 and an Xbox game in 2004, eventually selling more copies than Half-Life. Today, many other games, such as The Elder Scrolls, have active modding communities.

Game Sites

Game sites and blogs are among the most popular external communities for gamers. IGN.com (owned by News Corp.), GameSpot.com (owned by CBS), GameTrailers.com (MTV Networks/Viacom), and Kotaku (Gawker Media) are four of the leading Web sites for gaming. GameSpot.com and IGN.com are apt examples of giant industry sites, each with sixteen to nineteen million unique visitors per month. The ownership of these sites is a sign of the desirability of this audience—mostly male, ages eighteen to thirty-four—to major media corporations. IGN.com covers all the major gaming platforms and provides reviews, news, videos, cheats, and forums, as well as the regular Webcast of a news show about games called The Daily Fix. GameSpot has similar elements, and a culture section that features interviews with game designers and other creative artists. In 2011, GameSpot launched Fuse, a social networking service for gamers that is designed to be “your personal gaming dashboard.”¹⁷

Penny-arcade.com is perhaps the best-known of the independent community-building sites. Founded by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the site started out as a Webcomic focused on video game culture. It has since expanded to include forums and a Webcast called PATV that documents behind-the-scenes work at Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade organizes a live festival for gamers called the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), a celebration of gamer culture, and a children’s charity called Child’s Play.

Conventions

In addition to online gaming communities, there are conventions and expos where video game enthusiasts can come together in person to test out new games and other new products, play old games in competition, and meet video game developers. One of the most significant is the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which draws more than 45,000 industry professionals, investors, developers, and retailers to its annual meeting. E3 is the place where the biggest new game titles and products are unveiled, and is covered by hundreds of journalists, televised on Spike TV, and streamed to mobile devices and Xbox consoles. At the 2013 E3 in Los Angeles, Nintendo promised more games for its Wii, while Microsoft promoted its upcoming Xbox One and Sony heralded its soon-to-be-released PS4.

The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is a convention created by gamers for gamers, held each year in Seattle. One of its main attractions is the Omegathon, a three-day elimination game tournament, in which twenty randomly selected attendees compete in games across several genres, culminating in the championship match at the convention’s closing. In 2010, a PAX East convention debuted in Boston, and the original event in Seattle was renamed PAX Prime. Both events draw in excess of 70,000 attendees.

Other conventions include BlizzCon (operated by Blizzard Entertainment to feature developments to their games, including their top franchises—World of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft) and the Tokyo Game Show, the world’s largest gaming convention with more than 200,000 attendees annually.