Developers and Players
The player community in WoW and Second Life (for this blog I am saying it is a game) functions differently than developer/ industry pro communities. For the players the community functions as a form of leisure or escape, it gives them a form of entertainment and they play it because they want to, players in these communities are more functioned with play, group bonding and relationships. On the other hand, the developer/industry personal community serves as a matter for research and analyzation to give the pupil in the industry the different perspectives of gaming. They work together, for the most part, to create newer and hopefully better games. This community differs from the other in that it serves not to play, but the opposite, work. So for the player community it functions for fun and in the industry community it aids and helps with work. They are complete opposite and the strange thing is that the same game can function from two different sides of the field; work and play, leisure and "homework". It is ironic that the two communities cover much of the same content and yet their areas of influence are very different. As a developer I would weigh the player community more heavily in my estimation, the reason why I say this is because the games are made for the players in the first place, the games are not made for the developers. The developers work for the players by making the games, it is the player that decides whether or not the game is worth playing, not the developer. The developer has to keep an open mind as to what interests the player and what keeps the player in "play mode" so that they would want to play the game. If it wasn't for the player, the developer would have no job, so therefore I would heavily weigh my decision on the player community. I believe in order to be a more open-minded, down to earth,and well rounded individual, you have to approach the game from all sides of the field. It is defiantly worth participating in both as a developer and player, the two are just as important. With no developer, who would make the game? The two are worth subscribing to, but I would have to say the player community if by far more valuable, however, it still is a good idea to follow the developer community as well, just to get a sense of who the people are and to see how they tick. It is always good to know how people tick, a good lesson in life. Unfortunately, yes, the 30th is our last class session. :(
I absolutely love this class. I love you guys, Great work. ^_^