1. 46 / Farrago 2015 / edition six farrago 2015 / edition six / 47
culture // culture
You spend years playing and interacting with them for
hours on end.
Over time, you become really good friends. Every time you log
onto TeamSpeak, you know there will be someone online to hear
you out. They have your back in the guild no matter what. Without
question you’re all ready to fight for each other, and die for each
other. A virtual bond brings you all together as you raid and DnM
during those 3am conversations. But what happens when you meet
your virtual gaming buddies in real life?
Virtual relationships are formed over a PC and/or console,
connecting individuals who may not necessarily share any
commonalities in reality. It is interesting to see what keeps the
friendship going when the game isn’t involved: headphones are
disconnected, PCs are shut and all that is left to rely on is face-to-face
interaction.
Online gaming has become a global phenomenon accessible by
millions anywhere and anytime. Making friends online has become a
social norm, connecting millions of people on a global scale through
social media platforms. Meeting online-gaming friends has become
easier than ever, growing into a popular trend over recent years.
World of Warcraft (WoW) was created by Blizzard Entertainment
in 2004 as a massively multi-player online role-playing game
(MMORPG). It currently stands on 100 million subscriptions, with
500 million characters created and accessed from 244 countries.
Four-year WoW player, Edip Buyukbekir recently met up with
his virtual friends for the first time.“It was like a new face to the
character I’ve known online for years,” he says.
Buyukbekir is currently completing his Bachelor of Environments
at the University of Melbourne, and lives by himself in the CBD.
Most of his time is spent either studying or playing WoW. Averaging
approximately 20-25 hours a week playing the game, Buyukbekir
describes how “comforting it is for somebody who lives alone to have
a form of social interaction that is immediately accessible.”
The 23-year-old’s WoW friends made a road trip to Melbourne in
April this year, pit stopping at their fellow members’ houses to pick
them up on the way. Technically they were all strangers travelling
on a long 12-hour trip together. They had not seen one another in
real life before, apart from having an idea of what they might look
like from their Facebook profiles. Under common circumstances,
most people would hesitate to go on an awkward road trip, spending
endless hours of small talk and cozy seating with people they have
not met before. But for this group, ‘awkwardness’ was far from
an issue. Instead, they got to know each other without the game
interfering for the first time.
“It was like you go in there and jump in as if you’re talking
online, extremely causal, it’s like they’ve been there for hours even
though they just got there,” Buyukbekir says.
A 2007 study suggests that “42 per cent of gamers had met
with online friends in real-life situations,” according to a Cyber
Psychology and Behaviour report.
Eight-year WoW player Andrew Shephard, is one of the five who
travelled to Melbourne and describes his first meeting as, “normal
and natural, it wasn’t really that awkward, we all sat around and had
a good time and when we met with everyone else it was even easier
because there was so many of us.”
He spends almost 35 hours a week playing WoW, due to a recent
physical injury that has disabled him from returning to his trade as
a carpenter. Shephard has developed a strong bond with his guild
by Talya Alkilic
IRL
members and regards them as his “close mates.” He estimates that
he gives his gamer friends 70 per cent of his time; 30 per cent of his
time goes to his friends outside of the game.
“For the last eight-ish months we raid three to four times a week
and you get to know each other pretty well, and then we all just
ended up organizing a meet up,” Shephard says.
He has also travelled to New Zealand and Sydney on numerous
occasions to meet up with friends he had met six years ago through
WoW. “I caught up with them and nothing had changed, I guess I see
that happening with this group now”, Shephard says.
World of Warcraft is ranked as the second most popular video
game, standing behind League of Legends, with an average of “6.31
per cent of all time spent gaming on their platform,” according to a
recent 2015 study conducted by Statista.
Veterinary nurse student Rhiannon Mortimer describes the
“culture on WOW to be so diverse.” She plays the game because it
gives her a sense of belonging; it is a place where she can completely
be herself.
“People who play games seem a lot more understanding than
those who don’t and there are many different types of people who
play which makes it even more interesting,” Mortimer says.
Mortimer has been playing WoW since 2012. She averages
approximately 25 hours a week and says that there is more to their
friendship than just the game: “we all have certain commonalities
and inside jokes, it started from a place where we all met but then
we became really close which continues in real life.”
“You can have this completely different world which allows you
to leave your real world, and because I started playing WoW as an
escape I really liked that element of it”, says Mortimer.
Many bonds and long-lasting friendships develop within online
gaming sites, whether it is a mutual means of escapism, distraction
or vast enjoyment of the game they share in common. A 2009 study
shows that players emerge into “a magic circle,” taking them out of
real life and entering into a new fantasy world.
“Everyone has their own reasons, but I know people who started
playing because they couldn’t handle something and used WoW as a
coping method,” Mortimer says.
Although virtual relationships may be contained within your PC
and will only be accessible when you turn it on, sometimes they can
make their way into the real world. However, just like relationships
outside the gaming realm, online friendships can prove to be
just as fragile.
Recently, Buyukbekir decided to quit playing WoW due to
“prioritizing the game” above his real life. There were scheduled
times to raid online every week and when he was not available to
play, “it started to feel more like a job, and less like a game,” he says.
“Once the game was removed from the equation all that was left
was a friendship. Sure, just like any friendship there were a couple
of people that irritated me but that happens in every friendship
group,” he says.
Now, he spends time with his friends in real life and still remains
in contact with his WoW friends through social media platforms
every now and then.
That would be the underlying difference between online and
offline friendships, you can just switch them on or off when ever
you want to.
illustration by alyona