Competitive Online Gaming Community.

Essay by escoUniversity, Bachelor'sB+, May 2003

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Competitive Online Gaming Community

The competitive online gaming community consists of players who play personal computer (PC) video games online to compete with each other. This community is formed by PC video games and the competition aspect of these games creates online friendships. LAN parties bring the community together which affect the identities of the competitive video gamers. This world-wide community is really huge and is divided into sub communities for each PC video game that has online competitions.

Every competitive gamer is a member of a clan (team). Clans are formed to have team competitions. Friendships are created within these clans even though they haven't met each other in person. Competitive gamers use a chat program called Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to communicate with each other. Every clan has their own chat channel on IRC. They also use message boards to post messages on a website. Every clan has an identity.

They have creative names and every member wears their clan's tag besides their name to represent their clan.

Every PC video game that is meant to be played with online competitions, have its share of competitive ladders. WWW.ProvingGrounds.com and www.OGL.org are web sites that offer competitive ladders for many PC video games. Competitive gamers compete on these ladders individually or with their clan, to reach high rankings by winning scheduled matches. There are also LAN (local area network which connects multiple PC's onto the same network) parties that are hosted by companies which are held on a scheduled date and location. These LAN parties host tournaments for PC gamers to compete for prizes. These prizes are usually pretty hefty. The first place winner is expected to receive a cash prize of 5 figures. High-end PC's and computer hardware are also given out to the top...