What is an online game?
Nowadays Video games are easily accessible everywhere in the world. It is a form of technology that has been included in our everyday lives and it is part of our lifestyle. Games in general are the best example of a technology that has been “domesticated” and has become a part of everyday practices of people. (Mäyrä, 2008). Applying the concept of Bolter and Grusin (1999) games could be defined as remediations of representations of something that has originally been displayed somewhere else before. One may think video games do not have that much importance in our lives but that is not the case, they have a big influence on our way of life.
When it is said games are becoming part of people’s lifestyle it is in the sense that they are pervading our rooms and transitioning from being displayed only on tv screens to being played on our phones and mini portable devices such as Nintendo consoles. Because of this factor games have cultural effects which will be looked in detail as we go further.
How games have evolved overtime
The first games to have entered our society were simplistic games like pong and space invaders in 1970s which contributed in starting a new era of video games that became a very popular form of entertainment. (Whalen & Taylor, 2008). Games such as Donkey Kong, Pokémon and Sonic the Hedgehog become famous and their main characters worldwide known such as Mario and Pikachu. (HuffPost, 2019). These games received so much success and attention from people that they became a cultural phenomenon and from a simple video game they developed in card games, tv shows toys, movies and many more different versions of the game are continually being developed till today. One example is the development of Pokémon-go in 2016 which has a GPS locator on the players cell phone allowing them to go around in their area and catch Pokémons virtually giving the player a more realistic feel of the game. The accessibility of games on phones is allowing the players to be more involved in gaming. (Okazaki, Skapa, & Grande, 2008).
The first hand held devises to be released were Nintendo consoles and Gameboy which are single player games where the player plays the game against the machine, allowing them to get better with hand and eye coordination increasing reaction time and training the brain. (Psychology Today, 2019). This was only the beginning of the development of gaming devices. In the following years PlayStation, Xbox, Wii were realised which use the DVD technology and the graphics of the games were enhanced every time a new device was released. (Cade and Gates, 2016). Another major turn in the industry has been the introduction of the ‘iPhone’ and the software that is used in it, which allows the games to be played on it smoothly and effectively. After the release of the iPhone a large amount of games had been released like never before in history. (Parkin, 2013).
What is a game and what effects does it have?
It is difficult to define what a game actually is; Jesper Juul (2011) tried to define it by combining more definitions of it together and presented a game as a model which consists of 6 factors in his study, 1st being a system that is followed by formal rules, 2nd is having different outcomes, 3rd is having different values for every outcomes, 4rth is the player trying different things to change the outcome and affect it in a way, 5th being the players feeling attached to the outcome of the game and 6th being the changeable property of the outcomes which are not set and can be changed.
Playing video games could be explained as an understanding that is defined by the trial and error behaviour. The interaction with the game defines the understanding of the player of the game, the more he/she plays and tries different commands the more the understanding of the game increases. Playing games is defined as a form of “contact by interaction”. (Mäyrä, 2008). It is quite difficult to explain what the player exactly feels when playing a game because everyone has a different understanding of it based on their personal interaction with the game, so it is hard to say exactly what are the effects on the feelings of the player. The experience can be “rich and multidimensional but and yet hard to communicate”. (An Introduction to Game Studies, 2019).
Online games have an impact in education too because they all have goals and levels to achieve which increase as the player progresses through the game. Games have surprise elements, goals to achieve and difficulty levels that change based on the players position in the game and all these factors make a good education system. Games allow the players to learn by challenging them to overcome difficult levels by trying harder every time. (HuffPost, 2019). Video games have many positive outcomes such as bringing the whole family together when playing multiplayer games, affecting mental health positively and increasing school engagement. (Durkin and Barber, 2002). However according to many people video games cause violent behaviours in adolescents but there is no actual proof for games being the reason for this because many other factors can contribute in such behaviours and everything can have negative effects if abused and used in the wrong way; “computer gaming and violent socialisation are not inextricably linked”. (Selfe, Hawisher and Ittersum, 2007).
What is the Dark Web?
Dark web refers to the bits of the internet that cannot be found using search engines because they are not indexed. (Fruhlinger, 2019). To get access to this part of the internet you need specific software and have authorisation. Dark web comes after the surface and deep web and its main purpose is to keep the activity hidden and the user’s identity anonymous. (Hale and Hale, 2019).
History of the dark web
The dark web was originally created by the government in the US to enable an anonymous communication and getting information.The original aim of the ‘dark web’ was for the US military to stay anonymous. This was done by the government by introducing Tor which is a browser that keeps your activity anonymous protecting your identity online (Porup, 2019) and making it available for use to the general public. The aim was to make it difficult for spies to identify the government’s messages as there would have been a vast amount of people on the web. Tor is referred as the onion router since it uses layers of encryption to make the websites undesignated. (Bartlett, 2015).
What is the dark web used for and its implications on the society
Dark net has become a place for illegal activity hosting criminals and predators. According to Bartlett (2015) the dark net is an underworld which is isolated but connected to the internet, a place where there is a freedom and privacy by staying anonymous and where the “users say and do what they like…outside of society’s norms”. (Bartlett, 2015).Dark web is used by all types of people for various reasons which include illegal activities such as child porn, black markets for drugs, guns, personal details and hiding activities which include hacking and fraud. (Hale and Hale, 2019). The obscure and a radical example of what people do on the dark web is the ‘assassination market’ where users guess the death date of the person they added to the list and add money in the person’s name, the correct prediction gets all the money. The shadiest part of the market is the fifth instruction that is given which says making the prediction true is optional. (Bartlett, 2015). This can be an indirect way to encourage murder because the person who wants the money is likely to do anything to get his guess right.
The dark web is a popular network amongst cyber criminals and their illegal activities since there is no worrying about being stalked by the police. In fact, for this particular nature of this web, the network has been at the centre of attention in the United States because of the political scandals such as leaking highley sensitive information about the government and a big platform for carrying out political attacks. (Dark Web News, 2019). This is a challenge for the government since they are trying to monitor all political threats that happen online and track them down and their activity history.
Often the effects of the dark web on the society are quite negative or at least this is what the society thinks of it as, due to the factors previously mentioned. From another point of view the dark net is seen as a place where new search engines are used, where the privacy is kept by keeping the user’s identity always anonymous and a place where political dissidents blog. (The Conversation, 2019). The main point of the dark web is to go obscure and stay anonymous the term dark being referred as ‘going dark’, communicating using channels that are more encrypted and private. (The Conversation, 2019).
Precautions have been taken to protect the customers by introducing services such as Experian that aim to track the activity happening on the dark web. The main objective of the services is to let their customers know when their information is shared or it is being used by hackers for any purpose. In order to do this the user has to share all the information. Which is the data they want to protect in the first place from hackers.
Bibliography
Cade, R. and Gates, J. (2016). Gamers and Video Game Culture. The Family Journal, 25(1), pp.70-75.
Mäyrä, F. (2008). An introduction to game studies. London: SAGE.
HuffPost. (2019). VIDEO GAMES and THEIR EFFECT on MODERN DAY SOCIETY. [online] Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/video-games-and-their-eff_b_9873646 [Accessed 1 Apr. 2019].
Smith, P. (1986). Play in animals and humans. Oxford: Blackwell.
An Introduction to Game Studies. (2019). Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion. [online] Available at: https://gamestudiesbook.net/2008/06/01/fundamental-components-of-the-gameplay-experience-analysing-immersion/ [Accessed 1 Apr. 2019].
Bolter, J. and Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Juul, J. (2011). Half-real. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Whalen, Z. and Taylor, L. (2008). Playing the Past: History & Nostalgia in Video Games. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Okazaki, S., Skapa, R. and Grande, I. (2008). Capturing Global Youth: Mobile Gaming in the U.S., Spain, and the Czech Republic. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(4), pp.827-855.
Psychology Today. (2019). Cognitive Benefits of Playing Video Games. [online] Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201502/cognitive-benefits-playing-video-games [Accessed 1 Apr. 2019].
Parkin, S. (2013). An illustrated history of 151 video games.
Durkin, K. and Barber, B. (2002). Not so doomed: computer game play and positive adolescent development. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 23(4), pp.373-392.
Selfe, C., Hawisher, G. and Ittersum, D. (2007). Gaming lives in the twenty-first century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fruhlinger, J. (2019). Dark web websites: 10 things you should know. [online] CSO Online. Available at: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3322134/10-things-you-should-know-about-dark-web-websites.html [Accessed 1 Apr. 2019].
Hale, J. and Hale, J. (2019). What is the dark web? From drugs and guns to the Chloe Ayling kidnapping, a look inside the encrypted network. [online] The Sun. Available at: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/2054243/dark-web-kidnap-chloe-ayling-encrypted-network-black-death/ [Accessed 1 Apr. 2019].
Bartlett, J. (2015). The dark net.
Porup, J. (2019). What is the Tor Browser? How it works and how protects your identity. [online] CSO Online. Available at: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3287653/what-is-the-tor-browser-how-it-works-and-how-it-can-help-you-protect-your-identity-online.html [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].
Dark Web News. (2019). Dark Web as a Tool for Political Attacks. [online] Available at: https://darkwebnews.com/deep-web/dark-web-tool-political-attacks/ [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].
The Conversation. (2019). Illuminating the ‘dark web’. [online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/illuminating-the-dark-web-105542 [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].