Lets Talk About Community.

When we talk about the gaming community, what would be some of the first things, off the top of your head, that would best describe the community as a whole? Would it be the toxic environment that some communities hold, due to their younger audience members? Or would it be the rather dedicated, hardcore gamers, that play the game for its competitive reasons? In all honesty, there isn't an exactly right or wrong answer primarily because the gaming community as a whole is well diverse, and holds great potential.

One of the great things I find in any gaming community is that there is usually always a great following of people, who love a certain game, and can greatly become impacted by it. One of the first games in which I held great respect for is community, was the Pokémon games Ruby and Sapphire, off of the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. At the time I was 9, me, along with several friends, and people I didn't even know well at the time, had formed a strong bond and connection, simply by all having one thing in common, and that was playing Pokémon.




While many can argue that video games may not be the best platform to form connections and friendships, I find that it is a great avenue to become part of a larger support group and friend group who all have one thing in common, and that is playing games. Over the years, as the gaming community has grown and developed, so did the need to create sub groups for support groups, and other forums began to arise. In todays age, it is in fact extremely common to find support forums on certain games, and even advise on how to play the games, understand the community, and so forth. In fact games like Pokémon Go, the most recent Pokémon phenomenon, that occurred just shy of two years ago, had brought millions of people together all for the sake of catching Pokémon online. Such a thing had never truly occurred on such a scale.