The Experimental Social Gaming Experience

Video Games have long been perceived as being a solitary activity. Something that actually couldn’t be further from the truth. From the days of people clustering around arcade cabinets, evolving into holding LAN parties and morphing into the prevalence of Twitch and streaming today; as much as people play video games alone, it’s also always been an inherently social experience.

As the industry continues to exponentially grow, the concept of experiencing video games socially has grown and become more experimental and certain individuals have created strange social experiences where people participate en masse, being one small input amongst dozens, hundreds or sometimes even thousands.

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The Uzuki-Chan Drama – Twitter imposing their morals on a foreign culture

These past couple of weeks, I’ve seen Hana Uzaki, the titular character from Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! showing up on my Twitter timeline a lot. Weirdly tough, her viral popularity isn’t one of people excited about her or of her becoming a new meme template. Rather, there is this wave of sentiment amongst people to try and “fix” her.

It’s a weird collective take that enough of the internet has globed onto that it’s become a talking point. And all I can think when I encounter is it: “Is this the first time these people have seen an anime character?”.

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Will Pokemon ever bring back Mega Evolution?

I don’t know if it’s because I ended up blocking a dozen or so people on Twitter, but it feel like, since the release of Isle of Armor, the heat on the Pokemon franchise has cooled off a little. Those #bringbackthenationaldex people are still there, but I feel like they’re just brainlessly parroting themselves at this point rather than actually thinking they’re getting somewhere with their comment spam.

Rather than just being laser focused on that one issue with the mainline Pokemon games, I’ve started to see the criticism broaden out into a more “normal” series of complaints. In which everyone wants their pet demand fulfilled. One of the most common, and one I can’t disagree with being the return of Mega Evolution.

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