Blog #14

           We all view video gaming differently. Some people think that it is just for fun or a stress reliever. While others view it as a competition to see who can out do the other person. In the interview CH interviews B on his views of video gaming. CH thinks that video gaming is “software”, while B does not think really anything about it other than games. Then his view changes. He thinks that it is just a game and nothing really to it.  This is the jest of the paper. Everyone has their own opinion of what gaming is. For CH and B, they have their differences about what they thing of the term “gaming”. There are many codes (examples) that the interview uses. The biggest question and focus that is posed throughout this entire interview is what language patterns shows about how people do not listen to each other? CH has her own view about what gaming is and B has his own view. These two aspects will be discussed throughout the rest of the paper.

            The interview starts out a casual interview. CH starts off the interview posing the question and statement, “I wanted to talk a little, you talk about yourself as a hardware expert, you said software novice, although I bullied you into being competent, what software do you know how to use?” B responds with “you know, what everyone else knows how to use, word, frontpage, powerpoint, excell, spreadsheet things.” These two questions are very casual. Then CH continues with “so it's interesting, games aren't really considered software are they?” B responds with “they are –“. Now you can see where the different viewpoints are forming. With these short sentences, the two of them are starting to form their own conclusions without listening to each other. You can really see where the two of them are starting to form their own opinions with this dialogue with what CH has to say “so you know lots of software”. Then with B “yeah, but it's just games (laughing)”. Now back to CH “so what kind of crossover did you find between learning the games and learning the software everyone needs to know?  Obviously it wasn't real hard for you to learn, frontpage” Now to B “I think it's because I had ah, background exposure” Now to CH “what background?” This set of conversation is where the audience can see the friction start to form. This is where CH and B start to have their differences in opinion. You can really see here where CH and b are not listening to each other.

            B starts off with “well like a lot of games, in the beginning, there's menus.  You don't just start playing.  There's menus, you get to customize your decal your spray, clothes, laughing. It's not all playing the game it's a lot of process to prepare for it, there's like box, scripts, you practice it, and you're not playing with other people, you're just like fooling around.” CH comes back with, “OK so all those things - same kinds of processes, same kinds of moves - so navigating menus is something you learned from games that can carry over - anything else?” B responds with, “I think that is the main thing, I can't connect a First person shooter with Microsoft word, that would be a real stretch.” CH then responds with, “I think that is the main thing, I can't connect a First person shooter with Microsoft word, that would be a real stretch.” You see some differences of opinion here but there is more of a conversation aspect here. The two people here are still having differences of opinion. CH is very set on what she has to say in the interview and B is very set on what he has to say as well. These people have differences in opinion. They are answering the others person question in a sense but not to the fullest. CH does not continue to talk about the menus that B poses. They each have their own focus and what they want to say in the interview. It feels like they were set on what they wanted to say from the beginning of the interview.

            To go along with discourse community, the study will be ethnography. Gee describes it as the study of interviewing people. We use ethnography in our everyday life and we don’t even know it. From this interview we can see what language patterns shows about how people do not listen to each other? From what was said in the interview and what was conducted, you can see that the two people did not necessarily get along. They both had their differences on what they view about gaming. The two people would cut each other off when the spoke about their view point of gaming. These are the patterns that people would notice about how people do not listen to each other.