Online Gaming

I read an article in a newspaper this week, referring online gamers as an ‘ever expanding community of gambling addicts’, going on to push the blame squarely on the explosion of poker and casino sites (just a search of “online poker” on Google brings back 8,490,000 results), as well as the recently publicized change in the law to make it easier for people to use register for and use casinos.

What I find interesting is the fact that they consider online gamers to be part of a community. I play a lot of poker online but never considered myself to be part of any sort of community when I’m playing poker, but it has provoked a few thoughts.



What makes a community a community? Initially, I would have thought that sustained contact between individual players would be necessary and even regular interaction between players, but that’s not the case. Most casino internet programs do not provide a chat function as most games, although being played alongside several people, are based on a 1 on 1 game with the dealer – such as roulette, blackjack and others. Poker games however do allow for chat, although this is not always utilized – I’ve sat through 2 hour games where not a single thing was said, but then others where certain people won’t keep quiet, although the latter is certainly rarer. But there is no facility to keep contact with people, such as ‘friends lists’ or anything similar – in fact, the poker room owners would prefer you didn’t socialize – gaining friends playing poker increases the risk of cheating.

So it seems as far as a community goes it appears to be doomed from the outset – lack of communication mediums, and where there is a means, it’s heavily governed and kept to a minimum. However, games such as poker do show some characteristics of a community. After playing the same poker rooms for over 2 years, I’ve noticed a fair few times that I’m playing games against people whose names I recognize, entirely by coincidence. In the same way that in a real life offline community, people may not recognize each other at first but go on to ‘bump into each other’ unexpectedly. Also, in the way that the same people may regularly flock to a particular message board or chat room, Poker room users will often be seen taking part in the same weekly competitions so they may see each other.

On the face of this evidence though, I wouldn’t change my mind – I still don’t consider my online poker playing as playing a part in a community, and definitely not in the casino rooms. There is not enough potential for players to sustain contact and interact in any way other than the predefined game structure.