Week 9’s materials and activities were all about communities of practice and presenting our second Rapid Ideation project – which I described in my blog for week 8, as I got my weeks muddled up! As the presentation has already been covered, I’ll just concentrate on communities of practice.
Communities of practice are the groups, movements and professional bodies that practitioners belong to and engage with. They have many functions and benefits for being apart of that are important to the professional individual’s personal development, which include; peer support, networking, creativity and inspiration.
However, being part of a community does not entitle you to all of the above, it is something that requires a proactive helpful approach and rewards considered engagement.
“Start networking by thinking of all the ways you can be helpful and start giving. You’re building your Love Bank account. After some robust giving, you can start to ask for help, advice, brainstorming et cetera.”
(Horowitz and Sciarra Poynter 2012)
A good example of this, would be the Stack Overflow community, which is a public platform for coders “to learn, share their knowledge, collaborate, and build their careers.”
The community is all about “getting answers” and focus on problems that its users have faced. Questions are expected to go into detail and explain what you have tried and exactly what the intended goal is and exactly what you are trying to do.
This format allows for specific questions to be shared and answered – where in a library of details answers can be built for every programming question. The system encourages helpful and concise answers by rewarding the most knowledgeable and helpful contributors with achievements and moderating privileges – which includes being able to edit other’s answers.
Another example is the Software Cornwall movement, which is a tech community driven network that has been established to help connect, promote and grow local tech companies. The community organises meetups and events (such as Tech Jams) with the aim of supporting its members to collaborate and learn together. It is especially important for (local) students, as it enables them to get advice and support from local businesses, as well as develop and build their career options through networking.
Looking further afield I found some interesting articles from MCV Magazine, which describes Ubisofts’s shift to a community focus at the Gamescom consumer show in 2018. In the article Ubisoft’s EMEA exectutive Director Alain Corre explains the company’s shift towards involving it’s gaming communities early on in the development cycle.
He explained that “.. we want is our fans to be able to test, and for us to get their feedback, so that we can learn what they think, what they wish, so that we can improve our games in the future..”
By getting feedback very early on in the process, Ubisoft believe that they were able to adapt and improve their games more substantially before launch – adding in key features, which they would not be able to do with the traditional form of early access.
This approach is mutually beneficial, as Ubisoft get valuable early community feedback and investment, whereas it’s gaming communities get rewarded with exclusive content and to shape the direction of their favourite franchises. An example of this in action would be Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which had more RPG features and AI improvements and more regular events and content drops.
With this community-based approach, Ubisoft are ensuring that its games communities are satisfied and their games are successful. This is something I believe a lot of Indie developers have done for a long time and is key to their success.
Finally, week 9’s activity involved a bit of social anthropology…
Social anthropology is defined by discoveranthropology.org.uk as;
“Social anthropologists conduct their research in many ways, but the method most characteristic of the discipline is that of fieldwork based on ‘participant observation’. This usually means spending a long period (a year or more) living as closely as possible with the community being studied; learning the language if necessary; sharing the activities of daily life; observing and participating in the texture of social interactions; and identifying underlying patterns. Through analysing this experience and exchanging ideas with members of the community, the anthropologist aims to gain a deep understanding of how the society works, including its inherent tensions and contradictions. Social anthropologists usually report their research in the form of ‘ethnographies’, which are detailed descriptions of the society in question.”
To complete the task I needed to;
- Identify a community of practitioners that aligns with your interests and aspirations for the future.
- Create an ethnography report that is based on ‘participation observation.’
The report should include observations about:
- The tone and language used by members of the community.
- Activities and behaviours such as social gatherings and events.
- The types and modes of interaction.
- Patterns and rules of the community.
The community I have chosen to investigate is the Game Development on Facebook ( Game Development | Facebook ), which is a community of 50,000 and is for game developers to show and discuss the progress of their games, get feedback and ask questions about game design and development.
Tone and Language used by Members of the group
The tone and language of the community varies between polite and helpful – incorporating useful individualised feedback to non-helpful sarcastic comments to negative non-constrictive feedback – which I believe discourages newcomers and beginners from commenting.
Activities and Behaviours – Social Gatherings and Events
The community hosts a variety of regular events from; webinars, online panels and game release launches, as well as encouraging its members to publish dev-logs and articles.
Types of Interaction
Other than the webinars, the main modes of interaction within the community is through discussion posts, where members post; articles, dev-logs, promotional videos as well as ask for technical help. There is also Mentorship programme, where members are encouraged to offer support to other members – as long as they have some skills and experiences to offer.
Patterns and Rules of the Community
Like most Facebook groups, the Game Development community has a list of rules enforced by it’s community administrators. These rules cover a variety things including; spamming, outright advertising, posting for open positions – although networking and exchanging contact information is encouraged and finally respect – users are expected to use appropriate language and tone.
Looking towards communities of practitioners that align with my own interests and aspirations – it’s something that I’ll need to develop and focus on going forward, hopefully with my final project. Although I’m a member of a few online game development groups and forums, I’m not an active contributor due to time constraints and (as of yet) lack of any meaningful content to add.
References:
Super User (2015). Social and Cultural Anthropology. [online] Discoveranthropology.org.uk. Available at: https://www.discoveranthropology.org.uk/about-anthropology/what-is-anthropology/social-and-cultural-anthropology.html. [Accessed 9 Dec. 2020].
Parker, A. (2020). Communities of Practice. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/872/pages/week-9-researching-communities-of-practice?module_item_id=46499 [Accessed 7 Dec. 2020].
MCV/DEVELOP. (2018). Making it for them: How Ubisoft is tailoring everything from Assassin’s Creed to BG&E2 to fans’ desires before they’re even playable. [online] Available at: https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/making-it-for-them-how-ubisoft-is-tailoring-everything-from-assassins-creed-to-bge2-to-fans-desires-before-theyre-even-playable/. [Accessed 7 Dec. 2020].
MCV/DEVELOP. (2019). New series of Ubisoft Experience fan events kicks off in the UK next month. [online] Available at: https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/new-series-of-ubisoft-experience-fan-events-will-kick-off-in-the-uk-next-month/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2020].
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