The New 'Fire Side Chat'

Contrary to popular belief today's video game revolution hasn't been all bad.

A lot of people will talk about violence and link it to violent video games. They'll talk about college dropouts siting their addiction to games as the cause of their downfall. They even talk about the influence of video games eroding at conventional social interaction.

What they don't talk a lot about is how informed today's video gamers (mostly youth and middle aged men of moderate income) are about politics and culture.

I routinely play 2 different MMO's (Massively Multiplayer Online games). They are and EVE Online and World of Warcraft.

Now, looking at these two games two very different groups of people play them.

WoW is largely Americans (on the US servers I play on) while on EVE its largely European.

The main topics of discussion in Barrens, Ironforge and Ogrimmar general chats (popular locations in WoW) are:

1. Chuck Norris
2. Politics
3. Current Events
   

The main topics of discussion in EVE in Jita, Rens and Oursulaert local chat are:

1. EVE mechanics
2. Politics
3. Current Events
   

You can't watch chat in either game for more then a few minutes without seeing a discussion (often heated) on politics. If you want to know what Hillary Clinton said in Ohio at a rally, just ask in Barrens general chat - odds are someone who attended is online and chatting about it. If you want to know what Putin said in his weekly address to Russia, jump over to Jita and ask.

In EVE it's overtly obvious to me how upset many foreigners have become with the US of recent years. Icelanders, English, Italians, Germans, Russians all venting their frustration at the US foreign policies. Meanwhile, in WoW you hear people amazed at what their own country, especially their media, thinks of their intelligence.

You hear the spin lines, you hear the blog quotes, the direct quotes, and the inevitable opinions.

Mostly, especially in recent years though, you can get more information, faster, more accurately on just about any recent event in game. And, better, I can get it from a real person's perspective, not just some suit on the news telling me what his editor decided they want me to hear.

Certainly there is some spam - there's a lot of it really - but both games have very functional 'ignore' commands. Both games have 24-hour political discussion chat channels.

The fact of the matter is that despite the video game crowd has been largely 'written off' as non-significant, this singular group has more knowledge on current events and politics then the average American easily.

So, say what you will about video gamers, but many (not all) you will find to be more informed then you expected - because they are talking about the issues every night.