Digital games, digital players: Counter-hegemony practices and social interaction

The aim of this research is analyzing and revealing if digital games provide a novel space of resistance and counter-hegemony for the new generation. Moreover it is aimed to reveal whether digital games encourage the young people organizing, developing their own cultural practices and creating their own space of resistance and counter-hegemony; rather than make them passive individuals. It is also examined that if the young people find any opportunity to show a certain political stance through MMORPGs or whether they make them apolitical/politicized as passive individuals. In the method part of the research the mixed research model which utilizes qualitative and quantative techniques together was used. In this direction respectively; the examples which the players reflect the game world to the real world were examined; an interview with the Digital Games Federation was done; the game groups were followed and observed through social media; MMORPG LAN tournament was followed as an observer; an çevrimiçi survey was conducted with 493 players and finally deep interviews were done with progamers who are as team leaders. A descriptive factor analysis was applied to reveal the relation between the interaction among the game community members and offline activism and then it has been to tackle a new scale development. Deep interviews were done with 15 players who are/were guild/team leaders. The answers of the participants were categorized in the frame of the dimensions which were composed in the context of hypothesis of quantative technique. The results of the method techniques showed that MMORPGs promote the players to develope their own cultural practices (identification with the group), to coexist on the basis of the rules within game groups (identification with the game), to organize among themselves (social interaction), to reveal players's competence of showing critical, intellectual, strategic attitude and behavior, to show their social, cultural and political standings (interaction between game and real world), to let them as active individuals join the movements (offline activism) which direct them to create counter-hegemony and resistance through the virtual game communities. The fact that should be considered at this point, unless there is an intervention to their own public sphere, MMORPG players don't do any activity against the hegemony. Their passive stance in this context can be evaluated as a weakining factor for resistance and counter-hegemony.