I figured I would use this final practicum post to kind of summarize some of the experiences I had on Kongregate. Over the course of the semester, I participated in various parts of the Kongregate forums, as well as some attempts to interact with the Kongregate chat rooms. On the forums, I posted just under 300 posts over the course of the semester (20-25 a week). I also spent time on the chat rooms, although I had almost no success in making networks with the chat rooms.
On the forums, it took a solid month of posts before I was acknowledged with any amount of seriousness. The Kongregate community niches, at least the few that I participated in, seemed to be resistant to new comers. But, through persistence, I was able to carve out my spot and my answers began to fit in the persona that the other users came to expect. This is the first time I spend a continued amount of time on one forum (usually a bounce around 5-8 different ones without ever being a regular contributor). I hadn't expected to have to put in so much time to gain acceptance into the community.
I would imagine part of the community's hesitance comes from two main reasons. First, the community as a whole seems to be pretty young, probably 13-17 for the most part. I would imagine that the people who were posting in 'Serious Discussion' where I spent most of my time would be hesitant to take somebody who had a grand total of zero posts before I started this project seriously right away. Second, many people on the forums seem to, at the very least, try to troll. There are a ridiculous amount of troll alts on this site among the forums, I would imagine when people saw me roll in, that they thought I was just another troll alt.
In short, I was only really able to make a real connection with one other person on the forums. Generally when posting I tried to be confrontational which didn't foster many friendly connections among the other members. But, it was interesting to see some of the theories that Danny discussed in lecture play out within the Kongregate community.
It seems kind of crazy that there can be a group of people so tight-knit that they wouldn't accept you on a forum for online games. I wonder if they would have been more receptive if you had posted fewer confrontational things and contributed to the forums in a different way. Now that you are finally acknowledge in the forum, do you think you would be likely to continue posting even though this project is over?
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