FIN.

I realised a few days after making this blog and just passed the point where I could change my mind, that this subject might not have been the best idea, mainly because I was never going to be able to define or "finish" my view as well as I would like. I don't think that it is possible to define culture in one box. It doesn't live in a box it lives in everything that we do and make and as I do firmly believe that Games are a genuine culture I was not going to be able to define that either. Originally I want to look at Culture, then at games and their culture and then at how culture was represented in games. The last part of this seemed to get lost amongst the culture and looking back at my introduction post I don't think I have succeeded in what I wanted to do, however I think that this is more to do with how little I considered the subject Game Culture before I started, once I had begun my research I realised that it wasn't the best way to handle this subject. So in the beginning of this blog I had great difficulty finding anything to say, I decided to begin at the bottom with culture in what I believe is it's simplest form, a dictionary definition. A controlled, set view of what culture is. It became clear very soon after that culture isn't something that can be understood through a definition in a dictionary, it is far more complex than that and Cultures themselves are difficult to study and document without risking losing an important part of what those cultures are or miss-representation of a group of people. Through secondary media we can interpret others lives however we like and surely the only people who can truly say what a culture is about are the people deep within it, or everyone involved in it.
Of course that doesn't make it easier. As I learnt through my own research you can't just ask a gamer if game culture exists and leave it at that, there are so many different types of gamers and levels of connections with the culture and some don't even considered it to be a culture. So with the increasing size of the gaming world the amount of different opinions would be astounding. Too much to try and filter out or attempt to define, but this didn't help with the progress of my work because if I couldn't define game culture at all how could I prove/present it's existence, would it all come down to being a matter of opinion. So I found it difficult to lead my research in a certain way instead I felt that I was just letting it take me wherever it might go. I feel that I have a better understanding of culture and how to look at it and I have found what I have seen to be very interesting but at the same time quite frustrating, Game culture is a large subject, too much area to cover in a blog like this within the time given.
This quote from one of my posts - "Attitudes are elusive. Try to define them and you lose their essense, their special colour and tone. They have to be apprehended in their concrete and living formulation." - Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind 1830-1870, New Haven: Yale University Press 1957, p xv. - to me says that by trying to define something as huge as culture you are attempting to control it and lose so much of what it truly is in its most natural form. So the act of studying culture and applying games to those definitions feels like going backwards and as culture is something that changes and develops as we do it seems like you could keep writing about it forever and never come to an end.
So for a more accurate study it requires you to experience, in this case, the world of gaming, but there is so much to see and hear, so many different people involved and so many ways to interact with gaming culture. I think that this course is also a part of that culture and so to a certain extent my own view would be bias, or at least could be classed so purely because I am within the culture that I am studying in many ways. I play, study, love and design games and highly approve of their existence and the culture surrounding them, I think that it is very clear and easy to see that Game Culture is just as valid as a culture as things like film, television and even our world cultures. Reading through this website http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/culture/ about defining culture and propagating culture it seems even more clear that culture is all over the place. There are so many different groups of people all with many of their own sub-cultures, with there being so much of it I have found it difficult to have structure to my blog and I feel like I have explored a tiny drop from the massive ocean of Game Culture.
I don't think that I have a final conclusion to come to as there is much more about culture and game culture to learn and I do intend to keep following this, as game culture continues to expand as develop as I believe it will I hope to also develop my understanding and knowledge of the culture, even if this means that I can never find a definitive conclusion to the subject.