Dissection of Subculture

Each person is Different... They are likely to like what is familiar to their origin, national, or local infuences as well as their Subculture Influences... of course the most comfortable things would be what was introduced in their upbringing and social activities.now that we have that settled lets discuss what kind of addiction playing Board Games, Video Games, Card Games, and just games in general are... it mostly feeds Escapism which allows the person to immerse them self in a nonexistent world. This is usually in the form of Movies, Books, and Games. The next chemical it feeds is Ego...

Games I feel were brought into the world hundreds of years ago for the reason of furthering social interaction among humans. It would fall under the category of Entertainment.

To feed the Escapism a Designer would have to make an elaborate world that has plenty of detail for the person to indulge in.

Ego is close to personalizing... The feeling of making something is yours and unique to you... I feel gaming has a lack of this involved because alot of product makers do not understand that this is an important part to the escapism.

When someone Originally joins a game they like to feel apart of a group even if its a made up one

The best game of the Year 01 which sold 9.5 million copies starcraft used this to their avantage.
A way people can feel ownership over something is the Color Scheme, A Choice of a Faction, Customization, and how unique their appearance is.

This means it is effected by Fashion and Options. Being able to reminding them they are apart of these things in the real world is just as important as they are in the game world.

For example if they see a Keychain, bag, pencil, anything they use on a daily basis they will be reminded that they are apart of those things in the game world and it will bring further satisfaction of being a fan of that game. However it seems that most companies neglect this and make the game itself better but lack in other products...

Most subcultures have enough product to fill a store like the Emo/Gothic community has Hot Topic to feul their fandom of subculture but the Game community has not nearly as much if any at all and the Otaku community only is getting into Keychains and Stuffed animals... but still not big on the personalize products it seems...

The most neglected things I feel are Deck Cases and Messenger Bags... these are both seen all the time to transport all sorts of games and devices which are symbols of an Otaku or Gamer.

Board Games... Negative Meaning

It seems the more I try to figure out my own subculture community it seems that those in the subculture community see me the observer as some sort of alien threat. When I walk into the game stores I slowly notice that there are people who are so speciallized in their hobbys that they forget about those outside of it. It seems so strange at first because I was always apart of the hobby scene back in hawaii, however trying to join new people in their activities almost seems scary because its like a small cult in a way.

People in the community love some of the ideas if they are open to positive change, but some people resented it with hate unless it purely served a utilitarian role. Utilitarian meaning a direct Use.

A few ideas i have been trying to figure out is a way to transport Cards, Miniatures, Counters, and Dice in a more fashionable sense... also make catagories for different kinds of comics. The sizes of American comics seem to be too large for the average person to store... even japanese manga takes up loads of space... I learned that people think of comics as just super hero things and that really the definition for comic is what the book world calls a Visual Book or an Illustration which leads the person seeing it to think it is a more professional thing than a comic... but a comic is the same thing except called something else...

The social aspect is directly connected to the design of the game... and after discovering this... i learned that only very few games are social... Magic The Gathering, Clix, and Warmachine franchises are barely social... however the approach of Privateet Press makers of Warmachine keeps prices high while making the game easy to expand and easy to learn. The games Privateeer Press makes are easy to dive in and dive out from 30 minutes-1 hour long games. About the time in a movie which is also a form of Escapism... all media is Escapism, but the amount in hobby games has been overbearing in the past 20 years. I hope that more companies like Privateer Press invade the hobby industry....

The main way to keep things good with a game socially is to make it so you still have a life outside of it. Reason why most videogames are ideal for this except for the existence of the MMORPG...

A long While

Its been awhile since I was last able to have a chance to post. My parents came over to California to see how I was doing, and found out that I was unahappy with how things were going. We talked about the situation and conflicting views between my brother and I on what we both wanted out of this experience...

It seemed my brothers point of view wanted to me to approach things of the fine artist... while my own goals were quite different. To draw better is a life long thing approaching thing such as thick and thin lines... shadow shapes... the body... coloring, and many other components to a good drawing. These are all very good to learn but I think the thing that keeps me from spending night and day on this is trying to accomplish my own selfish goal of a shop. So, I always worked on the projects my brother gave me, but I always had wondered in the back of my mind how I was going to be able to make my shop...

Retail has been something I was interested in from when I first saw shops around my local area... however I knew that something about the every day customers made shops some sort of hang out as well... it wasnt until starbucks came around that it was normal to loiter because of their business strategy... I have had many experiences which told me a great deal about retail and its both good and bad... I have come to learn everything has its own Yin and Yang effect no matter what...

The first time I worked retail at Hilo Hatties it showed me what real retail was with the stock room, registers, and treating customers as herds of cow that we had to get out as soon as possible, but with helping them...

I went into Toys and Joys thinking it was similar, but this was catering to a niche crowd of customers that had similar interests that I had. This gave me a great I opener into seeing how people are very different in their indepthness of their hobbies and how it varies and effects their lives. People who were obsessed with games ended at a path of only gaming, and those who were interested in anime continued to watch the films all the time when they got home without understanding anything of the social drawbacks... this made me feel very uneasy, because unlike my brother I am very social and wish to create a sense of community.

I saw this lacking in multiple areas of my interests and I was thinking that this is probably the key reason these interests are not found out by many people such as Card Games, Video Games, Board Games, Japanese Animation... alot of these communities have labels and names but alot of them get so sucked into the media that they forget whom they are and what the rest of the world is about... they dont even have much in depth things to show that they socially belong to their hobbies they are so loyal too. From a design standpoint that means the products that are made are only to continues the fad or local top ranking show or game.... I dont really see any types of hair styles, clothes, or accesseries which help any of the subculture like other subcultures do... I think this is the main reason Otaku and Board Game Geeks are not taken seriously even if they kind of have a subculture... if you can even call it that without the products to support it...

An example would be to Face Emo culture which is fairly new and Otaku culture which is old...
The emo culture has many accessories and clothes and bags that are from the Gothic culture which has alot of products to show they are into, yet if you ever were to see an Otaku you would only expect to see someone with no fashion sense and have nothing but a portable game system and no other real identifiers... in japan the main identifier would be the ring tones on the system or you would need to see an Otakus bedroom to really know they are what they say...

I always wanted to help my community in the Anime/Manga community as well as the Board Game Community... however I am noticing that there are parts that bond well and parts that dont bond well when trying to help two communities at the same time... the anime community only takes from the Board and Card Game communities titles such as Magic The Gathering, Warmachine, and maybe a stretch id say Warhammer 40k.

I have begun trying to see the patterns of both types of shops which specirfically cater to these two communities. The Anime Manga community seems to have so many titles that alot of crap is what stays around... and there isnt really a place to sociallize about the anime... let alone figure out other things outside of anime. What im trying to get at is that the downfall happens to be that all the media is on a TV and thats the same problem as only being a fan of a TV show... somehow there has to be products and stores which make fans of anime go and do other things but have products that still remind them of the shows they use for escapism that they so love.

The board game community has alot of smart people but thats the problem is the games are designed for smart people. Smart maybe the wrong thing to use... maybe people how enjoy thinking alot with certain activities and board games can get as complex or simple as anyone might wish it to be... i also noticed that these games are mostly used as advertising tools for a prexisting franchise to just make it more scene and interactive... and when the fad dies it dies. The only ones that stick around are the social games from hundreds of years ago or original card games which the card game it self is the franchise.... The summarrized version would be its the flaw in the design of the product which leads this hobby to have a dead end with sociallizing because very few people like to play things for the sake of only over thinking a scenario...

I am talking with m y brother to see if he can take me to Anime and Hobby stores around California so I can see how they work and I hope we can talk together about this because when I chat about the topic it seems the longer we think about it together it gets easier to invision all the good and bad and make up some suggestions to fix some of these problems... maybe when I finally am able to understand how these sub cultures and communities function... I will feel more comfortable with spending alot of my lifes cash which I saved on my anime/hobby shop.