Ever since I could remember, I’ve loved gaming. Not just video gaming, but also board games and various other recreational games. On September 18th 2018, I made my first blog post. This was the Encounter With a Stranger post, it wasn’t particularly exciting nor accomplishing, but it was a step in the right direction. After 12 weeks of posting on my blog, I feel that I’d discovered an interest into content creation in the gaming genre.
The Online Self
Through all my process posts, there is a consistent theme of my bringing up of “The Online Self”. The online self is s persona that one creates or invents when they create content, such as Youtubers like Pewdiepie. The mannerisms and personality help the content creator engage with their audience, creating a coherent and loyal fanbase. I’ve had issues with developing an online persona around the first 3-4 weeks of the course, thinking that it’s awkward to be someone else. This led to the narrative of the blog being slightly dull, and my post introducing the game Overwatch perfectly illustrates a bland persona. There was no greeting to my audience at the introduction, I only focused on the technical analysis of the game, instead of cracking a few jokes, eliciting emotion or making connections to my real life. It was after I read John Suler’s The Online Disinhibition Effect, where I started to realize how I can develop my persona on my platform. Suler mentions seven different effects the online platform has on one’s personality, and the Dissociative Anonymity (Suler, 2004) effect resonated with me the most. Dissociative anonymity is the phenomena such that, a lot of times people interact with stranger on the internet, not knowing their true identity, and this anonymity empowers one to speak their true thoughts (Suler, 2004). This had taught me that I could display an even more “real” personality online, than I would with strangers in real life. From the post Infamous Second Son (PS4), I’ve started to incorporate greetings, and a few weeks later through Puzzles & Dragons (Mobile), I’ve integrated some of my real-life events like talking about my midterms. It is evident through my posts, that I was growing as a content creator, taking baby steps to engage with my audience.
The Design
At around week 10 of developing my blog, I started being more mindful on my Google Analytics, reflecting upon what the data tells me about my audience. According to my analytics by Monster Insights – a widget that I downloaded as an alternative to Google – there was a 62.96% bounce rate on my site. This means that around 63% of the sessions, the viewer leaves the site without going further than the homepage. My course of action against that was to drastically change the design of my webpage. The initial design of the banner, as I’ve been told by my peers, had too busy of a background which took the attention away from the navigation menu, which was integrated within the banner. This might have caused the user experience to lack in affordance. Affordance, according to Victor Kaptelinin in The Encyclopedia of Human Interaction, is design based on human intuitiveness (Kaptelinin, 2013). In order to create a more intuitive user experience, I changed the theme of my blog into having the banner on the left side of the page, taking up about 30% of the homepage. I feel that this puts more focus on the navigation menu, which helps the user explore my blog posts in a more robust manner. Furthermore, Mauve Page, a guest speaker from week 5 had given a presentation on web design and user experience. According to Page, contrast in the color and general content is critical in creating a point of focus for the audience (Page, 2018). This is also reflected on the change of banner on my blog, I chose a mostly white background for the banner, to create a contrast with the dark font of the navigation menu. This helps create a focal point for my audience, and ultimately develop an affordance in the navigation of my blog.
Final Thoughts
Over the course of the 12 weeks of this course, I feel that how my blog has evolved in terms of the Online Self and the Design and what I’ve learnt in this process is a skill that I will continue to explore. Blogging every week about gaming has been an eye-opening experience, as this is my first time creating content and a presence online. I’d like to continue this journey, expanding it to streaming games, creating Youtube commentaries or even podcasts. Developing an online persona has taught me how to engage with my audience, to create a coherent fan base.
Works Cited
- Soegaard, Mads & Friis Dam, Rikke. (2013). The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed..
- Suler, J. (2002). The basic psychological features of cyberspace. In The Psychology of Cyberspace, www.rider.edu/suler/psycyber/basicfeat.html (article orig. pub. 1996)
- Page, M. (2018). Some Considerations On Web Design And Type On Screens