Hey CSn, wanna help out?

[UncleTestes]

I took a college English course for my senior year, and I have a 3-part essay assignment I'd like the good people of Critsandvich to help out with, if they would be so kind. I have a copy of the prompt but I possess no scanner, so as soon as I can I'll link it to this post so you can understand it better if you want, but here's some important bits of the prompt outlining the assignment and how you can help:

Lazy readers may skip to the red text.

An Analytical Report
"People tend to organize themselves into communities as a way to establish their own identities, to define those around them, and to understand the world." The community I've chosen is the Critsandvich Network. "In this project, you will turn your focus outside of yourself and begin to consider others' histories and experiences. In order to do this, you will explore, analyze, and profile a specific community" (this is you guys) "and convey to your reader the significance of that community through the lens of a focused theme or topic. ...you should consider education as the focused theme."
"Your field research may lead you to write about a specific person, place, or a group of people as representative of the culture/subculture/theme you are analyzing."
"For the purposes of this assignment, it will be helpful to think about communities as groups of individuals who are physically, digitally, or temporally bounded by a commonality."

Here are the 3 parts:

1) Personal Interview: Conduct an interview with at least one member of the community to gain more information about the goals, assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs of the community, in general and related to the specific focus of the project. This interview might also give you some insight into the rules that govern behavior within the group, how membership works, as well as how power and authority get expressed within the community. (membership and authority will be easy)

2) Field Research: Basically I have to conduct surveys and polls. I'll post more on this later probably.

3) Artifact Analysis: The hard part. Basically pick something representative of the community. I really don't know what to do for this, since we don't really have objects. Suggestions on this would be much appreciated.

How you can help me:
Post a reply describing your view of gaming communities; CritSandvich in particular. Tell about the part it plays in your life, the benefits of being in it, yadda yadda yadda. Please don't leave anything out. Some feedback from at least one admin (a Pinkmin if at all possible. Not that the other admins are any less cool, but I know them and hang out with them the most is all. ...actually a Redmin would help for the "how power and authority get expressed" part) would be fantastic.

You would be helping me out a lot, guys. Many thanks,

Uncle Testes.

[Ron Swansons Stache]

I'll be the first to jump in here, if I don't give enough info or the right info you were looking for don't hesitate to reply here and I can add some more.

Post a reply describing your view of gaming communities; CritSandvich in particular.

I joined CritSandvich, the only real gaming community I've been a part of, seeking out some camaraderie and regularity when it came to TF2. I was almost fed up with being connected with random strangers who didn't play well together, socialize, or populate a server together. It's nice to be able to pop into the server, play a strong and somewhat competitive game (for a pub) while also joking around with familiars and getting to know them. I just recently joined this forum, so maybe I am not the best to ask about this, but a forum only enhances this in my mind. It is a better connection with each other beyond just the gaming aspect (as I've noticed there is not much off topic discussion while in game).

Tell about the part it plays in your life,

To be honest, I have noticed a huge spike in playtime while being a part of the community compared to just joining random servers. I'm more intrigued in joining a game and shooting the breeze than I was previously. I also know if there are people on CSN I can blow off some steam while again enjoying a "competitive" game with people who generally know the game well. It's a good outlet for "IRL" if only for a few hours. Furthermore, sometimes I'll check to see who's on and decide impulsively to play just because, something I would never do previously.

Anyway, I realize this is short but I'd be happy to expand upon this if you have any questions or have a little more direction for me to go! Let me know and good luck!

[Beartato]

I've done the gaming and internet community things for a large portion of my life; I've gamed since I got my Sega Genesis at 5 and I've posted on forums or otherwise participated in communities since I first made my Neopets account at 10.

I can't give you a single reason for gaming; it's served different purposes in my life. I've generally been a rather competitive person and gaming is a pretty good way to satisfy that. I could play a game of baseball by myself or enter some challenging fantasy world to satiate that need to compete when organizing some sort of sport or game outside wasn't viable. I've also always taken an interest in engineering processes, which explains why I played so many SimWhatever games by Maxis growing up. I could run my own farm or tower or nature park through my computer and I could quickly test my different ideas on how to make the best whatever. I've also gamed as an escape. Sometimes I just needed something mindless that offered instant gratification to take the edge off of a four hour homework session. It got the better of me last year, where I actually shut down and did almost nothing besides game. It was a pretty dark time for me and I can say that in my experience, gaming through depression is only marginally better than becoming addicted to some other vice.

I've mostly been a member of online communities for the social aspect. As I've pretty much said, I've practically grown up with the internet. I've always felt comfortable and had fun interacting online because I felt "in" and could easily just find a new place if I didn't like how things were going in one place. There's also an opportunity to meet people who are both very similar to you and very different than you; I feel more so than you can get offline. In the end, I just found it easier and more interesting to interact with people online.

As far as going for trial admin, I did it because I wanted to help expand the community. I felt like the servers needed to be better tended to and that I was a reasonable person to do it. The servers are a lot more fun to come onto when you know that chances are good at least one person you've talked with in the past will be on. Like 'Stache said, it's a good mix of skill play (for a pub) and goof offery.

As for why I chose CSn, it'd have to be a combo of the rules and regulars. I like the language restrictions we have because it tends to keep the abrasive jerks off the server that often thrive on Valve pubs. And over the ~1.5 years I've been here, I've made quite a few friends who are a ton of fun to play with. A game like TF2 is no fun without that aspect. I mean, it's really hard to experience things like MVM without having some good friends to do it like I've done thanks to CSn.

[UncleTestes]

Hey, great stuff so far. Thanks for the time you put into this. Ron, no complaints but I was looking a little more for how the community has impacted your life, and/or you as a person. Otherwise great replies from both of you, thanks.

[Rosey]

I started playing on CSN back in 2010-ish.
I could recognize a few names from back then, mainly Thret and Failhorse since their names had the >>nubz<<< text or something
I stayed on CSN because of its higher basic skill level while still being a pub.
I officially joined CSN in nov 2012 because my old community died.

I applied for admin cause I wanted to be able to do something whenever there wasn't any admin around. lurkers gotta lurk

[Sanic-X]

I'm a newbie to both TF2 and CSn, but I'll try my best to help you out.

I believe that gaming communities are a great way for fans to come together and talk about the games they love in a safe environment while making friends. The nice thing about game community friends is that you can not only talk to each other, but play with then in the games, adding another dimension to your friendship. I'm no stranger when it comes to the internet and video games, but I'm very new to TF2 and CSn. In my short time here, I've made some friends and improved my game(but only slightly- I still suck). Being in a community with regular servers has made me a lot more comfortable when playing. Just seeing names I recognize on the scoreboard makes me feel more at home. Being around familiar faces makes me more comfortable in expressing my opinions, especially if they don't exactly pertain to the game at hand. I feel being in a community really gets you more involved with the game itself. Having friendly competition from the regulars in the servers pushes me to improve, and I've found myself checking the Wiki for strategies and game mechanics. Getting more into the game also (for me) meant looking at fanart and reading fanfiction, and Tumblr has been a great platform for that. Since my introduction to CSn, I too have noticed an increase in my playtime in TF2. Having a dedicated server and familiar players has motivated me to play more.

[Balubish]

I've made some friends and improved my game(but only slightly- I still suck)

You will get better over time, learn tips and tricks on the road. So no worries man. I learned all that I know of TF2 in the slayboxes. Hopfully you will be in when they do game commentary, makes it very competitve and fun.

hmm we should have a admin vs community match soon...

[WET BUTT DISEASE]

Post a reply describing your view of gaming communities; CritSandvich in particular.

most gaming communities are terrible groups of people that play dumb anime games that usually aren't worth your time full of forum posts with 300 pages of mental illness that if you read them you too will become filled with mental illness.

however, with a game like tf2 (compared to DOTA or some dumb anime MMORPG), stuff like the metagame and theorycrafting takes an aside to active communication while playing. if you actually develop care for the group of people you are playing with and they aren't terrible people all the time and are typically funny and interesting, you'll stick with the community

i've played since release and was part of two/three major communities for a long while - 2fort2furious (when team roomba was still together - this was peak tf2 in my opinion), lost continents (which is a shadow of its former population), and knifeback mountain (EU version of lost continents, also where those posters in cp_steel came from)

2fort2furious was the "take it easy" server for the longest time where it was encouraged to drink, chill, and just tell stories and be a normal person. "terrible map tuesdays" was the best reason to play on the server (FLOOR_MASTER would take 10-15 random maps from gamebanana and force everyone to play them sight unseen while everyone got shitfaced), one of the first karaoke mods, semi-active forums, and a generally chill group of people. however, this was mostly ruined once the server became widely popular due to youtube and the original admin group lost interest. i was eventually banned from the forums for posting pictures of black authors in the "post your pic" thread and telling a person who said that they were having trouble meeting people in college to stop playing and get the fuck out. it finally died 100% about 2-3 months ago. it was a solid community for a long while, but vets vs newbies became a big issue along with moderation styles.

LCs was and still is a bastion for high-level play that was constantly packed in early-mid tf2 life. however, the original person that set up the servers disappeared and in turn caused the whitelist to become fucked up, so they stagnated with shitty map rotation and a lack of good events for a long while. it's still a fun group to play with when i want to feel tested and play highlander medic again, but it lost a lot of its flavor simply due to time and lack of admin. same thing with knifeback mountain. on the flipside, if i want to play with solid comp players, i go here.

now lets compare it with critsandvich. for me, tf2 has become a pick up and play game rather than an all day session - i don't have all day to read through some terrible reddit thread from 2 years ago to find a good gaming community to play with, so i ended up playing on 24/7 servers for a long while because i hate myself and i like harvesting pubbie tears. i remember reading about CSN off and on and finally started playing. more often than not, i play when i actually feel like putting effort into my gameplay - not a ton, but enough so that i feel somewhat challenged. most of the mods here i've met aren't completely terrible people and occasional join in on a terrible gimmick like dropping 20+ pallet of crates for hilarity. sure, that kind of thing is silly and annoying, but it's also funny and breaks up the monotony of playing 10gb of pure murder.

i mean, if i had to say anything about CSN, it'd be to come up with a cool gimmick - seriously i would give someone money to run "terrible map" nights because that was peak tf2 for me and brought out magical maps like arena_Biebertower and whoaaaaaaaaa. but people care more about a community like in tf2 when people actually act like people, and not like some random person behind a hat - which is why i loved having everyone laugh when i was horribly shitfaced and making drunk ribs while telling stories. at the end of the day people want to have fun with a community and feel better when familiar faces show up.

tl;dr: have a fun gimmick like free traffic cones or an arby's sandwich, make content and opportunities but let the community run/make shit too since that's who it's for, keep the community from fracturing whenever possible (vets/scrubs), and just enjoy your time with it

edit: this. this is basically peak tf2 for me (also cameo of me using a pistol script {back when you had to click off each shot} and dying at the end):

[UncleTestes]

Really great responses, all of you. Thanks a lot for putting time into them.

Also, thanks to Failhorse for agreeing to the interview, and apologies for interrupting his Chivalry session.

When I've finished the essay, I'll post it so you guys can read it if you want.