Gaming communities are basically groups of individuals who are working for a specific goal or are supporting other individuals who share the same passion for a video or an online game. Today, games such as FPS's and MMPORGS's and other RTS or real-time strategy games are the ones that are able to develop larger online communities because of faster computers that are capable to support a lot more options for more players.
These players make use of the collective power to influence others by setting examples for a particular games or by promoting certain views or perspectives, playing strategies or techniques, or a certain set of rules in the online gaming scene. You would sometimes see tags on the beginning or on the end of the names of players to show that they belong to a certain community or to signify that they are a member of a particular gaming group. Such tags could also signify that that particular player follows that community's code of conduct, for example, wanting to promote fair play in the gaming world. Tags also generally represent the smaller communities, as the larger communities typically have sub-groups like clans.
A lot of gaming communities exist throughout the online world. These gaming communities could vary from just a couple of friends who simply want to play together to the hundreds or thousands of gamers like MLG.
Some gaming communities are entirely online while there are others that organize frequent and regular meetings of their members that are typically through the form of LANs. Gaming communities could be joined by individuals due to the shared interest of players on a particular game and there are others who just enjoy the idea of belonging to a community with all the social interaction. An example would be those gaming communities that have forums full of chat rooms and discussion boards of any topic you could think of – from the tactics to who the best gamers are to general chat. There are times when the forum regulars themselves do not really play the games, but just enjoy the wonderful and warm sense of community it brings about.
