Haganai - Episode Two Analysis

In "There's No God in the Electric World," our Neighbors Club crew decide that the best technique to make friends in the modern world is with videogames. Videogames, after all, promote cooperation and can be an excellent teaching tool in their own right. However, things don't go as planned when the three begin an RPG only to turn on one another. After this chaotic session, Sena brings in a new console with a romance visual novel. The club spends the afternoon trying to complete it, but it turns out to be a lot more than they bargained for.

It would seem that videogames, then, are not so wonderful for bringing people together, are they? Well, the answer is clearly not so clear-cut. In the real world, what it has been doing is creating a semi-tangible layer of sorts to real world goods and services. The science here is in the expansion and preservation of these goods and services, which is where the cooperation truly comes from. So in a way gaming becomes work, and work has its own set of tropes and social customs.

First, a little primer: intangible objects which had their start in videogames have value. Individuals who are invested in these objects seek others who have the objects they are seeking, either to exchange or to capture said objects. In fact, one of the reasons these games do so well in major cities (like Tokyo and New York) is because of the large population necessary to increase the total output of virtual goods and services. We can hereby conclude that the success of these games is dependent on continual expansion of contributors to the whole; getting others to see the value in these goods increases their desire to exchange or capture them.

What we need, in order to put this to the test, is a city built upon gaming, gamers, and the proliferation of game objects.Would everyone in this city be working together? Or would the city fall into chaos the way things did for the Neighbors Club? Time would surely tell.