EST Project 1 - Grade: A PDF

Preview

Summary

Essay...

Description

Quenton Porter

1

EST 106.30 03/22/21 Discord: A Place for Everyone Discord is a voice, video, and text chat service that was launched in 2015 by founders Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy as a social service for gamers. But since then it’s reach has expanded from just gamers to a wide array of communities such as artists, musicians, and even sometimes the corporate world. It is available globally on all platforms from Mac, Windows, Iphone, and android devices all for no cost at all. It’s become such a popular service because of how convenient and easy to use the application is in the hands of those less experienced. It also provides such a plethora of options and settings and has only added to them overtime to support their spread to other demographics of consumers. The concept of discord wasn’t what Citron had in mind when he decided to step into the video game space.  Instead he made another social app for mobile games but, “He sold OpenFeint to GREE in 2011 for $104 m  illion”(Rao 2011). Citron then decided to make a mobile game of the MOBA genre named Fates Forever  in 2014 instead which didn’t receive any real commercial success. Although during this game's development cycle Citron and his team realized the difficulty of coordinating and executing strategies so the team felt the need to develop a simple chat service, “develop  a chat service with a focus on user friendliness with minimal impact to performance.”(Lazarides,  2015). After receiving some additional funding from companies like Tencent and Benchmark Capital, Discord was released to the public in May of 2015. After it’s launch Citron stated that he originally had not planned to target any specific demographic it became quickly apparent what this application would be mainly used for. Soon after launch many large gaming centered reddit pages began to replace their IRC (Internet Relay

2

Chat) links with discord links as well as many major esports teams creating their own discord channels. The apps launch also benefited from Citron's company having established relationships with many popular streamers as well as the ever large World of Warcraft  community. Discord has grown exponentially over the years and last year they officially changed their motto from  "Chat for Gamers" to "Chat for Communities and Friends”. This along with an official announcement discord stated that it would be shifting away from video games, “to a more all-purpose communication and chat client for all functions”(Chin, 2020). Discord has a pretty recent history in comparison to most applications but that only shows the usefulness of the application in how fast it's grown. As established earlier on discord was originally created to give gamers a platform to easily communicate with one another without causing extensive usage of a computer's CPU. As before the introduction of discord most games were forced to Skype or TeamSpeak to talk with friends and while they worked these apps were not designed to be used in conjunction with gaming so most were displeased with available services. Discord differs from other services as it is designed to create and manage communities of gamers, giving access to tools such as video calls, chat rooms, as well integrating with video game focused services. Of course Discord allows for extensive avenues of communication including video calls and screen sharing which were added in 2017 allowing up to 10 private video calls with different users the number then increased to 40 in 2020 due to the pandemic. One of their main attractions are discord servers that allow a large number of users “A single server can have up to 500,000 members”(Minor, 2020) and can be easily customized free or use in app purchases for “Server Boosts” allowing for improved voice channels and other perks. These servers can even be verified if they are created by game developers and publishers, which then expanded to esports teams and even

3

music artists and will most likely grow further in the future. This feature is just one of the many innovations that Discord has implemented to create a welcoming and easy to use app for all communities. While discord was created originally to give gamers a platform to communicate with each other quickly and easily it’s clear to see how quickly discord has become more than that. Discords focus on letting users create their own small personal communities has granted opportunities outside the realm of gaming and into music, art, education, even small businesses. This has even become apparent to the team at Discord themselves taking steps to further include and welcome other demographics into this web space. Because of these changes the application is now more widely used and accepted by demographics other than the original target audience. For example this is a quote from a teacher wanting to use discord of online learning, “My goals for Discord were simple: I wanted a less formal, community-oriented space where my students could chat with me and each other, ask questions, share fun discoveries, and generally do some of essential, social work that typically happens in the classroom.” (Cordell 2021). This demonstrates not only how Discord is currently being used but how much further it can possibly expand. I think Discord is on a direct upwards trend in not only it’s users but its functionality. I’ve already shown how Discord intends to broaden their horizons to other demographics so I feel it's only natural they in near future add features to support those groups. Possibly adding features dedicated to help artists more cleanly share their pieces or designs or even musicians having channels dedicated to streaming their own new music as personal concerts. Having business meetings directed from discord calls and companies sectors of companies having their own fully

4

customizable channels to best fit their objectives and much more. Discord is clearly ready to implement and necessary changes to help increase the widespread use. I’ve been an avid user of Discord for a solid few years now so there are some general tips you should know as you navigate the app. First if you are creating an account specifically for a professional or educational server make sure your profile is set up appropriately for those interactions. Make sure to utilize built in integrations having your discord connected to other social media accounts like Twitter, Youtube, or Reddit to stay connected and make transferring files simple. Set up hotkeys to better navigate the application without having to constantly monitor the window while you’re doing work or gaming. Lastly I’d say utilize bots especially if you’re going to moderate a larger server, having bot setup for notifications such upcoming events and deadlines can be a big help, they can assign different users roles within a server. In conclusion Discord is a constant state of change and evolution appealing to its users even during an unprecedented time such as now. It’s simplicity of use and expansive functions make it a great tool for people of all types. Whether it be playing games with your friends or collaborating on a project for work or school with colleagues the app has something for you. All of this especially for a relatively young app is impressive to say the least.

5

Works Cited Chin, Monica. “Discord raises $100 million and plans to move beyond gaming.” theverge, June 2020,https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/30/21308194/discord-gaming-users-safety-center -video-voice-chat.

Cordell, Ryan. “Tips for Classroom Discord.” ryancordell, January 2021, https://ryancordell.org/teaching/classroom-discord/.

Lazarides, Tasos. “Ex-'Fates Forever' Developers Making 'Discord', a Voice Comm App For Multiplayer Mobile Games.” TouchArcade, September 2015, https://toucharcade.com/2015/09/14/ex-fates-forever-developers-making-discord-a-voicecomm-app-for-multiplayer-mobile-games/.

Minor, Jordan. “What Is Discord and How Do You Use It?” pcmag , May 2020, https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/what-is-discord-and-how-do-you-use-it.

Rao, Leena. “Japanese Company GREE Buys Mobile Social Gaming Platform OpenFeint For $104 Million In Cash.” TechCrunch, April 2011, https://toucharcade.com/2015/09/14/ex-fates-forever-developers-making-discord-a-voicecomm-app-for-multiplayer-mobile-games/....