Chess.com Final Essay
Chess.com is an innovative, fun, and interactive game that goes above and beyond any chess server to date. Chess.com brings families closer, and friends together and finds new competition with strangers who love the game of chess. The circuit of culture is the moments of production, representation, consumption, regulation, and identity. It focuses on how to study cultural texts or artifacts and how they relate to our ways of life. We can learn about the users and systems involved by evaluating things such as the way its produced, what it represents, how it is consumed, what rules they follow, and the characteristics of who uses them (Chess.com 2022).
The story behind any company and or webpage that came to have an identity story. Identity is who was involved with the process, so if creating an online business or webpage you bring along matters and will be known by the public of your identity. Anything with the process of producing, consuming, and regulating the thing you are working on is all leaked as your identity (THE CIRCUIT OF CULTURE).
Picture from Chess.com
Chess.com is a very happy and satisfying webpage. The goal of the webpage is for people to enjoy their lives through the strategic game of chess. The URL started with 2 friends in 2005. The backstory of 2 friends (Jay and Erik) who became friends in college is a very happy and understandable story for consumers, two friends in chess club who were addicted to the game and believed the world needed a new source to play the game. I couldn’t make a movie script sound better than that for the creation of a simple but complex game like chess. Within the website, they have “Our values” a useful information center for consumers, starts with kindness they believe in respect as the number one rule, and learning as number two if you have ever played chess or even heard of it you know it is a very mental game you must outsmart your opponent with moving one piece at a time, the ultimate strategic game in my eyes. They have joy as value three, why do we do anything, for enjoyment or fun, and if it’s not why engaged with that program? I enjoyed these values as a consumer of the gaming website (Chess.com 2022).
This video proves people aren’t just putting on an act on the website the video shows a diversity of people who genuinely care about each other with a common love of chess. Chess.com is interesting, not conducting business as you would think, they uphold more than 400 employees these people have jobs as programmers, content editors, and member support. While this is impressive organizing all this will no office is the cool part, that’s correct everything Is virtual and Chess.com has 35 represented countries within its business.
Regulation is what keeps the peace within a service in this case a server. Formal and informal rules can affect and are affected by whatever the rules may be protecting. These rules regulate whatever they are representing and are policed differently by whoever they will be protecting. In other words, regulations can be viewed as the laws of the service (THE CIRCUIT OF CULTURE).
Coming into the Chess.com community I believed there would be few rules besides the no violent hate speech and no cursing on the sight, but I was wrong. Chess.com takes its community guidelines very seriously, starting with being kind, helpful, and forgiving of course coming into the identity of the website as a friendly place to be. The tolerance of racism, sexism, bigotry, or violent threats is zero and will be responded to with a ban on the account. You may not abuse, attack, threaten, discriminate, or mistreat other members in any way. You can’t hijack threads, troll, or post distracting or meaningless content. No spamming, advertisements, or copying/pasting of comments and messages. Can’t excessively promote your club in any way. Making publicly debating religious or political topics is disallowed. No posting of obscene or pornographic content. Illegal matters personal or not are to be discussed on the webpage. Opening 2 or more accounts will get both deactivated.
As the largest online chess community, you can see why Chess.com is trying its best to promote a national chess service where every individual can feel safe and have fun by escaping from their reality for however long they choose to play. Different from the community conduct they have a sportsmanship handbook with bullet points on how to be the best opponent and for a good experience on both ends of the board. They begin with do not abort games frequently, meaning don’t be a sore loser. Do not make your opponent wait an unnecessary amount of time. If you must leave, do not disconnect, or quit without resigning when lost. Don’t harass or accuse your opponents during a match. And last, they provide players/users with a “Fair play Policy” handbook that they promote all players read for the best experience (Community Policy 2022).
Picture from Chess.com
Consumption in the circuit of culture goes by a notion meaning creation is an ongoing process. It doesn’t end on a predicted date. Producers take products with different meanings and associations to different topics, but don’t end there with the product, why? Because with this information provides us with nothing with the products may come to mean to the public. The meaning of a product isn’t given to the certain product it is received by consumers. Another way to say this meaning is well active in consumption it is determined by the public in which they decide to use the product (THE CIRCUIT OF CULTURE).
Chess.com is made for the public around the world at any time of day in any nation, with just an electronic device. The consumption of the server is very popular on current dates, it holds tournaments for young and armature users and holds tournaments for grandmasters to win great amounts of cash in the grand prize. Why do users consume their time with Chess.com? People love trends and as of this moment Chess.com is the most popular server today and we measure trends with the amount of use on the server. The webpage is simple to use and provides resources for people wanting to upgrade their skills with puzzles, lessons, and game reviews. The competitive player will love to be consumed by this webpage with the ranking system, made to keep the player’s attention knowing their playing to reach a higher rank will bring the user back to play and may even keep them on the server longer. For the more advanced users, they may opt for the subscription service that depending on what level you purchase will bring you different perks. There are three tiers to the membership program starting with gold giving no ads, unlocking bots, unlimited lessons, and unlimited puzzles. Moving to the next tier platinum provides the same services but more including unlimited game reviews. The top membership level is diamond and provides every service available to the public to date with one-on-one coach explanations and unlimited insights to upgrade your chess game. In general, the membership program is relatively cheap with the diamond being $10 a month which is the highest, and the gold being $4.17 a month, platinum coming in at $6.67 which as showing affordable for the common citizen. All in United States currency (Chess.com).
Picture from Chess.com
The representation comes into play with the meaning of the thing you are bringing to light. kind of like a context memo, it is giving you information about the thing you are using or observing. With that knowledge, it is different for everyone so to whom will be added to the information? Relationships are known in common society and a certain group of people will always float to different things so knowing your relationships are helpful for success (THE CIRCUIT OF CULTURE).
The representation of Chess.com is a family-friendly server welcoming anyone wanting more knowledge about the lifelong and generational game. Everyone knows chess or heard of it so you don’t have to market or show users why you should play the game but come at users more as to why they should choose them for your chess needs. Whether a guest or own a paid or free account the webpage hits you with a simple layout. I have a free account with the company and the thing I like about the program that many other businesses don’t do is they don’t bombard me, meaning they accept I haven’t paid for their subscription and don’t show me what I’m missing every time I log in. With a guest account, they will ask if you would like to make an account, but this is different, this service is to make sure you still would like to be a guest on the server, it doesn’t take long for you to change your mind.
If you are really into chess and the chess community, you may let the webpage convey a news outlet for you. When on the homepage you can get content on chess grandmaster matches and twitch streams of high-level players displaying a variety of content. I’ve mentioned how Chess.com is an international resource and how they show this on the webpage by having it in every language so there’s no handicap. The articles they have at the bottom of the homepage have multiple countries represented within the article and on the cover, art. Showing everyone is welcome with open arms.
Picture from Chess.com
The circuit of culture is how groups of anyone, brands, social groups, or even individuals analyze a topic. Looking at this contains the consumers who may interact with a product, the intention of a product, the rules for the product, how the product is manufactured, and it can influence a product. The biggest influence is who’s making the money. If money is not involved, we could question the motivation behind the production (THE CIRCUIT OF CULTURE).
Jay and Erik are the stories I have based my whole circuit of culture on. These two men met in college but did not come to their fate in college. It took 10 years after graduation for the two to one recognize the world needs a new online chess world, and two for it to be them. The two friends spent all their time, money, and effort on chess.com. They took a risk and never knew the potential that they had (Chess.com 2022).
From then to now the two friends most definitely had ups and downs in the process of making the final product we enjoy today. Created in 2005 the server has been running for 17 years and still going strong. This obviously couldn’t have just been just the two of them for 17 years. Jay and Erik have over 400 employees, they knew they would need specific people for this gig. Knowing If you just hire people in the area, you will not get the best chess lovers in the world. The two brilliant businessmen then made the office 100% virtual being able to hire anyone with an internet connection and a good attitude. Observing the video, I have added in the works cited page produces information showing that most importantly everyone comes in with a smile and everyone at the company cares. Chess.com pays and accommodates the employee well driving the employees to provide excellent outcomes (Chess.com 2022).
After researching this amazing webpage for over a month I’ve decided I will be using this server until my chess career is over. I agree with all the values it claims and the happy and caring employees leave me knowing the future is bright for the company and will continue to provide me with content to keep me entertained. The circuit of culture within Chess.com runs deep and has expanded my vision on the matter and am grateful for it. I believe understanding the circuit of culture can help you with whatever you choose in life, knowing how a business or in this case webpage is created and or run in detail can help you understand how and why you are to consuming their product. Being a user of Chess.com a component I would enjoy seeing shortly would be to save games played against artificial intelligence players as all losses or wins can aid a player’s success in the future.
WORKS CITED
“Community Policy.” Community Policy – Chess.com, https://www.chess.com/legal/community.
Chess.com. (2022, November 29). About chess.com. Chess.com. Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://www.chess.com/about
“THE CIRCUIT OF CULTURE.” WordPress, https://culturalstudies101.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/hall-the-circuit-of-culture-ed-fink-11-11.pdf.