Researching Gaming

Researching online games can seem like an impossible task considering that it doesn't resemble a scholarly art. However you may be surprised to find that there is a robust amount of research on the subject. If you can access the college's research databases from home there is a good deal of scholarly research on the subject. Right now I can't use them because they removed the link from the faculty portal. Who knows why they do what they do. Many reliable resources can be found on the interwebs by searching for your subject and then following the hyperlinks to the main source. For example you may find a short blurb on a gaming website about some research that was conducted. If you are viewing a reputable source they will always hyperlink their source for information. In this way you can often find the initial source of research instead of relying on someones summary of it.

Below are a few places you will be able to find many articles on line:

Game Studies

Game Research

Game
Politics.com

Pew Research Center: This is a highly respected research center with a funny name.

Games+Learning+Research

Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture

That should get you started. Be sure to post on the blog today regarding your area of research and why you decided to do it. If anyone wants to research censorship please take a look at Australia and their laws. They have basically banned any game that you would,t let your three year old play. People there are rightfully angry about it. You can find a running commentary of the issues here.

Thursday
Remember that if you did not hand in the paper or the journals yet that you are running out of time. The grades will available today on the student portal.
Keep up the good work!

Friday

I am now awaiting your final papers so i can finish the grades and start a new semester. Thanks for a great winterim and I hope to see you on campus soon.

Jeremy

Questions for Research Paper

Research for the paper is slightly different then research for other topics, as the subject of gaming isn't usually taken seriously. This seems to be notable at least for how society views gaming.

My main questions would be as follows. Are we required to have one or more academic journals for reference? What I've gathered so far, I have honestly done so from just the web. I can check Proquest, however, and see if I find any more info. Also, must our paper correlate specifically to our game, or can it just relate to gaming in general?

My research topic

I will be researching the evolution of games- from Pong to Wii Fit, how has gaming evolved? Are "bigger and better" games necessarily healthy for our society?

I think this will be an interesting topic because of the controversy surrounding games, and newer innovations like Wii Fit.

Research topic

I am going to be researching the differences in online games and what attracts different people to the different games. I am going to look at and determine between three different online games and compare them to see why i think they are popular and what attracts people to playing each game. Also i will look at whether age restrictions on games has an effect on its popularity, i personally don't think it will because a parent normally buys a child a restricted game anyway. I will be keen to see why people prefer shoot em up games like "fallen earth" opposed to a game like "world of war craft".

Gaming in relation to prosperity and democracy

I think that there are definitely ways that the information age will make a difference to democracy but i am not to sure that gaming can have an affect on this. I think that within the next 50 years people will be voting via some computer aided device, and the way that we can view all democratic issues will be looked at differently and broken down better via computers. I think that with the fact that there are now 24/7 news Channel's on the television has made a huge difference in democracy. Anything that is now an issue is now all over the news so that everyone can see. In the future i think that the Internet will start to play a bigger part to the way we look at everything, even bigger than it already has. I think that because of the Internet that no one will be able to not vote and the more detail in the analysis of everything that becomes provide because of the Internet will make sure every single aspect is not missed.

Final Project Thesis

Late Post From Yesterday

I have decided to investigate further into the possible educational, ethical and general effects of engaging in MMORPG play.

This is the thesis I plan on using:

"Although the potential for great benefit to the player in terms of education, ethical development and the ability to contribute to the community does indeed exist in many Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, (MMORPGs), the true impact to the player is dependent both upon the proper and responsible usage by the player and the game's content itself.”

I feel like this has the potential of being a very interesting project. I am very interested in all of the various applications and uses that these games contribute, and I think that in order to maximize the benefits, we must understand how to engage in gameplay responsibly and safely.

topic

My topic for my paper is about world of warcraft. I wanted to know more about how it started, and how it became such a popular game. I had a hard time picking something for my paper, I didn't really have an intrest in some of the things we already talked about. But I figured if I did it on world of warcraft, I might get more insight to the game and better understand its popularity.