As with the fanfiction part of the project, I'm looking to interview roughly 20 people either by email or PM. Everyone who takes part will also receive a £5 voucher for the UK online GW store (or £5 via paypal, whatever is easier) as a way of thanking you for taking part.
For more details or info, just drop me a line
I see you're looking to present some of your work at some conferences. Is this a personal project or are you working with a University or other institution? I have a little pipe dream of doing research into wargaming when I eventually (hopefully) get to where I want to be, so I'm quite interested in what you come up with.
ReplyDeleteHi - well thats the $64,000 question! I teach in a university but my 'official' research isnt in wargaming as such, but after doing the same thing (and in some cases re-writing the same report 3-4 times) I just fancied a break. I spent a while trying to figure out how i could mix work and pleasure and trying to link work on fandom with 40K seemed the obvious solution.
ReplyDeleteFrom what i can see, the area of wargaming is wide-open for research. RPGs are pretty-much covered, but there are some gaps, while online gaming is hyper-well covered. The only issue is that the way that Higher Education is going, its going to become more and more difficult to 'officially' look at these kind of things. I think a lot can be done research-wise outside of academia, esp. in these kind of subjects
What subject area do you teach in? Obviously something culture related!
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame if you're correct, because I think that the setting of wargaming can help us to test quite a few theories with more representative designs than pen and paper tests in a lab. Where do you see the difficulties coming from?
I graduate this year so I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Most of the work I've done so far has been related to mental health, but I feel other research areas calling!
well, my background is in sociology, but i currently work in a dept of religious studies (a lot of what i have researched has been religion and violence, religion and pop culture).
ReplyDeleteIncreasingly (at least in the UK) HE funding is getting squeezed and will get more and more focused away from more speculative forms of research towards things that can either produce (perceived) benefit for Govt, Business etc. There is some good stuff still going on out there in media and pop culture, but i think that will be hit pretty bad over the next couple of years - its a soft target.
I agree that theres loads that can be looked at in terms of gaming as a social phenomeon - thats what i want to do - its just finding a gap.
I also know what you mean about being ata crossroads - im pretty much out on a limb research-wise, but as i said, i couldnt keep flogging the same old stuff.
Im in, i sent an email to you a few days ago.
ReplyDeleteGreat. sorry that i havent replied but the IT system at work is held together with a bit of string and some stickytape and its come unstuck since Friday.
ReplyDeletewill email you as soon as im back online
I havn't noticed that sort of thing happening yet in psychology, within the areas I'm interested in anyway. Maybe you should come over to the dark side? ;)
ReplyDeleteHa - well, i was originally a psychologist but swapped over in my degree because the sociology modules were more interesting (and no stats!).
ReplyDeleteHaha, escaping stats is not a bad reason for swapping. I'm lucky at my University because there are a few lecturers making a big push towards qualitative work. So, I chose thematic analysis & ethnography for my final year project. I'm good with numbers, but it's tedious work and you just end up wanting to smash your computer into little pieces after the 1000th time SPSS messes up. Plus I think there's enough people using stats, so I want to go for an alternative way of analysis to provide a different way of looking at things.
ReplyDeleteOk, I'll be here.
ReplyDeleteI wish I saw this post in february, I guess it is too late now. But I think it's great of you to show us female players as well, we are usually thought of as almost non-existing...
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Im still waiting to be interviewed.
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