Need help with research project

[Valvahl]

Hi!!

I am currently doing a research project for my PhD at the University of Barcelona.

My thesis will be about identity exploration and online videogames. As someone who has dabbled in both the gaming and research worlds, I think the research being done on the field of gaming needs a lot of improvement, which is why I want to do my bit in making a more rigorous research on videogames that goes beyond the overdone topic “videogames good vs videogames bad”. I really think that research on videogames can provide a lot more to the scientific community and society in general.

I am currently looking for MMORPG players who might want to participate by completing a brief survey and answering some questions in an online interview (voice only).

Although I still have quite a way to go, once I have finished the study, I could send you a brief report of my findings with a reference to the published paper in case any of you are interested.

The link to the survey is the following: https://ubpsychology.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cSlw8tHptYaxoIl

If you wish to know more about the project, just ask me and I will be more than happy to explain :)

[Rolig Loon]

I suspect that you are about to get a small barrage of replies to tell you that Second Life is not a MMORPG. They're right, of course.  It isn't. Instead of taking their word for it, though, I very strongly suggest spending enough time in Second Life yourself to figure out what it is.  You will find a few role play communities within SL, but they are a very small proportion of the total.  Many are gamers, too, but not the majority by far. SL residents are more inclined to be home owners, shoppers, and creators. We spend a lot of time socializing, dancing, enjoying music, and just exploring the wide variety of places in world. In order to understand the results of any surveys you do, you really need to do a lot of basic anthropological research yourself. 

[Lindal Kidd]

To avoid duplicating previous work, be sure to look up the Second Life studies by Dr. Tom Boellstorff

[Rowan Amore]

Tom Boellstorff: teaching digital culture in Second Life – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

[Valvahl]

43 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

I suspect that you are about to get a small barrage of replies to tell you that Second Life is not a MMORPG. They're right, of course.  It isn't. Instead of taking their word for it, though, I very strongly suggest spending enough time in Second Life yourself to figure out what it is.  You will find a few role play communities within SL, but they are a very small proportion of the total.  Many are gamers, too, but not the majority by far. SL residents are more inclined to be home owners, shoppers, and creators. We spend a lot of time socializing, dancing, enjoying music, and just exploring the wide variety of places in world. In order to understand the results of any surveys you do, you really need to do a lot of basic anthropological research yourself. 

They deffinetely are right. I can't say I have been in SL very much, but I have for a bit, and I do consider that, while not being stictly an MMORPG, it fulfills the characteristics that I am looking for in this study.

[Coffee Pancake]

16 minutes ago, Valvahl said:

They deffinetely are right. I can't say I have been in SL very much, but I have for a bit, and I do consider that, while not being stictly an MMORPG, it fulfills the characteristics that I am looking for in this study.

This is why you're going to get a bad response.

You have almost no idea what SL is, don't use it, aren't aware of it's complex cultural web, and have an idea that it can tick the required boxes for your study.

Literally looking for data to fit the conclusion.

Which in turn bites all us in the bum as there is now yet another scholarly academic study about all the novel and weird freaks in Second Life. 

Go play FFXIV and write about those potatoes, please.

[Rolig Loon]

21 minutes ago, Valvahl said:

They deffinetely are right. I can't say I have been in SL very much, but I have for a bit, and I do consider that, while not being stictly an MMORPG, it fulfills the characteristics that I am looking for in this study.

OK. Just so you know what you are looking for, and are aware of the limitations of your surveys.  As a retired academic, I wanted to raise that flag to be sure (and to forestall the usual stream of "IT"S NOT A GAME!" shouts that requests like yours get here). 

EDIT:   Heh ... Like the well-placed comment that Coffee posted while I was typing ^^ .  😉

Edited March 14, 2022 by Rolig Loon
Additional information

[Rowan Amore]

[Paul Hexem]

Nothing like setting up your studies to cherry pick data from places you don't understand.

And then people wonder why nobody trusts data anymore.

[CaithLynnSayes]

I'm gonna rant about something else. Flip the "theme" of this forum to dark mode and you'll see OP's text with a white background on black text. Annoying. Paste as plain text please  

[bigmoe Whitfield]

you need to spend at least a year in and sitting in the social area, human, furry, ect. to find out why people are here in SL,  this is not some funky junky mmorpg,  I feel insulted one would suggest that.

[Marigold Devin]

Getting other people to do the work by spoon feeding you information via a survey is no way as useful as taking your shoes and socks off and diving in there yourself. You could have a couple of months of intense Second Life time and meet a heck of a lot of avatars in all their weird and wonderful glory and still not really get a feel of what it's all about. 

But this particular guinea pig isn't available for study. 

/me wonders how tutors/examiners mark/assess this kind of thing anyway - is it 'A' for effort or D- NO SEE ME!!!

Edited March 14, 2022 by Marigold Devin
to remove an unnecessary bracket

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Oh dear. Yes.

What Rolig has said is particularly relevant, but the responses here will make it clear that there are some problematic aspects to this element of your project.

First of all -- your instinct is in some ways correct: identity is a huge part of Second Life. Hence the name of the platform, in fact. In some regards, and for a very great many people, identity is the attraction of the platform, because here one can "be" anything one wants to be, explore aspects of one's self that are difficult to articulate in "real life," and so on.

But that is why comparing SL with other MMORPGs is a bit like comparing apples and oranges: identity may be "important" in the latter, but it is not actually the raison d'etre of the genre, as it so often is here. If your main focus is upon games, SL is going to seriously skew your data.

And, as others have noted, if you approaching SL as though it were a "game," in the classic MMORPG sense, you're not going to understand the platform, so you're also going to be misrepresenting it. You really can't just "assume" that, because you "know" World of Warcraft, you also "know" and understand SL -- the differences vastly exceed the similarities.

SL is a huge subject, and the culture here is enormously complex and multi-faceted. Residents here engage in a huge variety of different activities, ranging from the digital creation of art to some pretty serious consumerism. There is a lot of "role play," but I think it's safe to say that the majority of SL residents are not actually here for that, or for "gaming" in any sense. I've been in SL 14 years, and I can't pretend I have come anywhere close to experiencing first hand the diversity of things people do here.

Boellstorff's book is a classic, but pretty dated at this point (2008): SL has evolved in many ways. You will find a fair amount in blogs, and also in the academic publication Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, currently on hiatus, and which you may already know about. But honestly, to repeat what others have said, you aren't going to be able to talk about SL with any real authority until you've spent at least some time in-world. Your experiences in standard MMORPGs really don't apply very well here.

Good luck with your research. If this is part of your thesis project, you may be able to spare the time to get in-depth. If it is for coursework, I'd suggest that you either focus exclusively on SL (and work fast!), or drop it as a component of your research.

Quick addition: surveys are of course an entirely legitimate way to inform research and collect data. In a virtual world as diverse as this one, they are probably the only way to get a broad sampling of residents. But they need to be designed with that breadth and reach in mind -- and you aren't going to get that here, on the forums.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Rolig Loon]

I get just as annoyed as everyone else by many of the "research" surveys we are invited to take. That's partly why I jumped in with a gentle warning as soon as I saw the OP's request pop up. Having said that, I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume that the OP or the faculty advisor who will have to supervise his work are totally clueless.  I always take exception when I see SL and MMORPG in the same sentence, but we can't tell from a distance exactly what the thrust of this research is meant to be.  Like any doctoral work, this project is a learning experience as much as a contribution to research literature.  I think it's important for us to point out where the OP ought to tread lightly, but we shouldn't overreact by assuming that the project is doomed to failure.  I like@Scylla Rhiadra's response.   🙂

[Qie Niangao]

"I am currently looking for MMORPG players who might want to participate by completing a brief survey and answering some questions in an online interview (voice only)."

This is an interesting problem. Presumably the researcher wants to compare and contrast across different "games" but there's an unintentional sampling bias: "(voice only)" that will have very different results from one platform to another. The history of voice in SL is… fraught. Personally, for example, I might be up for a survey with a potential text follow-up interview, but there's no way I'd do voice. I don't even have a microphone on the desktop I use for SL, and generally have my PC audio completely turned off so I can attend to other sounds while still in-world. Granted, my case isn't representative but still there are a lot of SL users who aren't going to engage in voice chat with a stranger. I bet that's much less true of other platforms. Makes you wonder what's different about SL voice users, compared to other platform voice users, right? But because the study only samples the voice users, any cross-platform differences in voice behavior instead appears to be differences in the platforms themselves.

When you think about it, the voice-only sample selection problem is just a special case of the overall platform-specific sampling problem. Who's getting recruited, by what medium? If by forums, does that select the same sort of user in SL as it does in another platform? And worse: In SL, how much negative (or positive) experience has the population had with surveys in the past, compared to other platforms? How much will that determine who responds, and thus affect what responses are obtained?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

This is an interesting problem. Presumably the researcher wants to compare and contrast across different "games" but there's an unintentional sampling bias: "(voice only)" that will have very different results from one platform to another. The history of voice in SL is… fraught.

Really good point, Qie.

And even more particularly, those who do use voice here (I'd have thought a minority of residents) are very likely to have a particular understanding of the role of identity here, because voice tends to break immersion, and undercut identity creation.

[Rolig Loon]

14 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

those who do use voice here (I'd have thought a minority of residents) are very likely to have a particular understanding of the role of identity here, because voice tends to break immersion, and undercut identity creation.

@Valvahl, you may want to do a little side research on this point, beginning with a review of threads where this topic has come up in these forums.  This one, just last week, is fairly representative but only one of many:

As Scylla and Qie have emphasized, people who regularly inhabit these forums are a vocal subset of SL residents, but are (1) a very small subset and (2) not representative. Their opinions may suggest interesting avenues for further study, but you must do that further study to figure out what SL as a whole is like.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Rolig Loon
typos. as always.

[LittleMe Jewell]

26 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I don't even have a microphone on the desktop I use for SL, and generally have my PC audio completely turned off so I can attend to other sounds while still in-world. 

Ditto

Not too mention that the folks that visit the forums are a very, very small percentage of the total SL population.

[Madelaine McMasters]

The perils of this kind of research parallel those of Parachute Journalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_journalism

As Rolig notes, in this analogy forumites are "stringers" of questionable value, and we have a massive parachute collection.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

15 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

The perils of this kind of research parallel those of Parachute Journalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_journalism

As Rolig notes, in this analogy forumites are "stringers" of questionable value, and we have a massive parachute collection.

This is very true, of course -- and we've seen it a lot here.

But what Rolig says also applies:

50 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume that the OP or the faculty advisor who will have to supervise his work are totally clueless.  I always take exception when I see SL and MMORPG in the same sentence, but we can't tell from a distance exactly what the thrust of this research is meant to be.  Like any doctoral work, this project is a learning experience as much as a contribution to research literature.  I think it's important for us to point out where the OP ought to tread lightly, but we shouldn't overreact by assuming that the project is doomed to failure.

A PhD candidate is not the same as an undergraduate student, or even an MA student. They have (or should have) received sufficient training to be able to negotiate the ins and outs of their project. And if this is being undertaken under the direction of an advisor, that helps too. Every research project starts with not knowing about something you think you'd like to know more about, and those first faltering steps into the unknown can be . . . perilous. But a good researcher is also a quick learner.

I do often feel very bad for the poor undergrads who are sent here by profs who have clearly done nothing to prepare them, either for SL or for the forums in particular. It feels as though they've cheerily been directed to walk straight into the helicopter blades.

Once, tired of stepping over the bleeding corpses of undergrads, I actually ventured onto the SL Educators' Listserv to make the (I thought) modest suggestion that students be better prepared before being sent to the forums.

It did not go over well.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra

[animats]

From the survey link: "We cannot offer monetary compensation, but in case you go through the whole study, we will send you a brief report sometime after the interview describing your results, your character's creation category, and its associated characteristics according to our model." That would be amusing.

If you really want to do that, here's a suggestion.

Log into Second Life. Find one of the big role-playing areas. Cocoon, Insilico, and Crack Den are good examples. They all have character classes. Go there, read the rules, wear an appropriate outfit, and introduce yourself to one of the sim admins for that area. Ask permission to go around and interview players. The sim admins may say no, and they have the power to lock you out of their area. Or they may restrict where you can ask questions.

Then you can do some research. A day spent doing that will give you more insight than asking people to fill out a form.

Posting yet another "please fill out my form" request will produce nothing useful.

[Paul Hexem]

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume that the OP or the faculty advisor who will have to supervise his work are totally clueless.

I don't. I've met PhD candidates in modern colleges. Until proven otherwise, we can safely assume everyone associated is a moron that's never experienced real life (and in this case the Second one too) ever.

[purrrkitten]

5 hours ago, Valvahl said:

I am currently looking for MMORPG players

But SL isn't a MMORPG...?

You should probably put more effort into your project. I googled your post and I see you posted the same thing all over the internet lol.

[Rolig Loon]

3 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume that the OP or the faculty advisor who will have to supervise his work are totally clueless.

I don't. I've met PhD candidates in modern colleges. Until proven otherwise, we can safely assume everyone associated is a moron that's never experienced real life (and in this case the Second one too) ever.

Heh.   We may have traveled in different circles, or maybe different disciplines. I directed quite a number of doctoral projects over the years. Yes, I've seen a small number of candidates who seem to have been admitted by mistake. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I've met a handful of truly inspired scholars. On average, though, people who make it through the filter into a doctoral program are pretty solid thinkers. Apprentices, to be sure, but definitely not morons.

[purrrkitten]

2 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Heh.   We may have traveled in different circles, or maybe different disciplines. I directed quite a number of doctoral projects over the years. Yes, I've seen a small number of candidates who seem to have been admitted by mistake. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I've met a handful of truly inspired scholars. On average, though, people who make it through the filter into a doctoral program are pretty solid thinkers. Apprentices, to be sure, but definitely not morons.

Meh. Academics tend to go from university to university and have never experienced the real world.

This is a general observation. I obviously don't know anything about OP.