Game Studies... pt002

So, in my last blog I mentioned my struggle to make a research upon gaming.

In me, I've found a surmountable difficulty in deciding what to study eventually. There were a lot of facets in this sub-culture.

During my research seminar (a class that prepares us for our thesis) I finalized my grade on a research titled 'Penelitian tentang Need for Achievement pada Professional Gamers'. A Eenglish translation of that title would 'A Research on The Need for Achievemens of Professional Gamers'. I chose that title because I was running out of time and I had to complete the pre-thesis paper or else I won't start my thesis the next semester.
My pre-thesis counselor namely Eric Mulyadi said, "you can focus on the motivational aspects of the gamers," and later "Vin, concentrate on graduating from the seminar first..."

Afterwards, my pre-thesis title was inadequate for my final thesis. Why? Because in my understanding and perception, there is no professional gamers here in Indonesia.
Why? Because the only gamers who compete professionally here, do not make a living out of it. Yes they do play serious, and yes they play in the cyber Olympics, but they don't compete in games as a I primary source of income.

I had to find something else!

What I found, took me 11 months of searching, peer-to-peer counseling, guidance and the occassional luck.

I searched from various sources: game forums, game academics, online news (yes, yes,yes.. most of them are found in the World Wide Web), magazines and the occasional conversations with people.

And you know my vision was during the whole study? I want to make a research upon computer/video gaming from a psychological and social perspective, that is objective and not condemning. Why did I mention the word condemning? Because in my literary search through two Indonesian universities, three of them used a title that was rather judgmental.
'A study on the relationship of hostile attribution bias and violent content games';
'A Study about the Addiction of Ragnarok Online Players'
'A research on the hostile aggresivity of violent video gamers'

Just by reading the title one can get the idea that, "Oh my, games can be dangerous."

I didn't want to judge games as being bad or dangerous. I've played many kinds of games and I consider many of them being immersive and thought provoking. Some games like Civilization and Wing Commander sparked my interests toward social sciences. And it was also Wing Commander that taught me lessons about sacrifice, patriotism and love. Those two games were also violent, but I learned from them.

So, where did my attitude towards games lead me to?

I decided to investigate the motivational aspects of people playing games.

My working research title is: Penelitian tentang Hubungan Motivasi Bermain Games dengan Perilaku Bermain Games.

The English translation would be: a study on the relationship of the motivations of playing games with the gaming behavior.

Later