I wasn't sure exactly where this should go, so I figured blogs was the safest bet since pretty much everything applies here
To make a semi-long story short, I'm a junior at a high school in the US that requires you to do a "senior thesis" in order to get their special diploma. I had a meeting today to talk over different topics with my advisor, and out of all the topics I had listed out, she said I should go with a study of the psychology behind gaming communities and the cultural phenomenon of professional eSports.
However, there's not really that much research about that. Thanks to google scholar, I was able to find some research about it....but not much. Most of it is from Chinese books on Warcraft (no offense to Warcraft or China). So that means that I need to do a ton of original research...and as part of senior thesis, we have to find a mentor that is an "expert in the field" that can help me with the researching process and lend their years of education in my field of study. Does anyone have an ideas as to whom that could be? Some sort of psychologist with a minor in programming or something? Or if anyone knows of any research that's been done about esports that I missed because I barely know how to find applicable and scientific research as it is?
Well just me ranting about how although I don't even play SC2 that often because of grades, it ends up in my life because I threw it down on a piece of paper next to a proposal to study the differences between traditional US education and Montessori. If I get something with esports in it approved as my final topic in December, I'll definitely be lurking around a lot more to see if I can get some data out of you guys!
I wish you luck on your research, it sounds like a fun topic to write about. I know National Geographic did a documentary on the WCG and had a lot of focus on the brain activity of pro-gamers while they are in-game. It'd probably be useful to check it out.
"The cultural phenomenon of eSports" sounds like a good topic. For that, you would probably want to rely on community sources for eSports specifics, and connect with an adviser who has studied pop-culture phenomena of some kind... there's a good chance your local university will have someone who does something of this kind, doesn't matter if they do eSports or not.
I'm not sure what "the psychology of gaming communities" would be about. I doubt there's much to say about gaming communities that doesn't apply to the formation of subcultures in general. I believe that there are a number of sociologists who study online communities of various types that you might want to look at.
However, if you wanted to do "the psychology of computer gaming", there is lots of interesting stuff going on. Check out Skillcraft for some researchers who have previously advertised on this site.
thanks both, that national geographic video is absolutely amazing and I had no idea it ever existed x.x
and I didn't even think about pop culture phenomena people, that's an amazing idea. I was stuck on trying to work game dev into it or something. I'll definitely have to look into more consumer articles and reports and probably end up abandoning scholarly research in lieu of interviews and original data
You know, I would talk to your adviser a little more because I don't think there is an expert in the field. I would say that you have a great opportunity to pioneer a lot of the historical research yourself, and make conclusions based on your own personal research. If you have an opportunity, go to MLG and interview players/casters/etc there. PM people like Nazgul or EGAlex, who, I'm sure, would be happy to answer your questions (as they have mine). The people in the gaming community are mostly very nice, and the kicker is that there are no dead professional gamers that I'm aware of.
EPT
