A sincere online interview invitationFollow

(This post is Approved 7-6-2011 ~ Administrator Kaolian)
I am an MSc International Marketing student at King’s College London.

As a player of World of Warcraft myself, I wanted to carry out a dissertation study that examines how people can be freed from the constraints of the market logic in a videogame environment and how much freedom they can get when engaging with this game. Personally, I like this game because it offers me a good way of escaping the reality and it brings me so much fun. But in addition to the gameplay, I am also very interested in the fan communities where people share so many innovative ideas and creative fan arts about WoW. This creative and active fan culture in WoW makes fan communities increasingly powerful and uncontrollable, so that’s the reason why I would like to look into a topic about consumer emancipation. Hence, my research is dedicated to find out whether there is any creative activity that can emancipate players from the gaming logic of leveling up and getting the highest achievement. I am constantly looking for activities in the game or fan creations that do not follow the normal route, but aim to achieve their own ends. These could be experiencing the game in an unexpected way, creating fan arts that reflect critical thinking, or manipulating the game to achieve some unusual purposes, etc.

However, since I have only played this game since Cataclysm, I don’t have enough knowledge about this game’s historical development and the interesting ways of game engagement. That is why I am asking for your help.

Anyone who plays World of Warcraft who is over 18 years of age and has at least one level 85 character is welcome to take part in a 40-minute online interview. The interview could be face-to-face through Skype or online chat through MSN or other chat software. When I finish this dissertation, I would like to send the final piece to you and share my research result with you^^

This research has passed the ethical approval of King's College Ethical Committee. All research findings reported will be on an anonymous basis and will thus not be associated with you unless you wish to be identified. Responses collected will form the basis of our research project and might be put into the final written report, so there might be a need for disclosure of the information covered in the interview to a third party.

If you are interested in my research or want to do me this little favor, please contact my email: qiaoshen.wu@kcl.ac.uk and tell me the way you would like to be interviewed (skype, msn or other chat software), so we can make an appointment for this! Just to let you know, if you want to participate, you will also have to fill a consent form which is pretty simple. All of these could be done through the internet!

For more information about information sheet and consent form: iwowstudy.blogspot.com

Thank you for your help ^_^! Cheers!


Edited, Jul 21st 2011 8:51am by Xsarus Lock Thread:

No more gold for our efforts?

From what I'm reading, I gather this is a study on how people act in a virtual economy contrasted with known trends in real economies? Sounds interesting.

No pants, no problem.

On the left foot.

This is a really good summery! Because I believe people who play games and people in virtual communities have more power to be active and to resist the market. Players constantly develop their own way of videogame consumption, and they cannot and never be fully controlled. Fan communities really play a big role in deciding a videogame's success or failure. But I need to know these active and empowered activities in more detail, that's the reason why I need expert like you^_^

I hope my research can contribute something to the videogame communities at the end!