MMORPGFollow

May i be the first to give you a well deserved GFY

Make many assumption about us already?

I Sincerly hope you fail for tarring my fine community with such crass and frankly insulting acusations, why not go study how to make a unbiased and usefull thesis instead of spreading lies and missinformation about a computer game.

for an ALLEGED collage student you're a ******. Not it will not, it will be completely useless and missleading because you automaticly are making an assumption that people who play MMORPG are obsessive and that they are social factors beyond just enjoying a game, because thats all it is.

Why don't you scrap this pathetic excuse for a study and turn your misspent time studying the social impact of a tsunami and the effects of the loss of the majority of preteens in a small comunity.

PhD = Piled Higher and Deeper

Who the hell taught you how to research? You make a totally flawed assumption, insult your core data source by stating up-front your obviously biased opinion of their "addiction" ... and you think this research will lead to benefits to society? Who the f*** is your doctoral advisor? Go to your department head and request another advisor; anyone who would allow you to go down this path in the first place is obviously an idiot undeserving of tenure. Or maybe you should just enroll at a real University, one that supports valid, ethical, and beneficial research - not the kind of crap in which you're engaged.

Personally, I'm playing games on-line, surfing the web, downloading **** from the internet ... and loving it. I sincerely hope that pisses you off.

P.S. In case you're wondering: Master of Public Policy, with concentration in International Security and Economic Policy. Have a nice day.

Just a matter of a different style tarv :)

Believe me, we're on the same page. My initial reaction before I toned it down was to tell him where he could stuff it.

Edited, Mon Jan 3 12:22:20 2005 by vostik

normally I take a look at these whole survey threads and proceed to issue my usual grain of salt.. however... the responses this time were quite..

shall we say... vocal..

so I decided to perhaps take a look from a very logically-cold & dispassionate point of view and see where all the heat was coming from and why...

Honestly.. Mr. Parsons.. your topic alone is flawed.



so within this topic you have allready told the direction you fully intend on taking any results in this paper / thesis / whatever you wish to call it.. this is a far far cry from "objective" research... and honestly I'm amazed that you could form such an obviously biased topic after so many years of research and study.

let's move on...



I find this line particularly interesting... the social needs.. Honestly.. what is the point of this survey? Truth be told it comes across as yet another attempt to bathe video-games in yet another poor light. Your purpose is merely a variable.. and honestly it's a very "been there", "done that" variable at best.. I could just as easily say....

The purpose of this survey is to determine what social needs lead to excessive drinking.

the purpose of this survey is to determine what social needs lead to excessive drug use.

the purpose of this survey is to determine what social needs lead to excessive ebay buying.

do you not see my point.. all you really need to do.. is take ANY obsessive / compuslive skewed research.. plug in the term MMORPG, and your project is done.. Honestly.. is this REALLY a problem or something that was drummed up because it managed to encompass all the necessary buzz words like "internet", "RPG" (which have LONG been the target of many a slander), and "Social interaction".

You toss around the term "Addiction" and in reading your web page.. it really does appear as though you plan on looking at it in the context of it's primary definition.. however:


source: Encarta.com

perhaps you should re-evaluate your project and thesis... to truly show WHAT you mean and why.. Or perhaps it's time for a totally new thesis all together, because the "Addiction" you wish to show in your paper is using definition 1 of the term.. however the "Addiction" that we, as players, KNOW the game to be like due to our experience is most definitely definition number 2.. and honestly that definition is FAR more accurate to easily 90%+ of gamers as a whole... and as far as the others...

as with ANYTHING in this world.. it can be abused, but I HARDLY suspect MMORPG's (and games in general) are an earth-shattering, world-changing, topic which deserves such a large microsope...

and as everyone knows, definition 2 is not nearly as flashy sounding or controversial enough to ellicite the response from the scientific community you desire... so.. if you're done wasting time on this particular project, I believe it's in your best interest to change it because the more educated gamers among us will simply disregard it as yet another obviously skewed research. Pretty much guaranteeing you will not get the proper user-base opinions you need for a more wholistic view of the gamer community....

but then again, perhaps that's what you want..... since it would make your conclusion far easier to backup with whatever "data" you acquire...

in short:

"Figures don't lie.... but liars figure..."

think about that for a moment, and think about what you're REALLY trying to research and how you'll treat the data if it's not exactly what you were hoping for or expected... ALSO have you created a situation to almost guarantee that the people who respond to your survey will provide expected data to backup an allready determined conclusion...

So, anyone make it inside nek castle yet? Man, that's a fun zone! I can certainly see myself spending hours of time in there and having a blast with some good friends doing it!

nothin like blowing a stereotype... that was one of the most entertaining surveys i've taken in a while :).

it's always fun to see someone trying to study something that s/he completely does not understand. like trying to explain *anything* to a person that speaks only swahili, when you are explaining it in english. it will never make sense, and they'll draw the conclusions they like, no matter what you say.

a true, scholarly effort would be much more involved, instead of taking the standard questions involving addiction and replacing the subject with mmorpg's, as stated above. for an effort such as this, see the research section of this site. i found it fascinating.

here's an interesting bit:

soo... they're also assuming that we're all young, impressionable students that should be doing our homework or something? and if this is what the survey was intended to measure, then why not make it a point to include that little tidbit in your solicitation?


i wasnt asked anything about my playing interests. i was asked how long i play. and i certainly wasnt asked anything actually conclusive about my social needs. at least, if you are going to ask questions like the ones you asked, differentiate between before the onset of the "addiction" and after it begins, to rule out preexisting conditions. perhaps, i've always been in my room, by myself, while my family watches sitcoms. perhaps, i've read more literature than my whole family put together. perhaps, being in a room playing an mmorpg is no different. was i addicted to reading as a child? can you honestly tell me that this was a bad thing? [i've been out of my parents' house for quite some time, fyi :)]

who decides what "excessive internet use" is? i use the internet for 40 h a week at work, since i'm a web apps developer, so when i go home i'm sometimes online looking at ways to improve my own work... is that excessive?

if i am looking up information on sans-souci, a palace in berlin, online, is that less "healthy" than running down the street to the library, which probably doesnt have much on the subject at all? is it less healthy than sitting on a sofa like a slug soaking up bad advertising and puerile plots, with no opportunity for interaction, and no reason for exercising sentient thought?

(note: yes, i know, some tv can be good, and informative; i'm referring to the other stuff, like the stuff my family watches :x)

omg i just might be addicted to social interaction... can that be?! oh, da horror!

wonder how these "students of education" would react if their cell phones were taken away... that's an addiction to social interaction, too, isnt it?

/endsoapbox ... for now :).

yar... i've been, in the past, in charge of creating statistical analyses and, when asked if i could write a report that covered thus-and-such, i'd always respond, "what do you want the data to say?" anyone can make any dataset say nearly anything, especially if there's a premise already in mind.

OK, I decided to come back and offer you some advise (if you even come back here):

You survey is garbage. As you can see from this thread, it is doing nothing but a enfuriating everyone. So, even if an MMO player does feel alienated in the real world, do you think they are going to answer correctly on your survey? No, of course not, because they dont want you to succeed in your doctrine. I personally think this has a few too many over sightes to bank your future on.

The thing is, all these "defensive" responses will only prove to him that he's right and we're all addicts trying to justify our habit.

Well in this survey i was a 69 year old woman with more than six kids, single, with a doctorate, living in a very small town with an income less than 25k. I answered all the questions as he would have hoped painting the picture that I am the saddest, loneliest, depressed little old lady you could ever meet.

People are gonna paint the picture that MMO players are just that, so lets skew this guys lovely results.

Cheers
Minky

btw.. nick yee, the person that did the research i linked above, is running his 16th in a series of surveys... if you'd like to see the way this sort of thing *should* be done, take a look at the current one :).

i've enjoyed watching his research on mmorpg's progress. he's been doing this project since 1999. and yar he played eq for a bit, though i'm not sure if he still does.

some highlights:





ok i'll stop :).

Edited, Wed Jan 5 11:59:44 2005 by runyariel