Research Topics for the Presence of Games in China
August 19th, 2008
In a week I shall be leaving my comfortable life in Australia and stepping out into one of the busiest and most insane cities on the planet; Shanghai (China). Shanghai has a population of approximately 20 million people and is the epicenter of China’s economic and trading boom.
My reasoning for traveling abroad is language acquisition. I’ve been studying Chinese for 7 years now and much of that has been a waste of time due to the hold-your-hand approach of Western language education. I realized how frustrated I was with the this early on last year and have since gone to considerable efforts to amend my wasted time, the exchange represents a large part of this.
I’ll be away for at least half a year, possibly a year and a half depending of if I can combine a second scholarship that I won for the same time slot. While I am over in China, I would like to use the time I have to extend my understanding of the impact of video games in the country. This is all part of an upcoming direction that I’d like to steer the blog in, where I begin to analyze games from a world perspective and not just an American perspective, as usually tends to be the case. Being interested in both games and Chinese culture, I am already familiar with some nuances in the country’s gaming landscape so I would like to investigate:
-the underground piracy economy
-the rampid success of online gaming
-opinion from older/parent demographic
-gaming and Internet Cafe Culture
-Chinese/English gaming language
Among other issues. ShangHai also hosts a number of game developers including the Ubisoft branch whom are working on the new voice controlled RTS EndWar.
The reason why I am writing about my travels is because I want to hear your opinions, I want to know if there is anything about Chinese games and gaming culture that you wish to learn more about. I’m hoping to do mountains of research by talking to locals, testing these online games, browsing through pirated goods posting my finding on the blog. So let me know if there is anything that interests you about this side of the gaming market and I’ll try and snuff it up.
We Place Faith in The Conduit
July 31st, 2008
I like to keep tabs on the Nintendo fanbase and their response to new games and announcements. I do so because it makes for a fascinating case study on how a loyal fanbase (such as Nintendo’s) reacts when their favourite company expands outwards to other audiences. The reality is that these players can enjoy games like Wii Fit and Brain Age (why wouldn’t they? I love them) yet haven’t made the transition into that frame of mind just yet, keeping hold of an arbitrary notion of thought (“hardcore gaming”). Their reaction is very insightful of fan culture and the identity it creates.
I myself am, of course, a huge Nintendo fan which makes up part of the fascination. You can even slap the commonly abused “fanboy” label on me too if you like. I’m not fussed. I think that the difference here is that, I’m very interested in casual games for both play and curious investigation. There’s no shame in it, contrary to popular belief, people like me can enjoy “casual” games and enjoy them because after all, they are games and I like to play games!
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Analyzing Contributions towards Negative Video Game Culture
May 20th, 2008
Video game culture; I find this so awfully difficult to write about yet so compelled to submit to the keyboard every time. Culture, culture, what is culture? It is an issue that I have been grappling with in this blog a couple of times already, each time concluding with mixed results. This time around though I think that I have formed a better methodology to approach the topic so let’s see what happens.
So Why Culture?
My interest in video game culture recently received a jump start when I read an article from Write the Game’s Keira Peney which summarized the various opinions on video game culture among us bloggers. Unfortunately I can’t say that I have read much on how other bloggers feel about gamer culture, which is probably why this article has opened a whole new can of worms which I’d like to explore.
It interested me why so many other people were also interested in gaming culture, it kinda surprised me a little as well. Once I got to the end of the article though and continued on to read the other articles referenced in the paper it all became clear. We have all been looking at culture from the same mind set.
What you’ll notice if you read any of the articles (including this one by me) is that we are all concerned about the growing negative social behaviour growing within our industry. Be it video game fandom, the negative overtones in online play and/or juvenile behaviour converging around online discussion boards; these are all issues of concern. We are all concerned because such behaviour is devouring the reputation of our industry and is restraining the growth of our identity as people. So therefore, in order to better understand this situation we have turned to culture (on the whole) as the answer.
Now that I am conscious of this I would like to step back and provide my own ideas about what elements within video game culture has spurred on this epidemic. Culture is, of course a complex issue and cannot be defined simply by a list of trends and occurrences. I’d like to acknowledge that. I’d also like to point out that culture is messy and you might notice, it is something that cannot be defined hence why I have had trouble differentiating video game culture as a whole from this negative social activity (another facet of video game culture itself).
What I am posting though is what I see to me dominate contributors to these issues. If you have your own ideas then be sure to let me know below or via email.
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