I'm most intrigued as we begin looking at gaming and gaming literacies with the "why" behind playing games. What is it that attracts someone to games in general and video or electronic games in particular? I suspect that they are related. Maybe someone who likes to play games in general will also like electronic games? I don't know. Or does it have to do with the way our brains function? It would be easy to say that it is about age and gender, but there are far to many exceptions to this generalization for it to be true. It is true that I don't know even one teenage or pre-teen boy who doesn't like electronic games, while I do know teenage and pre-teen girls who don't -- so maybe it is safe to say that it isn't quite a prevalent with girls -- but I don't know where that would get me. The same is true for age. I know lots and lots of men who love electronic games and plenty of women who like them. Take my own family, for instance. I have two brothers and four sisters. Both of my brothers (48 and 32) love electronic games. The 32-year old grew up with them, but the 48 year old didn't. Of my sisters and me, two of us don't play electronic games and three do. My sister and I who don't play them do not play other games much either. My attention span when it comes to gaming is so short. It's not that I don't like them -- it's just that they don't hold my attention for long. But then again, neither does chess, checkers, card, board games. When my children were young and wanted to play something like Trouble (the board game) with them, I would feel so anxious by the time we finished. I can't even imagine sitting through a game of Monopoly or Life.
I wonder what it would take for an electronic game to catch my attention or my sister's attention? I wonder if it is even possible... and this from someone who loves technology, gadgets, and the like. I wouldn't go for a run without my Garmin -- I love podcasts -- and I'm fascinated by online technologies for teaching... So it's not about it being electronic. And I don't have a sense that it is waste of time. In fact, I'm quite convinced by Gee's arguments. I think it's an interesting question because there is a chunk of the population who isn't consuming this very easily consummed good...
1 comment:
Susan-
I agree that gaming and game culture is a an area rich in possibilities as far as research, but can you think of ways to frame this as a research questions. You bring up many good issues like gender inequality related to gaming and clearly some age issues, but the challenge will be focusing this interest into something that can be handled.
Because the nature of this project is exploratory, I am wondering if you can use this as a way to gather basic info on your topic, a topic that you might very well pick up in more length later. For example, maybe you will spend your 8 pages building a profile of the "average" gamer or a list of the general appeals of games - as seen in others' research. From there - in a later project - you might be able to look at case studies of non-traditional gamers, those not the norm.
I think taking on a small piece of this research question - what makes some people gamers and some not - might be a great start in broadening your knowledge and interest in this field of study.
I am interested to see what you come up with and please let me know if you would like to chat/email about ways to narrow the focus.
Jen
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