KBigelow

Heya, thanks for the question. I don't think a master's thesis would be considered a reliable source as is. It's more an introduction to academic research where students demonstrate that they are able to conduct research and be honest and critical of their work. The university is checking that I satisfy the requirements for my degree, which includes my committee evaluating the quality of my thesis. For my results to be considered in wider academic circles I'll have to be published. I might be able to publish articles from the thesis, but that will depend on my results and whether my professors and any journal I submit to think my research is worthwhile. Not all articles have equal quality, but there is a peer review process that is meant to check for quality. My data, specifically, is currently drawing more from a specific gaming community and I will be mentioning that several times in my thesis to give context for my results. I was hoping for more data so that didn't happen, but it's part of the process and I'll be mentioning it in my discussion. But I've certainly learned a lot, including not repeating the mistake I made here. 😅 (And, to your previous post, my survey is unfortunately a bit long. I tried my best but I got a little excited. It doesn't require a social media login though, that doesn't sound like something my IRB would even allow. It's hard to imagine those that do are academic since anonymity would be a big issue there. By the standards of my department, anyway.)

Fair enough. I'll take that into consideration next time.

I'm approaching video game research from a sociological perspective, but I'm personally interested in video game research because I love video games. Though, building model trains would also be an interesting research topic. I've never built a model train, but it'd be cool to learn why people enjoy it and how they got into the hobby. It'd be really difficult to change my thesis topic now, though. The survey is completely anonymous and I can't sell you anything, if those are concerns. But, I appreciate your feedback on how my post comes across. Probably why most video game forums consider survey links spam.

I'm a master's student (and avid gamer) currently working on my thesis about video game player typologies and taxonomies. I've read a lot of academic articles about how previous researchers have gone about categorizing gamers and am wondering what people think of gamer categories. I'm also curious to know if people are aware of gamer typologies and if they've participated in this kind of research before. Are you familiar with any gamer typologies? And do they seem accurate to your experiences as a gamer? I'm also looking for survey participants so if you'd like to take my survey and help me finish my degree please follow the link to Survey Monkey below. And if there's anyone you can think of who'd also like to take it please pass it along. Thanks for considering. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CVNZJ2B