HBY

If you do you'll get an e-mail from me next week

Not yet. I will shut it down on may 14th.

I wouldn't say so, since the primary goal is still entertainment. I think there are very few games that don't teach you anything, even tetris "teaches" motor skills and trains one's reflexes. However, the primary objective is to give you a good time. I would say games specifically designed to teach you for example math in a playful way are educational games.

Maybe I should use "someone who plays a video game" instead of "gamer" . "Gamer" has all kinds of connotations and different meanings to it, while "someone who plays a video game" can be someone who plays every single day, or every once in a while. I wasn't planning on going too deep into current social behaviour, since my primary research goal is to map out the socialising factors behind gaming. However, if it indeed turns out that 30 year olds play significantly more games than other age groups it would be hard to ignore. In that case I would be very curious to see if they all started playing around the same age, which would mean they started gaming in the same time period. That would suggest that the explanation for average gamers (there's that word again) being around 30 years old would lie in the past, although it's hard to be sure. I think it has become increasingly difficult to really separate online and offline computer use by asking people about it instead of measuring it, also because of the different meanings these words can have. For example: is playing a single player game on steam offline or online? And having facebook open all day long, like you said? This is quite complicated and people will interpret it in different ways when asked about it. Also, I think people switch between online and offline a lot, sometimes every few minutes. I don't think people really keep track of that, let alone are able to answer questions about it. Kallio et al. have written a very interesting article on that. According to them one person can be many different types of gamer, it depends on the context and motivations to play. Here you can at least read the abstract, I don't think the article itself is available for free: http://gac.sagepub.com/content/6/4/327.abstract

Thank you! I agree, but I linked my survey in a lot of other places as well. Also I had some trouble determining what a typical gamer is. I found some research on usage of digital equipment and gaming, both Dutch and American. Unfortunately it wasn't really useful for determining typical gaming behaviour, for various reasons. Sometimes the numbers were a little outdated, and in research done by a large Dutch institution they made a separation between offline and online computer use, for some reason. I think this is very bad: nowadays you can't ask someone how long he uses the computer in an online way, and how long offline. I myself wouldn't be able to answer such a question and would probably just make things up. To come to a point: I don't know exactly what a typical gamer is. I think the thesis itself will give some hints, since people playing all kinds of games have filled it out, but it won't be enough to draw any final conclusions on this matter. I have already addressed this problem in the theoretical part of my thesis, and in the discussion at the end I will recommend that my study (or something similar) should be repeated as soon as solid data on typical gaming behaviour are available.

Ah, okay. Makes sense

Thank you very much! And hmmmm, why is my post count still 0. Does a reply to one's own topic not count as a post?

Doesn't really matter People that play 1 game enter 1 title, people that play 50 games enter 10. It's just to give me some idea of the games you play. Thank you for your time!

Thank you for telling me! I think the database went down. It happened 2 or 3 times before and the downtime never lasts longer than 20 seconds or so. Unfortunately 20 seconds is enough to really mess things up if people are filling out the survey. Since I'm not a company and don't employ any legal staff there's not much I can do about it. If I'd call the hosting company they'd say they're very sorry and then do nothing. So grrrrrrrrrr. I'm sorry that I have wasted your time. I'm not really sure I can use data from incomplete surveys. There are some ethical issues: can I use data given to me by someone who never approved sending his answers by clicking the submit button?

Hey guys, I already linked my survey before, but unfortunately my topic (and my account) were deleted because of the recent database issues. Anyways, good job getting the forum back up, Kerbal! It was a hell of a job if I understand correctly. But here it is again: My name is Huib, I study sciences of the arts at Tilburg University in the Netherlands (no I didn't know Diederik Stapel, different faculty etc.) and I'm currently working on my master's thesis on video gaming. To collect data I have set up an online survey and I would like you to fill it out, although a lot of you have already done so I believe. The survey is about video games (so no board games) and will take about 15 minutes to complete. As a thank you I will be giving away some games when it's all done, just check the website itself for details. The survey is located at Videogameresearch.nl Some information about data usage and the way your privacy is being handled: The only people with access to the data itself are the professor supervising my thesis and myself. The data will just be used for statistical tests, that will *hopefully* lead to my conclusions. The survey doesn't ask for your name, address or any other personal information like that. It does log your IP address, as a quick check for me to see if people have been filling it out more than once. Your IP address will not be exported to my statistics software. If you would like to have a chance of winning a game, you will be asked to enter your e-mail address. This will be stored in a second database that doesn't log IP or date and time of entry. This way your e-mail address can no longer be linked to the answers you gave. I would really appreciate it if you would fill it out, every single person helps. If you have done so already: thank you!