How players "read" a game?

It's is funny that while I blog what I am doing for my study, I never mention what my research topic is. My research topic is to find out how players "read" a game and the game genre I am interested in is MMOG. I am confident that we can develop a theory that describe how players "read" game and grounded theory approach will help me achieve that.

Just as learners may not necessarily take the view propounded an author when reading a book, and in some instances they may take a totally opposite and unexpected view, in MMOG too there is likelihood that players may not necessarily "read" a game as game designers and developers would want them to (Gee, 2003). We can better understand what players take away from playing a game by looking into the conversations and interactions players have with other players (Shaffer, 2007), and answer question that will broaden our understanding of social interactions, culture and practices in MMOG. So I will be focusing on a phenomenon or process and my study would look into evidences that will allow understanding of the process that links the two dynamics - players' interactions and conversation that emerge form social structures in MMOG, and their playing experience.

My study has potential to contribute to research on games for learning, because educators who are interested in exploring MMOG as a learning tool have to be aware of the nature of social play and community dynamic found in MMOGs. Furthermore, different learning opportunities are afforded in MMOGs based on different social context found in them (Squire & Jan, 2007). As such, designing MMOG for learning entails not only structuring learning activities to cover an intended syllabus, but also to view MMOG as a social system and to design game and social structures in MMOG that will engender interactions and conversations that are favourable for learning.

I have explored other qualitative approaches during my qualitative class but I feel social constructivist approach to grounded theory by Charmaz (2006) is most suitable (and I am also exploring Adele Clarke's situational analysis on top of Charmaz's approach). Many will argue that qualitative research is not aimed for generalizability but I feel constant comparison method to draw theoretical categories and theoretical concerns to the point of category saturation will end me up with a theory to describe the phenomenon I am investigating.

Choosing the right methodology and methods are important to give credibility to our findings and for readers to take our work seriously (Smagorinsky, 2008). Stories I write if I were to use narrative approaches (Polkinghorne, 1995), would at best explain a phenomenon with respect to a local setting (my specific research site). The same can be said with case study research (Yin, 2005; Stake, 1995). Phenomenology (Moustakas, 1994) would leave me with categories so thin that I can hardy pull them together to draw out a theory. Traditional grounded theory (Rock, 2001; LeCompte & Preissle, 1993) is a no as explained in my earlier post. Mixed method is interesting and Johnson & Onwuegbuzie (2004)'s approach is one version of a few versions of mixed methods approaches. I have heard a seminar by Dr Chen W. who said that in mixed method, quantitative methods may be used to affirm findings from qualitative methods (a turn around from Johnson and Onwuegbuzie). Anyway, I have explored the possibility of getting quatitative data by mining one the game servers of the MMOG I am researching on. However, the game distributor company chooses to put on deaf ears to my request. Ah well, I understand perfectly why they are doing so. : )