PhD in gaming culture – the new wave of academics
- — 29 May, 2003 12:31
The University of Queensland this week attracted around 100 people to a conference on a growing area of academic focus – post graduate studies in gaming culture.
Local and international academics spoke on topics such as the corporate ownership of virtual communities through to debates on violence before an audience of students, industry representatives and gamers, said conference organiser Sue Morris.
Currently writing a PhD paper on gaming communities devoted to the first-person shooter genre, Morris said she has researched online first-person shooters since 1995 while undertaking a media studies degree at Sydney’s Macquarie University.
Academic interest in gaming has come from the communities gamers have created via the Internet, she said.
“TV has fan cultures, but gamers and [professional software] developers co-create products, like Counter-Strike,” she said, referring to the popular multiplayer first-person shooter. Counter-Strike began as a fan-created add-on for Half-Life before it was commercially adopted.
At Monday’s conference, titled “From Space War! to the Ivory Tower”, Morris spoke on the topic of “Fear and loathing in cyberspace - Game research and the debate over computer game violence”.
This subject fuelled her interest in the field of study. The claims that video games contributed to the Columbine High shootings in the US motivated her to disprove the theory, she said.
“The idea that people play because they love killing; you just have to look the popularity of multiplayer games to see that isn’t true. It’s about social interaction,” said Morris.
A survey of gamers about four years ago by the Office of Film and Literature Classification on gamers’ attitudes to violence also disproved any link, she said.
That most students studying gaming culture were gamers themselves did not create bias, Morris said. Rather, it was needed to understand the complex social processes in which online gamers engaged.
“It’s hard to measure these things [in this field of study],” said Morris. “So a lot of my research is based on my own knowledge and surveys [at LAN gaming meets],” she said.
Another university colleague and conference speaker, John Banks, said he gained employment with Brisbane games developer Auran while researching a PhD paper on the collaborative efforts of gamers with developers and related ownership issues.
In 1997 Banks approached Auran for help with his PhD due to the company’s use of fan-created content in its Trainz series of games.
“I thought they’d be a good case study for my PhD. Since then I’ve been employed with Auran to help them manage their game communities,” said Banks, who is Auran’s online communities relations manager.
The position involves liaising between Trainz’s fan base and Auran’s developers, with Banks helping Trainz fans to take advantage of Auran’s beta software.
One group of Trainz fans sells their add-on software online, an issue close to Banks’ PhD.
“My PhD is about how gamers are hardly consumers anymore, they’re helping create the game.
“It raises IP issues, who owns the content? End user agreements regulate a lot of what users can do with the software, but there’s a lot of [legal] issues for game developers at the moment about how to share their content with fans,” he said.
Morris’ Game Culture web site
