Theme 4

The article I have chosen is 'The Attitudes, Feelings and Experiences of Online Gamers: A Qualitative Analysis' by Zaheer Hussain and Mark D. Griffiths published 2009 in CyberPsychology & Behavior, vol 12, nr 6. It is about MMORPGs, i.e massive multiplayer online role-playing games, and their effect on gamers attitudes, feelings and experiences. A large part of the participants where mainly playing the MMORPG World of Warcraft (released 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment, furthermore known as Activision Blizzard).  

One qualitative method is used throughout the study, namely semi structured interviews. A semi structured interview focuses on topics of choice rather than straight forward and already decided questions. During the interviews the interviewers (i.e the authors) let the participants speak/write freely about their experiences without interrupting excluding the authors influence. The interviews where conducted using either MSN Messenger or e-mail conversations. The gamers where divided into three different groups, group one consisting of casual gamers (playing less than 15 hours a week), group two of regular gamers (playing between 15 and 30 hours a week) and group three of excessive gamers (playing more than 30 hours a week). The gamers where between 18 to 54 years old and where from all around the globe, 52 where male and 19 female. The gamers reached a mean of 4,7 years experience from MMORPGs.

The benefits of using interviews conducted online as a method is that it is a fairly easy way of gaining participants, you have a much bigger group to recruit from. All of the participants in the study had chosen themselves to be a part of the study so you get participants who is more willing to explain their experiences etc. Another benefit of using a qualitative method as this is that you get lots of qualitative material that you can analyze and easy sort into different categories. The limitations is that qualitative methods as this often only use a small amount of the total sum of gamers playing MMORPGs. For example World of Warcraft has about ten million users. Therefore asking 71 gamers about their experiences might not generate a general picture applicable towards the whole mass. Although 71 participants in a qualitative study is quite a high number and should be sufficient for drawing out the main points.

I did not learn so many new aspects about qualitative research actually, I do not know if I would have done it by choosing another article either. I have already learned quite a bit about it in earlier courses like "Evaluation methods", "Introduction to HCI" and from the bachelor thesis. I have learned more from these and using trial and error than reading one single article alone.

The use of the method could have been improved by firstly including a larger number of participants to make the study more valid (apply to online gamers in general) rather than just reliable (the answers are pointing out a few key points that come up consistently throughout the interviews) as it is in this moment. Secondly alternative methods could have been applied such as questionnaires or focus groups etc. I do not think a questionnaire would have given as good results though, the number of participants is quite high in the study and the discussions in the interviews have more data to analyze and more depth to them. Focus groups could have been a supplementary method to get the gamers to inspire each other to even more insights. Thirdly it would be interesting to see if these key points also are applicable to other MMORPGs or are unique to World of Warcraft?