Game mods & Post-Industrial Play

Yesterday (June 28) I mapped out some of the territory of what will be part of my dissertation proposal for a 40+ audience at Columbia Business School. Over the last six months modding has become an inevitable chapter since it seems integral to much of what I think video gaming is all about. So as part of my presentation I drew up a brief case study of the industrious people over at Derelict Studios.

Of course, I’m still formulating my methodology, but I think it’ll be interesting to, in addition to drawing up the network universe of modding communities, create a bunch of maps like this:

I made a pretty overview of where the various people involved in this modding collective live & work. I’m going to try and see if I can map out a slice of the modding universe, in addition to the obvious inquiries like interviews and surveys. Anyway, from a methodological standpoint, I like not having to acquire and learn some sophisticated piece of software to visualize a certain aspect, but instead can use big common denominator software apps like this (thanks Google Maps). Perhaps this will be a good angle to use for my talk in D.C. this november, tentatively called Virtual Ethnography or something along those lines.

If anything, a simple visualization like this shows the integral role for message boards. Clearly, without some asynchronous way of communicating, none of these people would be able to work towards the same goal. So, for research purposes, whether ethnographic or otherwise, this means that the communication method is the most fruitful area of investigation. Unlike real-life observational studies, such as Daniel Buenza & David Stark’s investigations of Wall Street trading rooms, online forums allow observing collaborations with a higher fidelity simply because it is documented in a static source. Of course, there’s no access to the one-on-one communication that takes place, in the same way that minute body language may be missed in real life observation. But the bulk of communication is right there, organized by date and time stamp, permanently stored digitally.

So, to answer the question I got after my presentation as to where, by God, my methodology was, I’m hoping to use some of my experience with message board analysis as a research tool to understand the dynamics of a modding community. Comments/questions?