- We all love to play WoW
- We love to read about WoW (otherwise we wouldn’t be here)
- Some of us like to write about WoW
- Given the opportunity we all like to share our WoW experience to anyone that will listen.
- Most of us believe that WoW and other online games have given us skills that are transferable to the real world.
- All of us get annoyed at the negative perspective that follows online gaming, where a positive story about it a rarity.
There are a bunch of Academics that would love you to share your WoW experiences and have asked me to spread the word. There is an initial short survey which will probably only take up 10 minutes of your life, with the option of being involved in further activities including skill tests to compare your skill development over time.
Here’s the email I received:
I am writing to you on behalf of a Media Studies research team at Utrecht University (Netherlands) currently doing a project involving players participating in World of Warcraft. As part of our project we are inviting people to take part in a survey (which can be found at
http://vw-researchproject.110mb.com
) that looks at how virtual worlds can build skill and knowledge and how it can (or perhaps to some cannot) be transferred between the physical and the digital. We have issued the survey because we are interested in seeing whether or not players believe that they do gain skills and knowledge usable in other instances and if so how useful it is to them in other activities in their lives.We are writing to you if you would be willing to both take the survey and, if you would not mind, pass along information about the survey to others if you know that they might be interested in taking it. We chose your blog because we are looking for some of the biggest and most well known blogs and are hoping to find some active player communities to get the survey so we can proceed with our research and really get a good scope of what people believe and what they do not believe.
The goal of the project is to direct research to a somewhat ignored field in academia – specifically the beneficiary nature of games. Most of the team has played a variety of online MMORPGs before (including text-based and role-playing) and so are interested in bringing their own experiences with gaming to light and break some of the stereotypes that are still somewhat lingering around dealing with gaming in academia.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing back from you.
Best,
Tzoanna
So:
- Why not spend 10 minutes shedding light on your experiences.
- Why not tip the balance from the negative to the positive.
- Why not spread the news to your friends, guildmates and anyone else that will participate.
Do yourself a favor, get an alternative view of the value of gaming out there… You never know, one day in the future it might be advantageous to note your WoW playing and guild leadership exploits on your resume.
You can make a difference, so why not make it now?
Not sure that your online presence really makes a difference? Check out this post and reconsider.
Gnomer and Out!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/09/17/
sharing-your-wow-experience-for-a-noble-cause/
ZOMG creepy. There is a line in the Massive Nerd post that’s almost exactly a line in my post for tomorrow. (A post I wrote some 4 days ago.) Get out of my head!
I’ll be throwing my two copper in for the survey!
throw a copper or two in my direction too…
Funny how bloggers are often thinking along parallel lines…
Survey taken.
But, um… wow.
I run on with a bunch of stuff that’s been crowding my head for a while, and I’m increasingly amazed at the response.
Put into this context, Gnomer, my friend, you have honored me greatly.
It’s often the stuff that is crowding out the head and that gets spewed into the blog editor in one huge heave that comes out the best…
As for honoring me… I have been struggling for days to think of an appropriate way to introduce the survey, then your post appears in my reader…
There is a reason I hhve followed you across blogs… you are worth the read!
done and done. i love surveys that show the positive side of WoW and gaming in general. there’s so much misinformation and falsehoods out there. i’ll pass this survey info on to my guild, too.
excellent… yeah, I find the media a curious beast.
There’s a few things hitting the media here in Australia right now that you know are 1 in 20 million… but they are reported as if it will happen to you, guaranteed, if you step out your front door.
A little balance never hurts…
Of course we are all more likely to read, believe and quote that which is most like out point of view to begin with
Done, However, seems all the question is positive
for the in game exprience…
kinda strange, don’t you think?
Ahhh, but what is it they say…
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics”
I did make sure I put in some less positive things experienced from the game, of course there is the danger that they will be anecdotal rather than statistical…
But that said… Most surveys would have us believe that 100% of respondents felt that WoW was addictive and brought us closer to the devil
So it’s only fair that another survey would suggest that it should be introduced into schools and a learning tool
(OK, massive exaggerations there)
My thoughts are my own, I don’t want more internet worms eating them.
Only fair…
I have been sitting on this one for a little while.
In the end, I went and did the survey.. it looked well put together and straight up.
I also figured if I was leading you into a nefarious trap, at least I would be the 1st to know…