Anthropological study of the fighting games community

ayjayirl

Lads, my better half is doing her final year thesis on “Language and its affect on a sub-culture: a fighting-games community in Ireland”. This is a follow on from her project last year with Inferno 17 where she used a form of participant observation to learn about said topic. She will be helping me out on the day setting up and wanted to do another participant observation on this EVO event – it being the biggest we have done…. well, hopefully. She has asked me to start a thread to allow her to explain to all of you what it is and that its voluntary etc etc. So here is the thread started – she’ll reply to this with details.

This is completely voluntary and anonymous and if anyone has a problem they don’t have to be included at all. As I said she’ll be posting in this thread next with details and feel free to ask her any questions or queries about it – she’d love nothing more.

Thanks,
Aj

Doctor DooM

I'm ok with it, obviously

Zoomyzoom

ayjayirl wrote: »

Lads, my better half is doing her final year thesis on “Language and its affect on a sub-culture: a fighting-games community in Ireland”. This is a follow on from her project last year with Inferno 17 where she used a form of participant observation to learn about said topic. She will be helping me out on the day setting up and wanted to do another participant observation on this EVO event – it being the biggest we have done…. well, hopefully. She has asked me to start a thread to allow her to explain to all of you what it is and that its voluntary etc etc. So here is the thread started – she’ll reply to this with details.

This is completely voluntary and anonymous and if anyone has a problem they don’t have to be included at all. As I said she’ll be posting in this thread next with details and feel free to ask her any questions or queries about it – she’d love nothing more.

Thanks,
Aj

[FONT=Utopia, serif]Hi Guys, with your permission (those who would like to be involved in my research) I would like to conduct 'Ethnographic' research through applying the qualitative method of 'participant-observation' alongside 'informal interviewing' within the communities' social space (tournaments, online [/FONT]boards.ie[FONT=Utopia, serif], online commentary) in an effort to explore my research question.[/FONT]


[FONT=Utopia, serif]Anthropological topic of interest - “Language and its affect on a sub-culture: a fighting-games community in Ireland.”

Snipped from my proposal which I think will be helpful for those who want to know what my research is about - "There is evidence to suggest that online fighting-games communities have the ability to creates neologisms (newly coined terms, entering common use but have not yet been accepted into mainstream language) in an effort to efficiently describe specific events, persons, situations and actions. My thesis will examine whether this phenomena occurs within the context of this particular fighting-games community in Ireland"[/FONT]


[FONT=Utopia, serif]During this summer I would like to attend each tournament, as a guest of Doom and Aj, and record our experiences and interactions within tournament. I would also like to record interactions on the online forums and the online commentary during the games. The emphasis will be centered around the linguistic discourse that occurs and the semiotic relationship that is so innate in this discourse. I will use 'field-notes', 'descriptive-notes', photographs and other recording devices (video camera and recording equipment use to records the commentary) to record the experience; also know as my data. The development of my 'field-notes' and any 'data' collected for my Anthropology thesis will be collaboratively developed; meaning that each individual as a 'participant' and I as the 'researcher' will work together in an effort to describe and illuminate our experiences. The method of informal interviewing (more like a conversation rather than a questionnaire/survey for those who are wondering what informal interviewing is) may take up a few minutes of each participant's time. I would like to record each informal-interview with a hand-held audio recording device. Each participant will receive their own copy of their interview along with the transcription for their personal review. Each participant will maintain full autonomy over their own data and can choose what they would like included and what not to include.[/FONT]


[FONT=Utopia, serif]There are no risks involved in this research and the interviews along with the method of participant-observations DOES NOT constitute as any type of scientific experiment and/or psychological counseling or treatment. All identities will be kept confidential and I will use a [code names/pseudonym] to identify your information and other data in an effort to maintain complete anonymity. Neither personal names nor private information will appear in the final thesis. I will store all recordings, transcripts and other notes of our conversations safely in a locked box located in a locked desk. This information will also be kept on a password secured folder on my laptop. All information regarding participants will be kept completely confidential.[/FONT]


[FONT=Utopia, serif]The benefit to the community is that community will have full access to the research when it is finished and may use it to understand how the experience of the individuals of this community compares with others or to the wider Anthropological literature. All information regarding participants will be kept completely confidential. All participation is voluntary and individuals are free to refuse to take part, can refuse to answer any questions and may stop at any time. [/FONT]


[FONT=Utopia, serif]Those who were at 'Inferno 17' will have already experienced what it is like to be part of Ethnographic research as I conducted a small participant-observation project during that tournament. [/FONT]


[FONT=Utopia, serif]It would be highly unethical of me to include anyone or any member who does not want to be part of my researcher. I must re-iterate that all participation is voluntary. Everything that I record or write about will be coded and full anonymity will be maintained for those who are concerned about anonymity. Any person or member who does not want to be part of my research can be assured that I will not included them or any details about them.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Utopia, serif]
[/FONT]
[FONT=Utopia, serif]Thank you all for you help in advance; it is greatly appreciated.
[/FONT]
Kind regards and many thanks
Rachel Phillips

Konata

Wow, that sounds like such an interesting thesis topic!

Good luck with your research

Zoomyzoom

Thanks...hopefully it will go well lol

Sairus

I'm interested to see how this turns out! Best of luck with it, and I'm fine with my data being sampled.

pdbhp

Once there's more rice krispie cakes to eat I'm good:D

ayjayirl

pdbhp wrote: »

Once there's more rice krispie cakes to eat I'm good:D

€1 a cake.

Zoomyzoom

Of course! I will be making rice-crispy cakes for all the participants (for free Aj ) in an effort to show my appreciation to all those involved. However, there will be a fresh supply of cakes to buy on the day.

Dreddybajs

Sounds great, I'm in.

K.O.Kiki

Rachel, make sure you hang out on the IRC channel; it's taken on a life of its own.

#IrishFightingGames on QuakeNet

Doctor DooM

You should release some rice krispie cakes for free, but without paying people won't have access to evil rice krispie cakes, true rice krispie cakes, or twin rice krispie cakes.

Zoomyzoom

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Rachel, make sure you hang out on the IRC channel; it's taken on a life of its own.

#IrishFightingGames on QuakeNet

Will do and many thanks

Owwmykneecap

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Rachel, make sure you hang out on the IRC channel; it's taken on a life of its own.

#IrishFightingGames on QuakeNet

It's mainly you posting hentai and fergus asking to be a mod.


This reminds me of the episode of Bones where Bones goes to study the people at the Jersey Shore. But with less guidos and more hadokens.

GTL baby.

Sabre0001

Doctor DooM wrote: »

You should release some rice krispie cakes for free, but without paying people won't have access to evil rice krispie cakes, true rice krispie cakes, or twin rice krispie cakes.

And if you pre-order from certain places, you get them made with marshmallow

Voa

Evil marshmallow rice kripsie cakes, you say? I'm in.

Fergus_

Best of luck with it! \o/

Ramza

Awesome, I'm down

ayjayirl

Fergus_ wrote: »

Best of luck with it! \o/

I think you'll need a parental consent form to participate in her research cause you are under 18......




lol

Misty Chaos

If you hear someone say ' You've being Mistified! ' on the day then that was me winning a match.

But seriously, it sounds like an interesting topic your working on and I have no problem with you collecting any sample data from me.

pdbhp

ayjayirl wrote: »

€1 a cake.

Boycott:p

Orim

Sounds good. The one from the online fights was interesting, be really cool to see what you come up with after 3 months or so.

Xinkai

sounds good Need any interviews hit anyone up, I'm sure they'd be happy to help you too

SuperInfinity

OP, you are using the word "anthropological" wrongly.

You want to talk about the history of fighting games, not the "anthropology" of fighting games.

an·thro·pol·o·gy

(nthr-pl-j)n.1. The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.

Orim

No he is using it right. His better half (trust me, this is not just expression in this case ) is doing an anthropological study on the language and social development specific to our fighting game community. This is for her thesis.

I wouldn't presume things but I'm guessing that you didn't read one word of this thread. Because in this thread we are in no way talking about the history of fighting games or our community. In fact the first line fairly clearly states this :

ayjayirl wrote: »

Lads, my better half is doing her final year thesis on “Language and its affect on a sub-culture: a fighting-games community in Ireland”.

D4RK ONION

Isn't it the anthropology of humans specific to the community "fighting game players" she's looking at?

A-Trak

LOL,

Reading the initial post of a thread, and using an online dictionary definition of "anthropology," aimed at someone who's doing a masters degree and drafting a final thesis in said subject whilst failing to read the rest of the thread.....

The ironing is delicious

Post 3 SuperInfinity, Post 3

SuperInfinity

Orim wrote: »

No he is using it right. His better half (trust me, this is not just expression in this case ) is doing an anthropological study on the language and social development specific to our fighting game community. This is for her thesis.

I wouldn't presume things but I'm guessing that you didn't read one word of this thread. Because in this thread we are in no way talking about the history of fighting games or our community. In fact the first line fairly clearly states this :

I skimmed to see if anyone was arguing linguistics and it didn't appear they were. >_>

A-Trak wrote: »

LOL,

Reading the initial post of a thread, and using an online dictionary definition of "anthropology," aimed at someone who's doing a masters degree and drafting a final thesis in said subject whilst failing to read the rest of the thread.....

The ironing is delicious

Post 3 SuperInfinity, Post 3

It doesn't say this in the OP.

A-Trak

SuperInfinity wrote: »

I skimmed to see if anyone was arguing linguistics and it didn't appear they were. >_>

It doesn't say this in the OP.

Yup, it does.

“Language and its affect on a sub-culture:

And even if that wasn't clear, post 3 is a very detailed explanation of the study, which I'm guessing you "skimmed" before wading in with your copy and paste definition.

Orim

D4RK ONION wrote: »

Isn't it the anthropology of humans specific to the community "fighting game players" she's looking at?

Anthropology is a noun. Used to describe the study itself, don't think it can used that way.

But yes, it took me a while but I should have mentioned players. Although I don't think that's what it's really about. I think it's based on masochists that stick with Honda in AE and the ego maniacs that drop him

SuperInfinity wrote: »

I skimmed to see if anyone was arguing linguistics and it didn't appear they were. >_>

We wouldn't be. This is the fighting game forum. Doesn't make the use of a word wrong.

SuperInfinity wrote: »

It doesn't say this in the OP.

Must have been some skim to miss the first line.

Placebo

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT
Im available to be interviewed online.
I think its worth taking a look at sensory motor contingencies on this, mind+motor skills come a lot into it.

SuperInfinity

A-Trak wrote: »

Yup, it does.

You're mistaken. My post was aimed at the OP, not the OP's other half. I would have thought that the OP came up with that word himself. I would think that I do know who I am "aiming" a post at.

If it was the person who was doing the thesis that was actually posting, then I wouldn't have said it.

If you contradict something in this post again I charge you with just trying to start an argument for no reason and won't be available to respond. I'm done with this thread.

Dreddybajs

SuperInfinity wrote: »

If you contradict something in this post again I charge you with just trying to start an argument for no reason

LOL

Doctor DooM

SuperInfinity wrote: »

You're mistaken. My post was aimed at the OP, not the OP's other half. I would have thought that the OP came up with that word himself. I would think that I do know who I am "aiming" a post at.

If it was the person who was doing the thesis that was actually posting, then I wouldn't have said it.

If you contradict something in this post again I charge you with just trying to start an argument for no reason and won't be available to respond. I'm done with this thread.

And I would think you would know enough to read a thread this short all the way through before making what appeared to be a snarky comment. It was you who started an argument in this thread, if any is actually occuring.


Regardless, this isn't humanities, it's a forum for fighting game dicussion. I am sure AJ feels incredibly remorseful for his reckless use of the term anthropology, and will never dare to use it with such abandon in future.

ayjayirl

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I am sure AJ feels incredibly remorseful for his reckless use of the term anthropology, and will never dare to use it with such abandon in future.

Soooo remorseful..... anthropologically speaking of course.

UberPrinny_Baal

This sounds very interesting. Not sure I fully understand what goes into it, but it definitely sounds cool.

I'm sort of curious how much pollution the local Irish fighting vocabulary would suffer because of the Internet Fighting Terminology in general.

We didn't come up with terms like "Salty" etc, but we definitely use them

Also: lol @ Superinfinity, failed attempt at being a drive-by spelling nazi

Doctor DooM

Interesting point Dave- while we use similar terms to the English and the Americans, the way we talk is also quite different.




He was rinsed, innit, sick boy.

Monkeyto

Yo pot monsters! What's going on!? And why so salty SuperInfinity? Did you just get blown up?

Where yo curleh moustache at!!!!!!!!!!!

A-Trak

The topic of this thread and the purpose of it has huge benefit not only to this forum and it's members, but more-so, I reckon the end result may well feature on a lot of global sites and worldwide commentary surrounding fighting games.

I'm not going to derail this thread anymore getting caught up in your petty semantics. Any further posts I make will be directly related to the theme of the thread, I'm not looking for any sort of argument as it would be contrary both the tone and direction here.

And I don't want to be charged with anything, good day sir.

Orim

Our terminology is very polluted by the Americans and to a lesser extent the English. However this is a general trend that seems to be happening all over the country.

There is also a very Irish twist on the way we use those words. The slightly offensive and self deprecating banter that is very much an Irish way of talking. "The Slaggings" if you will. A very simple example would be how often a good player would be called a scrub and a crap player would be godlike.

Doctor DooM

Monkeyto wrote: »

Yo pot monsters! What's going on!? And why so salty SuperInfinity? Did you just get blown up?

Where yo curleh moustache at!!!!!!!!!!!

This post is way more relevant than it might first appear.

Doctor DooM

Orim wrote: »

There is also a very Irish twist on the way we use those words. The slightly offensive and self deprecating banter that is very much an Irish way of talking. "The Slaggings" if you will. A very simple example would be how often a good player would be called a scrub and a crap player would be godlike.

That's really true. The other day I walked in to casuals and said "I want to beat up these two scrubs now" and it was Stev0 and Dreddy

ayjayirl

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

This sounds very interesting. Not sure I fully understand what goes into it, but it definitely sounds cool.

I'm sort of curious how much pollution the local Irish fighting vocabulary would suffer because of the Internet Fighting Terminology in general.

We didn't come up with terms like "Salty" etc, but we definitely use them

This is interesting and gold for her project. I am not sure if she would have the heuristic grounding to look at that but that is pretty much the whole point of this participant observation. She wants the guru's like us...... well, like you, to bring up discussion points like this with her.

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Also: lol @ Superinfinity, failed attempt at being a drive-by spelling nazi

LMAO... I nearly fell off the chair.

@SuperInfinity: From the Oxford dictionary:

Derivatives (for the word anthropology)
anthropological
Pronunciation:/-pəˈlɒdʒɪk(ə)l/
adjective

For the layman, this means that 'anthropological' is the adjective, or "descriptive meaning", for anthrolopogy and it can be used within a sentence to provide an understanding of methodology (in the case).

lol

ayjayirl

Orim wrote: »

Our terminology is very polluted by the Americans and to a lesser extent the English. However this is a general trend that seems to be happening all over the country.

There is also a very Irish twist on the way we use those words. The slightly offensive and self deprecating banter that is very much an Irish way of talking. "The Slaggings" if you will. A very simple example would be how often a good player would be called a scrub and a crap player would be godlike.

Too true and I agree, it is something that translates across more than just the fighting games genre and community.

Owwmykneecap

SuperInfinity wrote: »

OP, you are using the word "anthropological" wrongly.

You want to talk about the history of fighting games, not the "anthropology" of fighting games.

I don't think any of us expected him to say that.

Dwydwy

-Insert something here to make it seem like I understand what this is -

Owwmykneecap

Dwydwy wrote: »

-Insert something here to make it seem like I understand what this is -

I am 12 and what is this?

Doctor DooM

Oh by the way Superinfinity- you were too slow, someone reported the post.

I am considering you a troll and I don't want to see you in this thread again. I will not ban you because I am so mature and at very least you deleted your little strop.

Orim

Shoutouts to DooM putting SI on blast (sorry, couldn't resist)

Zoomyzoom

Holy Optimus, I leave the forum for one evening and all hell breaks loose! lol Below is just a section I put together to illustrate what Anthropology is about and where my research fits in to the discipline....hopefully to avoid any other confusion about the discipline and my research.

Anthropology is the study of humankind. Of all the disciplines that examines aspects of human existence and accomplishments, only Anthropology explores the entire panorama of the human experience, from human origins to contemporary forms of culture and social life (for example: on-line fighting games and the linguistic discourse that is employed). Anthropology as an integrative interdisciplinary discipline has four field (archaeological, biological, linguistic, and sociocultural Anthropology) although many Anthropologists also conduct research across these fields. With its holistic perspective, Anthropology intersects the multiple approaches to the study of humankind-biological, social, cultural, historical, linguistic, cognitive, material, technological, affective, and aesthetic.

My own interest lies in linguistics. Linguistic Anthropology examines the history and structure of human languages, the relationship between language and culture, cognitive and biological aspects of language, and other symbolic forms and media of communication and reasoning. For example, in the case of on-line fighting games, 'indexical-iconic signs' (see [FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Peirce - Semiotics)[/FONT] such as ‘salty’ & ‘scrub’ are different ways of using main-stream language to contextually describe an action or situation...which in turn allows another member of the fighting games community to quickly interpret and relate to the world around them. A small part of my research will investigate the relationship between the biological aspects (the brain and how it interprets and reproduces language and symbol systems) with linguistics (how language is used as a socially and culturally grounded practice, which encompasses sets of expectations, beliefs, ideologies and moral values about the world). In other words, investigating the difference between 'button bashing' and 'execution' / playing for fun and playing to win (I'm currently reading 'Playing to Win'). However, for the most part, my research will focus on 'neologisms' (newly coined terms, entering common use but have not yet been accepted into mainstream language, which are used to efficiently describe specific events, persons, situations and actions)....investigating the history, the development and the use of the communities indexical language.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]For me, a greater understanding of how language is used as a socially and culturally grounded practice, which encompass sets of expectations, beliefs, ideologies and moral values about the world, and the context in which it is uttered, can help to illustrate the users own understanding of the values and practices of the world they live in. In other words, language is not just a simple tool used to communicate during interactions with others, it shapes our thoughts and emotions and how we perceive and understand the world around us. In the case of my thesis, I hope that my research will reveal a deeper understanding of the sub-culture of competitive gaming, in the Irish context, from a linguistic perspective. My thesis could form the basis of further research in this field and to the best of my knowledge this research in relation to competitive gaming has not been carried out utilizing the methodologies that I will use.

I hope that helps
[/FONT]

Doctor DooM

Zoomyzoom wrote: »

Holy Optimus...

This post wins the internet.