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Blog 2: Beginning of My Research
A Recap of My Research!
So just a recap of my research thus far: I am looking into male and female representation in video games. My goal with my research is to analyze the games' success compared to certain game elements. I am looking at a variety of factors such as male/female sexualization and representation. Through my research, I am going to be conducting both quantitative and qualitative data and comparing the two. By this, I will be able to compare the characteristics of the game through representation and portrayal of the characters to how successful they are. So far, I have started and am about halfway through my quantitative research and have yet to start my qualitative research. My purpose through this is to essentially to get a deeper understanding of the gaming world and how games are created.
Where's The Gap?
As of now, there is a lot of research to do with games and their relation to sexism or how it affects people. Some sources look at how games are portraying their female characters in different ways. This can be through ways such as the storyline and their physical appearance. Along with this, other research aims to find the effects of the sexualization of games on the men and women playing them. Some research looks at the sexualization of characters but fail to compare those characteristics to the success of the game. Many look at how video games affect the people playing them. Elizabeth Morawitz’s study of looking for a relation between the sexualization of games on things such as self-esteem is a prime example of this. (Morawitz 2017) There are many studies trying to see if sexism affects its players and while this is important to my study, it doesn't answer my question! Along with this, the box art of video games is another area that has been researched. With the research showing that more hypersexual art tends to lead to more sales, this doesn't necessarily mean that the games themselves will have the same patterns. (Haslam 2019) These research topics are able to give me context and a societal impact on my study but they don't answer the question to see if the variety of qualities in the games makes them more or less successful. Thus, this leaves a gap in my research showing that there is no information surrounding the idea of comparing success to sexism implemented within gameplay.
How Has My Research Gone?
Throughout my first week of research, I was stumped because I wasn't able to efficiently do research. This is because some of the areas of research I wanted to do had to do with looking at video games and it seems that the school firewall didn’t like that too much. Because of this, I had to go talk to my mentor, Mr. Barker, to get some advice on how to fix this issue. He let me know about getting VPNs and the dangers in them. I had to get one in order to do my research efficiently at school but I also had to be careful of the safety of my computer. He told me that I needed to get a VPN that wouldn’t track my data or do anything weird so I took a class period to truly look into them and ask around. A few of my friends had them and after some advice and research, I decided to go with SetUpVPN. So far, it has given me no trouble and my minor backstep was resolved!
https://trendywebz.com/setupvpn-for-pc/
How Am I Going To Execute My Research?
One of the bigger concerns in my project would be not letting my own opinions affect the outcomes of my data. I really need to make sure that I remain unbiased and objective towards the information I gather. Part of this means I need to use information that doesn’t stray one way or another. The way I decided to do this would be through other research methods done by other researchers. One of the ways I will be doing this was by looking at perimeters outlined by Christopher Near, a researcher who studied female representation on the box art of video games. His table, (on the left) explains how he justified different definitions and with that, he explains his definition of a sexualized female character. His explanations are easily quantifiable and being able to use them in my data is easy because I can use these indicators to justify my reasoning. Rather than being objective, my data collection will be reliable because I am not using my own opinions to influence what I see.
What Research Have I Found So Far? Where am I?
I have been able to finalize the list of video games I will be looking at. I did this by deciding to go through several different sources relating to top-rated MOBA games both by most popular amongst the general gaming community, how successful they have been, and also how many people are playing them. With this combination, I feel I will get an accurate understanding of which games are truly the most relevant to my research and which will give me the most accurate data. The games I have chosen are shown below.
Down below are my final 5 games (down from 10) that I have chosen in alphabetical order:
So, the final list includes:
Dota 2
Heroes of the Storm
League of Legends
Overwatch
Smite
In Conclusion. . .
With this, my research has been going pretty well and it should continue to progress smoothly. This week, I will continue the quantitive aspects of my research for each game, and then move on to my qualitative parts hopefully with no setbacks! To the right is a picture of me doing some research at home! Make sure if you want to see more details about my project, I have linked my research proposal and you can also subscribe to my newsletter here! Blogs
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