Midway Through the Interviews

In a ‘ripping the plaster off’ approach, prompted both by my participants asking to be interviewed within the same few weeks, but also because I’m a rip-off-the-plaster type of person anyway, at the time of writing (early February 2025), I’ve carried out 12 interviews in a little over 2 weeks. So, it’s at this halfway point that I’ve decided to write about how it’s going.

Preparation and Setting the Scene

As with the pilot interviews before them, interview questions are based around each respondent’s responses to the Call for Participation survey. Questions are semi structured; adapted from a pool of broad questions but tailored to each participant’s responses. So far all interviews have been carried out online, though there are three upcoming interviews that will be carried out face to face. Zoom (my interview platform of choice) generates a transcription, audio and film files, allowing me to rewatch the interviews as often as needed, an advantage that face to face interviewing does not have.

The Interview: What’s Happening Here?

After informing participants that I will not be asking any trick questions, there are no ‘right or wrong answers’, and that they are free to refuse to answer any questions I ask or criticise any comments I make, I ask the interviewee if they are happy for me to record the interview. As the consent form and participation information sheet provided to the participant beforehand state that interviews will be recorded, this isn’t a shock to them, but it is polite and professional to reiterate this.

As I have been interviewing, I've made some adjustments along the way. Here's a photo of one of my first interviewee's questions. I now add a standard first question to all interviews to help build rapport and break the ice: "What are you playing at the moment?"

I also make a note of the games each participant listed in their survey responses. I can use these as prompts, or as a way to share experiences and build a convivial atmosphere. This isn't about me, but saying "I really loved that Bog Witch fight in Witcher 3 too!" is not only something that balances the (perceived) power dynamic of the interview, but can be a useful prompt for further conversation. The body language participants demonstrate in the interview is as important as the words they say. While recording online interviews is useful for the reasons mentioned above, so much overall communication is lost when respondents are unwilling to share their camera. A certain demographic of participants wished to remain off-camera, so I was unable to see their non-verbal communication, giving me only ‘half the picture’. However, the vast majority of participants have been happy to share their camera and share unspoken communication with me. As they talk, I keep in mind Glaser’s fundamental question: "what is happening here?" I also remember to use prompts to guide the conversation ("was that expected?" "How did that make you feel?") and to make memos, often using gerunds where possible to highlight the immediacy and energy of the interview ('smiling', 'laughing', 'recalling', etc).

As the participants relaxed into the interview and in all cases where cameras were shared, I saw demonstrative use of gesticulation, leaning towards the camera, open body language, and strong levels of eye contact with repeated evidence of Saccade-Induced Retrieval Enhancement (SIRE). SIRE is a process whereby memory is enhanced when retrieval is preceded by repetitive horizontal eye movements, relative to vertical or no eye movements. Importantly, participants smiled and laughed a lot, demonstrating that a rapport was being established.

Memos written during an interview

Rapport

Rapport is crucial to ‘get the best’ from participants. To establish this, as mentioned above, the first question I ask is "what are you playing at the moment?" Not only does this set the scene, it also allows a conversation to start. As a gamer, I have often played or am aware of the games that my participants have played, so am able to share similar experiences with them from the outset. It is often at this stage the participants will be surprised that I am not just a ‘stuffy researcher’, but one of them. Many have exclaimed "wow!" or "you’ve actually played [insert game name here]? Amazing!" Immediately the (perceived) power balance of the interview shifts via a convivial, conversational question that breaks the ice, establishes the parity of the interviewer / interviewee relationship, and relaxes the interviewee. Surprisingly, it has also acted as a springboard for interesting insights and the occasional extra question from me.

Interviews range in length, from 25 minutes to an hour. One observation, and something I have been hoping for, is to see participants becoming increasingly animated as they talk about their experiences. Interestingly, at the end of their interviews, several participants have told me that they have enjoyed the conversation and are keen to be kept up to date regarding my research. I think that being able to talk to someone about playing video games without eye-rolling and dismissal of the hobby as being ‘a waste of time’ is a positive experience, and the interview environment has provided a safe space for people to talk freely about their enjoyment and experiences of OWRPGs.

Interview insights at a meta level

What I’m Learning

Every interview is a pilot interview* so I’m learning and honing the mechanics of semi-structured interviewing, conversation management, subtle note taking, and using prompts effectively as I go. I’m also observing what is happening at a meta level; how the process affects me from an autoethnographic standpoint, how participants respond to the situation and the questions they are asked, and what might be happening outside of the interviews themselves. As Glaser also said; "all is data".

And with that in mind, I've decided that it will be worth my time transcribing / analysing the responses from the Call for Participation questionnaires to complement the interviews. There may be rich data in these responses, some of which are lengthy, detailed and emotive.

*And a PhD is merely an Apprenticeship in Research, and by bearing these things in mind, I don't feel overwhelmed

What I Did Wrong

Here's a list of how I cocked up when carrying out the interviews. And boy, did I cock up. Not badly enough to need to re-interview anyone or re-think the interview process or my questions from the ground up, but there are certainly a few things to reflect upon and try to improve should I need to carry out any further interviews:

Assumptions about the interviewees. Because the Ethics Committee warned me against sending out an international call for participants, recommending that I solely recruited from UK universities so as to better-manage any issues with English as a second or third language, I didn't consider so many students in British universities would be from overseas. And I work in a British university and see hundreds of students from across the globe enrolled here, so should have known better! This meant that carefully prepared questions were sometimes too wordy for some interviewees to fully get a handle on, and that I often needed to rephrase them on the spot . It also meant that I had to be very careful with my use of figurative language and metaphor, and this often threw me off. Basically, when my interviewee's name is Helen Smith and their written responses to the call for participants survey is linguistically coherent and grammatically sound well-written, I'm assuming they're British and NOT that they're from another country and Helen Smith is the name they are using while living and studying in the UK. (Is this racism? The arrogance of colonialism?)
Not asking participants for clarification when I should have: I should have asked participants to clarify what they were saying more often. I'm at the initial coding stage as I write this, and I'm coming across the occasional unit of meaning where, ironically, I can't locate clear meaning because I didn't ask the participant to clarify what they meant.
Ignoring conversational 'points of interest': I only noticed this when I was transcribing interviews. On a few occasions, I notice that I stopped some (possibly) interesting and useful conversational pathways in their tracks before they had a chance to develop further. Instead, I simply moved onto the next question. Maybe this was because I was mindful of time, maybe I had concerns that the conversation was at risk of 'going astray', and maybe, being kind to myself, I was still learning how to manage interviews and learning the ropes, but the choices I made here were to the detriment of generating some useful data.

For anyone reading this who is about to take their first foray into interviewing, heed my words(!), but also remember this: it's okay to make mistakes as long as you recognise them, but you must address them if they are a threat to the authenticity of your research, and reflect upon them critically when it comes to any writing up.

And here endeth the first lesson.

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