How do researchers choose commercial games for study?

摘要

This abstract is a report on a qualitative meta-analysis of the methods used in choosing games for study. Game Studies continues to develop as a discipline just as digital games continue to evolve. While there remains an interest in examinations of specific games for various purposes, as the number and sophistication of titles released in a given year continues to rise, it becomes necessary to closely at how we are choosing the games we study, the criteria we use for those studies, and how we support our claims about the suitability of the game for our purposes. Often, studies of individual games are conducted with the hopes of being able to generalize at least some of the conclusions to other games and/or other players. Given the number and variety of games with no cleanly defined delineations of genre, can it be assumed that it is possible to examine one game and make generalizations to other games? Games are no longer trivial, nor frivolous so this is not a straightforward question. Claims that a particular game meets certain criteria critical to the analysis should be supported by something beyond the author's say-so. As studies on, with, and of games become more accepted and common in mainstream educational research, it will also become more important to justify the choices of subjects. This has not been common practice to date.