Thursday, October 17, 2013

Data Analysis 2: Newbie Haven

For my second data analysis memo, I would like to present the forum called  Newbie Saikyo Dojo . Follow the link and you'll see a list of threads posted by players who are beginners to the community and to the fighting game genre in general.  Just by glancing at the thread titles alone you get a strong sense of new players appealing to experienced players for mentorship.  I think this is one of the few places on the website where a new player can get away with a certain amount of naivete.  Here new players can pose their callow inquiries without fear of (too much) harassment from the reactionary and elitist set of older players, all of whom have seen every conceivable permutation of each question type.  One interesting thing to notice is the title of the forum, Newbie Saikyo Dojo, which combines the slightly derogatory connotations of the word "newbie" with the structured apprenticeship in martial arts that is explicit in the phrase "Saikyo Dojo."

http://forums.shoryuken.com/categories/newbie-saikyo-dojo      

2 comments:

  1. Hi Ken. I checked out the link, and I agree with what you said about it being clear how new players are relying on new players for help. The page also looks like its a good place for players to start developing their online identity. Perhaps you could elaborate more on that. I believe that for your project you're focusing on competitive game strategy? You've already noted the amount of naivete on the board, and the fact that players can post without fear on harassment. Does that affect the gaming strategies? Maybe you could observe certain players, if there's any that post regularly, and see if patterns start to emerge. Good luck!

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  2. Very interesting...
    I liked that you focused on a different angle in this data analysis. Beginners always have to begin somewhere. I thought this was definitely a helpful sight for newbies to learn some of the ropes for gaming. Did you notice that there were specific types of questions that kept repeating or did you see that the newbies gleaned information from other posts and asked their questions based on what they had read? More like a conversation rather than a question/answer format?

    Along those lines, how did you perceive the overall tone of those who responded to the newbie questions? Did the elite players have a mentoring role or were they just answering questions to make them "go away" in a sense? One other thing, did you participate in the discussions at all (either the questions from the newbies or the answers from the elite players)? If so, did that experience give you any insight into how the overall data piece that you chose for this analysis was created and how it works?

    Nice work, let the games begin...

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