Admit Decision

After five applications, I received three acceptances, one waitlisting, and one rejection for Ph.D. programs. I also visited two campuses, met faculty, and made a decision. After careful consideration, between me and my wife, we feel that the University of Oregon is the best fit for me, my family, and my academic interests.

I’m really excited to work with the faculty of this great school. I found three great professors who could be a great fit as a dissertation chair. I felt at home on the campus. The Ph.D. student I met with explained better the pros and cons of the program. Not only that, but the school secured funding for a VR/AR lab for experiments and research, and they recently hired two new faculty members who specialize in game studies.

While I’m not a huge sports fan (nor a track athlete), I am excited to take advantage of all the hikes and outdoorsy activities in the area.

Review of Communities of Play

Recently I read Communities of Play by Celia Pearce, a great ethnography of the Uru Diaspora. It was initially fascinating to read. I had no idea that so many fans of the game Uru (part of the Myst franchise), would band together as refugees after Uru‘s servers were unplugged. These fans maintained their community and even moved into other game worlds and adapted them to mirror what they loved from Uru.

As I read I remembered similar instances where groups from one game would migrate together to another, creating a transmedia relationship. And I also saw connections to my current ethnography, where I am studying fans of Phantasy Star Online who are continuing to play the discontinued game illegally on private servers.

However, I got pretty bored mid-way through this book, and only skimmed the sections I found repetitive, or just too stuffy. As this book evolved out of Pearce’s Ph.D. dissertation, portions of it include in-depth analysis of the mechanics and gameplay of Uru, as well as detailed documentation of her research methods and justification of them. As a non-player of Uru, it was kind of good to learn more about the game, but also boring, as it felt much like thick description of common elements of all MMO’s. But I did appreciate the rationalization of Pearce’s methods, and how she adapted anthropology and ethnography into a study of virtual worlds. Again, this part was beneficial to me and my current research.

So this book had some great elements, was perhaps a little too stuffy and boring at times to read, and perhaps targeted an audience with no experience with video games. So these strengths may outweigh the flaws but still led to a lot of skimming. For the good insight and template for an ethnography of a game community, I rate Communities of Play 4/5 hearts.

Wansink, P-Hacking, & Shoddy Research

So there’s been a lot said about the current controversy with an Ivy League professor and his shady research. And while I don’t feel like I have anything new or meaningful to contribute, I did want to reflect on this controversy as it relates to the psychology and social sciences, or in other words my field of study.

My thesis research didn’t pan out how I anticipated. I overprepared, hoping by collecting more variables I would have a greater chance at finding significance, but still, all my attempts at finding a story failed. My thesis and I interrogated my dataset, probably too hard, for two weeks but found nothing too surprising. We probably engaged in what an angelic statistician would have labeled as p-hacking, and I admit it might have gotten a little out of control.

But I realize now that finding significance isn’t the most important thing. I’ve accepted that my thesis isn’t ruined because I found no significance. And even though I might not get a publication out of my thesis that also isn’t the end of the world. I’ve learned a lot about the research process, and know how to refine and improve my next attempt at these research questions and hypotheses.

So the real question is what am I learning from Wanksink? I’m learning that P-hacking is not ethical, but also that I should not be obsessed with finding significance or getting published. I do think that if your research into the literature reveals that these variables are related somehow, or that you have a hunch that they are, but in the end, the relationship that arose out of the data is not what you expected, then you aren’t such a terrible researcher. I think a little bit of investigation is okay with data, but squeezing data for significance is too much.

I also hope that one day I have the guts to not go fishing for significant p values. Or that I don’t let the allure of being published (or going viral) interfere with the objectivity of my research.

(Note – I know I am using the same image as the Buzzfeed article. In my defense, I just Googled “sliced and diced” and it was one of the stock images that came up)