Masters degree dissertation research

[wowismydiss]

Hi all,

Not sure whether this is the right place but apparently I need to make posts before I can message any of the mods so posting here.

I am carrying out research for my master's dissertation into communication strategy and my topic of research is how buying attitudes for games-as-a-service products sold in World of Warcraft were affected by how Activision-Blizzard responded to the 2021 sexual harassment scandal. The research is a 15 minute questionnaire for current and previous subscribers.

I'd like to post on MMOC for respondents and asking if this is OK and if so where I can post. The timeline in the questionnaire is sanitised to remove anything from the timeline which could cause distress. Happy for a mod to review before posting. The research and methodology has been signed off by my supervisor.

Thanks in advance.

[ClassicPeon]

I dont think i'l ever understand how a masters dissertation based on anything world of warcraft related could ever be greenlit.

Possibly outside of data science.

[Santti]

I dont think i'l ever understand how a masters dissertation based on anything world of warcraft related could ever be greenlit.

Possibly outside of data science.

I don't know what masters dissertation is, but I'm reminded of one Warcraft related thing that was researched at one point: The Corrupted Blood incident.

[Veggie50]

I dont think i'l ever understand how a masters dissertation based on anything world of warcraft related could ever be greenlit.

Possibly outside of data science.

wording this research differently:

"What is the influence of negative media pertaining to company culture on the buying behaviour of consumers"

Just strip out the "WoW" and "Blizzard" and it suddenly sounds like a serious subject =P

[Ghost of Cow]

I don't know what masters dissertation is, but I'm reminded of one Warcraft related thing that was researched at one point: The Corrupted Blood incident.

Always felt like people greatly overstated the "pandemic modeling" possibilities of Corrupted Blood.

Having actually played at the time, it was nothing more than people trolling to the best of their ability and using it as a intra-faction PvP exploit. People who didn't want to deal with it just...logged out. People who did just paired up with healers and ran around every flight point they could find in the hopes of annoying someone.

If you caught it? Just die and rez. Whoopee.

[ClassicPeon]

I don't know what masters dissertation is, but I'm reminded of one Warcraft related thing that was researched at one point: The Corrupted Blood incident.

Yup definitely. Quite a different subject matter imo though.

I think my main gripe with this is how are you even going to get any relevant information out of people in this case.

Posting something like this on mmo-c is not going to get a nuanced image. From most of the polls aswell as how the site is moderated we know that the crowd here is - as they would say in the US - very left leaning compared to the average person.

[wowismydiss]

I dont think i'l ever understand how a masters dissertation based on anything world of warcraft related could ever be greenlit.

Possibly outside of data science.

Haha, it's for my masters degree in business. Fortunately there is quite a lot of scope. Games as a service is a massively growing market, and basically there is very little research on consumer behaviours. There's a study that linked the community and development cycles much more closely in GaaS than GaaP but that's it.

This is going to be research on communication strategy within the space, and picking WoW specifically was because a) I'm a player myself but b) academically everyone who has ever subscribed to WoW has paid for a GaaS product in the subscription - so I can say with confidence that this is about GaaS customers.

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Yup definitely. Quite a different subject matter imo though.

I think my main gripe with this is how are you even going to get any relevant information out of people in this case.

Posting something like this on mmo-c is not going to get a nuanced image. From most of the polls aswell as how the site is moderated we know that the crowd here is - as they would say in the US - very left leaning compared to the average person.

This is one of several communities I'm trying to approach so will hopefully get a good spread of views. No data gathering exercise will ever be perfect and this will be identified within the study.

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wording this research differently:

"What is the influence of negative media pertaining to company culture on the buying behaviour of consumers"

Just strip out the "WoW" and "Blizzard" and it suddenly sounds like a serious subject =P

This is down the lines I am thinking, but my study is not necessarily based purely on negative media, rather it's a study from a strategic communications point of view as to how the company's actions and subsequent comms affected buying behaviours - but you're very close ;-)

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I dont think i'l ever understand how a masters dissertation based on anything world of warcraft related could ever be greenlit.

Possibly outside of data science.

Games as a service is a multibillion dollar industry which is still emerging so very relevant to business academia

[ClassicPeon]

This is one of several communities I'm trying to approach so will hopefully get a good spread of views. No data gathering exercise will ever be perfect and this will be identified within the study.

Cool. out of interest what other communities are you targetting?

[wowismydiss]

Cool. out of interest what other communities are you targetting?

Hi, I'm also speaking to Wowhead and r/wow