What About Thesis Defenses and Flow?

So I am happy to announce and revel in the completion of my Master's thesis defense, where my 144-page tome was 'accepted as submitted', which is as good as it gets. I had a very lively and dare I say fun Q&A session with my committee which included Dr. Leslie Shade, Dr. Marty Allor, and Dr. Kim Sawchuk.

Already moving on... my next beautiful, virgin research area will be the intriguing question of flow in video games. From what I have seen, most people are referring to the work of the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. According to Wikipedia, Csikszentmihalyi uses flow to describe "the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment". So flow would describe the engagement experienced in sports, playing an instrument, and the play of video games.

This leads to preliminary research in psychological research on affect, cognition, motivation, and flow. A tad dull, but I know it will be worth it for when I can move into computer and science and technology studies to get in deeper into this topic.

Jenova Chen's MFA research popped up, and I must say that game is very pretty but not altogether addictive. Her thesis looks fairly interesting though, as I think flow is an intriguing way to get at game design. I'll keep you posted!

Nice to be back...

The Hardcore Casual Gamer

Today I deposit my Master's thesis at the Thesis office at Concordia, which is basically the last official step before my thesis defense on December 11. Unofficially, I will be madly rereading my references and trying to remember how I had these brilliant thoughts last February.

Anyhoo, in the second-to-final edits of the thesis, my supervisor Dr. Leslie Shade asked me to include within my third chapter, which is centered around case studies of 7 video games, my own particular position as a gamer. In other words, to answer the question- what kind of gamer are you? Upon a little thought, and research into what defines hardcore and casual gamers, I included within my thesis the designation of a hardcore casual gamer.

No, this isn't a slippery way of getting out of the question. Rather, it highlights the variety of dimensions that comprise the definitions of both hardcore and casual (nevermind the ferocious denigration connoted by each camp when discussing the other). I am a hardcore gamer simply based on the numbers per week I play video games (typically over 10 hours a week). I am a casual gamer because of the types and range of games I play. Besides World of Warcraft, I play mainly 'soft' video games, especially the simulation games I so enjoy mastering and the classic games like Super Mario Bros. I play on my emulator. I also play a few games dedicatedly and repeatedly rather than playing rapidly to completion and then moving on to another game.

As a state of mind, I would say I am a casual gamer, playing for pleasure with little motivation to play new games, but hardcore in terms of interest, seeking news daily on a salmagundi of sites and blogs daily. How would you classify your gameplay? Where do you stand on these labels, which are so pervasive I had to include them in my thesis?

Or are you simply what Kotaku calls an insane gamer, like this poor soul?