Is there value in researching games?

So I've been asked to participate in a seminar this weekend where the topic is the "value of research."

For those of you in the UK, you've probably heard on the news about the ways that the British government is making cuts all over the place. Higher education has not been exempt from this. In fact, there have been a series of quite well attended (and sometimes unfortunately violent) protests against the prospect of significantly raised university student fees in England. Other parts of higher education have been impacted as well. We've got cutbacks in research and there is a very high chance that certain types of research will be less funded down the road... and you can probably guess where the priorities will be and where the money will dry up. The arts and humanities tend to suffer the most when this sort of thing happens and research that shows some sort of technological advance or money making possibility tends to be protected.

 

This means that with less money available for conducting research, any agencies (charities, research councils, universities, etc.) that do hand out money will have to be more discriminating than ever in making decisions about what they want to pay for. They will probably have to decide things like is this research going to have a significant impact on society? Will it give us new insight into how things work? Is the research important? Is the research valuable? Is it contributing to the "body of academic work"?

 

So where does research into games fit into that picture? You can imagine (or at least I can) that some people may not see the value of researching games. They are just a kind of mental black hole that we get sucked into with almost  no productive value or consequence. It's not like they're the cure for cancer or the invention of time travel. They could be making us less social, less intelligent, less competent, less peaceful. But then again, isn't that what the older generation likes to see about the upcoming generations? That's definitely been documented for thousands of years. Socrates once wrote, "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants..." He wrote that about 2500 years ago.

 

So are video and computer games, a part of our popular culture, valuable? Is it important to understand why an increasing majority of us are playing games? Do we have something to learn about how we play them and what they mean for us? Do gamers have something to teach the rest of the world?

 

Naturally as a person who is doing postgraduate research into raiding culture and raiders, my answer has to be yes. I believe passionately that what we're doing and how we're doing it needs to be documented and studied. I also believe that the aim of any research should be to contribute something original and new to the collective intelligence of the world: and I am adamant that what we're doing contributes to that. We accomplish complex tasks in groups, we are a 'learning community', and we're always trying to find ways to improve ourselves. That doesn't really fit with what the media prefers to report. I can't tell you how many times someone has referred me to an article or documentary that's exposing on the dangers of games addiction or the negative impacts of games on children. We'd always prefer to think about the negative before the positive, and I think research should be more than that--facts without fiction, reality without opinion.

 

But as I prepared my presentation, I realised that I want some input from everyone else. Do you agree that there is value in researching games? Do you think we have something to teach and learn?

 

I'd love some insight. I'll include the comments (anonymously!) in my presentation. :)

 

Thanks so much,

Ladan