Archaeology and Skryim: a Qualitative Survey

I’ve been holed up for the past few weeks, frantically reading, thinking and writing!

Finally I’ve reached the point where my deceptively simple survey is ready to be released.

For those who haven’t been following my previous posts, I’m a masters student studying the significance of the past in videogaming and videogaming culture. My case study is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The main aim of my research is to find out whether or not people are aware of the historical aspects of Skyrim, and how they view these elements of the game.

A large part of the qualitative evidence I will use in my dissertation will be ethnographic data collected on online discussion forums dedicated to Skryim. However, this information will be supplemented by the views of as many Skyrim players that I can reach through the web.

The survey will take 5 or 10 minutes to complete, and you can go into as much detail as you want with your answers, but any thoughts you might have would be extremely valuable to me and my research. Please take a minute to read carefully the information that is provided at the beginning of the questionnaire.

If you’re intrigued by the idea of archaeology and Skyrim being in any way connected, by all means take a look back at previous posts on this blog to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

If you don’t want to fill out the survey but would like to contribute your own ideas or opinions, replies to this post would be equally appreciated. Similarly, if you could share the link with anyone you think might be keen to contribute their views then I would be extremely grateful!

Click here to complete the survey! 

What is Archaeogaming?

An excellent post by Andrew Reinhard on ‘Archaeogaming’ – Andrew organises his thoughts on archaeology and gaming most eloquently, and articulates some of the fuzzy, thought-shaped notions that have been bashing about my head for the past 6 months or so. This new blog is a must for anyone interested in the intersection of archaeology and games!

Archaeogaming

Let me begin at the beginning, a Level 1 n00b, but an archaeology “Master.” I was once a reluctant gamer who was dragged kicking and screaming into World of Warcraft (vanilla) and ended up losing myself in the virtual world, leveling to 70 the hard way (on my own, pugging instances, and without any mods). I played through Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. I quit before the release of Mists of Pandaria dropped. Why? Because I had a problem with the lore, the underlying story-history of the game-world.

As an archaeologist (B.A. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Evansville, M.A. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Missouri-Columbia), I am interested in how the game-world is built. This includes everything from architecture to humble pots. This also includes the story of the races within whatever game I play. Playing WoW was extremely…

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Research is like art.

I’ve decided to create a hashtag for my thesis topic. I already said that I plan on blogging about my research as I go, but I think tweeting it could also be really interesting. I’m really interested in the way that research happens.

Click above to go to the #archgames twitter feed

I always thought research was a lot like creating a piece of art. Drawing or painting, for me at least, never quite goes as expected, and I never end up with what I envisaged right at the start. That doesn’t mean I’m never satisfied with the fruits of my labours, but it can sometimes mean that I lose sight of how I managed to get to the point I ended up at.

I have no doubt that being able to look back at my blog and a series of potentially incoherent, panic-stricken tweets will be enlightening. I also hope that anyone wanting to contribute to the debate/research will use the hashtag. If I feel the need to use your comments in my thesis I will, of course, ask your permission before doing so!

Anyway, tomorrow the second week of the ten-week-long summer term starts, and with it comes a thesis writing workshop, and the deadline for a 50 word abstract for the assessed lecture that we are to give on our chosen topics. I’ve always struggled with words counts, for I am the queen of rambling. I can’t help it, I’m just an absolute slave to scholarly jargon and sentences so long they could kill a (wo)man. 50 words is absolutely nothing. It’ll be a good exercise though, I’m sure.

I’ve been thinking some more about my methodology, too, and have come to the conclusion that my best bet is to conduct a sort of digital ethnographic study, focussed on players of one particular game. You guessed it… SKYRIM!* By using different data collection methods (online surveys, interviews, observation and participation on online forums, social media – the possibilities are endless! I love teh interwebz) I think I can get a really good idea of how people interact with the game and with it’s culture. A brief scan of the official Bethesda forum for General Discussion on the 5th Elder Scrolls game informs me that the words ‘archaeology’ and ‘history’ feature somewhat regularly in people’s conversations. Of course there are some other very interesting trends in topic, which I suspect play an important part in the identity creation process.  My whole research premise rides on the idea that the past can be used as an arena for identity creation. 

These are subjects that really excite and interest me, and whilst it might look like they’re very vague, I am sure that archaeology and ideas about the past play an important, albeit subconscious part in most interactions of this sort. I have so many little tangents that I want to go off on in this post already, but it’s almost 1am, and I promised myself this would be a short post and that I’d save the juicy stuff for longer, more involved posts.

As always, thoughts and contributions are welcomed with open arms.

*I think my next post is going to have to be a justification for this particular choice