Dear Professor Lehdonvirta, For introduce thank you for your anwser to my dissertation subject. The terminogology of real world is i am agree more ambiguous. I use this for this mail but i think i use an another during my work. My project is not really a comparison beetween the « two world ». I try to analysis I try to analyze the political behavior of the gaming community and check those who might be their own and those who depend on the national cultural practices or social. The game is a pan-European world view, even if the community is only 150,000 members, I try to see if attitudes have some specificity or not. The direction of policy that I use does not refer to behavior parliamentarians as the example you cite but the etymological sense of policy (Politika, the affairs of the city) The policy covers actions, the balance, the development internal or external to the community, its internal and its relationship to other sets. That's why I adopt a holistic approach in my analysis. -- Fabien Lorc'h Message: 4

Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 12:10:26 +0900 From: Vili Lehdonvirta <vili.lehdonvirta@hiit.fi> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Online role-playing community study Message-ID: <D83089DE-4C7B-4AAB-8E0D-5A06B225CFEC@hiit.fi> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

Dear Fabien,

Welcome to study online games. My suggestion would be to re-think your approach, as it seems to rest on a dichotomous "real world" vs. "virtual world" notion, which in my opinion is fundamentally flawed ( http://gamestudies.org/1001/articles/lehdonvirta ).

You state that your goal is "to see if there is a difference between the real world and the virtual environment". But what is the "real world" against which you are comparing? The parliamentary politics of France, the politics of the world of finance, or the politics of game research are all different, yet all part of the "real world". It is obvious from the start that you will find the politics of a given online game to differ from your chosen point of comparison in some respects, and resemble it in others. Unless this online game is an important research subject in itself (e.g. because it engages so many people), such findings may not be very useful.

My advice would be to look instead for a theoretical research question from the literature of your discipline, and then see if this theoretical question can be addressed with a study pertaining to the online game. Write your research question clearly. Good luck!

Vili Lehdonvirta University of Tokyo / HIIT http://www.hiit.fi/~vlehdonv/ <http://www.hiit.fi/%7Evlehdonv/>

p.s. please do not worry about your English.

...

Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 21:52:27 +0100 From: "Fabien Lorc'h" <fabien.lorch@gmail.com> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] Online role-playing community study Message-ID: <AANLkTinEb9QA+OzfZjfL4Us8g99ZQPh5b6vn6K+72XfK@mail.gmail.com<AANLkTinEb9QA%2BOzfZjfL4Us8g99ZQPh5b6vn6K%2B72XfK@mail.gmail.com>

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am writing to you to present you my Master's dissertation subject .

I am currently a student in the Master's program in Political Science at the University of Rennes 1 in France.

For this Masters, I have decided to study an online role-playing community : The Renaissance Kingdoms: http://www.renaissancekingdoms.com/

The purpose of this study is to make a political analysis of this community, in a global meaning and thencommunity considered as a whole, through an analysis of some data :

- Register/Leave the game - Identity (virtual or real, sociological analysis of the players (I am planing to get a questionnaire for this) - Internal regulation and discipline (almost all institutions between characters having been planned by players) - Independence of this community with national culture and history (the game is in an alternate history of the 15th century in Europe)

The goal of this study is to think in an Aristotelian sense of Politics, and to see if there is a difference between the real world and the virtual environment. It is also to consider if the community has a clear particularity.

I would love to receive your help on possible research lines that maybe I have forgotten to study, or if you have ideas to concerning my approach.

If you have books or articles on this, please don't hesitate to contact me with suggestions.

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

-- Fabien Lorc'h

PS: Sorry in advance for my English that I am sure is catastrophic.