The trick is to network. Find people outside of your uni if you have to. Meet them at conferences or through the internet after you’ve read some papers and id’ed who you’d like to meet.

I’d say at least 50% of being successful in academia is networking.

I love your site and your thoughts on academia. I am a gamer who is studying video games — specifically why people play them and the positive and negative effects of playing games. The thing is, at my university and in my M.S program there isn’t anyone who studies video games. I wanted to know how you went about submitting your manuscripts to different journals solo. Did you just write them yourself and let faculty or other graduate students edit them?

I appreciate the time and effort you put into this website. As a prospective PhD applicant, the insights you have provided into the life of a graduate student and academia in general have helped me understand what I may be experiencing soon (hopefully). Thanks for the transparency and honesty.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth de los Santos

my name is Patrick and I am a PhD student in Media and Communication studying computer game cummunites. I just read the titles of your last presentations

Walter, S. and Chen, M. (Oct 2009). A comparison of Collaboration across two game contexts: Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft. Presentation at the 10th Annual Association of Internet Researchers Conference (IR10), Milwaukee, WI.

Chen, M. (June 2009). Using actor-network theory to study expert player groups in World of Warcraft. Presentation during the Graduate Student Symposium at State of Play 6, New York City, NY.

and I was wondering if it is possible to get hold of them. I will take some time to look through your whole page. Looks like you are doing some interesting stuff, really.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Sicerelly yours,

Patrick Prax

I am trying to get a hold of your game experience questionnaire, but I am having a hard time. Can you point me to a library space or place where I can find the questionnaire? It does not have to be a finished paper, just the rough doc with questions would do the trick. I’m trying to decide on a questionnaire for a gaming experiment and would like to put your’s into the comparison.

Thx!

Cuddihy, E., Chen, M., Medina, E., and Kolko, B. (June 2005). Modeling and measuring engagement in computer games. Paper presented at the annual conference for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), Vancouver, Canada.