After looking at the BBC research I wrote my own short questionnaire. The questions are very brief and I haven't posed it to a lot of people. Mostly because I don't want to see how many people play games because I already know that there are a lot, instead I want to see what people think of game culture, do people even consider it at all like other cultures and does it effect other world cultures.
1. Do you play computer games? - This would be the most logical question to have first, being very likely that if the person didn't play games they would have quite different answers to the rest.
2. Do you consider yourself to be a gamer? - I think that although identity can be seen from an outside view it can only really be completely decided by the person themselves what they are.
3. Would you say you knew much about the gaming world? - It was drawn to my attention that this question may not be worded very well as it's very open, if you didn't know something then how would you know..and so on. However I feel that was my point, how much do you think you know?
4. Are you familiar with the phrase "Game Culture"? - A very simple question however I was uncertain if "phrase" would be the correct term for Game Culture. Everyone I asked said yes to this question except one answer which was - "the phrase game culture can be interpreted in different ways but yes game culture is something that in some social groups has more of an influence than others." - I found this interesting because it made me wonder if Game Culture although it exists for "gamers"could ever be considered a genuine culture, or perhaps it would always be classed more as a sub-culture.
5. Do you think that game culture exists? - A very important question but a difficult one, I got a lot of conflicting answers to this. It seems that most gamers believe game culture exists, but some think "it's still growing", "it hasn't been around long enough" and one answer was "I think it exists but i wouldn't call it a culture." This answer was from someone who had also said yes to questions 1, 2 and 4. Does it depend on what you consider a culture to be and is there a scale to measure that.
6. Do you think that Game Culture is expanding? - All of the answers to these questions were yes, of course, definitely. I think it's very clear that it is expanding, but possibly "developing" would be a better word as although games are becoming more popular it isn't clear at what point they will reach the height of their popularity, as I don't think they have yet.
7. How do you think games will/could affect our cultures in the future? - I got some very interesting/amusing answers from this question. It's a very broad question and I don't think I've phrased it as well as I could. I would like to see how much value people place on games and if they consider them to be able to change and affect the world outside of gaming and gamers. Quite a few people do think that games will keep advancing and I do think that the technology in games and computers will and already has started to effect other parts of life.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121358204084776309.html - "Two rival chip makers are about to deliver the next advance in technology to improve the realism of video games. But this time their efforts could have a broader impact."
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume41/DigitalGameBasedLearningItsNot/158041 - "Digital gaming is a $10 billion per year industry, and in 2004, nearly as many digital games were sold as there are people in the United States"
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