Help needed for a Nintendo Wii dissertation... (No Fanboyism intended)

[Urban Xperience]

Hello everyone, as an avid listener to the many OC remixes submitted on OCR for a good few years, I now require your help! As a final year uni student, my dissertation is focused on the Nintendo Wii and my objectives are as follows:

 To understand consumers’ current perceptions of computer games. Is the activity of playing games socially accepted regardless of age or gender or is it frowned upon?

 To make certain if the Wii is contributing to a new trend in gaming perceptions, buying habits or appeal. Is Nintendo’s targeting of an unconventional market a realistic strategy to widen the appeal of games? Does it encourage someone with no experience of playing games to make a purchase?

 To realise if such trends will continue in the long-run or short-run. Does the launch of the Wii firmly establish this unfamiliar trend for the future? Or will it eventually bore consumers as they are too familiar with past and present gaming conventions? I.e. traditional controller inputted games.

In order to succesfully complete my 'disso' (as we call it here), I would like a good source of reliable and if possible 'academic' information on past and present consumer perceptions of video games. As well as the Wii, I want to focus on the industry too and I am having difficulty in obtaining such information due to the fact that there is not alot of research done on this industry (oh apart from the violence in games and how it affects adolescents but thats about it). With the OCR community's wisdom, I know for a fact that I can accomplish what I need to and when it is done, I cannot express my infinite gratitude and appreciation to you all. I may also need to conduct an online focus group too in order to provide a richer analysis of my results so more of that will come soon if I get enough interest from this thread. OK enough pleading, now its time for me to wait (im)patiently for any positive responses. *Sigh.*

[Dhsu]

I did a research paper on the Wii (or Revolution as it was still called then) in college, and found out there really isn't any academic research on video games. That's the burden of writing papers about video games...you have to get creative with your sources. Maybe look into business or marketing periodicals using the database account that your school library probably has. In any case, good luck, and post your paper here when it's done.

[Urban Xperience]

Thanks for the suggestion Dave, unfortunately I can not find such info in my uni library database either. If there are any 'other' sources of information you or anyone coudl direct me to (such as a credible website) then that will suffice to say the least. Thanks.

Oh I forgot one more tiny detail I jsut forgot to mention... the deadline is on the 10th of March! I know, I really am in deep shit...

[Dhsu]

This is a good place to start

I would look at The Escapist and Gamestudies.org in particular.

More good sites:

http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/index

http://www.gamejournal.org/

http://www.academiccolab.org/initiatives/papers.html

http://www.nickyee.com/index-daedalus.html

[The Pezman]

there really isn't any academic research on video games

Say wha?

I've written more than one (good) paper on video games from both a sociological and technical perspective, and I've never had much trouble finding resources. The exception was the paper I did on leetspeak, but that's not really video games either.