J T wrote:Surely the Hawthorne effect and possible intrusions of personal bias had less of an effect on your subjects than the subtraction of your previous participant-observer status within the subcultural community... which is my academic way of saying "WE MISSED YOU!"
That's a really good point, and not a way I've looked at it before. The middle ground between pure unobtrusiveness and natural participant is a place I've had difficulty navigating. The good news is I've got a lifetime of scholarly work ahead of me to improve on that and many other fronts.
Edit: by the way, I've been reading threads now and realizing why I enjoyed this community so much back then. One of the best and most mature I've found. Looks like I'm going to dip back in and post/lurk. On a related note, I don't plan to do any more research here but if I do, I'll let everyone in on it before hand. I think an active engagement in any discussion I'd be interested in would be the most beneficial way to go about it, for all parties involved.
So there you go. Thanks to those who filled me in on the community discovering my article, and I hope everyone is willing to welcome me back, in whatever capacity I end up posting/contributing.
Edit #2: It seems I can't stay away from this topic and now all of you have gotten me to thinking about this subject more. One thing I mentioned in the article was that companies could build brand loyalty and keep their characters/games relevant through making old software free. Recently there's been some interesting examples of this. Even EA gave away The Sims 2 and every expansion, and I strongly suspect it was to generate interest in the franchise as the release of The Sims 4 approaches. Blizzard has released a couple of their retro titles through Battlenet, again I suspect to get people ON Battlenet and also perhaps to drum up some nostalgia, because that's good for business. Consumers have been doing this same thing on their own for years though, by sharing (i.e., pirating) games. As one of the members here prompted in the article I wrote, if not for emulation, how popular would some of these franchises and characters that saw their best days in the past (e.g., sonic)?
Ok, I'm stepping away now. Still would be happy to discuss this if anyone has further thoughts or suggestions.