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Masters Thesis: "Parsing the Paramour: How Players' Sexuality, Motivations, and UDO Influence their Romantic Decisions in Western Role-playing games."

Individual Researcher & Author | June 2023 - April 2024

Recently completed graduate-level quantitative and qualitative research into genre-specific player communities under the direction of Dr Elizabeth Stringer. The statistical analysis incorporates ordinal and nominal data from a human research survey with 1,001 start-to-finish participants.  This thesis considers participants'  sexual orientations, Universal-Diverse Orientation (UDO) scores, and Nick Yee's player motivation types as variables that influence romantic subplot decisions in AAA Western RPGs like Mass EffectDragon Age, and Divinity, and Baldur's Gate. (Full paper and analysis coming soon!) 

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In May 2024, "Parsing the Paramour" was selected by the faculty at SMU Guildhall as the Honors thesis in Production for Cohort 32. (Click the above Title Slide image for the complete thesis defense slide deck

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Survey Creation & Administration (Qualtrics XM)

Genre & Player Community Analysis

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1000+ Participants Surveyed over a 2-Month Window

Collected Industry and Community Feedback during Analysis Crafting

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