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I'm writing a research paper on Nintendo. The simplest things are so difficult.

Wowfunhappy said:
This paper is for a business class. We needed to pick a company with an e-commerce strategy that could be improved (e-commerce being defined broadly as just about anything involving digital technologies). I picked Nintendo, because (A) I thought they'd be fun to write about, and (B) I think just about anyone on Neogaf could come up with ways in which their digital strategy could be improved.

But geez, the fact that everything needs to be cited from an ultra-reliable source (established newspaper such as the New York Times, business journal, etc) makes everything so difficult. For example, I want to say in my paper that Nintendo should make better use of its back catalogue. For example: many of their old titles have not been re-released digitally on their virtual console service. Doing so would require very little investment, because virtual console games run inside an emulator...

...oh wait, I don't actually have a source that says virtual console games run in emulators. No mind the fact that it's obvious to literally anyone with any familiarity on the subject. No mind the fact that hackers have opened up both the Wii and 3DS and managed to inject their own roms in the Virtual Console emulator. There's no "official" source that states the games are emulated.

I'm not asking for a solution, I'm just venting. God is this annoying.
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try searching through academic archives about or referencing nintendo, these are citable and will also provide extra sources to dig through
 
Wowfunhappy said:
To back up that argument, I'd like to point out that cost of re-releasing VC games is nearly zero. And I can't make that point unless I say that the games run in emulators.
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This simply isn't true. There are plenty of legal fees and other costs associated with releasing a VC title. That's even true for some first party titles. Just because there's no more technical development work on the emulation side, doesn't mean that Nintendo can freely release titles at no cost.
 
GAF helped me with this one - though I wrote an Asian Business History paper.

You can try reading
Game Over by David Sheff
Nintendo Magic by Osamu Inoue
History of Nintendo (various volumes) by Florent Gorges

Although most of them are journalist and may not qualify as academia, you can take a look at their sources as they have referred to quite a number of Japanese news sources, etc. You can mine their bibliography.

Check with your prof or institution if you can get access to Harvard Business Review as they have done case studies on Nintendo (recent ones on the company's business strategies and all that)

Widen your search terms over at JSTOR, Google Scholar, ProQuest and Project Muse - go beyond Nintendo. Since you are working on digital strategy/archival, try terms like "digital games archival" etc. While they may not directly address your research topic, they may shed some insight to explain the processes (and associated costs) behind.

I posted a GAF thread asking for help previously - I'll see if I can find it and get back.
 
postcyberpunk said:
Yes, as primary sources. And no, don't do that. If found out, it can destroy your credibility as an author and you could wind up with an F for the paper.
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nrvalleytime said:
I swear to all high heaven - if I ever have you in one my courses, every word of your paper will be cross-checked.
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At first I couldn't believe you guys didn't know I was joking. But then I read my own comment. I was trying to be ironic by giving the worst advice possible, not making a genuine suggestion. Oops.
 
Couldn't you just cite the definition of Emulator?

Old games appearing on their non native platform necessitates using emulation if the original hardware is not in place.
 
Well you don't have to find sources for common knowledge / facts. You wouldn't have to cite a source to say that there isn't much technical work needed for the emulation. You would, however have to find a source that Nintendo can make any money from that, because that would just be your own specualtion/opinion if not verified by a source.
Cited Specualtion cool, your own nono.
 
Wowfunhappy said:
This paper is for a business class. We needed to pick a company with an e-commerce strategy that could be improved (e-commerce being defined broadly as just about anything involving digital technologies). I picked Nintendo, because (A) I thought they'd be fun to write about, and (B) I think just about anyone on Neogaf could come up with ways in which their digital strategy could be improved.

But geez, the fact that everything needs to be cited from an ultra-reliable source (established newspaper such as the New York Times, business journal, etc) makes everything so difficult. For example, I want to say in my paper that Nintendo should make better use of its back catalogue. For example: many of their old titles have not been re-released digitally on their virtual console service. Doing so would require very little investment, because virtual console games run inside an emulator...

...oh wait, I don't actually have a source that says virtual console games run in emulators. No mind the fact that it's obvious to literally anyone with any familiarity on the subject. No mind the fact that hackers have opened up both the Wii and 3DS and managed to inject their own roms in the Virtual Console emulator. There's no "official" source that states the games are emulated.

I'm not asking for a solution, I'm just venting. God is this annoying.
Click to expand...

Does Gamasutra qualify as a reliable source for your research paper? Because they used to do magazine print runs of their various interviews and research.
 
It is kind of a weak argument anyway. Running in an emulator eliminates the cost of programming the port, but it doesn't eliminate all costs. They presumably would still need to pay for things like testing, licensing, marketing, and a variety of other things. The source you are really missing is the cost breakdown of putting a title on VC. Without being able to demonstrate that the non-programming costs are negligible, your argument that it takes little investment is completely speculative.
 
Wowfunhappy said:
This paper is for a business class. We needed to pick a company with an e-commerce strategy that could be improved (e-commerce being defined broadly as just about anything involving digital technologies). I picked Nintendo, because (A) I thought they'd be fun to write about, and (B) I think just about anyone on Neogaf could come up with ways in which their digital strategy could be improved.

But geez, the fact that everything needs to be cited from an ultra-reliable source (established newspaper such as the New York Times, business journal, etc) makes everything so difficult. For example, I want to say in my paper that Nintendo should make better use of its back catalogue. For example: many of their old titles have not been re-released digitally on their virtual console service. Doing so would require very little investment, because virtual console games run inside an emulator...

...oh wait, I don't actually have a source that says virtual console games run in emulators. No mind the fact that it's obvious to literally anyone with any familiarity on the subject. No mind the fact that hackers have opened up both the Wii and 3DS and managed to inject their own roms in the Virtual Console emulator. There's no "official" source that states the games are emulated.

I'm not asking for a solution, I'm just venting. God is this annoying.
Click to expand...

Wired has run pieces critical of Nintendo's Virtual Console strategy. Go look up some of their stuff and see if any of 'em are citable for your needs. Best of luck to you.
 
You don't need to have a neatly-packaged source that says that Virtual Console games run inside an emulator, you just need to be able to prove it. That's the difference between the hundreds of papers you've done for their own sake (because they were assigned to you), and real journalism. To elaborate, it's not like Nintendo's VC could have ever reasonably worked without an emulator being involved. To say this in your paper, it's only necessary to point out software cannot run natively on an architecture it wasn't designed for, and that the Wii/Wii U use different architectures than previous Nintendo consoles, thus creating a need for emulation.
 
Wowfunhappy said:
Luckily, the professor has made clear that we don't have to do financials in this paper. We don't need to say that X will increase profits by Y. We just have to say, X will help, and here's a good justification as to why.

FWIW, the argument that I'm making here is that consumers have come to expect lower game prices because of mobile platforms, and even though Nintendo can't possibly match those prices with their main games, they can rope consumers in by giving away older games at lower prices, and then those consumers will own Nintendo's platform and may purchase newer games. It's also not the only argument in my paper.
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It sounds like a lot of assumptions on your part. It's almost like you're speaking as someone who frequents a video game forum, but doesn't actually do research or know what they're talking about. And I don't mean that in an offensive way at all. What I mean by that is what you say in your second paragraph, you can say that all day long on these forums and get into arguments with people and blah blah blah, and it's all good and no one's going to say, "well, hey, actually support that," but in the professional world, or in a world where you actually want to make a difference, if you're going to make assumptions like that, you need to have sources and credible, peer-reviewed backing to support your claims.
 
Couldn't you just literally interview a prominant figure in home brew development who could unpack a WAD and verify that there'a a rom in there?

Also, I'm pretty sure that Nintendo puts VC releases through full Q&A, so it's not a free process.
 
jholmes said:
Wired has run pieces critical of Nintendo's Virtual Console strategy. Go look up some of their stuff and see if any of 'em are citable for your needs. Best of luck to you.
Click to expand...
I can't believe I didn't think about Wired. This is actually great on a number of levels. Thank you!

To everyone else: I'm not going to defend myself but I would just like to say that:
A) My actual argument IS more in depth than what I"m posting here (and I have several of them)
B) I'm well aware that this paper completely sucks.
 
wilflare said:
GAF helped me with this one - though I wrote an Asian Business History paper.

You can try reading
Game Over by David Sheff
Nintendo Magic by Osamu Inoue
History of Nintendo (various volumes) by Florent Gorges

Although most of them are journalist and may not qualify as academia, you can take a look at their sources as they have referred to quite a number of Japanese news sources, etc. You can mine their bibliography.

Check with your prof or institution if you can get access to Harvard Business Review as they have done case studies on Nintendo (recent ones on the company's business strategies and all that)

Widen your search terms over at JSTOR, Google Scholar, ProQuest and Project Muse - go beyond Nintendo. Since you are working on digital strategy/archival, try terms like "digital games archival" etc. While they may not directly address your research topic, they may shed some insight to explain the processes (and associated costs) behind.

I posted a GAF thread asking for help previously - I'll see if I can find it and get back.
Click to expand...

I totally recommend these books too! I used these for my dissertation and they all counted as peer-reviewed sources.
 
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