As I am traveling back to Japan to attend the 2019 Replaying Japan and DiGRA conferences in early August, I want to take a moment to official announce that my journey as a graduate student came to an end last week when my thesis deposit was officially accepted by the University of Alberta. This marks the culmination of a seven year-long adventure that started by discovering the fascinating world of Japanese arcades when I was living in Japan in 2012. Little did I know when I started my initial research on this topic that this world would occupy the main part of my intellectual life for almost a decade. I feel grateful for my institution, the University of Alberta, my thesis supervisor, Prof. Geoffrey Rockwell, and for the support provided by the many agencies (MEXT, SSHRC, and GRAND) that funded the project along the way. But as I enjoy this weight being lifted off my shoulders, still feel that I am leaving a project that still has many more facets lefts to explore. As I am reflecting on these past years I wonder, is this really the end? Are there really ends to this type of endeavor?
Many meaningful observations and pages of notes did not make it into the final version of my dissertation. While a part of me longs to engage them in complementary projects, I also feel the desire to explore entirely different topics as a junior academic. The field of game studies changes drastically in the space of ten years. The GamerGate controversy shook the foundation of game culture, virtual reality is bringing a new aesthetic paradigm to the market, and, most importantly for me, Japanese game studies is more visible than it has ever been. On a personal note, I am also much more involved in the exploration of the potential of text mining techniques in the study of games and gaming communities. I would seem that, for the time being, work on the spatiality and material conditions of game centers will have to wait until an opportunity to reexamine my ideas arises.
Perhaps a research project can never be over, but should be voluntarily halted for others to evaluate its contributions and suggest new paths of investigations. It is important to remind oneself that research is not conducted in a vacuum. Punctual releases of the status of one’s thoughts in the form of papers and, in this case, a dissertation, be them imperfect or incomplete to the eyes of its author, is an important step towards the production of knowledge. Perhaps this realization is the only way to cope with my current feeling of leaving a whole range of questions unexamined.