I presented a short paper as a keynote in the Medi@terra Gaming Realities conference, inviting international collaboration on mapping the global game cultures — into gathering reliable information on who is playing, what, how, and how much, and perhaps even why. If you are interested, take a look at the version available in my home page, and lets be in contact.
frans goes blog 
Hello Frans,
It is a great opportunity and to read you and to listen to your ideas and reflections, as always. Thanks for put the effort in all this 😉
From the first read on your paper, it jumped two comments from my part:
1) The first one, no as media researcher, more as a researcher interested in games, especially in the creation of serious games (use the technology to support education and make it fun). Then after read you paper my first question that arises is in the topic of the methodologies used for game researchers, and the fields involved. Are you only talking of the analysis of the actual games? am I right? . Because for example in cases as mine, in which I am looking to create, at some point, games with a purpose for that I am bringing together the knowledge produced by the game researchers as well as by educators. For that I need to combine not only qualitative methodologies of social sciences and social psychology, but also being aware of the advices of education researchers, at least in some cases. I guess this is particularly important while talking of serious games. Besides to be aware of the technology and tools for this purpose.
An interesting paper from Andrew Ravenscroft and Simon McAlister, from the London Metropolitan Universtiy, in UK called “Digital Games and Learning in Cyberspace: a dialogical approach” (E-Learning Volume 3, Number 1, 2006) talks much better about this approach of games for learning, and actually he puts some question in place that I would like to hear its answer from the game researchers perspective. Well, this comment might no be in the scope of your work, or not interest you, but I felt I should share it to you.
2) The second point is referring to your call of a community effort. I would like to collaborate in your work in case I can do something, Even that I am in the same country as you, at this moment, but we are not in a same location. But if I can suspect that perhaps in your research while talking of different cultures, it might contemplate that sometimes you do not have to go so far away because it exits differences between metropolitan areas and the country side, as you well understand. Even in so homogenous countries as in Finland. Then what I can offer is my location right now if in something I can cooperate in your efforts. Also I’ll go often to my ex-university in Germany and I might get some information from there as well, if it is needed. From Mexico right now I can’t commit but it might come the opportunity. Anyway, I guess we will communicate in case it is also appealing for you.
Now wish you a nice evening,
Carolina
Carolina,
Thanks for your responses — and yes, the idea of the International Study of Games Cultures is to gather socio-cultural data on games and gamers, but on any formats that people actually use. Edutainment is one category that comes close to educational interests, of course. And I would be really glad to get some data from you at some point when we open up the initiative, so lets keep in contact.