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Abstract: The online community at NeoGAF.com focuses its attention almost exclusively on videogames. The conversations can be indecipherable to outsiders, even those familiar with videogames. This passionate group of fans is one of the most influential in the industry. During live events, specific threads provide insight into the reactions of the community. It is the intention of this study to reveal their real time reactions to such an event, Nintendo's E3 press conference held on June 2, 2009.

Methodology: In order to chart these reactions, I assigned a score to each comment. If a comment was optimistic or positive, it scored +1. If it was negative, it scored -1. NeoGAF time stamps each post to the minute, so for every minute interval during the press conference, the sum total of response scores were charted.

A Positive Remark: Any remark that was positive in nature, either optimistic for events that may happen within the conference or approving of events as they happened. These were restricted to the actual conference happenings.

A Negative Remark: Any remark that was negative in nature, either pessimistic of what was to come, or disapproving of events as they happened. These were restricted to the actual conference happenings.

Ambiguous, Irrelevant, or Otherwise Unusable Data: Some comments provided responses that were difficult to gauge, and these were ignored. Comments regarding the quality of the stream were also ignored. And finally, some comments that were making demands of Nintendo during the conference without providing an idea of attitude were also dismissed (an example: "Where's my Zeruda?," while asking for a Zelda game at the conference, reflected neither a positive nor negative attitude at the time of expression).

Events: Certain events are listed in the chart. These are associated with a time interval based on the first post citing it within the NeoGAF thread.

Difficulties Encountered: The above graph reflects the score, but does not account for posts/minute. A particular time interval's score, if close to 0 (Zero), can either account for a low posts/minute ratio, or a high posts/minute ratio in which opinion was mixed.

Also, many of the participants within the thread were viewing different streams, some slightly time delayed. This resulted in certain opinions being expressed out of sync of the actual conference.

Conclusions: The reaction data mirrored what one would expect after categorizing conference topics as "casual" or "hardcore." NeoGAF showed that they were intensely interested in hardcore subjects and games while not interested in casual subjects and games. They also were disapproving of items that were known prior to discussion in this particular conference.

While this is an obvious conclusion, the positive scores upon the appearance of Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime and Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, and the eventual decline into negative scores once it was realized they were discussion casual subjects, sales figures, or some other phenomena frowned upon by the community, is quite interesting. This reveals a certain hero quality ascribed to these executives -- the interest level even spikes when Fils-Aime beats Bill Trinen, senior manager, product marketing (NOA), at Wii Sports Resort basketball. I will also point out that they really hate Cammie Dunaway, executive vp, sales & marketing (NOA), whose news announcements also tend to be more casual.

Another point of interest: the time between the discussion of the Wii Vitality Sensor (scoring 80 negative remarks in a single minute) and then the reveal of Super Mario Galaxy 2. This represented a 129 point change in under four minutes. Videogamers at NeoGAF hold very strong opinions and will change them very quickly during an event of this nature.