Video game advertising dissertation ideas?

Hello,

I'm currently at university studying advertising and need to come up with a dissertation question. I thought I would try make a good question around a topic I'm passionate about, video games. I'd love for some ideas on a topic related to advertising and video games, so please, fire away! Currently I'm thinking of doing something around word-of-mouth, whether its making advertising for games less redundant or simply allowing for smaller games to thrive.

I guess think about access to sources. How would study word of mouth? I think that would involve the role of social media and hastags etc. You could try and look at game trailers and see when they start including hashtags!

But yeah, where would you look for 'word of mouth' opinions and spread. I guess looking at smaller titles on Steam with very little marketing. Or say something like Contradiction gets played on Giant Bomb. Does that still count as word of mouth if it's featured by a game website?

Just the general increase in information about games has had an impact of advertising. We have Steam user reviews and Youtube videos for people to get a real look at games. But the you can talk about some YouTubers or Twitch players getting the game early or being partners. See Dark Souls inviting prominent streamers to a preview event for Dark Souls III or Nintendo's weird official partnership rules.

You should actually just get a blank sheet of paper and just mind-map out everything you can think of. It's an interesting topic for sure.