Bylimet Spiritwalker
03-23-2009, 08:02 PM
To model 'real world,' scholars try EverQuest
Partly funded by the Army, the Web-game study looks at leadership, collaboration
By Richard Chin
rchin@pioneerpress.com (rchin@pioneerpress.com?subject=TwinCities.com:%20 To%20model%20%27real%20world,%27%20scholars%20try% 20EverQuest)
Updated: 03/22/2009 11:14:24 PM CDT
There are monsters, wizards, elves and warriors in EverQuest II, an online multiplayer role-playing game.
There also is a team of economists, sociologists and computer scientists. They're watching the action in the fictional, virtual land of Norrath, hoping it will give them insights into human behavior in the real world.
The research — a multi-year, multi-million dollar project funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army — is part of the emerging field of computational social science, which, according to University of Minnesota computer science professor Jaideep Srivastava, has the potential to advance social science research in the way that gene sequencing has transformed biology.
Srivastava is part of a team of academics, including researchers from Northwestern University, the University of Illinois and the University of Southern California, who have been given access to three years of play data of EverQuest II, a Sony Online Entertainment massively multiplayer online role-playing game that attracts hundreds of thousands of players.
The play data has been anonymized — scrubbed of any real-life names of the players. And the researchers don't have access to the content of the communications between players.
But they can see when and how often players interact. And thanks to anonymous surveys of players, they know lots of their socio-demographic characteristics — sex, age, sexual orientation, psychological profiles,
body mass index. "We know lots about them, except who they are," said Dmitri Williams, an assistant professor at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC.
Players in EverQuest II create a character for themselves and interact and team up with other players as they go on quests, kill monsters and garner loot and expertise.
Sony gave the researchers access to the data because the company thinks the researchers may help it learn more about its customers and how to keep their business.
The Army is funding the research, according to the scientists, because it hopes it may provide insights on effective leadership or how successful teams are formed in a competitive environment.
"The Army is very interested in getting groups of people to work together effectively," Williams said.
And the researchers get what they believe is an unprecedented large scale data set, mapping out group dynamics involving thousands of interactions at a level of detail and accuracy that would be impossible for researchers to record in the non-digital world.
For example, studying macroeconomics in EverQuest II doesn't rely on surveys and estimates.
"Unlike the real economy, we can measure and track every single transaction to the penny in real time," said Williams. "It is a very powerful tool."
To the extent that the online world mirrors the real world, the researchers think all that game play data will give them new insights into human behavior.
And so far, the researchers have found that in many ways life in EverQuest II does work like the real world. In EverQuest II, for example, a rapid influx of money results in inflationary prices, just like in the real world.
"The real world is not just offline. The real world is both online and offline," said Nosh Contractor, a behavioral science professor at Northwestern.
Other findings about the world of EverQuest II:
Players spend an average of nearly 26 hours per week on the game. A lot of time, but still less than the average amount of time Americans watch TV. Men make up a higher percent of the players, but women are more intense players. They play more hours and are more committed to the game.
The average age of EverQuest II players is 31, compared to the U.S. median of 35.
Players have higher levels of depression but lower levels of anxiety than the U.S. population as a whole. They also are thinner than the general population.
Women are happier when they play the game with a romantic partner. Men are unhappier.
And despite the Internet's potential to link people around the world, EverQuest II players are more likely to interact with other players who live closest to them in real life, or who are at least in the same time zone, an indication that players are playing with people they already know, or with people who at least go to bed at the same time. Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560.
Any comments on this? And sorry if it seems crammed; I copied rather than trying to link, due to some being unable to access the paper's links.
Partly funded by the Army, the Web-game study looks at leadership, collaboration
By Richard Chin
rchin@pioneerpress.com (rchin@pioneerpress.com?subject=TwinCities.com:%20 To%20model%20%27real%20world,%27%20scholars%20try% 20EverQuest)
Updated: 03/22/2009 11:14:24 PM CDT
There are monsters, wizards, elves and warriors in EverQuest II, an online multiplayer role-playing game.
There also is a team of economists, sociologists and computer scientists. They're watching the action in the fictional, virtual land of Norrath, hoping it will give them insights into human behavior in the real world.
The research — a multi-year, multi-million dollar project funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army — is part of the emerging field of computational social science, which, according to University of Minnesota computer science professor Jaideep Srivastava, has the potential to advance social science research in the way that gene sequencing has transformed biology.
Srivastava is part of a team of academics, including researchers from Northwestern University, the University of Illinois and the University of Southern California, who have been given access to three years of play data of EverQuest II, a Sony Online Entertainment massively multiplayer online role-playing game that attracts hundreds of thousands of players.
The play data has been anonymized — scrubbed of any real-life names of the players. And the researchers don't have access to the content of the communications between players.
But they can see when and how often players interact. And thanks to anonymous surveys of players, they know lots of their socio-demographic characteristics — sex, age, sexual orientation, psychological profiles,
body mass index. "We know lots about them, except who they are," said Dmitri Williams, an assistant professor at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC.
Players in EverQuest II create a character for themselves and interact and team up with other players as they go on quests, kill monsters and garner loot and expertise.
Sony gave the researchers access to the data because the company thinks the researchers may help it learn more about its customers and how to keep their business.
The Army is funding the research, according to the scientists, because it hopes it may provide insights on effective leadership or how successful teams are formed in a competitive environment.
"The Army is very interested in getting groups of people to work together effectively," Williams said.
And the researchers get what they believe is an unprecedented large scale data set, mapping out group dynamics involving thousands of interactions at a level of detail and accuracy that would be impossible for researchers to record in the non-digital world.
For example, studying macroeconomics in EverQuest II doesn't rely on surveys and estimates.
"Unlike the real economy, we can measure and track every single transaction to the penny in real time," said Williams. "It is a very powerful tool."
To the extent that the online world mirrors the real world, the researchers think all that game play data will give them new insights into human behavior.
And so far, the researchers have found that in many ways life in EverQuest II does work like the real world. In EverQuest II, for example, a rapid influx of money results in inflationary prices, just like in the real world.
"The real world is not just offline. The real world is both online and offline," said Nosh Contractor, a behavioral science professor at Northwestern.
Other findings about the world of EverQuest II:
Players spend an average of nearly 26 hours per week on the game. A lot of time, but still less than the average amount of time Americans watch TV. Men make up a higher percent of the players, but women are more intense players. They play more hours and are more committed to the game.
The average age of EverQuest II players is 31, compared to the U.S. median of 35.
Players have higher levels of depression but lower levels of anxiety than the U.S. population as a whole. They also are thinner than the general population.
Women are happier when they play the game with a romantic partner. Men are unhappier.
And despite the Internet's potential to link people around the world, EverQuest II players are more likely to interact with other players who live closest to them in real life, or who are at least in the same time zone, an indication that players are playing with people they already know, or with people who at least go to bed at the same time. Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560.
Any comments on this? And sorry if it seems crammed; I copied rather than trying to link, due to some being unable to access the paper's links.