Abstract
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) occupy a unique position in the videogaming landscape. While multiplayer computer games are certainly not new (Spacewars, in 1962, was already designed for two players), MMOGs have gone much farther than any other genre in their attempts to encourage social interactions between large groups of players. This is all the more interesting when considering that most of the activities offered in a MMOG, such as killing monsters, leveling up a character, gaining more powerful abilities and gear, etc., are all already available in single-player games: from an individual standpoint, one could have a strikingly similar experience playing a MMOG like World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004), for instance, and a single-player role-playing game (RPG) like Dragon Age (Electronic Arts, 2009). Therefore, what makes MMOGs so unique and interesting is their social architecture: the way each game world is designed to maximize opportunities for player-to-player interactions. In turn, it is these repeated player interactions that keep subscribers coming back β and paying their monthly fee: as previous studies have shown βit is the players that are addictive [in MMOGs], not the game itself (Lazarro 2004).β Understanding the nature and structure of player behaviors and interactions in online games is therefore not only an interesting (and fun) sociological question: it is also potentially a very lucrative one, since a better understanding of player behavior could lead to improved social architectures with even higher attractiveness to the players and a corresponding increased retention (and profit).
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Nic Ducheneaut: is a Senior Scientist in the Computer Science Laboratory at PARC. βHe uses a combination of methods (including data mining, surveys, and ethnographic observations) to study the social life of online communities. Based on these studies, he also designs and implements new computer systems to better support electronic communication and collaboration.
Nicβs most recent research focuses on the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds: he founded the PlayOn project, which is conducting the longest and largest statistical study of player behavior in World of Warcraft to date (300,000+ characters observed over 5 years). Before that, he developed a wide range of novel social software ranging from email clients to recommender systems. He currently has 23 US patents pending and published more than 50 research papers in Human-Computer Interaction, Sociology, Communication, and Game Studies. βNic obtained his Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of California, Berkeley.
Nick Yee: is a research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His research focuses on social interaction and self-representation in virtual worlds and online games. He is well-known for the Daedalus Project, a long-running online survey study of over 50,000 online gamers that examined who plays online games and why. As a graduate student at Stanford University, he conducted psychological experiments to understand how virtual worlds allow us to break the rules of physical reality in productive ways. And at PARC, he has analyzed large-scale data sets of logged behaviors from online games. Nick is the author of more than 40 peer-reviewed publications in virtual environments and online games.
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Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N. (2013). Data Collection in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Methods, Analytic Obstacles, and Case Studies. In: Seif El-Nasr, M., Drachen, A., Canossa, A. (eds) Game Analytics. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4769-5_28
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