Quantification of EQ Players

Nick Yee writes: "As part of a psychology thesis project, I collected data from about 4000 individual EverQuest players who together filled out about 25,000 surveys that focused on many facets of personal and social dynamics in real-time 3D immersive virtual worlds, such as: gender differences, gender-bending, addiction, friendships, romantic relationships, people who play with romantic partners and so on. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. "

Re:I didn't find any of this especially...

[Xenographic]

Better read that again. When it spoke of "romantic partners" it was talking about RL one, not fantasy ones. It's just as well, since half the female charactors are really males, though that only disturbs people a little less than 2 on a 1 to 5 scale, apparently [1 is "not bothered at all"].

There are plenty of interesting tidbits, though. For one, females are likely to be attracted to the game by their SO. Female charactors tend to get unsolicited help a lot more, while male charactors tend to be taken more seriously [note that this refers only to the charactors, not the players--the section on "gender bending" illuminates this quite a lot, from telling us that a lot of the people play a charactor of the opposite gender because they like the looks of them, to telling us about some guys who like to play women for the deferential treatment]

Granted, none of it is exactly earth-shattering, but it's still an interesting read if you have any interest in what motivates people.

Journal of Virtual Environments

[alansz]

An online publication venue for this kind of work (and a place to go to read other related work) is the Journal of Virtual Environments [brandeis.edu] (formerly Journal of Mud Research).

Suggested reading materials

[LinuxHam]

Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet [barpoint.com] by Dr. Sherry Turkle.

Great book. Provides excellent insight into the psychology of RPG gamers.