Given that the virtual worlds we spend 20 hours a week in are able to keep track of everything we do in them, there's a gold-mine of social science data (personality, social networks, etc.) that's being accumulated. It's a pity that it's so hard to get access to aggregate server-side data. This is changing though with games like World of Warcraft that allow third-party census mods. But so far, most census mods have only served to provide snapshot data.
Several researchers at PARC (who I'm working with this summer) have devised an automated system that cycles through 3 servers for both Alliance and Horde and performs a census about every 16 minutes. This longitudinal data provides a way to answer far more interesting questions that the static data is unable to. For example:
- Do players who group more often level faster?
- Do players in guilds spend more time playing each week than those not in a guild? (answer)
- How does server type affect guild size or grouping among players?
We will answer these questions and many more at our new PlayOn Blog. We hope you come join us in interpreting and playing with the data. We will have new entries each day this coming week.
Neat stuff, Nick!
Posted by: greglas | Jun 17, 2005 at 10:59