Wanna Be Part of an MMO Documentary?

The folks at Pure West Docs are making a very cool documentary on MMOs. They're trying to get at some of the more interesting issues in this space, rather than the narrow focus on addiction we see all the time in mainstream media. For example, their roster of guides in the documentary includes, among others, a woman who runs a BDSM service in Second Life and a man who borrowed money from his dad to start a gold farm in China. They've also interviewed several well-known academics in this area, such as Ted Castronova, Julian Dibbell, and myself.

What they're looking for now are players who have had particular kinds of experiences in MMOs and wouldn't mind being interviewed for a documentary. Here's the kinds of players they are interested in interviewing:

- a couple that met in an MMO and are currently together in RL.
- a virtual world refugee: someone who was in an MMO that was shut down who can talk about how they and the community reacted.
- someone in a long-standing guild that has branches in different games, or has migrated through several games.
- a physically-handicapped person who plays MMOs and finds it to have a positive influence on their life.
- someone who feels that the virtual world offers a better life for them (financially or otherwise).
- an activist: someone who has organized or led a protest in a virtual world.
- someone who lives in the New York City area and has an interesting MMO story or experience

They are located in the New York City area so they would prefer players who are geographically close to them, but they are open to traveling to other parts of the US. I think they're working on a really interesting project that emphasizes the new frontiers that these online games are providing. So if you've got a story and you don't mind being interviewed, please drop them a note. You can reach them at victorATpurewestmediaDOTcom

Index of Journal Articles and Conference Papers

For other researchers who are looking for published material relevant to MMOs that they can cite, here is a list of my journal articles and conference papers that I will keep updated. I will provide brief summaries for each to make it easier to pick out what is relevant for you. The digital copies of these papers are also provided for easy access. All articles here, except for the book chapter at the end, are peer-reviewed publications.

Yee, N (2007). Motivations for Play in Online Games. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 9, 772-775. (pdf)

This is the more recent 10 component model of player motivations. An earlier 5 factor model is presented in the Presence (2006) paper.

Yee, N. (2006). The Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively-Multiuser Online Graphical Environments. PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15, 309-329. (pdf)

This is a three-part paper that has much of the earlier demographic and usage data. If you need a paper for age, gender, and usage breakdown of users, this is the most relevant paper of mine to cite.

Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Nickell, E., and Moore, R.J. (2006). "Alone Together? Exploring the Social Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Games." In conference proceedings on human factors in computing systems CHI 2006, pp.407-416. April 22-27, Montreal, PQ, Canada. (pdf)

This was the CHI 2006 paper that came out from my research at PARC with my colleagues there. In this paper, we argue that the “social” nature of MMOs may have been over-estimated. We present analysis of longitudinal data of groups and guilds to suggest that many players enjoy the “alone together” aspect of MMOs.

Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., Merget, D. (in press). The Unbearable Likeness of Being Digital: The Persistence of Nonverbal Social Norms in Online Virtual Environments. The Journal of CyberPsychology and Behavior. (pdf)

In real life, our social interactions are guided by well-known psychological rules. For example, when people get too close to us, we avert our gaze to lower the intimacy (i.e., the elevator effect). But do these rules transfer into virtual worlds? In this paper, we collected data from Second Life to answer this question.

Yee, N. (2006). The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play. Games and Culture , 1, 68-71. (pdf)

A short paper on how complex play can be in MMOs and talking more broadly about the intersection of work and play in virtual worlds.

Yee, N. (2006). The Psychology of MMORPGs: Emotional Investment, Motivations, Relationship Formation, and Problematic Usage. In R. Schroeder & A. Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars at Work and Play: Collaboration and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments. (pp. 187-207) London: Springer-Verlag. (pdf)

A book chapter that provides an overview of MMOs with an emphasis on relationships and motivations, but with a broader focus and provides more narrative data than the Presence (2006) paper.

Slideshow #4

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I'm looking to gather some more visual data points of all the interesting social phenomema happening in MMOs. If you have any screenshots that fall into the following categories, please consider submitting them. Any images you submit will be credited to you if they are ever displayed on The Daedalus Project.

In particular, I am looking for the following kinds of images:

- Emergent Behavior: Interesting social behavior that emerged in game, whether this is a vigil, a funeral, a wedding, or someone crashing your party.
- Strange Bugs: Like the recent WoW Plague.
- Funny Moments: Humorous moments in your MMO adventures.
- Others: any other screenshots that you think are interesting but don't fall into a category above.

Please send your screenshot as a JPG file. Screenshots that are well-composed and where the interface elements are hidden are much appreciated. Please note that there is a file size limit of 800k per image.

PARC Forum Talk

I gave a talk at PARC’s Forum in late July on MMOs. It was a 45 minute presentation with about 15 minutes of Q&A. I touched upon several issues during the talk, ranging from the blurring of work and play, how RL race can matter in fantasy worlds of elves and ogres, and whether there is such a thing as “online gaming addiction”. The audience was a mixed group of IT researchers and lay people, containing both MMO veterans and newbies. So the talk starts very basic, but dives into the interesting concepts pretty quickly as well.

The PARC AV folks did a great job in capturing the presentation. The only thing I wish they had been able to do was pick up more of the audience reactions along the way. They have both a streaming video and an MP3 file of the presentation on their website. In case you’ve ever wished that you could have Nick Yee on your iPod, your wish has just been granted.

Number of Active Subscriptions

In the most recent survey, I also asked players about the number of active subscriptions they had to MMOs. The majority of players (76%) only have one active subscription, and most of remaining players had 2-3 subscriptions. In less than 2% of cases, players had 4 or more subscriptions.

Of those who have more than one subscription, about one-third are playing just one of the MMOs they are subscribed to. Most of the remainder (58%) prefer one game among the ones they are subscribed to. Only very few players (10%) spend about equal time in the games they’ve subscribed to.

This data suggests that many players with multiple accounts may be transitioning between games, rather than deliberately trying to play both.

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Open-ended responses probing respondents for why they kept largely unplayed subscriptions active brought out a set of distinct reasons.

Social Links

For some players, keeping the account active allowed them to stay in touch with friends or family members who were still active in those games, even though they themselves had moved on to other games.

Sentimentality

Other players were sentimental less about their friends online than for the accumulated hard work and memories that their characters carry with them. For them, canceling the account might mean seeing all that effort disappear.

Subscription Plan

Others were simply waiting for their subscription plans to run out. They had bought long-term subscription plans for the discount that they will not renew in the next cycle.

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Just in Case

While some players are keeping their accounts to maintain their past efforts, other players are keeping their accounts in case they may be interested in the game again in the future.

Hard to Cancel

Some players note that canceling an account may not be as easy as it seems. Several players noted that in certain instances, canceling may require a phone call.

Forgot to Cancel

And finally, a very few players admitted that they had simply forgotten about those active subscriptions until they filled out the survey. You heard it here first. Participating in online surveys by Nick Yee can save you money.

Seasonal Fluctuations in Playing Time

There are several stats that I check often as basic guards for data sanity. So typically, I check average number of hours and gender distribution to make sure they are close to the numbers I’ve seen before. I had also found before that age doesn’t correlate with number of hours played each week, so I was terribly surprised when I checked for that in the most recent data set and found a significant correlation (r = -.13, p < .001). I plotted this out and indeed the correlation looked strong.

So I went back through the past survey phases one by one to see how long this had been the case. And then something more puzzling showed up. The correlation does not appear in data set from the phase before (r = -.03, p = .21), or the one before that.

Over the past 6 years, I had come to expect relative stabilities from phase to phase especially because the sample sizes tend to be large. And then I realized that this may be driven by teenagers and college students being out of school for the summer since I started the phase in early June, while the previous phase started in late March. I ran some numbers and playing time overall was higher in the June sample than the March sample (23.5 vs,. 22. 3), and most of the difference came from the 22 and under crowd (as the graphs show).

I then went back to last year’s data and found the same pattern. There was a correlation between age and playing time if a phase was run in the summer months, but not in normal school months. So what I used to say about the correlation about age and hours played per week isn’t entirely correct. Age is not correlated with hours played per week, except when school is out in the summer, in which case younger players do play significantly more than older players and there is a correlation between age and game-play.

Time Spent in the Meta-Game

Playing an MMO is more than just about the time spent within the game. Many players seem to spend time reading and posting on forums, managing guild websites, or looking up FAQs and guides that others have written - activities that are very much a part of their MMO game-play. I was interested in getting a sense of just how much time the typical player spends in these meta-game activities.

I first explored contributions that players may have made to the body of knowledge that surrounds MMOs. While 30% of players indicated that they almost never post on forums, about an equal percentage (36%) post on MMO forums once or several times a day.

And about 35% of respondents indicated that they had created at least one FAQ or guide for an MMO at some point.

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I then asked respondents to estimate the number of hours each week that they regularly spend in four types of activities:

1) Searching for and reading up on information about the game (i.e., character classes, abilities, quests, etc.)
2) Reading and/or posting on forums related to the MMO I play (excluding time spent on the your guild’s website).
3) Reading and/or posting on your guild’s website.
4) Guild related tasks such as scheduling raids / managing DKP points / other guild logistics.

Players spent on average 3.5 hours each week looking for and reading up on game-specific information, and 3.55 hours reading or posting on forums. For players who belonged to guilds (about 87% of respondents), they spent on average 2.7 hours reading or posting on their guild’s website, and 1 hour managing guild related tasks. In other words, the average player spends about 10.8 hours each week performing game-related tasks outside of the game.

In the sample that this data was drawn from, players spent on average 23.4 hours each week in the game. Thus, on average, the majority of players spend about an additional 50% of their game-playing time outside of the game performing game-related activities. While time spent in the game is the more intuitive and visible part of playing an MMO, this data shows that a significant part (about one-third of total invested time) of what it means to play an MMO happens outside of the game itself.

The "Impossible" Romance

What it means to fall in love in an MMO

In the past, I’ve presented some stats on the romantic relationships that form online as well as some thoughts on how the social architectures of MMO environments may encourage relationship formation. In a recent survey, I was interested in exploring the formation of romantic relationships from the perspective of players who have physically dated someone they first met online. In particular, I wanted to get a better understanding of how the formation and development of these online relationships differed from ones these players have had that started face-to-face (F2F). Their narratives help illustrate that these online romances have their own set of constraints and affordances and are not simply inferior or superficial versions of F2F relationships.

I received 115 responses to an open-ended survey targeting players who have physically dated someone they first met in an MMO. The majority of these relationships were still ongoing when the survey was conducted (67%). Of course, there is likely a sampling bias here of players who have had positive and ongoing relationships in the sample. On the other hand, I was less interested here in getting representative stats, and more interested in a qualitative understanding of the issue. Nevertheless, it is important to point out this sampling bias so readers are aware that even though a lot of important information can be gleaned from the narratives that follow, these narratives are probably more positive in tone due to an under-sampling of failed relationships.

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Brief Sketches of Love

First Contact

Let’s start by going over some representative sketches of the formative period of these online romances. These sketches will help ground us before we talk more conceptually about these relationships. Most players describe fairly commonplace and low-key situations for how they first met their romantic partner.

In many circumstances, both players belonged to the same guild and the guild played an important role in the initial meeting and providing sustained contact.

Incubation Period

An incubation period then typically follows where the casual relationship evolves very gradually over a period of typically 3 months to 12 months.

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Moment of Truth

These developing emotions then come to a point where the players decide to express their romantic feelings to each other. Most players had fairly detailed descriptions of this part of their relationship.

Cascade of Communication Mediums

This early period in the relationship is often supported by increasingly synchronous and intimate forms of communication (i.e., phone or webcam). The relationship starts to progress via other communication mediums. In other words, most players don’t jump from avatar to F2F directly as assumed by some media reports that try to paint these relationships as largely based on fantasy.

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Meeting F2F

These romantic partners were almost always separated by great geographic distances. In fact, in all the 115 responses, no pair of romantic partners were living in the same state. In many cases, romantic partners lived in different countries. Meeting F2F was thus a multi-layered problem for many of these couples. It was likely to have been a significant emotional, time, and financial investment.

Many players expressed great anxiety and fear as they step foot off the plane or train and were about to see their romantic partner F2F for the first time. The word “intense” was used very often in this section of the open-ended responses.

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Ever After

There were many happy endings from the responses. Many of the couples had relocated to be together geographically, and many indicated plans for marriage or children.

But there were also stories that didn’t have happy endings. Among the relationships that ended soon after the F2F meeting, some cited the geographic distance as the primary problem, while others cited problems with “chemistry”, and a few described gradual conflicts or personality differences similar to ones that would terminate F2F relationships.

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Low Pressure Environment

Let’s now talk more conceptually about these romantic relationships and the unique constraints and affordances of MMO environments. While it’s easy to compare this aspect of MMOs to a dating website or a romance chat room, these analogies are in fact inaccurate and frame these relationships incorrectly. First of all, none of the respondents described themselves as deliberately looking for love when they met their romantic partner. In fact, they often described the opposite.

The more apt analogy is probably the gym or the office - places where romance is not the primary goal for social interaction. This is an important distinction to make because people interact very differently when under and not under the pretense of a date. In other words, the formative and incubation period of these online relationships typically occur without this additional emotional pressure.

More importantly, the game environment provides a variety of collaborative tasks that allow players to get to know each other. In fact, players are forced to communicate with each other.

As other players point out, working together through crises reveals much more about another person than going to the movies with them. Watching how someone interacts with others in different social settings (under different amounts of stress) and how they work through problems can be very character-revealing.

In other words, many of these players got to know each other without the intent of trying to impress, date, or get in bed with each other.

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Anonymity and Honesty

The notion of anonymity intersects with relationship formation in many different ways. Let’s walk through several of these. We’ve seen that most of these players were not specifically looking for romance online when they met their romantic partner. We’ve also noted that they typically live great distances from each other. Because players assume that they are talking to someone they will never meet F2F, the initial formative period can encourage honesty. After all, there is little incentive to lie to someone you don’t know and assume will never meet.

Others commented that it’s easier to get to know someone precisely because of the anonymity - people are more open with each other.

Honesty was in fact an issue that many respondents brought up themselves. These players typically suggested extreme caution about taking what people say at face value. Nevertheless, when they then described their own experiences, most players noted the complete honesty that they and their partners exhibited prior to meeting F2F.

Another potential buffer to deception is the presence of other communication modalities that we mentioned earlier. It’s much harder to lie to someone about physical appearances when they can see you on a webcam.

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Masks and Superficiality

Superficiality was another issue that many players dealt with in their narratives. One argument was that players necessarily embellish themselves online and thus online identities are typically superficial.

Others countered that people are superficial in real life as well, and in fact, many common tools of self-embellishment in the physical world do not exist in virtual worlds.

Another line of counter-argument noted that physical appearances are deemphasized online, leading to a stronger concentration on internal qualities - such as personality and intelligence. These players question why emphasis on physical appearances in F2F relationships is considered normal while emphasis on internal qualities in online relationships is instead considered superficial.

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Creating Possibilities: Part One

One statistic was the most surprising from the narratives. Of all the respondents who were still in the relationship that began in an MMO, 60% of them indicated that they didn’t think the relationship would have happened in a F2F context, even had they met. Another 18% were not sure. Only 22% were somewhat certain that the relationship would have happened F2F. Thus, one very intriguing theme that emerged in the narratives was the notion that these virtual worlds had made it possible for otherwise “impossible relationships” to happen. By this, some referred back to the geographic separation, but many respondents suggested that their relationship would not have occurred F2F even if they had met each other. Respondents described two kinds of “impossible relationships” that were made possible by virtual worlds.

The first kind of “impossible relationship” revolves around shyness. As I read through the narratives, it surprised me how often respondents described, without any prompting from the questions, either their own shyness or their partner’s shyness.

About 25% of all respondents mentioned shyness somewhere in their narratives, either in describing themselves, their romantic partners, or both. Of course, it’s not clear whether this percentage is higher or lower than online gamers, video gamers, or the population in general. On the other hand, it makes it easy to understand why a non-trivial number of respondents felt that their shyness or their partner’s shyness would have prevented the relationship from ever happening even had they met in real life.

These narratives show that virtual worlds can enable the formation of relationships that would otherwise have been considered impossible F2F, even though the two people are actually highly compatible and can develop a significant romantic bond. The confidence that people can acquire online due to anonymity, something that has been critiqued as leading to superficiality, can in fact have very real and positive consequences for some people.

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Creating Possibilities: Part Two

There was another kind of “impossible relationship” that was made possible in virtual worlds. As we saw earlier, many respondents felt that the virtual environment deemphasized external qualities (such as physical appearance) and made it easier to get a sense of another person’s internal qualities (such as personality and intelligence).

Some respondents described this as getting to know someone from the inside out - a reversal of how things typically progress in relationships that start F2F.

In fact, this process of “inside-out” made possible many relationships that would never have started if they began “outside-in”. Many respondents suggested that they would never have given their partners the chance to learn about the inner qualities that they now love them for had they met F2F.

It is ironic that the norm of F2F relationships makes it easy for some to argue that virtual relationships are necessarily superficial. But as these narratives show, the absence of physical cues can in fact make relationships less focused on superficial qualities between people who are in fact highly compatible.

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Ending Thoughts - Stronger Foundations

Not only do virtual worlds make “impossible relationships” possible, but many respondents argued that the process itself provides much stronger foundations for a long-term relationship than is typical in F2F relationships.

The theme that the low-pressure game environment allowed them to become good friends before romantic partners was described by many other respondents. These players had gotten to know each other well, worked together, and gone through crises together before love happened.

It’s easy to argue that MMO relationships are somehow superficial because they are “missing” things that people have in F2F relationships, but I think that argument fails to understand that sometimes less can be more, and that there can be something superficial about the emphasis on physical attributes in F2F relationships. The notion that the MMO can render the “impossible relationship” possible is intriguing indeed. But ultimately, the most interesting thing that we’ve learned from the narratives is this. The MMO relationship isn’t something you can look for. It’s something that happens to you.

Welcome to The Daedalus Project

I've just completed my area exam, which is the last bureaucratic hurdle before the dissertation proposal meeting (yet another bureaucratic hurdle). I've been so busy I've hardly been able to log into WoW, but have spent some time in the BGs since the new cross-realm patch. I also picked up a Nintendo DS recently (semi-impulse buy) and have been playing Fire Emblem (GBA version) a lot. Old-school turn-based strategy can be so satisfying ...

Thanks to all of you who help spread the word of this site and those who continue to participate in the surveys. I really do appreciate it. As always, feel free to drop me a note here or email at contact@nickyee.com

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