Study says social games make people more social
by Mike Schramm 
Aug 18th 2007 at 5:15PM
Our good friends at Joystiq reported on a study earlier from Nottingham Trent University (it's in England) about MMO gamers and their social behaviors. And supposedly-- are you sitting for this one?-- massively multiplayer online games actually help people meet others and make friends. Go figure!They surveyed 1,000 gamers (which is not a huge sample, actually), and found that almost half had actually met another player in real life, and one in ten developed "physical relationships" with someone they'd met in a game. 40% of people discussed sensitive issues with online friends rather than real-life ones, and 30% of players were attracted to another player. 80% of players also played not only with online friends, but with real-life friends and family as well. And according to the study, women were more likely to both be attracted to other players, and to eventually date them, and while women play for "therapeutic refreshment," men play for "curiosity, astonishment, and interest."
50% of respondents said World of Warcraft was their game of choice, so while the study was actually about MMO players, it's not a stretch to say it's just about WoW players (and pretty hardcore players, too-- average play time per week was 22.85 hours!). Like I said, 1,000 people is a pretty small sample, but apparently a journal approved it-- the study will be published in CyberPsychology and Behavior.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
srn Aug 20th 2007 10:05PM
1000 people is a pretty big sample, if they were randomly selected - the sampling error will only be a few percent.
On the other hand, if the people volunteered for the survey, the results are going to be self-selected for the more social people - i.e. people who do the survey are likely the sorts of people who like to do surveys and interact with other people.
Michel Aug 18th 2007 7:31PM
I'm shocked
all that years I was happy to be called a violent sociopath unable to do anything good
and now, suddenly, I have a social behavior, friends, good work and able to write in english.
I'm so shocked. Blizzard, you made medias and studies having a good opinion of me ! bad blizzard, bad.
:)
Kartre Aug 18th 2007 8:32PM
A sample size of a thousand actually gives a reasonable estimate of "truth" if the study was conducted well. Plus or minus 5% accuracy.
But yeah, I don't know about you guys but WoW turned me into a serial killer.
slayerboy Aug 18th 2007 9:31PM
Um yeah...I think WoW actually ruined my social life....either that or I've been working Night shift for the last year.
On the plus side, WoW has kept me pretty much un-bored the whole time LOL.
RogueJedi86 Aug 19th 2007 3:35AM
Killing social lives seems a bit much. I still hang out and do stuff with my friends. We still run around together, talking and doing stuff. We just do it in a virtual world. It's not good for our physical bodies, but our social creature minds are still healthy.