BBC: WoW behavior can predict epidemic patterns
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Aug 21st 2007 at 9:30AM
With all the recent news stories about WoW ruining lives, destroying children, supporting terrorism, etc., it's nice to see the media reporting on the positive aspects of the game. But this WoW-positive article has a surprising source -- the prestigious Lancet medical journal.
As reported by the BBC, Nina Fefferman and Eric Lofgren, both from the Tufts University Inititiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Disease, have published an article in the Lancet about how virtual worlds can provide models for human behavior in real-world epidemics. The duo specifically focused on the "Corrupted Blood" epidemic of fall 2005, which virtually wiped out Orgrimmar and Ironforge on many servers.
The BBC article states, "Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves. Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves. And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others." Fefferman added that since it's impossible/unethical to "cause" an epidemic in real life and see how human behavior influences its spread, virtual worlds may be the best model for this type of research.
However, she admitted that people are likely to take more risks with disease in-game than in real life, which sounds about right. Dying to tuberculosis is unlikely to cost you a mere five-minute corpse run, and I don't tend to see many people hiding incredibly infectious animals in bags and then pulling them out in the middle of a crowded shopping center, which is pretty much what happened with Corrupted Blood.
What do you think about this study? And, taking a broader view, does people's behavior in WoW accurately reflect their behavior in real life?
Filed under: Virtual selves, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
jpatterson Aug 21st 2007 9:44AM
Beautiful.... as an economist I love talking to colleagues about WoW, and often mention WoW based examples in my lectures. Glad to see other scholars showing the power of WoW to teach and extrapolate knowledge for real world events
Brandisis Aug 21st 2007 10:29AM
People's actions in an online game are completely different from what they do in the "real" world. I don't go around killing anyone or anything I can just for a good time.
Yes there are jerks in Wow, just as they are outside of the game, but when they log on, they don't have to hide their true nature because no one knows who they really are, so they're free to be jerks.
Basing a study on how people would act in a real world situation by looking at how they act in a game is foolish.
dotorion Aug 21st 2007 9:48AM
WATCH OUT !
That lady has a cute little white bunny in her bag !
AHMAGAWD it'll infect us all ! RUN !
I guess many people's first reaction will be to seek aid. I'm thinking I would be over-confident that I can cure the disease (in-game of course), though seeing an auction house full of corpses would probably ring a bell.
I hope some people's behaviour isn't the same in real life as it is in WoW, though ...
I can already see some guys at the office going "PWNED U NOOB!" after racing a co-worker to the coffee machine.
*shiver*
yotix Aug 21st 2007 10:13AM
There have been some reports of HIV positive people "barebacking" [doing it without condoms] on purpose -- as a way of, I guess, getting back at society or something. While rare, these things happen.
@2: People's actions in an online world are not restricted by laws as in the real world, but the game mechanics. Apart from that? It's similar. Humans are a lying, ninjaing, murderous, unreliable and greedy bunch, occasionally capable of doing something nice. But the actions themselves? Some beat up smaller kids, others use their lv70 to gank lv35s; some people ninja that purple item, other people ninja your great-aunt's inheritance; many people fail to show up for appointments or arrive 15 minutes late, whether it's SSC or an Origami class; some people exploit dungeons, some people shoplift; ...
In a game, no one has to worry about prison or having real blood on their hands, so I guess there is somewhat more lying, cheating and especially ganking in games. We still base our actions on what we feel is "acceptable behavior" in the real world; and will sometimes show flamboyantly bad behavior (like repeat ganking, or infesting everyone with a disease) ... the fact that people show off in a game going "Look, I did something evil" may make this so interesting for social researchers.
Dcruize Aug 21st 2007 10:16AM
Sounds like someone wants to justify running WoW on their office/lab PC...
How can anything like this be used to gauge human response to epidemics? Corrupted blood was before my time, but I'd been playing WoW at the time, I'd have been straight to ZG with my pet purely for the comedy value. In real life I'd keep my cat shut in the kitchen until it all blew over.
Hephaestion Aug 21st 2007 10:20AM
I think they should try releasing such an epidemic in Second Life and see how people react, because in that MMO people take the game much much more seriously
Phehon Aug 21st 2007 10:28AM
Writer wrote:
"What do you think about this study? And, taking a broader view, does people's behavior in WoW accurately reflect their behavior in real life?"
I think it point made in the article is correct, people will take more risk ingame, simply cuz you cant *really* die.
That being said: I think peoples character does reflect in their play style and manners.. Rude people will still be rude, tw*ts will still be tw*ts.. PUG-ing is a great example of that.. I think peoples character is even extrapolated into their WoW toon.. Cause of the anonimity, helpfull people will be more selfless and stupid people will be worse than they actually are..
ps. DONT JUST OPEN A TRADE WINDOW FOR YOUR LOCKBOXES!!!! ASK FIRST
pps. sorry for the yelling ^^
Vistol Aug 21st 2007 10:33AM
If there are not Economists doing studies of the WoW economy I would be shocked.
Looking at prices for different good across factions, and realms, then studying what makes the outliers different, has PhD written all over it.
Heck the ability to tweak drop rates on specific goods on different servers and seeing what happened, would be an economists wet dream.
Imagine adding a 5% tax to all repair bills on a server and seeing what that would do.
My inner nerd smiles with glee at the thought of it.
ThorinII Aug 21st 2007 10:43AM
I don't buy it. There are no real consequences in games. Like someone said, a spirit run isn’t possible outside of a digital world. Not to mention the fact that people often play games so they can be someone they really aren’t and do things they really won’t/can’t.
For example: People are a lot more likely to rush into a cave of who knows what to recover some trinket of value for someone they just met when playing WoW than they are IRL. In fact, unless there is a life-changing amount of money on the line, I seriously doubt anyone I know would IRL. We’re certainly not going to go kill X number of creatures for someone and bring them back their eyes, or ears, or whatever just to gain a reputation or get free gloves.
How can they say someone would be willing to bring medicine (risking real death) for some stranger IRL just because they were willing to in a video game? This is not even a close guess as to how people would react in real life.
Morgun Aug 21st 2007 10:52AM
This topic is even getting air time on Sky News....quite a long segment as well.
Nice to see good things being said about WOW for a change rather than how it is a destroyer of social lives.
Pingmeister Aug 21st 2007 11:01AM
Herd behavior is herd behavior. Yes, I think that you can study behaviors in-game and use those results in studies.
However, the data will be severely skewed (perhaps to the point of being useless) when you take into consideration that there are a large percentage of folks who play MMOs because they can do things in the game that they can't in real life.
Think about the PvP servers. You get to be a mass murderer.
Comparing WoW behavior to real life is silly. But looking at WoW behavior and studying it certainly has its value.
InterSlayer Aug 21st 2007 11:39AM
http://youtube.com/watch?v=s6dlvOMSBys
Aladek Aug 21st 2007 11:41AM
This is rather old news but I'm glad to see it resurface again. As a sociologist I have to agree, it does tend to show a trend of what you would expect from people.
As for all the nay-sayers out there, your correct in some aspects as well. The percentages will not be the same, you will not find as many helping, or being malicious in all likely hood.
That being said, it is an excellent study, and probably as close as we will get at this time without actually causing an epidemic in RL.
___________________________________
I would love to have the chance to see the research data, even see Bliz work with Universities to set up studies of similar situations.
Bentas Aug 21st 2007 12:03PM
@9 "How can they say someone would be willing to bring medicine (risking real death) for some stranger IRL just because they were willing to in a video game?"
They do it every day. They're called firefighters, and paramedics and doctors and police officers and more. People risk their lives on a regular basis for strangers, and they don't do it for the money.
Theserene Aug 21st 2007 12:44PM
Speaking as someone who holds a professional qualification in infectious diseases, it IS an interesting study that can be applied to the field of epidemiology.
There is not an overriding human desire to get out of the way of disaster, as witnessed often by emergency services etc. who often have to get past onlookers to get to the actual problem. People like to go and see the morbid details for themselves.
So, it is not totally unlikely that the admittedly over-the-top antics in an online game could be reflected in a smaller scale in real life situations should such an event occur.
Coherent Aug 21st 2007 1:04PM
Interesting application! Yes, I think WoW behavior DOES accurately reflect real-life tendencies, with the caveat that some people will lean towards bad behavior because "it's only a game".
The "game-ness" of the situation tilts the table towards amorality in a linear manner, but once you compensate for that, I believe the behavior ratios do reflect real-world choices and tendencies.
Throck Aug 21st 2007 1:10PM
@11 (Pingmeister) I like your points. The skewing of the data comes from people experimenting in (or degenerating into) behaviors several standard deviations from what might be deemed "normal" in RL.
So you have ultra-sociopathic behavior like camping lowbies just for fun (assuming there aren't ulterior motives of luring higher levels to their honor-point-giving deaths or preventing the competition from leveling).
And you have ultra-altruistic behavior like giving most of one's gold to a guildie so that they can buy a mount. (Would you honestly buy some co-worker a car?)
And you have everything in between, across from, behind, under, and over those behaviors.
Studying all the different behaviors might be interesting. But mapping those behaviors to RL behavior would have limited utility because they can mean such different things in each environment. Sometimes a /lick doesn't really translate to an RL lick.
Coherent Aug 21st 2007 1:16PM
As an amusing aside, I think people who say that WoW behavior is completely different from RL behavior are mostly people who are bad to others in WoW. People who are generally GOOD to other players in WoW will say that it DOES reflect real-world behavior.
So you get percentages and ranges:
people who are always good;
people who are mostly good but a little bad;
people who are equally good and bad;
people who are mostly bad;
people who are always bad to other players.
Everyone in the last three categories will say "it doesn't reflect real world activity at all!"
They're lying and/or ignorant of the truth though, they just want to disassociate themselves from their "no consequences" behavior.
Rob Aug 21st 2007 3:13PM
I agree with this study and the comments by the epi guy above. Sounds like real life to me. During Hurricane Rita, almost everyone in Houston tried to evacuate; we had just witnessed New Orleans utterly destroyed by Katrina, and Rita was a cat 5 storm. Chaos ensued; it took most of us 16-24 hours to get less than 200 miles away. So the tendancy in people is panic and terror. Not many stayed due to morbid facination; although there's always some. Some stayed thinking they could ride it out. In the end, the only way we ever would have been in danger is if the eye wall went through the port of houston, a very unlikely chance. As it turned out, there was absolutely no damage to Houston. Beaumont wasn't so lucky.
Me Aug 21st 2007 3:36PM
If I get the plague I will so go out of my way to spread it all over Azeroth. Stealth Rogues sneaking into Horde capitals for infection FTW!