Gnome Rogue with Pink Mohawk wants your data
by Matthew Rossi 
Mar 17th 2010 at 5:00PM
The full text of the press release will be behind the cut for those interested.
Have you ever wondered about who it is behind that gnome rogue with the pink mohawk? Or whether it's possible to figure out if a player is a man or a woman just from the way they play the game? We're social scientists from the US, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and we've wondered about that too. And that's what this study is about.
We're trying to find out how well we can predict who people are just from the way they behave in a virtual world. Our research team has a long history of studying interesting aspects of online games. We are also the same researchers who brought you the Daedalus Project and the PARC PlayOn Project.
To be a part of our newest research project takes only about 15 minutes to complete a web survey. If you are a FaceBook user, we'll also ask you to install a FaceBook app to gather some of your real world data. Individuals who are under the age of 18 or incarcerated are not eligible for participation. Follow this link to begin:
http://wow.parc.com/survey/us_consent.php
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Tim Mar 17th 2010 5:09PM
Add a facebook app? No thank you.
dinnercoat Mar 17th 2010 5:13PM
If anyone on your list has used any app you're account/privacy has been compromised already.
Nick Yee Mar 17th 2010 5:28PM
Our app only grabs data once when you do the install. You can uninstall the app right after. We only grab data from your profile, and do not grab anything from your friends. We also show you the exact XML we grab from your profile so you can check before sending the data to us.
We completely understand your concern with the privacy of your FaceBook data (as you should be), but it would be very helpful to us even if you just completed the survey without installing the FaceBook app.
Tim Mar 17th 2010 5:57PM
@dinnercoat
Really? @.@
@Nick Yee
Your words sooth my fears. I'll see what I can do.
mibluvr13 Mar 17th 2010 7:14PM
Waaaaah, my life needs privacy! Everything I do matters and nobody can know about it!
Arras Mar 17th 2010 7:40PM
@Nick Yee
Survey complete, app installed. Do you have an estimate on when we'll be able to read the results? I'd be very curious to see what you find
Nick Yee Mar 17th 2010 7:51PM
@Arras We are hoping to restart the PlayOn blog or something similar to distribute the findings over time as we analyze the data. Having said that, it will likely take us about 3 months to finish deployment, process the raw data, and analyze the data before we start to write up the findings. Once we do start the write-ups though, we hope to put out findings on a regular basis.
Banic Rhys Mar 17th 2010 5:10PM
By restricting this to over 18 year olds they're missing out on a large percentage of their data.
dinnercoat Mar 17th 2010 5:16PM
Probably not as large as you think. Aside from the fact that kids are stupid, they're constantly maturing (some of them), learning, and growing as people. Hell even now in my near-late 20s I can see I am vastly different from a few years back, whether or when my growth as a person will halt who knows.
But to the point, usually sub-18 people will change quite often and dramatically over the next few years at least and are unreliable study subjects anyway and would be unfit for a study of this type.
Nick Yee Mar 17th 2010 5:19PM
This is largely an IRB issue due to restrictions on recruiting minors as participants unfortunately. We would have loved to get data for the under 18 age range.
dinnercoat Mar 17th 2010 5:19PM
Actually from the study site:
Some balk at the finding that the average age of MMORPG players could possibly be as high as 26 and thus all other results must be wrong. Oftentimes, they claim that the average age must be closer to 18-22 because they always feel like they’re interacting with adolescents in the game. But industry reports have shown that the average age of video game players in general is 30, so the MMO average from the surveys is actually lower than the overall average.
Dukah Mar 17th 2010 5:20PM
Lol Dinnercoat, good point.
Kids are stupid.
Cetha Mar 17th 2010 5:10PM
..."or incarcerated are not eligible for participation."
Are prisoners allowed to play WoW???
(cutaia) Mar 17th 2010 5:39PM
In Russian prison, wow plays you?
sprout_daddy Mar 17th 2010 7:12PM
@cutaia
+1 internets for the Yakov Smirnov reference
Kooshi Mar 17th 2010 7:40PM
i thought it was from family guy. i guess i'm a youngin'
John William Mar 17th 2010 8:14PM
@Kooshi:
Everything in Family Guy is a reference to something else.
Lissanna Mar 17th 2010 11:20PM
There are a lot of legal disclaimers that have to be put into informed consent forms that may not make sense to you, but are part of the hoops you have to jump through to do this kind of research.
Hoggersbud Mar 18th 2010 12:47AM
Some places they might be, in Vermont they can vote.
Neuropox Mar 18th 2010 4:31AM
your tax dollars at work.... helping convicts get their WoW fix!
Love it!