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Latest EverQuest II data study covers roleplayers

Seraphina Brennan — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest II, Culture, News items

A year ago, we mentioned that Sony Online Entertainment had opened up their EverQuest II database to researchers, allowing scientists from noted universities the ability to study the demographics of their server in an anonymous fashion. Slowly but surely, more studies are coming out that are using this information, and one of the newer studies takes an in-depth look at roleplayers.

While the study is over 40 pages long and packed with information, Raph Koster has broken down the big findings on his website -- namely the fact that hardcore RPers only make up 5% of the player population and don't care about playing on an RP server. RPers also commonly belong to minority groups of some sort, play less hours per week than the average player, and have a higher rate of turning in-game social connections into real-world connections.

It's all interesting stuff, and Raph has it broken down on his site, or you can check out the full study in Word's .doc format.

Latest EverQuest II data study covers roleplayers originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MMOrigins: Life's funny like that, page 2

Brendan Drain — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST

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MMOrigins: Life's funny like that, page 2 originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MMOrigins: Life's funny like that

Brendan Drain — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Real life, Culture, Opinion, Virtual worlds, MMOrigins

We all got started gaming somewhere. For a lot of people, it was the Sega Mega-drive, the Atari 2600 or the NES that signaled their first steps into gaming. For me, it was the Commodore Amiga, a machine that was more a complete home computer than a games console. It was on the Amiga that groups like Team 17, Ocean, Electronic Arts and Blizzard first really made their mark on gaming and it was a great time of innovation in the industry. I recall long nights spent playing Frontier: Elite II, scooping hydrogen fuel from the corona of a star or wormholing into deep space. Another favourite that I still play occasionally was K240, an early space 4x game and still one of the best I've ever played.

It was the public domain market on the Amiga that really caught my attention. It's one thing to play a game, but here was the opportunity to make one and sell it via a page in CU Amiga magazine or a PD order disk. I've always been more interested in making games than playing them but being young with no programming experience, I was limited in what I could do. I tooled endlessly with the "Shoot 'em up Construction Kit" and "Reality Game Creator" packages, making countless primitive prototype games that only I ever played.

Continue reading MMOrigins: Life's funny like that

MMOrigins: Life's funny like that originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Crytek's CryEngine in UK classrooms

Brooke Pilley — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Aion, MMO industry, Consoles, Academic

Students of video game design in the United Kingdom should be doing back flips after hearing that Crytek is donating their CryEngine free of charge to all universities in the country. CryEngine is most famously known as the graphics engine behind visually stunning titles such as Crysis and Aion.

This is really big news because only the priciest universities tend to license high quality software for their students to learn on. They're the only ones that can afford it. It's also great for students to dream up pie in the sky concepts for games, but knowing what's practical in the real world is essential. "Universities are looking to foster creativity and send people out into the industry who have lots of ideas, but it's also about that practical hands-on training so that they know what the limitations are," says Managing Director of Crytek UK Karl Hilton. "It's very easy for students to come out of the academic world and not have a grasp on the realities of making a video game."

We hope more MMOs are released with CryEngine due to its stellar performance and scalability and it would be great if other graphics engine companies followed suit to increase the options in our genre.

Crytek's CryEngine in UK classrooms originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Richard Bartle laments poor state of game education in the UK

Samuel Axon — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, Academic

Richard Bartle -- the man who co-invented MUDs at the University of Essex in 1978 -- described the poor state of game-related academic study and education when speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival a few days ago.

Bartle made a distinction between games-focused training (the acquisition of skills by instruction) and games-focused education (the development of understanding through learning). He said that the United Kingdom's colleges are short on education, even though training is available at some universities.

He noted that symptoms of this problem are already apparent: the academic community, such as it is, has been unable to agree (or even engage in cohesive discourse) about the reasons men and women often play as characters of a different sex than their own in MMOs.

Richard Bartle laments poor state of game education in the UK originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Study: MMO players play more... and get more

Mike Schramm — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:16:00 EST

Filed under: Dark Age of Camelot, Culture, MMO industry, Leveling

Apparently playing MMOs are worse for your health than regular games, but they're also more fun, too. That's the conclusion of a Syracuse University study that sent groups of students out to play four types of games-- arcade games, a Gaunlet PS2 game, Diablo II, and Dark Age of Camelot. Apparently the DAoC folks reported that their game had a more adverse effect on their health, and that their social and student lives were more affected by their playtime.

But they also had more fun-- the students who played DAoC reported that they enjoyed their playtime more, and had even made more friends ingame than any of the other games. The professor who commissioned the study wisely strayed away from the word "addiction," and says that addiction is completely different than what happens to gamers. Instead, he says, more attention should be paid not to violence in games, but to the "enthrallment" factor. Some games are easy to pick up and put down, and other games, while more rewarding, are more likely to involve you as a player. Online games, says Raph Koster, are "more intense."

So I can't exactly tell what the study solves, but most of the reasoning sounds all right. My only worry is just how old the games are-- seriously, Gauntlet? Dark Age? It would be interesting to see if a more recent MMO (like LotRO or WoW) was able to balance the enthrallment/timesink factor a little better without losing the payoff.

[ via DungeonRun.com ]

Study: MMO players play more... and get more originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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