Using an Information Technology Approach to Investigate Virtual Worlds: Mining Demographic Data in MMOGS

• Main Authors: Ji-Lung Hsieh, 謝吉隆
• Other Authors: Chuen-Tsai Sun
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/56201528696450429316

博士 === 國立交通大學 === 資訊科學與工程研究所 === 96 === A growing number of researchers are looking into ways that online virtual and game environments are affecting human activities, including communication, interpersonal relationships, and community interactions. Whereas the first game researchers focused on the potential for virtual world “addictions,” they are currently accepting the premise that virtual space and online games are evolving into a collective “third space” in competition with family, work, and school [1]. However, those researchers must deal with significant barriers based on the nature of network environments, online games, and cyberspace. For example, the large majority of users interact via their avatars and from divergent computer terminals, therefore dynamic online and in-game behaviors are difficult to observe and analyze by conventional off-game approaches (e.g., surveys or interviews) [2]. This dissertation will describe a method for overcoming those barriers. As network services have evolved over the past two decades, a growing number of service providers have started using easy-to-understand programming languages such as markup language XML and script language Lua, and are now providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to give users the power to refine and develop their own user interfaces (UIs). These user-designed UIs are often executed as add-ons or plug-ins attached to main applications. Examples include the Mac OS Dashboard, Yahoo! Widget, and Google Desktop Sidebar. This flexible feature has also been adopted by the designers of World of Warcraft (WoW), currently the world’s most popular Massive Multi-player Online Game (MMOG). WoW players can design or modify their own UI add-ons to supplement in-game controls, create guides and maps for solving missions, and collect in-game information on other players or game environments. The third use will be the focus of this dissertation—specifically, taking advantage of the UI feature to collect analyzable data on human behaviors in virtual space. The resulting data can be used to perform quantitative longitudinal analyses, as opposed to restricted qualitative analyses of data gathered via interviews and surveys aimed at specific groups. In this dissertation I will highlight the advantages of the personalized UI feature for investigating virtual worlds and give three examples of potential investigative uses: how in-game communities grow and decline, how players join and leave guilds, and how Taiwanese and American gaming cultures differ. As background I will discuss the characteristics of Web 2.0, user-created data, and client-designed user interfaces—all of which blur boundaries between content providers and users as well as between game designers and players. My results indicate that (a) compared with conventional research on organization ecology, the proposed method is capable of capturing in-game guild evolution dynamics; (b) players usually leave guilds or quit group play due to group mission pressure; and (c) compared with Taiwanese players, American players put more emphasis on recreation.