New Issue of the Daedalus Project

Nick Yee's seminal Daedalus Project has released a new issue. Topics covered in this release include MMORPG Hours vs. TV Hours, Transfers of Stereotypes into virtual worlds, and a look at the virtual police state. As always a new issue means a new round of tracking on the Daedalus Survey, so if you're a MMOGamer go answer some questions. From the Television article: "MMORPG gamers spend on average 21.0 hours per week playing the game (N = 1996), and spend on average 7.7 hours per week watching TV (N = 1996). The national average for TV watching per week is around 28, which is what the above averages add up to. In other words, this lends support to the claim that time that was spent watching TV has been displaced by MMORPG playing." Commentary on Terra Nova.

Comments

Re:SUPRNOVA!

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, we don't have time for this. we're all hopelessly addicted to WoW...

Interesting.

[bynary]

I find it very strange indeed that many assume that online communities are free from prejudice, murder, theft...free from any of the vices, crimes, and atrocities that occur in the real world. These are still human beings playing with and against other human beings. Why would an online community be any different from an offline community?

Re:Interesting.

[Dachannien]

I don't get it either. In fact, it makes sense to me that online communities would be *more* prone to antisocial behavior because of the shield of anonymity and because of the general lack of oversight by authority figures (i.e., weak or no law enforcement).

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

The people playing MMORPG's are wealthy enough to buy a computer/rent time on a game server and have the free time to do so. I.e. the MMORPG's are not poor people living under the gun as far as meeting physical needs (food, shelter) goes. Since poverty is the #1 cause of criminal behavior, it's not suprising to see (relatively) rich people behaving in a law abiding fashion, even in an imaginary world.

Also, the theme and structure of most MMORPG's is good (players) against evil (NPC's and environment), so most players take the "paladin" route. Now if there was a MMORPG for Grand Theft Auto or Postal, you'd see alot more anti-social behavior.

Re:Interesting.

[ebrandsberg]

hehe... In my prefered mmorpg (eve online) they have black market items, piracy as an accepted trade, smuggling as a skill you can train up, and you can put bounties on people's heads you don't like (with the limitation that the police don't like them either). You can have your corp declare war on another corp, then anything goes even in front of the police between the two corps. They even have situations where you are given missions BY the cops to aquire illegal items for them. It's just like the real world!

Re:Interesting.

[Riddlefox]

The people playing MMORPG's are wealthy enough to buy a computer/rent time on a game server and have the free time to do so. I.e. the MMORPG's are not poor people living under the gun as far as meeting physical needs (food, shelter) goes. Since poverty is the #1 cause of criminal behavior, it's not suprising to see (relatively) rich people behaving in a law abiding fashion, even in an imaginary world.

This may be true, but it also seems to me that most people online tend to be younger (teenagers). These kids take advantage of the shield of anonymity to act like jerks, in accordance with John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. I think you just need to browse /. at -1 to realize this. Where's the motivation to act like this?

Re:Interesting.

[Squatchman]

The Anti-social behavior is there.

There are some dumb people out there.

TV Watching

[Daxx_61]

And why shouldn't it be TV watching being replaced by MMORPGs? I think most people would agree with me that although there is some educational content on TV, most of it is utter rubbish. Far better, then, to spend some time interacting with your choice of entertainment.