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MetaverseU: Dmitri Williams’ research

February 17th, 2008 (Visited 4163 times) Tags:

Some notes from Dmitri Williams‘ brief presentation on data extracted from EQ2 and Second Life. My laptop crashed in the middle, but here’s what I remember from it:

People who use voice-over-IP make stronger interpersonal connections in virtual worlds, but also tend to be more insular and meet less strangers. People who use text make somewhat weaker connections but talk more to strangers.

The older you are, the more hours you spend per week in the world. That’s right — it’s not college students who spend the most time. The graph shows a nearly linear relationship between age and hours spent per week.

Core roleplayers: 4% of the population; 15% more with occasional roleplayers. And they tend to have more psychological problems and physical disabilities. (Don’t kill the messenger on this one, folks!)

It’s worth pointing out that these are results from very large samples; SOE generously shared terabytes worth of metrics data, and worked with him to do extensive user surveys.

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Digado | Mapping the Metaverse | Are you a believer? wrote on February 18th, 2008 at 2:29 pm:

between Virtual Worlds in various stages by linking (meta) information to VW data, or reversed, creating Mirror Worlds as a time machine for the real world. Other Links: Metaverse U: VWs and future of work Metaverse U: Metaverse 2.0, Tony ParisiMetaverseU: Dmitri Williams’ researchLiveblogging MetaverseU: Beth Coleman and Parvati Dev with Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs Liveblogging MetaverseU: A Conversation with Brewster Kahle and Henry Lowood on Preserving Worlds Liveblogging MetaverseU: TL Taylor, Jeremy Bailenson, Kari Kraus

Topic Digest: Metaverse U Conference wrote on March 21st, 2008 at 9:09 pm:

Raph’s Website :MetaverseU: Dmitri Williams’ research

mbf tod@y: Metaverse U wrote on February 18th, 2008 at 2:24 am:

[...] Rapk Koster’s websiteDimitri Williams’ research on MMO [...]

Live Blogging - Metaverse U Wiki wrote on February 18th, 2008 at 3:59 am:

[...] Dimitri Williams’ research on MMO [...]

» MetaverseU Follow Up #1 wrote on February 19th, 2008 at 12:21 am:

[...] kick things off, Raph Koster posted some interesting highlights from a presentation by Dmitri Williams: * People who use voice-over-IP [...]

Metaplace - Conference Roundup wrote on February 25th, 2008 at 5:52 pm:

[...] community guru). Raph also wrote notes on a couple of the other presentations at Metaverse U:Dmitri Williams’ ResearchTony Parisi (creator of VRML)Virtual Environments and the Future of WorkNext up was the Game [...]

Moroagh said on February 18th, 2008 at 12:05 am:

Thanks for the link to Dimitri’s work. I’ll be interested to see hard data on this. If anything I still doubt this. I.e. a 90 year old will not spend more time than a college age kid. And I doubt that the data does not show a baby impact or mid-career impact.

Even if the data does not show the above the data may be biased in the sense that people in certain age brackets do not have the typical live circumstances of that age bracket (unemployed, long-time single etc, child-less) hence giving a false impression by biased sample with typical people of that age group having fallen off )this larger variance in the data would show) or dropped their activity completely. But to know this one has to see the data and the sample selection process.

But I’m looking forward to seeing actual data (i.e. what population was used, what are the significances etc). But there isn’t much point in debating this without actual tractable claims.

Michelle D'israeli said on February 18th, 2008 at 10:01 am:

Actually, I am not surprised at all by the finding that the older a player, the longer they play. I seem to have became bitter and jaded as my friends graduated and moved on to cities new, and as I look at the life of my parents. As one gets older, finding in-person social life and appealing social events does seem to get harder and harder. My father has been getting into forums in a big way, and I see a lot of forums are dominated not by the college kids, but by professionals posting from both work and home.

Eolirin said on February 18th, 2008 at 2:07 pm:

I think a few things need to be taken into account here… This is a survey of people who are or were actively subscribed to specific games. Those games have specific demographs, so if you were to see that older players do spend more time in game, that’s older players who play this specific game. Since these games tend to have huge time commitments, and it’s pretty clear that they have that sort of time commitment, anyone who’s older and getting into it probably has a reason for being able to spend that much time. In otherwords, this isn’t going to hold true for all older people, but the ones who can’t dedicate more time aren’t likely to play *at all* rather than to play, but play less. So I don’t doubt the results.

As to the percent of RPers, the EQ series has never really been a haven for that sort of activity, so I’d expect the percentages to be lower(by some degree anyway, RPing has never been huge in a popular MMOG) than something like UO. So you’ll likely get variance based on demograph for some of these numbers. The more interesting stuff is the higher incidence of mental/physical issues, since that’s probably more universal, though from my experience with the RP communities in UO, that doesn’t really surprise me much.

dr0 said on February 18th, 2008 at 2:10 pm:

I hope that means that young people spend more time outside enjoying themselves than glued to the box.

Then as we get older the nightclubs have less appeal and we have more disposable income to have a decent PC, a broadband connection and a game console or two.

So yeah, when you’re hanging out at home you’ve gotta do *something* right?

Duane said on February 18th, 2008 at 2:18 pm:

[quote]Core roleplayers: 4% of the population; 15% more with occasional roleplayers. And they tend to have more psychological problems and physical disabilities. (Don’t kill the messenger on this one, folks!)
[/quote]

Call me jaded but I’ve become suspect of anything SOE presents as statistical fact; SWG subscriptions are increasing! Was it not statistics that proved how creating the “new game enhancements” for Star Wars Galaxies was going to create a subscription base on par with World of Warcraft?

I’ve met quite a few gamers over the last 8 years, many of whom “rollplay”, and not a single one appeared to have disabiilties. Then again, it’s not like I was spending the evening with all the gals at a local convention to get an accurate account of this nor had I come home to Kitty in a boiling pot of water.

Raph said on February 18th, 2008 at 7:13 pm:

Duane, the stats on that are not from SOE. They are from surveys of EQ2 players. Not the same thing.

Eolirin, yes, the claims re not generalizable to all worlds. That said, Cory Ondrejka commented to me that the age finding was consistent with SL’s graph as well.

Dominic Gugas said on February 18th, 2008 at 11:38 pm:

On the VOIP thing – my experience is that voice comms only tend to get used within guilds or other organised groups (e.g. regular PvP teams). People rarely invite strangers to use their TS/Ventrilo servers. So people using voice comms have a small but stable group of in-game contacts already. And given how much easier it is to coordinate over voice than by typing, they prefer a guild team to a pick up group and so don’t make many new contacts outside the guild.

It’s also interesting that, speaking from my own experience, when a game provides built in voice comms players often ignore the feature. I’ve played LotRO since launch, and in all that time I’ve been in two pick up groups that used the game’s voice comms. I’ve also been a member of three different guilds, each of which ran its own TS or Ventrilo server instead of using the game’s own system.

Prokofy Neva said on February 18th, 2008 at 11:40 pm:

Go and look at the Lindens economic statistics:

http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

Look to your right and get the Google docs.

I’ve often heard the Lindens say that older people had the longest hours, but this month, it seems ages 25-35 have most people and most hours.

Kerri Knight said on February 19th, 2008 at 1:06 am:

Possibly the most fun I have had with my time in WoW was a few summers back, up until 3am or later some nights doing Alterac Valley on another guild’s Ventrilo. They had a channel for the AV people to come into, played European techno music, and after a few folks got the idea of the basic strategies, there were 3 or 4 of us taking turns leading the pick-up members. I have never used voice in games before or since (stopped do to changes to the battleground).

However, I’ll agree I don’t like dungeon pick-up groups. Its more a competence issue than a social one, for me. Blizzard gives little/no feedback in your performance. Most damage classes were in no way prepared for the transition to heroics where they were expected to suddenly chain CC targets without fail, no heads up or preparation given. That’ll start me on a whole tangent about the overabundant gimmicky use of CC, so I’ll stop, now :9.

Moroagh said on February 23rd, 2008 at 2:40 am:

On the disabilities thing, how is that identified even? Self-evaluation? Psychiatrists trying to make a DSM-V-type diagnosis based on questionairs? At least some hit at methodology would be helpful how meaningful that claim even is on its merits and what conclusions can actually be drawn about it.

@Profofy: Thanks for the link. But if you actually divide the total hours by the number of avatars, you get a larger number for older people just because they have much less avatars. Question here is, are the avatars here rollup up to customer level as is the case on the entry page or not.

I.e. do the youngsters just alt more and hence make it look like they play less.

In any case we look at 67 hours a month average for the >45 group if the avatar thing is controlled for. That’s 2 hours a day. The 25-35 year olds clock in at 1.6 hours a day. And the 18-24 year olds at 1.1.

But that doesn’t really explain anything. What if the 18-24 group spend some extra hours in WoW or other games in addition to this, while the elders just live in second life? Or older people are less likely to switch to new content or split their time? This really isn’t controlled data of total time spent online.

I’d actually like some clean analysis before conclusions are drawn.

Castro said on February 26th, 2008 at 3:14 am:

DSM-V?

MetaverseU: Dmitri Williams’ research

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