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Every day, millions of users interact in real-time via avatars in online environments, such as massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). These online environments could potentially be unique research platforms for the social sciences and clinical therapy, but it is crucial to first establish that social behavior and norms in virtual environments are comparable to those in the physical world. In an observational study of Second Life, a virtual community, we collected data from avatars in order to explore whether social norms of gender, interpersonal distance (IPD), and eye gaze transfer into virtual environments even though the modality of movement is entirely different (i.e., via keyboard and mouse as opposed to eyes and legs). Our results showed that established findings of IPD and eye gaze transfer into virtual environments: (1) male-male dyads have larger IPDs than female-female dyads, (2) male-male dyads maintain less eye contact than female-female dyads, and (3) decreases in IPD are compensated with gaze avoidance as predicted by the Equilibrium Theory. We discuss implications for users of online games as well as for social scientists who seek to conduct research in virtual environments.

Virtual environments, such as online games and web-based chat rooms, increasingly allow us to alter our digital self-representations dramatically and easily. But as we change our self-representations, do our self-representations change our behavior in turn? In 2 experimental studies, we explore the hypothesis that an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them— a process we term the Proteus Effect. In the first study, participants assigned to more attractive avatars in immersive virtual environments were more intimate with confederates in a self-disclosure and interpersonal distance task than participants assigned to less attractive avatars. In our second study, participants assigned taller avatars behaved more confidently in a negotiation task than participants assigned shorter avatars. We discuss the implications of the Proteus Effect with regards to social interactions in online environments.

In a planetary system known as Corbantis, geological surveyors are busy inspecting their chemical harvesting installations to maintain their daily quota for a cartel of pharmaceutical manufacturers. These manufacturers, allied with a rebel faction, are struggling to research and supply key medical supplies to the front lines of the conflict. Corbantis is an incredibly sophisticated online

A large volume of neurobiological research has been conducted in recent years, almost all of which has been considered solely from the perspective of biology. However, most of the insights gained through this research are also valuable for the game research field. This paper discusses the implications of existing research in neurobiology to the play of games (including, but not restricted to digital games), and connects neurobiological perspectives with models of play aiming to construct superior player satisfaction models built upon biological foundations. Connections are presented between already recognized patterns of play and recent research on the brain (in particular, the limbic system). By providing a framework for understanding how the brain responds to recurrent patterns inherent to play, we aim to provide a platform for future experimental player-game interaction research (for which possible directions are briefly explored), and a propaedeutic to biologically-grounded player satisfaction models.

In this paper, we investigate racial diversity in avatar design and public discussions about race within a large-scale teen virtual world called Whyville.net with more than 1.5 million registered players ages 8-16. One unique feature of Whyville is the players ’ ability to customize their avatars with various face parts and accessories, all designed and sold by other players in Whyville. Our findings report on the racial diversity of available resources for avatar construction and online postings about the role of race in avatar design and social interactions in the community. With the growing interest in player-generated content for online worlds such as Second Life, our discussion will address the role of avatars in teen identity development and self-representation, and the role of virtual entrepreneurs and community activists in increasing the diversity of avatar parts available. Author Keywords Avatars, identity, design, race, participatory culture,

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Abstract. Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have grown to entertain tens of millions of players daily. Currently, the game operators and third-parties using gameplay information rely on pre-provisioned resources to analyze the current status of the player community and the evolution of this status over time. Instead, with the appearance of cloud computing it has become attractive to use on-demand resources to run automated MMOG data analytics tools. Thus, in this work we introduce CAMEO, an architecture for Continuous Analytics for Massively multiplayEr Online games on cloud resources. Our architecture provides various mechanisms for MMOG data collection and continuous analytics of a pre-determined accuracy in real settings. We assess the capabilities of our approach by taking and analyzing complete or partial snapshots from Runescape, one of the most popular MMOGs with a community of over 3,000,000 active players. Notably, we show evidence that CAMEO already supports simple continuous MMOG analytics, and give a first estimation of the costs of the analytic process. 1

As massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds grow in popularity, the investigation of culture in synthetic environments has become of interest. One representation of culture in games is the narrative provided in MMORPGs ’ quest sets: tasks given to players that provide a view of the artificial cultures... Researchers have used specific quests to advance arguments about game cultures. We expand on this previous work by examining the complete quest set for the MMORPG World of Warcraft, subdividing it into three corpora: two for the quests intended for players in one of the two ingame factions, one for those that can be completed by members of either faction. In order to determine salient cultural and narrative elements highlighted in the text, we performed relational text analysis on these corpora, looking for shared textual relationships. We find that while all three corpora possess diverse and unique terms the only relationships present in the corpora at least 5 % of the time are those emphasizing the relationships between players, enemies, and quest giving computer-controlled characters. From this we suggest that it’s important that game designers leverage extra-quest data if they want to get messages about the game world to the player.

Player satisfaction modeling depends in part upon quantitative or qualitative typologies of playing preferences, although such approaches require scrutiny. Examination of psychometric typologies reveal that type theories have—except in rare cases—proven inadequate and have made way for alternative trait theories. This suggests any future player typology that will be sufficiently robust will need foundations in the form of a trait theory of playing preferences. This paper tracks the development of a sequence of player typologies developing from psychometric type theory roots towards an independently validated trait theory of play, albeit one yet to be fully developed. Statistical analysis of the results of one survey in this lineage is presented, along with a discussion of theoretical and practical ways in which the surveys and their implied typological instruments have evolved.