neils clark

Sampling is the time-honored art of getting the right people to talk to you. If you can ask questions of a group of people that accurately represent the group you’re looking to understand, then their answers are said to be representative of the whole. Let’s just say that if you had twenty people who, by some act of magic, accurately represented all of America, then you could make a lot of money.

But it usually doesn’t work like that.

I represent all puppies everywhere. Trust me.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to studies of “game addiction” has been sampling. The investigators ask groups of college freshmen what they think about videogames, and not every gamer is a college freshman. The ESA believes that the average and mean ages for gamers are wandering around 25 and 30. While it’d be interesting to see how they sampled for that, and the questions that they asked, not every gamer is going to college. It’s also not always ethical to ask every gamer, since there are strict rules for polling minors.

Nick Yee (now with the snazzy Ph.D., gratz) has been getting a lot of impressive data over the years, most especially during the times of EverQuest, DAoC, SWG and the like, and has polled tens of thousands of gamers. The data that he got was crucial to painting our first picture of who plays, and because Dr. Yee’s Daedalus project is still our best connection to changing populations, should probably be explicitly funded so as to keep going. His project has gone on for many years, and again, it nearly single-handedly painted the statistical pictures that we do have. The gamers who frequent his surveys really ought to be lauded, and encouraged to keep visiting.

At the same time, some types of gamers don’t seek out websites on player motivations. Ted Castronova has been calling on game companies to open up statistical data for research use. While his focus is Economics, and I’m guessing that he’s probably most interested in seeing how some of the economical systems work, this would be an integral slice to the understanding pie. The PARC Play On Center, in a project also headed by Yee, actually used World of Warcraft’s UI to gather data, like how players name their characters. There’s no doubt that we can use this kind of data, and use it to paint some pictures of how much people play, but there are some limitations.

This data is server-side, and it only tells us so much about what happens on the other side of the screen. In going through some of my old neuroscience notes (and sorry I haven’t been posting lately, it’s been crazy insane writing time), I stumbled across some of my notes from sampling inside of games. See, when I did my Master’s thesis I actually wanted to test a method for going into games and getting a representative sample. Rather than rely on people finding websites, or only server-side data, I wanted to create a method whereby you could create generalizeable results. That is, get numbers which actually represented all gamers, everywhere.

It’s hard. Especially when you’re doing it on your own with no budget and an overloaded schedule of graduate courses. There were serious technical, but also ethical constraints. And those could fill a few volumes. I discuss it a little bit in my thesis, though it’s something I’m planning on developing better during or before I head back to school for a Ph.D. This is all really just a long introduction for some fun quotes that illustrate two points that I’m getting at:

It’s time that we start attempting to develop more scientific methods for understanding gamers.

Some gamers, especially those with problems, may never go to a website that doesn’t relate to their game.

I have a lot of notes on scientific sampling inside of MMO games. I also ran into a lot of basic stumbling blocks, and not all of them are in my thesis. But I’ve got to get back to my real work, so without further adieu, just a few of the quotes that I got permission to reproduce. These come from a range of MMO games, from DAoC and WoW, to SWG and EQ2.

Some people were very interested in addiction and player motivations, even had informed opinions on why academics needed a better understanding of gamer psychology, but they had no desire to participate.

“sorry I play so much and am so in the game that never do something else and dont have time with this survey”

“I am aware of my fixation on videogames and wish you luck in your survey but am uninterested in participating in your study. Thank you for asking and good luck.”

“Videogame research?” Yeah, I’ll bet.

There’s an inherent fear of viruses, defamation and effort:

“if its a virus or something ill bonk you ! not in the british way tho”

“kk” then “nvm (nevermind) I thought u were just going to ask me in game” then “dont go to websites idk (I don’t know)”

Some people frequent outside sites heavily, even (or especially) when not playing.

“I couldn’t stay away even if I wasn’t playing…checked the forums a couple of times each week”

One player was initially infuriated, and very intent on having my account permanently banned. After earnestly apologizing, he opened up.

“you know soe (Sony Online Entertainment, publishers of the MMO games EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies) thinks of this as spam and you should be reported” then “you did not offend me but what dose this have to do with star wars” then “to make this short I no longer work and I play this game almost all day every day for over a year now” then “I would be playing table top star wars rp if I did not have this” then “I used to table top 30 hours a week”

Neils Clark :: Oct.07.2007 :: Game Addiction, Research ::

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