SuperAwesomeBlog

“What do you collect?”
“Well, everything—what do you want?”
“Can we have it all?”  “Sure.”
Dmitri Williams summarizing the conversation with Sony.

MSNBC and Ars Technica recently reported that 60TB of user data over the last 4 years of EverQuest II play will be released and studied by scientists. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation and, ominously, the Army Research Institute.

Among other things (read: all things) the information will include who players talked to, when they talked to them, and the geographic locations of those players, as well as their Body Mass Index (BMI), psychological and other factors like depression, and their sexual orientation.

Once the data and the study are released, some interesting trends may become available. Already we’re told that MMO players in the study are more fit than the United States as a whole, and interestingly that players on Roleplaying Servers are more prone to have higher levels of depression.  Players also tend to play with individuals that they know personally and who are geographically close to them.  Numbers on the percentage of gay players has yet to be released, I’m curious if the MMO population is higher than the general population.

In my personal experience of playing MMOs it certainly seems like there are more gay people around, however I suspect this may be because more people are “out” in MMOs, due to the consequence free environment these games provide.

The data in the study has been made anonomous, with no user names (real or otherwise) apparently involved.