Sony Gives Everquest 2 Data to Science

Upon request from a group of academic researchers, Sony forked over 60 TB of behavior data from its MMORPG Everquest 2. The nearly overwhelming amount of information spans four years and 400,000 players and was followed with a demographic survey. Researchers found the average player was 31 years old, and while most players enjoyed the game for entertainment, roughly 5 percent used Everquest 2 as a coping mechanism, often because they were minorities in race, ethnicity or sexual orientation and faced societal issues in real life. Another interesting find: Older women, many of whom logged serious hours with the game, tended to understate the amount of time they played. This casts doubt on other behavioral studies that rely on self-reporting. As for actual social interactions in the game, those are harder to quantify. Figures like “monster composite difficulty index” and “experience rate measure,” as one researcher is working with, don’t translate easily into the real world. [Ars Technica]