Your insights to the OLMMP industry are outstanding.

Actually, they aren't. The analytical methods are poor, the methods need serious re-evaluation (note that Yee himself says he undertakes all this because of the ease of the endeavour), and the amount of bias is quite strong. Disengaging from the research setting is an important part of doing research in the social sciences. If you remain engaged, it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle yourself from your own investments in the setting.

The recent inclusion of narratives as part of Yee's research is also poorly done. If you want to do Grounded Theory, at least do it well. Presenting a giant block of text and a single line of commentary is an insult to narrative techniques in the social sciences. Consulting some good work in this field might help. There are many researchers who are writing solid work incorporating narratives and life history, and it really doesn't resemble the superficial statements posted here.

The article claiming to be an ethnography of weddings is embarassing. Please, read Lofland and Lofland, or some other social science methods experts. Learn what an ethnography is, learn how to properly analyse the data you've collected.

Quality is much more important than quantity. Spitting out quick, superficial musings does not do justice to the complexity of lived experience in massively multiplayer online games, or to your reputation as a future scholar.

Sandy - The Daedalus Project happened for many reasons, none of which was to present rigorous academic quality work in the qualitative traditions. I'm sorry if you mistook a personal blog for scholarly literature. You can find my academic writings here .

Much of what led up to and started The Daedalus Project happened as a side-project in college and while I worked full-time. Who my audience is (or should be) is something I've struggled with but have never quite made up my mind on, although I think it's always mainly been for the players.

And fortunately, most of the site's visitors are not here for my grounded theory. You are of course free to criticize the Daedalus Project as if it were something it is not. But just in case no one had told you this before, if you go around the net treating blogs as academic journals, you will be sorely disappointed.

Sandy,

Do I detect a note of jealousy in your comments? Nick has done an incredible job of posing important questions, speculating about methodological approaches, and paving the way for future scholars who plan to investigate these topics. Though the Daedalus Project is aimed at a general audience, his arguments have always been well supported and he has openly acknowledged his limitations.

You claim that "disengaging from the research setting is an important part of doing research in the social sciences. If you remain engaged, it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle yourself from your own investments in the setting."

You do not acknowledge that there are competing perspectives on this issue. For example, in the case of ethnography, many critical theorists have called for researchers to acknowledge their own subject position and community entanglements, rather than claiming to occupy a privileged and purely objective perspective.

If you had such deep concerns about Nick's approach, you could have aired these issues via private e-mail. Your decision to attack his abilities as a scholar in this public forum suggests that your comments are motivated by emotion. Your post clearly does not represent the thoughts of an "objective" social scientist who has freed himself from entanglements.

It is also important to note that Nick has revealed his identity, while you take potshots at his work under the shield of anonymity.

You may think of yourself as a "senior scholar" with superior research methods, but you come across as both jealous and petty.

I'm wondering when volume 3 will be released in pdf form?

Hi Donald - I was never sure whether there was demand for these in PDF format, but now that I know there is, I'll get the PDF versions out in the next few days.

I really thank for this research. I was thinking about doing my final work about MMO, and now I actually have something that helps me prove points of view and statistics (teachers love statistics :S) Thanks Nick!

Nick,
I too want to thank you for this project. You've brought up some very interesting thoughts and statistics and it has been helpful in giving some direction on what direction my senior paper is going to go. I do have many academic journals (mine is aggressive behavior in adolescents pertaining to violent media), but your site shows me who is playing what and why.
Thanks again and keep up the good work,
Suzanne

I really would like to thank you for this resource. I am doing a similiar inventory of new servers and class/race choice on a much smaller scale. I was wondering if you have any plans to do a study of the physical geography of Wow? Just an idea for a future topic.

Thanks very much for taking the time to put this information together. While I do not pretend to understand all of the methodology of your statistical analysis, the fact it is readily accessible and easily understood makes it invaluable for my own background and projected research needs.

thanks so much for puting up all these info. It really helps me in my background research. =)

An impressive collection of information you have here. I haven't gone through most of it yet, but I'm sure it will help me decide on a direction for my thesis. Thanks!

Nick,
Might as well toss in my thanks too your site is really helpful for my senior project as well.

I will join the chorus thanking you for making this data available. I would also like to put in a vote for making all he volumes available as pdf files. I find it easier to download and read/index the pdf volumes for future reference than the html pages.

I also have been starting to do a sociological based research on mmorpg for my thesis.. do you know which books or papers that i have to read first? , especially if i try to focus on social relationship on cyberspace?

Nick;

Your site was one of the first to pop up in a Google search when I was looking for viable sources for my final project this term. The information here is going to be overwhelmingly helpful for my expository essay on the sociology of MMORPGs. I honestly thought I would find nothing credible and thus have to change my topic.

I do have one question. I have actually found that you have done a number of academic papers with content of related material. I tried the link you provided for Sandy long ago so that I might possibly be able to use one as a citation. The link appears to be dead. Is there another location your writings may be accessed?

~Tori

Student at University of Phoenix
WoW player US Lightning’s Blade

Tori,

Thanks for asking. You can find the links here: http://www.nickyee.com/cv.html

Nick

Dr. Yee, great, great research.

I know the project is in "hibernation mode" but, couldn't you cap it off with a Conclusions pdf before shelving the whole project?