I think this is an interesting insight for those people new to this project. Many people assume that games are for young people or people who really find themselves with a lack of something to do in their off time.

In actuallity, there are all sorts of people who play MMO's from corp execs, lawyers, students, senior citizens, disabled people, home bodies, accountants and that is just to list a few that I know personally.

The Daeddalus project has done a nice job of outlining the data, but this article is kind of a nice grass roots idea as to why we are actually all here and why Yee is doing the work he is doing.

Gaming is evolving, specially certain genre, the proof is here on this website.

As an addition to this article:

I'm a 20-year-old College Student Majoring in Communications at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. I share my World of Warcraft account with my sister, who is a member of a hardcore raiding guild, consisting mostly of Filipino players. She's gotten so addicted to the game that she's taken over paying for it.

I'm considering getting my own account, as my parents have recommended I take advantage of my US citizenship and migrate to New York to find work after graduation. A WoW connection would certainly allow me to keep in contact with my family and some of my friends.

Another addition:

I'm nearly 60 and have played MOGs for many years. One reason I played was to build a relationship across distance with my grandson. He lives half-way across the country from me and is now in college, however, when he was about 10 I introduced him to multiplayer gaming as a way for us to share an activity together and remain close despite the distance. We didn't really have anything to discuss in IM's--we had no common ground--and gaming gave us a place to meet, activities to do, and a chance for us to play as equals and just become friends. It always made me laugh to watch him explore his own personality (he rolled new characters with radically different names and styles almost weekly), and learn mature ways of interacting with others, especially strangers.

For example, he always introduced me to his game friends as "my friend XXXXX", never as his grandmother, which amused me. He liked to take charge and lead groups, but was willing to accept my private coaching for how to be better at communicating with the group when he was the leader. And since I was "friend XXXXX", I responded by playing with his friends in their style and at their levels. It was a wonderful way for us to relate and be involved in a shared activity while so far apart.

I'm now working on my widowed 80 year old mother to get her involved for the same reasons--a shared, fun activity. I hope it will also give her the illusion of a social life and a place to go since she can't get out and about much any more.

whoa. its kinda..odd when i think about playing an online game with people _____ much older than me :X mostly cause i don't know anyone much older than me who plays (with the exception of my uncle...)

in elementary school, most kids i know start something like, say, runescape at 10-12. some drop out later and others switch to more "sophisticated" games.

in high school there's like...1% girl gamers out of all the gamers that i know. most people would assume that they're nerdy too.

Wow I simply love the insight this article provided.MMORPGS really are a gathering of people with various backgrounds ,genders,races and ages. I myself use the mmo world to make new friends as well as learn from them in hopes that I can make an even better game someday.

While these are definitely diverse profiles, they're not REPRESENTATIVE profiles, are they? If you randomly picked 25 random MMO players from the population, what kind of people would you get?