Hibernation

It's been 10 years since I ran my first survey of online gamers, and a great 6 years running the Daedalus Project, but time has come for me to put the project into hibernation mode. A variety of inter-related reasons led me to this decision.

Over the years, I've looked into so many different aspects of online gaming that it's become harder and harder to think of new themes to explore using a survey format. Oftentimes, I'll think of a great idea and then realize that it was something I already looked into a couple years back. A lot of the areas that I could move into would require a much more significant effort and devotion of time. These include looking more rigorously into changes over time or delving deeper into many of the more qualitative issues. But unfortunately, time is harder and harder to come by now that I'm working full time.

Getting my PhD also meant being more disciplined about what I say and put out, and this had the effect over the years of putting more and more time into each issue of the Daedalus Project. As a personal project, the time it takes to run Daedalus began slowly to directly compete with time I could spend writing an academic paper among other things.

I'm still deeply interested and fascinated by the MMO space, but I think I came to realize that continuing the project would require more time than I could devote to it. It's for these reasons that I'm putting Daedalus into hibernation mode. Of course, all the data that has accumulated here will remain and comments will be left open, but there will no longer be regular data updates or surveys.

I look back over these 10 years of doing these online surveys and I'm deeply appreciative of every gamer who filled out my surveys (and there are over 70,000 of you who did), every person who sent me notes of support and congratulations, and especially those of you who have been participating and commenting on the project since my undergrad days and have helped spread the word in the gaming community. I really do mean it when I say that I couldn't have done it without you. I hope none of you think of the Daedalus Project as something I put together alone because it was something that we came together as a community and built over the course of 10 years.

To all of you who have been a part of this project, you have my sincere thanks and gratitude. And to all of you who venture into Azeroth, Norrath, and other lands, may your journeys be safe and your adventures bountiful!