Be a Part of Our New Study
We have completed recruitment for this phase of the study. We are not accepting new participants, but I'm keeping this page up for archival purposes for the comments. Thanks.
As some of you know, I'm now a research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). My colleagues and I recently got funding to conduct a rather ambitious study of WoW. We're trying to find out what our behaviors in WoW reveal about who we are in RL. If you're currently playing WoW on a North America/Oceanic server (see future plans section for players from other countries) and are interested in becoming part of our newest study, keep reading:
Gnome Rogue with Pink Mohawk LFG
Have you ever wondered about who it is behind that gnome rogue with the pink mohawk? Or whether it's possible to figure out if a player is a man or a woman just from the way they play the game? We're social scientists from the US, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and we've wondered about that too. And that's what this study is about.
We're trying to find out how well we can predict who people are just from the way they behave in a virtual world. Our research team has a long history of studying interesting aspects of online games. We are also the same researchers who brought you the Daedalus Project and the PARC PlayOn Project.
To be a part of our newest research project takes only about 15 minutes to complete a web survey. If you are a FaceBook user, we'll also ask you to install a FaceBook app to gather some of your real world data. Individuals who are under the age of 18 or incarcerated are not eligible for participation.
Other Ways You Can Help
As always, I would appreciate your help in spreading the word for this study. A link on your guild's forum to this page or a quick mention to a friend who plays WoW goes a long way to helping the study. The more WoW players we can get, the better our findings will be.
Future Study Plans
For the current study phase, we are only collecting data from players on North America/Oceanic + Hong Kong/Taiwan realms due to infrastructure constraints. Our colleagues in Hong Kong and Taiwan are currently recruiting in their respective locations, but if you happen to run into this page and currently play on a HK/TW server, please participate using the HK version or TW version of the survey (which lists the appropriate servers).
In the next phase of the study, we will collect data from players on European and Mainland China realms.