Someone's certainly doing it.
Nicholas Yee is a young researcher (mid 20s) who is doing incredibly extensive,
and interesting, work that he posts online in The
Daedalus Project. Just about any question I've thought of asking seems to
have already been dealt with by him, and done in an impressive and convincing
manner. Do online gamers feel that they develop meaningful relationships with
others they meet online? Yee's run a
survey. Do online gamers feel a sense of commitment toward the other players
of the games they play? Yee has asked gamers why they
leave and gotten interesting
results.
Occasionally we come across web sites that are both captivating and frustrating,
and this is one of those. It's full of information which I've either said to myself
I'd like to know, or deals with questions which I hadn't even yet asked myself.
I could probably write this entire column just by linking to Yee's list of topics
- which is of course what frustrates me. He's already done it all.
Go to: It's all in the game.