Tech Digest

Video game offers new way to study human behavior

A RESEARCH STUDY by computer science and engineering professor Jaideep Srivastava and colleagues nationwide revealed findings showing that online game communities are large enough to resemble traditional communities in many ways now. The findings are being used in social science to study human behavior using games like EverQuest 2.

With data collected over the span of three years and weighing in at more than 60 terabytes, the study tracked the behavior of approximately 300,000 EverQuest 2 players who averaged 26 hours per week playing the game.

Because of the intense level of involvement and multi-player environment of the game, the researchers were able to model social and behavioral dynamics of individuals, groups, and networks within the EverQuest 2 community.

Their study presented evidence that the social sciences are at the threshold of a fundamental shift not only in our understanding of the social and behavioral sciences, but also the ways in which we study them.

The results were recently presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting during a 90-minute symposium titled “Analyzing Virtual Worlds: Next Step in the Evolution of Social Science Research.”