There are many unique ways that people have learned to use video games over the years. They were used as a motivational tool, prestige competitions... a model for studying complex economic scenarios. OK, that one probably needs a little explanation.
In fact, the complexity of these virtual economies has increased so much that the game designers had to turn to help economists. Mechanical balancing game is a huge part of maintaining a multiplayer game. A specific character type or profession may not have huge advantages over another type of character. It leads to a lot of not-so-fun scenarios as players become frustrated because their preferred category is not enjoyable to play. The economy of a game world also need a few checks and balances so that the old and new players can appreciate the subtleties of the rating in the game.
Curiously, however, it is not just game designers of learning of economists. In fact, the two professions have formed a symbiotic relationship.
"Just as video game designers are in an urgent need of economic advice, many academic economists is willing to study video games," wrote pluck it. "A virtual world, after all, to study the concepts that occur rarely in real life, as a non-fractional-reserve banking, a popular libertarian alternative to the current banking system that has arisen in Eve Online, the economists. The data are richer. And it is easier to run the economy-wide experiences in a video game, the experiences which, for obvious reasons, cannot be carried out on the country. »
Economic theory and video games are not traditionally associated with another, but some developers have even taken the step of hiring the experts of their own domestic economy. For example, Yanis Varoufakis detailed his transition from the Professor of Economics at the consultant's video game in a blog earlier this year.
"I have followed your blog for a while...". Here, in my business, we discussed a problem linking the economies in two virtual environments (creation of a common currency) and to the fight with some thorny problems of the balance of payments, when it me is quand il m' est apparu appeared "is Germany and the Greece", a thought that wouldn't have occurred for me without following your blog, "Valve co-founder Gabe Newell explained in an email to Varoufakis." "" Rather than continue to run an emulator of you in my head, I thought I would check to see if we couldn't get the real you interested in what we do. »
Varoufakis also highlighted the value that provide environments of videogame for the study of the complexity of the economies. Virtual environments are able to provide far more data, and, more important still, they allow researchers to control the underlying parameters. In this way, experts can develop a model that closely follows the rules of the real world and then change things a bit to test the impact of different parameters.
Although there has been significant debate about what have video games effect on behaviour, innovative research has been directed to whether online games have something to tell us about how people interact. Social science research often runs into a roadblock big: as soon as people know that they are observed, they are likely to behave differently than they would otherwise. In addition, it is generally considered rude (and unethical) for all the world observes people in the real world without their consent.
Video game worlds offer some unique advantages when it comes to social science research. Rick Nair, editor of PsychCentral, noted, data from the video game interactions is always available. This means that different researchers can look at the exact data in the same context. This could significantly improve the reproducibility of the experiences of social sciences. The anonymity of online games may have spent some of the privacy issues which would be created in the real world studies.
Nair highlighted a study that looked at human behavior by collecting vast amounts of data of EverQuest 2. We are ready to bet that the game developers did a not provide their product being used to inspire "the next step in the evolution of social science research. However, the player of countless conversations and actions in the game has risen to more than 60 terabytes of valuable information for researchers to analyze.
Conor is a manager of Marketing, Big Fish, the Seattle Office. In his spare time, he enjoys watching old-school adventure games and scientific documentaries. Get in touch with him on Twitter!
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