August 16, 2007
Play MMO's, make friends
A new study by the U.K.'s Nottingham Trent University finds that "gamers make good friends with the people they meet in their virtual worlds, with almost half meeting in real-life situations and one in ten going on to develop physical relationships." The study goes on to analyze the types of friendships and bonds that players form with each other through interactions in game worlds, as well as the ways that gamers express themselves in MMOs in comparison to the physical world.
GameDaily Biz has a summary here:
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=17145
as does GamaSutra:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15114
The full study titled "Social Interactions in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Gamers" will be published in the journal "CyberPsychology and Behavior," which UIUC has online access to from this link:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/results.php?titlesearch=CyberPsychology+and+Behavior&tstype=K&types=JN&ByTitle=Search
Posted by undergrad at August 16, 2007 12:22 PM
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