Massively Multiplayer Online Games as Living Laboratories: Opportunities and Pitfalls
نویسنده
چکیده
Introduction Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have emerged in recent years as an increasingly popular form of entertainment. They offer persistent, richly detailed 3D universes in which players cooperate or compete with each other, trade, and socialize. In this, they share characteristics with the more broadly-defined virtual worlds (VWs), their distinguishing feature being a more objective-driven environment than VWs (in the “sandbox” environment of the virtual world Second Life, for instance, residents are free to engage in any activity they can imagine, unlike online games where players tend to focus on well-defined activities such as combat, exploration, etc.). The most successful MMOG to date, World of Warcraft (WoW), is home to 11 million subscribers worldwide, and several competitors host at least 1 million players or more [20].
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