Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Science of MMORPGs


I've always been fascinated by science, ever since I was a kid. I've been watching NOVA for over 20 years and am a member of the National Geographic Society. Yes, a Geek I am.

So it'll come to no surprise that the science involved in MMOs is something that's dear to me. Over the years, I've read a number of white paper, case studies, abstracts and other papers on the science of, and, behind MMOs. As such, I wanted to keep track of these and decided to have a place to store the links on this blog. I've only got 2 at this moment, but expect more to be added as I find the ones I've already read and lost, and some new ones!

6 comments:

jtyler said...

Really interesting stuff CK. Do keep these coming.

Mandrill said...

hmm, do they really count as science though? They read more like management and economics/sociology to me, and personally I don't count them as sciences.

Not to belittle them in any way, they are interesting, its just me being pedantic about categorisation :D

Maria Wingtips said...

I've always been interested in topics like these! My primary interest is with virtual worlds, and of course there's a quite an overlap between MMO's and what we call virtual worlds. Here's some material on those:

I'd mention Edward Castranova here, especially his 'Synthetic Worlds':

http://www.amazon.com/Synthetic-Worlds-Business-Culture-ebook/dp/B001LF2KRE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1272518427&sr=8-2

Also, the Journal of Virtual World research:

http://jvwresearch.org/index.php?_cms=default,0,0

and, for a more practical take on the usage of virtual worlds, I should mention Metanomics:

http://www.metanomics.net/

Alehandra Dvemko said...

If you like this type of stuff you might enjoy a couple documentaries. GET LAMP is in the final phases of production and talks about the rise of interactive fiction like Zork and others and is fascinating. BBS the Documentary follows the development of early BBSes and how they gave rise to the internet we know today.

I was able to see a screening of GET LAMP at PAX East and just really enjoyed it. Came to find out later that I knew the director from an old MUSH.

KaarBaak said...

Apologies in andvace for the links...my comment "skillz" are lacking, it's late and the IGB doesn't like me much for some reason.

There's a mountain of historical data in the currently hibernating Daedalus Project: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

Interesting books I've read include: "State of Play: Law Games and Virtual Worlds" Ed. by Balkin and Noveck

Sligtyly off-topic: "Post-Mortems from Game Developers" Ed. by Grossman and "Dreaming in Code" by Rosenberg.

A whitepaper from SOE on RMT from '07: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070207/SOE%20Station%20Exchange%20White%20Paper%201.19.doc

Of course, any of Ted Castronova's stuff is great.

Also, here is a link to a page that lists a pile of whitepapers to keep you up to the wee hours:
http://virtual-economy.org/biblio?q=bibliography

Stabs said...

http://terranova.blogs.com/

is a community of MMO academics who are generally fascinating.