The Proteus Paradox (28 page)

3
. Olga Kazan, “Lost in an Online Fantasy World,”
Washington Post,
August 18, 2006; Vicki Haddock, “Online Danger Zone,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
February 12, 2006; Edward Castronova,
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 76.

4
. Sherry Turkle,
Life on the Screen
(New York: Touchstone, 1997), 263–264; Bonnie A. Nardi,
My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 7.

5
. A more detailed methodology description of the Daedalus Project can be found in Nick Yee, “The Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively-Multiuser Online Graphical Environments,”
Presence
15 (2006): 309–329.

1
.
Kriegsspiel
is described in Tim Lenoir and Henry Lowood, “Theatres of War: The Military-Entertainment Complex,” in
Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne—Schauplätze des Wissens im 17. Jahrhundert,
ed. Jan Lazardig, Helmar Schramm, and Ludger Scharte (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003). The full text of H. G. Wells's
Little Wars
is available at Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3691
.

2
. Scott Lynch, “Industry Insights: The RPGNet Interviews: Interview with Gary Gygax,”
RPGNet
(2001), available at:
http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/lynch01may01.html
.

3
. Interview with TheOneRing.net, available at:
http://archives.theonering.net/features/interviews/gary_gygax.html
. See also Gygax's interview with Game Spy in 2004, available at:
http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538817p3.html
.

4
. For the history of the
PLATO
system, see Stanley G. Smith and Bruce Arne Sherwood, “Educational Uses of the
PLATO
Computer System,”
Science
23 (1976): 344–352. For the history of
Maze War,
see Anthony Steed and Manuel Fradinho Oliveira,
Networked Graphics: Building Networked Games and Virtual Environments
(Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2010), 23.

5
. Dennis G. Jerz, “Somewhere Nearby Is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original ‘Adventure' in Code and Kentucky,”
Digital Humanities Quarterly
1, no. 2 (2007), available at:
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/001/2/000009/000009.html
.

6
. Richard Bartle, “Early MUD History,” available at:
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/mudhist.htm
. See also Richard Bartle
, Designing Virtual Worlds
(Indianapolis, IN: New Riders, 2004), 4–7. For ARPANet and MUD, see Koster's timeline of virtual worlds in Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky,
Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide
(Indianapolis, IN: New Riders, 2003), also available online at:
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/mudtimeline.shtml
.

7
. See Koster's timeline.

8
. See Damion Schubert's postmortem of
Meridian 59
in Mulligan and Patrovsky,
Developing Online Games
.

9
. Subscriber estimates of
EverQuest
and
Ultima Online
are drawn from MMO-Data.net, specifically the historical charts for 150,000 to 1 million subscribers. See also Bartle,
Designing Virtual Worlds,
20–29, on how
Ultima Online
and
EverQuest
changed the field.

10
. Subscription numbers of
World of Warcraft
drawn from MMO-Data.net. The original Blizzard press release announcing breaking the one million subscriber mark
in Europe was posted on January 19, 2006, but is no longer available on Blizzard's website. A copy of the press release is available at:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/news/
gameID/15/showArticle/4427
.

11
. As Bartle explains, “mobile” originally referred, not to movement per se, but to the moving sculptures, “because creatures moving in a controlled but unpredictable way are like the kind of ‘mobiles' that hang from the ceiling” (
Designing Virtual Worlds,
102).

12
. “Nothing to do”: ibid., 5. In Hans-Henrik Starfeldt's original 1990 alt.mud post calling for developers on his new MUD, he wrote that “we think the preatent [sic] games has lost some of the D&D spirit (with all respect!).” Koster's “Simultaneously and independently” and “removed more features”: Koster blog post on MUD influence on online games:
http://www.raphkoster.com/2008/06/27/mud-influence/
. Bartle's “grew in a particular way”: Metanomics interview in
Second Life:
http://www.metanomics.net/show/archive031008/
.

13
. The first game in the city-building genre to introduce a limited multiplayer mode was Sierra's
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
in 2002. Monte Cristo's
Cities XL
had a massively multiplayer mode when it launched in 2009, but Monte Cristo closed this multiplayer option after five months. I consider the shallow and asynchronous multiplayer options in city-building games on Facebook and mobile devices to be different beasts altogether.

1
. For a historical perspective on gaming, see Dmitri Williams, “A Brief Social History of Video Games,” in
Playing Computer Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences,
ed. Peter Vorderer and Jennings Bryant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006), 229–247. For Williams's news media analysis, see Dmitri Williams, “The Video Game Lightning Rod: Constructions of a New Media Technology,”
Information, Communication and Society
6 (2003): 523–550.

2
. For recurrence of moral panics, see Ellen Wartella and Byron Reeves, “Historical Trends in Research on Children and the Media: 1900–1960,”
Journal of Communication
35 (2006): 118–133. For historical overview of the comic book moral panic, see James Gilbert,
A Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Angela McRobbie, “The Moral Panic in the Age of the Postmodern Mass Media,” in
Postmodernism and Popular Culture
(London: Routledge, 1994), 192–213.

3
. Jimmy Kimmel interview with Mila Kunis,
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
October 17, 2008.

4
. For studies that provide demographic data on online gamers over the past decade, see Mark D. Griffiths, Mark N. O. Davies, and Darren Chappell, “Breaking the Stereotype: The Case of Online Gaming,”
CyberPsychology and Behavior
6 (2003): 81–91; Nick Yee, “The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users of
Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments,”
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
15 (2006): 309–329; Dmitri Williams, Nick Yee, and Scott E. Caplan, “Who Plays, How Much, and Why? Debunking the Stereotypical Gamer Profile,”
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
13 (2008): 993–1018; and Nick Yee, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Mike Yao, and Les Nelson, “Do Men Heal More When in Drag? Conflicting Identity Cues between User and Avatar,”
Proceedings of CHI 2011
(2011): 773–776. For estimates of online gamers who are teenagers, Griffiths, Davies, and Chappel, “Breaking the Stereotype,” found 40%; Yee, “Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences,” found 25%; and Williams, Yee, and Caplan, “Who Plays,” found roughly 10%. The average of these numbers is 25%.

5
. On the percentage of female players, Williams, Yee, and Caplan, “Who Plays,” report 19.2%, and Yee, “Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences,” reports 15%. In a Daedalus Project sample of 1,109
World of Warcraft
players in 2005, I found 16%, but in a more recent study of
World of Warcraft
gamers reported in 2011, my colleagues and I found 26%; Nick Yee, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Les Nelson, and Peter Likarish, “Introverted Elves and Conscientious Gnomes: The Expression of Personality in World of Warcraft,”
Proceedings of CHI 2011
(2011): 753–762. The 20% reported in the text is a rough average of these figures. Younger players are more likely to enjoy leadership positions in online games. Whereas younger players are more likely to start a guild, older players tend to assume the leadership role at some point down the line. See Nick Yee, “Being a Leader,”
The Daedalus Project
(2005):
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001467.php
; and Nick Yee, “The Origin of Guild Leaders,”
The Daedalus Project
(2006):
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001517.php
.

6
. Part of this cross-cultural data has been reported in papers focusing on different aspects of gameplay. See, e.g., Nick Yee, Nicolas Ducheneaut, and Les Nelson, “Online Gaming Motivations Scale: Development and Validation,”
Proceedings of CHI 2012
(2012): 2803–2806. But the full cross-cultural data from the entire study have never been reported, so I mention the new data here: the average age of online gamers in the United States was 34.2 (SD = 10.7,
n
= 876); in the European Union, 32.6 (SD = 8.6,
n
= 279); and in mainland China, 22.3 (SD = 3.6,
n
= 640). Owing to institutional review board restrictions at the federal research level, we were unable to collect data from minors, so these data points are skewed higher than the true averages.

7
. In terms of average hours of play each week, Yee, “Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences,” reported a mean of 22.7 hours and a median of 20 hours per week. Williams, Yee, and Caplan, “Who Plays,” reported a mean of 25.7 hours per week. Yee found no significant correlation between age and hours played; Williams, Yee, and Caplan found a significant positive correlation. For average TV watching in the United States, see Nielsen, “Report: How Americans Are Spending Their Media Time . . . and Money,”
www.nielsenwire.com
,
February 9, 2012, available at:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online-mobile/report-how-americans-are-spending-their-media-time-and-money/
.

8
. Frequency of playing together with people outside the game has been reported in multiple papers, but often grouped in different ways. In Yee, “Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences,” 16% of male players and 60% of female players regularly played with a romantic partner; 26% of male players and 40% of female players did so with family members. In Helena Cole and Mark D. Griffiths, “Social Interactions in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games,”
CyberPsychology and Behavior
10 (2007): 575–583, 26% played with family and friends. The data reported in the text come from Nick Yee, “Playing with Someone,”
The Daedalus Project
(2005): available at
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001468.php
, which lists the percentages by category and then the summed overlap across the categories.

9
. Positive and negative experiences data points are drawn from Yee, “Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences,” as is the friendship comparability issue. Cole and Griffiths, “Social Interactions in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games,” report a similar finding on friendship comparability, 46%.

10
. For Bartle's player types, see Richard Bartle, “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDS” (1996), available at:
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
. Factor analysis was used to identify these motivation clusters. See Nick Yee, “Motivations for Play in Online Games,”
CyberPsychology and Behavior
9 (2006): 772–775; and the validation of the scale in Nick Yee, Nicolas Ducheneaut, and Les Nelson, “Online Gaming Motivations Scale: Development and Validation,”
Proceedings of CHI 2012
(2012): 2803–2806.

11
. The research in problematic Internet usage has tended to dovetail with research in problematic gaming, suggesting that both depression and social anxiety are significant contributors. See Marcantonio M. Spada, Benjamin Langston, Ana V. Nik
č
evi
ć
, and Giovanni B. Moneta, “The Role of Metacognitions in Problematic Internet Usage,”
Computers in Human Behavior
24 (2008): 2325–2335; Robert LaRose, Carolyn A. Lin, and Matthew S. Eastin, “Unregulated Internet Usage: Addiction, Habit, or Deficient Self-Regulation?”
Media Psychology
5 (2003): 225–253; and Scott E. Caplan, Dmitri Williams, and Nick Yee, “Problematic Internet Use and Psychosocial Well-Being among MMO Players,”
Computers in Human Behavior
25 (2009): 1312–1319. For the study on family members playing together, see Cuihua Shen and Dmitri Williams, “Unpacking Time Online: Connecting Internet and MMO Use with Psychosocial Well-Being,”
Communication Research
38 (2011): 123–149.

12
. Andrew J. Grundstein et al., “A Retrospective Analysis of American Football Hyperthermia Deaths in the United States,”
International Journal of Biometeorology
56 (2010): 11.

1
. B. F. Skinner,
The Behavior of Organisms
(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1938).

2
. B. F. Skinner, “‘Superstition' in the Pigeon,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology
38 (1948): 168–172.

3
. Alfred Bruner and Samuel H. Revusky, “Collateral Behavior in Humans,”
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
4 (1961): 349–350.

4
. Heather Sinclair discusses some of these superstitions in a comment to a blog post on Terra Nova:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/10/superstition.
html#c25369047
.