SOE has announced they will be sharing more than 60 Terabytes server logs and data from EverQuest II academic researchers to study human interactions in games. SOE also assures us that our personal information has been removed from this data package.

We're providing our data for science! In a recent collaboration, SOE shared over 60TB of server logs from EverQuest II and additional data collected from a voluntary player survey with a team of academic researchers who hope to use the data to study human interactions through the gaming environment, connections between players and how their online networks are built and used, and more.

The server logs were scrubbed of all PII (Personally Identifiable Information) prior to being provided to the researchers, including chat log content. The team received data such as the volume, frequency and demographics of in-game chatters, but none of this information was connected to the real names or other PII of any players.

Read more here.

I wonder if they made them buy Station Cash to buy the information.

I certainly hope the researchers enjoy the  nice juicy cyber I had with my wife many many times in game...

If this is such a reputable cause, why aren't the institutions involved named? Maybe they want their privacy respected. SOE's assurance about anything is tantamount to a guaranteed lie.

Here is an excerpt I found interesting:

Mostly, the gamers seemed healthy; their body mass index was better than the US average and, although they were slightly more depressed than average, they were also less anxious.

How would they know that without identifying individuals?

60TB .. did they keep every logfile since eq2 started oO?

This thread is redundant. It's already in discussion here www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/223573/SoE-gives-60TB-of-players-personal-server-data-away.html

Japan kill Whales in the name of science.  It's how they are able to "harvest" them for food and skirt certain international regulations.  Being that Sony is a Japanese corporation I find it extremely difficult to not identify how easily "for the benefit of science" can be abused. 

p.s. Is Whale meat any good?

Originally posted by mindspat

Japan kill Whales in the name of science.  It's how they are able to "harvest" them for food and skirt certain international regulations.  Being that Sony is a Japanese corporation I find it extremely difficult to not identify how easily "for the benefit of science" can be abused. 

p.s. Is Whale meat any good?

I had an opportunity to try some whale meat during my recent Antarctica expedition. It tastes like chicken.

I particularly like how those who roleplay are labeled psychologically inferior and homosexual.

I guess all of us on Antonia Bayle are a bunch of deviants. Who knew?

Originally posted by Kartuhn

This thread is redundant. It's already in discussion here www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/223573/SoE-gives-60TB-of-players-personal-server-data-away.html

Nah that topc is is not about the article, but pure another SOE bash topic.

As a GAMER and a MMORPG player i find things like this very intresting, it also shows how many seem willing to lie in online survey's while this isn't really a suprise as I know this forum already so I knew that for a fact, but it's great to actualy see researche in the HARD ACCES area instead of asking or listening to players.

Originally posted by Zorvan

I particularly like how those who roleplay are labeled psychologically inferior and homosexual.

I guess all of us on Antonia Bayle are a bunch of deviants. Who knew?

It would have been nice if you actualy told what was said instead of drawing your own conclusion. As it is not about those who just roleplay, he spoke of a mer 5% that seriously roleplayed....wel just try and read what was said yourself below.

Links between the real and virtual world
In addition to introducing the EQ2 logs as a resource, Dmitri Williams described some of the efforts involved in exploring how much of the real world spilled over into the virtual.

The average age of players turned out to be 31. "These aren't just pasty white teenage boys in a basement—to be sure, they're there, but they're not typical," he said. The older players tended to play more than the kids and, although the total hours played seem large, he said that the time mostly displaced either TV watching or movie going. And the surveys showed that those who viewed TV news in the first place continued to do so, suggesting that gamers really slotted EQ2 into their entertainment time.

Mostly, the gamers seemed healthy; their body mass index was better than the US average and, although they were slightly more depressed than average, they were also less anxious.

Buried among those happy, average players was a small subset of the population—about five percent—who used the game for serious role playing and, according to Williams, "They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players." They belong to marginalized groups, like ethnic and religious minorities and non-heterosexuals, and tended to use the game as a coping mechanism.
 

I honestly could care less. Why is this such a big deal to you? Its not like it effects you in any way. Its just numbers and it doesn't contain any personal information. Btw, I play EQ2.

We'd all be better off if people actually attempted to help scientists do their jobs instead of fighting them constantly. Maybe they'd actually solve some of the worlds problems if people stopped fighting their use of knowledge, education, and logic.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/224758/Experiment-with-Lab-Rats.html

For those who don't like to read links:

Well there seems to be a lot of screaming over this one.
 

Hopefully someone will speak up for the gaming community and their rights against SOE.

In my opinion, SOE has stepped over the line. Problem is that I don't have the money for court fees nor the legal knowledge.
 

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/02/aaas-60tb-of-behavioral-data-the-everquest-2-server-logs.ars
 

SOE has taken peoples intertainment to a new level; players being lab rats and the game being the experimental grounds for the rats to run around in.
 

So how do you like outside psychiatrist/scientists/associate third parties; etc etc, etc...reading all of your chat logs to include private tells then openly catagorizing ya as having psychological problems?
 

Quote:
Buried among those happy, average players was a small subset of the population—about five percent—who used the game for serious role playing and, according to Williams, "They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players." They belong to marginalized groups, like ethnic and religious minorities and non-heterosexuals, and tended to use the game as a coping mechanism.
End Quote
 

Quote:
In his view, the data suggests that many studies that report marginal male-female differences in gaming based only on self-reported figures most likely did so based on unreliable numbers. It's entirely possible that a number of other sanity checks on past studies are lurking in this virtual data trove
End Quote
 

Some people may scoff at these turn of events. Believe me when I say, this is only the beginning. There is ALWAYS a fallout effect and the end result is NEVER for the good. Remember, book burning, witch hunting sessions. Will you be frightened to openly admit you play in an MMORPG????

for those that dont do deeper digging to the actual study
www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121394419/HTMLSTART

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Abstract
In the current study, 7,000 players of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) EverQuest 2 were surveyed about their offline characteristics, their motivations and their physical and mental health.

These self-report data were then combined with data on participants' actual in-game play behaviors, as collected by the game operator.

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(Survey) Participants were identified by an unseen account number in Sony's databases. These account numbers were used to unobtrusively link the survey data with the game's databases.

The main measure derived from Sony's databases was total playing time, calculated by averaging the number of cumulative seconds of play over the playing window on each account.

These data were then used to compute the players' average time in the game per week, and were matched back to their entries from the survey. Because players could maintain multiple characters on their account, each character's playing time was collapsed into one metalevel play value for the player.

These calculations occurred within the database and separate from the survey, so subjects were unaware that their time online, their server residence, or their character use were part of the research.

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No eula, no matter how well written, can justify the gross invasion of privacy this is to all the players of EQ2, who -expect- a certain level of privacy in the game with any information they give out to other players, especially if it's a private tell between two friends.  (Cybering or otherwise)

Some people give out personal information in in-game chat, for instance, and even if you anonymize the data, that information will still be plainly viewable.

I hope SoE gets sued over this and the EULA found unenforceable so that individual rights of basic -privacy- aren't undermined by this.