Who gets to define what's "normal" for gamers?

[academic_gamer]

Apparently the United States government, those who have been criticizing the gaming community for so many years, feels that they are perfectly within their rights to define what normalcy is for our community.

http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=26256583

Trying to explain the gaming culture to a bunch of ignorant people isn't an easy feat, but for them to have the go-ahead to begin "researching" deviancy in a community they lack an understanding of is asking for massive political pandering.

My name pretty much speaks for who and what I am in terms of gaming: I actually study it. Yes, there are academics out there that actually root for the gaming community. I, for one, find this initiative distasteful. They are doing what is known in academic research as "data mining". Amongst academic researchers this is known as the intentional skewing of data to fit a certain build or theory. Here we have a classic case of it, and here's why.

First of all, it assumes that there is a normalcy that can be easily measured or defined within their research. Secondly, it also assumes that from this "normalcy" that "deviancy" can be picked out, and that ?detecting? it early will lead to preventing ?extremist? behaviour. Notice all the quotation marks I put in there? There are a lot more assumptions in their theory I don?t know where to begin. Do we even know if extremist behaviour shows up in the online world? Do we even know if the online representations of ourselves even amount to our actual personality? What about people who role-play, or pretend to be someone else (very much like an obsessive person) but clearly within the confines of the game? How do we know that the data is authentic, and observing a dispute between two players is not an inside joke? All of this speaks nothing of how they are even defining ?extremist behaviour? and how they are coding it, and detecting it.

But let?s go back onto the original issue here. Who are they to be in authority to even define normalcy? Does this notion of defining what is ?normal? for groups of people seem familiar to you? Do any of you remember the age of Rock? Or the baby-boomer generation? What happens when normalcy gets defined by an authoritative body, and starts calling out those who deviate too much? A word comes to mind which is control. To me, this seems like an inception of set behaviours for people to apparently abide by. They slap on some research methodology, give it a fancy name, and rationalize the hell out of their findings. What we end up with is the imposition of a specific type of gamer within a diverse community. Then people will begin feeling excluded because they don?t belong to the majority of ?gamers? according to this research, and that they are deviants. Rules and set behaviours will then be set down by an authoritative body for gamers to attempt to abide by.

What do you guys think? Do you think this will hold any water?

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

wow, thats just great. actually if you think about it terrorists and the like meeting in an online game is a pretty good idea, its fairly easy to organize anonymously and a bunch of people standing around wispering to each other is not that out of place.

hence the problem, secret plots abound in games like this and distinguishing a vioent extreminst aiming to hijack airlines from your average add kid wasting his life in a virtual world is almost impossible. at least difficult enough to keep the us government from being able to do it. now if they wanted to pay players a small fee to keep tabs on other gamers that might be a different story even so with the wisper feature in most online games it's just too easy to be discrete.

however if by "violent fundamentalists" they mean potential school shootings then they've got potentially hundreds of "at risk" people to arrest and hold without trial then waterboard just for fun.

 

[Hey Joe]

I think there's already a thread on this story on the second page

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.54856

BTW, Which institution do you study at if you don't mind me asking?

 

[academic_gamer]

I think there's already a thread on this story on the second page

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.54856

BTW, Which institution do you study at if you don't mind me asking?

Didn't realize there was one already made, but I just recently came across this one and found it ridiculous, and was wondering what other people felt about it.

I actually don't belong to any institution, I actually came across the study of video games throughout my studies at university. I noticed various parallels to other subjects I studied, and conducted various studies on my own. I pretty much am a sort of "freelance" researcher, using what information comes my way. Like this story for example, and how research methods are being grossly abused. I know I'm not the only one out there, but I feel that the academic community needs to be more vocal about fallacies in research such as this.

Thus far I have done research on various gender theory, online interaction/psychology, and sexuality in video games.

 

[Copter400]

I'm all for this stuff. I know very little about a cultural group, so I'm going to make judgments on what is the norm for them!

All Jewish people wear green shoes. Anyone who strays from this is abnormal.

 

[werepossum]

Gee, I wonder which party gets to define normality, the one where the guy carries his bible past the camera crews on his way to screw his intern or the one where the guy crusades against the gay agenda in between having gay sex in public restrooms. Either way it ought to be a hoot.

 

[xMacx]

Not sure where to start here, to be honest.

First, I'm not sure any card-carrying academic would give him or herself the title of academic anything. I'm surrounded by them, and none flex their academic muscles that way.

Second, data mining isn't solely (or even primarily) in the domain of academic research. Especially among psychologists (depending on your definition of data mining, but the general description certainly won't fit). And nothing about data mining (or the study you referenced) suggests that they're skewing any data.

And while we can wring our hands at the operational definition of "normalcy", it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that virtual worlds that operate by their own currency and have millions of voluntary users are a great way to examine human behavior in a naturalistic setting that many behavioral analysts can't in the real world. Image if you're running a scam on an MMO; or plotting to overthrow another guild, or planning to ambush a party. MMO's like WoW provide a place where millions of untrained or poorly trained individuals attempt to accomplish goals, providing a rough simulation of how poorly trained individuals might approach illicit goals in the real world.

In other words, it's in-game behaviors serving as a rough correlate of behavior that they're looking for. Perhaps they're looking for trends in behavior that can identify rogue elements before they are able to act - it's proactive data collection rather than backtracking after that fact. Not a bad goal, and a clever use of existing datasets.

No offense, but per your earlier statement about at least one games researcher - maybe you should get in touch with the games research community. There's a lot of good games researchers out there, and there have been for quite a while (check out Malone's work on motivational characteristics in games from the 80's to get an idea of how far back we're talking).

Finally, per the bad methodology argument: Make sure you know the community you're talking about before you start tossing things out there criticizing others' research methodology. You're making the moving target mistake - criticizing anything and everything about the study without really understanding the goal of the study.

You can't criticize methodology unless you know the explicit goal of the project. If you don't know the goal, you can't conclusively say whether the methodology is appropriate or not.

 

[academic_gamer]

First of all, all professors define themselves as academic. They expect academic sources in their works, and those of their peers. Being a professor, a student of academia, or even a researcher indicates an academic description of what they are doing. Me? I look at games academically, hence, academic gamer. I never said my work was of the purest academia, nor do I ascribe to any particular institution as noted above.

The thing about researching online communities is that there is very little academic research done on it that is very in depth. And, if I may unveil this academic curtain a bit, the study of communities entails a direct interaction and interpretation of the community, not distancing oneself as an academic in a position to dictate who or what goes on in it (much like this study is doing by not considering various other aspects of the community).

As for the term "data mining" I understand there is a broad definition, and you are correct in your description of it. If you check wikipedia for the term, and look under the section that states its misuse, that was what I was referring to in a nutshell. When I first used that term, I stated how it is referred to negatively in social research. (Sorry, perhaps I should have made that clear, but the reason why I post in public is for these kinds of misunderstandings to be explained) I never said this was the standard definition, and in fact data mining has been used for various numerical and statistical analysis that have yielded great sources of information.

My criticisms of this research are based on the assumptions behind it, which I stated in my initial post. Just because these online worlds have world economics, currency, and social interaction, does not necessarily mean that deviancy can be rooted, nor detected for government use in preventing "extremist behaviours".

Although, as a sociologist, I understand and actually depend on the social reality of these communities. I agree with you wholeheartedly in the enormous amount of information that can be found in researching online communities. My complaint is that to presume such research can be used to deter extremism is a leap in logic. One can't simply say because it represents an actual community in various ways, that rooting extremism in this medium will yield productive results.

Aside from the various assumptions, there is also the negative context that this research is already under. Rather than considering the dynamics of online communities, it is already assumed there is:
1) Extremism
2) Ways to define and detect it
3) The online medium is a place for dangerous behaviour present itself

For 1, 2, and 3 there is no indication of where exactly the root of this behaviour stems from. Instead we see research in merely detecting and preventing it, but this speaks nothing of its source or how to prevent it. If all of their negative assumptions are true, and if they manage to deter it, it speaks nothing of the fact that extremist behaviour existed before then, and continues to do so through various factors outside of gaming. In the end the research solves nothing.

All of this research also speaks nothing of the dynamics of the community, such as how people interact, the dynamics of the game to social interaction, the purpose of this online community on a social or personal level, etc. Notice something similar in these characteristics? They are neutral, rather than defining it already in a negative context. Instead, researchers should approach their research population in a balanced attitude, especially when it is being funded by the government to further understand it. Not only do they have a democratic responsibility to the people they represent to not skew the research negatively, but they also have an obligation to provide a credible source of material as a government institution.

Also I never said that I was the only researcher for gaming. My comment was that there wasn't enough of a spotlight on them, and instead their research is either ignored or used in a negative context. I also said that they are out there, and on the side of gamers, rather than politicians who like to go around toting how video games are the bane of society.

 

[stompy]

I'm mad, but then, I'm sure this will end when my generation, or the generation before me, get into power. Then it'll be a whole new scapegoat. Yay!

 

[xMacx]

First of all, all professors define themselves as academic. They expect academic sources in their works, and those of their peers. Being a professor, a student of academia, or even a research indicates an academic description of what they are doing. Me? I look at games academically, hence, academic gamer. I never said my work was of the purest academia, nor do I ascribe to any particular institution as noted above.

No, really, they don't. Talk with some people with PhD's who do research in the world and see how many identify themselves with the title "academic" before whatever it is they do. Requiring refereed sources is not the same as calling yourself academic_anything.

The thing about researching online communities is that there is very little academic research done on it that is very in depth.

Also not true. In the HCI community, there is a painfully frequent amount of research done on online community behavior. And amazingly, there is work done about online behavior in MMO's. Check out the following article from CHI about player behavior in WoW: http://www.parc.com/research/publications/details.php?id=5599
or another paper on social activity in WoW:
http://darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/pdf/fp199-Nardi.pdf

As for the term "data mining" I understand there is a broad definition. Perhaps you should look in wikipedia and look under the section that states its misuse. As I indicated when I first used that term, I stated how it is referred to negatively in social research. I never said this was the standard, and in fact data mining has been used for various numerical and statistical analysis that have yielded great sources of information.

Please show me in your earlier post where you explicitly referred to the argument that data mining has previously been used negatively in social research.

While you're at it, here's the wiki on data mining. Educate me on what you were referring to there as well. And seriously, wikis are good for a lot of things, but that page on data mining is pretty poor to be basing your argument off of. Are you talking about limitations of modeling decision-making behavior using data mining?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining

My criticisms of this research are based on the assumptions behind this research to begin with, which I stated in my initial post. Just because these online worlds have world economics, currency, and social interaction, does not necessarily mean that deviancy can be rooted, nor detected for government use in preventing "extremist behaviours".

See my "moving target" example of earlier. Same fallacy again. You don't know the goals, so you don't know the assumptions. Which makes any criticisms you throw out there pretty much null and void until you can understand the lens through which they're looking at the data.

Although, as a sociologist, I understand and actually depend on the social reality of these communities. I agree with you wholeheartedly in the enormous amount of information that can be found in researching online communities. My complaint is that to presume such research can be used to deter extremism is a leap in logic.

It seems like you're confusing identifying behavioral trends with deterring extremism. Look, most federally funded projects like this have a far away end goal - usually of being able to produce models that can define possible outcomes or actions...which may someday in the future be used to design societal or strategic defenses. All of the Darpa style projects have some end goal so far in the future it's not even worth arguing whether it will work or not. That's why research like this gets funded - to see if you can do it.

Seriously, I'm doubting you've ever worked on a research team for any period of time or have ever been on a funded research project. Your objection is precisely how research gets done in the states - its all some glossy, airy idea that may never actually come to fruition.

Also I never said that I was the only researcher for gaming. My comment was that there wasn't enough of a spotlight on them, and instead their research is either ignored or used in a negative context. I also said that they are out there, and on the side of gamers and not politicians who like to go around toting how video games are the bane of society.

And what I meant is that if you're making that statement, then you're clearly not in touch with the research community that does look at games. Games researchers are at GDC, they're at CHI, they're at a slew of venues getting their work and the good word out there. You should probably look into some of the conferences and journals that are regularly published on the topic.

Your comments throughout this thread pretty much guarantee that you aren't familiar with the games research professionally. If you want to talk about it, fine, but don't start it off talking about how you "study" them if don't have a formal background in the science behind games study. I'm not rolling up on a physics board with the screen name Academic_Physicist. I'd be misrepresenting myself, and insulting those who have invested a significant portion of their life getting the academic degree that I'd be suggesting that I had. And that would just be wrong.

 

[MikeyW]

Er, shouldn't the ones who define normality within a group be the people in the group itself. The way all this talk is sounding is that gamers are a bunch of monkeys to be studied and understood.

 

[xMacx]

Er, shouldn't the ones who define normality within a group be the people in the group itself. The way all this talk is sounding is that gamers are a bunch of monkeys to be studied and understood.

Usually the aspect of behavior you're interested in will define how a concept like normality is defined. For example, if you were trying to identify extreme financial behavior in an MMO, you'd have to define what the normal (usually average) monetary behavior is within the MMO. Then you might select all outliers from that average (meaning REALLY far away from the norm) and identify how this sample's behavior differed from a sampling of those around the average.

 

[xMacx]

Guys I think it is important to put our own egos and standard internet bickering on who is right and focus on the real problem for United States gamers(and world gamers). They are doing a study on gamers to determine what is acceptable normal behavior for normal online gamers and anyone that show this "deviancy" will be hunted down by the United States government for terroism(at least this is what I got from this article and forum).

I don't think this is completely the case. What I took from the article is that the focus is not necessarily gamers. A lot of the people on this forum (and to be fair, the authors of the articles) are assuming that gamers are the end-goal, or that detecting terrorists in online games are the end goal.

The end goal appears to be detecting outliers in behavior, which may or may not have anything to do with online worlds in the end. However, the OMG THEY'RE GOING TO GET US IN WOW!!!!!1111! generates more views than "Data mining program attempts to detect behavior outliers in MMO"

 

[xMacx]

and even if they are attempting to data mine conversations for someone's 10 minute extended conversation into how they are going to attack a tourist center, what does it matter?

 

[General Ma Chao]

I find it hard to take it seriously. This project looks ridiculously unmanageable. And even if it does get off the ground, what do you have to hide? I doubt the government is gonna take much interest in anyone's noob PKing.

 

[Scubamike1978]

Given the diversity of online gamers, how exactly could you define any norms to deviate from?
And how "normal" are those norms anyway? Seems like there is a lot of acting out going on. Think:

Prepubescent Male trash-talking everyone they meet while using gangland slang and spouting about how awesome they really are.

So that would mean a "normal" prepubescent male is channelling 50cent, Eminem and .... Oh wait, I guess it's true

Oh well...

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

I'm having trouble dealing with the fact that for all the big words and ideas being thrown around, no one seems to have followed the links to the original Wired article.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/nations-spies-w.html

If you're still too lazy to click on it, the headline is:

"U.S. Spies Want to Find Terrorists in World of Warcraft"

Now I don't have a stance on Big Brother watching me frag one way or another, but the point is that this doesn't seem to have anything to do with "normality" outside of establishing the difference between a clan fighting over loot and people using WoW to plot terrorist acts.