How to Play WOW For a Living, Get Tenure, and Live in Hawaii - Really

Comment

Comment by Kevin Luttrell on March 28, 2010 at 11:54am

I think a central anthropological byproduct about Wow has been overlooked by this "study." The game is overrun with criminals who prey on people's love of the game an discovered that they can use the game as a premise to set up attack websites, phishing email or simply run scam guilds to send out key loggers, Trojans and other viruses in an attempt to steal both Wow accounts and personal banking and credit card information.

I played wow since the vanilla version was released over 5 years ago, befriended good people, had great virtual adventures but we've all quit the game. We noticed that over time the nature of the game had changed from shared goals to tons of new players with selfish intentions...and criminal desire to fulfill those intentions. Blizzard, despite making grip-loads of money off this game, has done very little to curb these activities with security or aggressively going after abusers. MY account was hacked, my friends all has their accounts hacked...and we all got tired of dealing with selfish little kids. Game over.

Comment by Konstantin A Lukin on March 25, 2010 at 10:19am

While I'm not anti-academic, I've found this type of disconnect to be extremely common in many fields be it geography, computer science, computer security, etc.. and I think it's a really a product of an intrinsic bias many academics have - if the discussion isn't driven or produced by someone with credentials then it either never pops up on their radar or they won't even consider it worth reading.

I think this goes back to an earlier point about certain 'arrogance' displayed in scientific/academic communities, as it is often the case that are not willing to listen to the underlying common-sense simply based on the presentation factor. IMO such approaches are limited and short-sighted. It also makes me appreciate the following quote:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ~ Leonardo da Vinci

So, then, let me ask these questions.. What defines/constitutes a respected academic/scientist? What guidelines should/do they follow? What goals are they trying to achieve?

Comment by Daniel Leuck on March 23, 2010 at 7:35pm

Brian Russo: I used to play WoW 50-60+ hours a week. I still know many people that do. 20 hours a week is nothing.

He probably had to reserve some time for the professor stuff ;-)

Brian Russo: Anyway, if it took him a year to figure out that 'shared sense of purpose and goals' was what made it immersive rather than 'visual fireworks'; then wow.. the 'academic' community is incredibly out of touch with the gaming world.

Golub put a year into the research, so I imagine it has some depth. I bet his paper is an interesting read.

Comment by Alex Salkever on March 23, 2010 at 7:30pm

Brian, WADR he probably figured it out long before then and waited to start talking to people because he wanted to gain their confidence and trust. Ironically, the academic community is very often a key source of innovation in the gaming world. Georgia Tech's masters in game development program is a pipeline to the big studios. Lots of guys who build very innovative physics engines and other key components have academic backgrounds. So best not to paint with a broad brush.

Comment by Daniel Leuck on March 22, 2010 at 6:00pm

Brian Russo: If he's only playing 20 hours a week then he doesn't understand WoW.

LOL. Do you have something to confess Brian?

Comment by Mika Leuck on March 22, 2010 at 5:58pm

Anyone who can figure out how to make a living playing games in Hawaii must be very, very smart :-)

Comment by Konstantin A Lukin on March 19, 2010 at 7:18pm

If we want to study virtual worlds, we have to study their relationship with other parts of our lives. They are deeply a part of our whole life.

This is pretty interesting from a neuro-science perspective. Basically a player makes a 'connection' with a virtual world that is taken into real life. The longer one plays, the more 'persistent' this connection becomes. This somewhat reminds me of Avatar movie (see discussion). I wonder how such games affect players' neuro-nets? Why are some games more addictive than others? What constitutes an addiction?

Since Golub is arguing that virtual worlds are somehow interconnected with reality, which I fully believe so, it's interesting to do a more thorough scientific study as to how that happens. For one thing, we could use this knowledge to create educational virtual worlds skillfully tailored towards visualizing/absorbing other types of information. IMO This has potential to fully transform educational system the way we know it today :)

Comment by Alex Salkever on March 19, 2010 at 6:49pm

He didn't actually. He felt the game was a pretty healthy outlet compared to many others and that, actually, the game taught useful social and life skills.

Comment by Cameron Souza on March 19, 2010 at 6:36pm

Wow. I knew I was in the wrong profession :-)

I wonder if Prof. Golub ever felt like he was in danger of falling victim to the addictive qualities of the game.