Social Science in cyberspace
Marco Janssen and Allen Lee
Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Experiment
• Everybody gets a piece of paper.
Please, be silent, this is an
experiment
Rules of the Game
• Suppose you get 100 dollars. You are matched to a
random other person in this room.
• You need to make a decision how much of thess 100
dollars to give to the other anonymous person and
how much to keep for your selves.
• The other person can decide to accept your offer or
reject. If the person reject both of you do not get
anything.
• Write down how much of the 100 dollars you like to
offer the other person.
Ultimatum Game
• The experiment you played was an ultimatum
game. The typical answer is 40%
Ethical dilemmas in doing experiments
with humans
Limitations of controlled experiments
• Small groups in artificial setting doing unusual
tasks
• Internet leads to new opportunities of doing
experiments with large groups:
– Natural experiments: open source projects,
amazon.com, ebay, myspace…
– Virtual worlds: studying the behavior of actual
people in alternative worlds
The Scientific Research Potential of
Virtual Worlds
Open source projects
• Largest portals: Sourceforge.net:
• 145.000 projects registered, with 67.000
projects with download statistics
• the top five projects alone (eMule, Azureus,
Ares Galaxy, Bittorrent and DC++) account for
roughly 30% of the overall downloads
• Most projects not successful
• Can we use data to analyze the conditions
what make open source projects successful?
Statistics available
• Project level data
–
–
–
–
‘Demographics’ (Start date, license etc)
Team (Founder, roles etc)
Communications (Email lists, IRC etc)
Code repositories and release history
• Cross project data
– Project lists and counts
– Relative statistics (Downloads, activity etc)
Developer numbers
67% never more than 1 developer, only 1.9% have had >10 developers
E-Bay and reputation
• Randomized controlled field experiment of an Internet
reputation mechanism. A high-reputation, established eBay
dealer sold matched pairs of lots—batches of vintage
postcards—under his regular identity and under new seller
identities (also operated by him). As predicted, the established
identity fared better. The difference in buyers’ willingness-topay was 8.1% of the selling price.
Social Networks and the spread of
information
• Data used to study how information (or
viruses) spread in social networks.
• Data from:
–
–
–
–
–
Myspace
Amazon.com
Blogs
email traffic
Website links
Virtual worlds
- Massively multiplayer online games
(MMOGs)
- Virtual worlds without gaming
1972
Full Spectrum Warrior 2004
Scripting Virtual Worlds
• WoW scripting is purely event driven, always
in response to something happening in the
world
Event driven?
• Your code only gets executed as a result of
some thing happening on the server
• Limits autonomous data collection
• Designed to prevent “botting”
Second Life
• More flexible than WoW, state-event driven
• Centered around the state of objects in the
world
• Allows botting
• User created content
• Script objects in addition to collect data
Limitations and Challenges
• Data collection
• Environment control
• Difficult programming platform –
compile/edit/test cycle is onerous
• Observer effect
Observer Effect Take Two
June 2006
MMOG Industry
 2003
U.S. Industry Profit Numbers
 Gaming
Industry
 Online Games (2003)
 Online Games (2009)
 Hollywood box office movies
 Music industry
 Home video rentals
 Virtual



$10.0 billion
$ 1.9 billion
$ 9.8 billion
$ 9.5 billion
$14.3 billion
$19.0 billion
worlds are significant:
Larger populations than some major real cities
Larger economies than some major real countries
Substantial time investment
 Diversity of those who play
Growing Impact
• Percent of American Adults Online (Pew)
– 2000: 50 percent
– 2005: 66 percent
– 2006: 73 percent – 147m people
• By 2011, 80 percent of web users to have
‘second life’ (Gartner)
• More than 100m avatars by the 2012 election –
in America alone
What is a MMOG?
• Online role-playing game…
• Large number of players (10,000 on single sever )
• Players create fictional character within the game (represented
by an avatar)
• Players control all aspects of avatar within the game:
– Earning a living
– Buying food and clothing
– Interacting with other players
• Players might spend ‘in-game’ time:
– Trading with other players; starting a business; joining a guild; creating
a community; building a house; etc.
• Objective of MMORPGs differ:
– Acquire gold; build status; conquer worlds; create marketable
goods/services; etc.
Example: World of Warcraft (WoW)
•(Currently most popular MMOG)
•Currently >50% of overall market
•>7.5M subscribers (November 2006)
– ~4M China
– ~2M North America
– ~1M Europe
•Initial player cost ~US$20
•Daily play cost ~US$0.50
Virtual world without gaming
• For example, Second Life (currently 6 milion
citizens)
• Features of Second Life:
–
–
–
–
–
–
User Created
Functional Economy
Proprietary Rights
Shared Spaces
Multimedia Platform
Voice Enabled (almost)
Second Life
property rights
In Second Life, residents own their creations
What does this mean?
• Residents retain their Intellectual Property rights to their creations
• Residents may buy and sell L$ for real world $
• Residents may license their creations back into the real world
Video shared in a Community Space
Music shared in a Community Space
Conferences extended into a Virtual Community
Space
Prefabricated games: Fishing
Kin focused his search criteria towards Prefabricated Games and the people who played them.
Types of Social Science with virtual
worlds
•
•
•
•
•
Ethnography (interviewing avatars)
Epidemiology (spreading of viruses)
Economics (selling virtual goods)
Psychology (can we trust avatars?)
Law (legal issues in virtual worlds)
Virtual Economies
• In-Game Economy:
• Players can specialise, gaining valuable skills
which others will pay for
– Leads to competitive advantage + division of labour
• Commerce: magic weapons, houses, goods and
services can be bought and sold in game-currency
• Need for property rights, and protection against
crime
• Second Life recognises IP rights for assets created
in the world
• Game economy mirrors many aspects of real
economies
Virtual Economies
• Link to Real Economy:
• Users willing to spend real time and money for virtual
resources
 Magic weapons, real estate, game-currency and characters are
bought and sold on auction exchanges for real money (e.g. eBay)
 http://www.gameusd.com/ lists virtual exchange rates
 Examples:
•
•
•
Island in Project Entropia sold for U.S. $26,500
Virtual space station for U.S. $100,000
Level 60 EverQuest characters sell for up to $5,000
 Criticisms:
 Many regard trading game items for real money as unethical
 Blizzard (WoW) has banned it (but hard to enforce)
 April 2006: Blizzard banned >5,400 players and suspended 10,700
(for farming, often using bots)
 Sony launched “Sony Station Exchange” for EverQuest to legally buy&sell
Virtual Economies
• Some people have made the buying and selling of virtual
property their full-time jobs.
• Producers of economy are the teenage kids
 Have a lot of time but no money
 Do the hard work to produce items to be bought and sold
• Consumers are rich who do not want to invest time
• Much money to be made from accounts of long time
players
 Selling the items individually can generate large profit
• Can make profit of $1,000 (US) per week
• Some players making >$100,000 annually
• Risky business without real-world laws to protect virtual
property
Virtual Economies – Second Life
• Second Life gives property rights to players
–
–
Allows players to create new objects from primitives
Allows them to decide if these may be copied, modified or
transferred
– Residents actively trade their creations
– In-world currency Linden dollars are exchangeable for hard
currency
– Top ten in-world entrepreneurs averaging $200,000 a year
• Business Model: virtual property company
– Residents lease property $20 per virtual “acre” per month
– 25,000 residents, or about 3% or the population, lease property
– Monthly revenues of $1m
• Companies taking notice:
–
–
Toyota is selling virtual cars
Hopes for viral advertising
Gold Farming
• Gold Farmer = a player who farms items for the sole
purpose of sale to other players via an out-of-game venue
(e.g. eBay)
• Most MMOGs include terms of service that forbid this
• China dominant in market, but also in Eastern Europe,
Mexico, Philippines
–
–
–
~ 100,000 people in China employed as gold farmers (December
2005)
Represents about 0.4% of all online gamers in China
Typically work 12 hour shifts, sometimes up to 18 hour shifts, for 1
dollar an hour.
“Virtual Law”

Practice of law via virtual worlds

Law as it applies to virtual worlds

Self-governance in Second Life
Second Life as legal testing ground
Residents' stake in Second Life
 Intellectual property rights reserved to residents
 Sales of goods and services
 $L – US$ currency exchange
 Land “ownership”
Linden Lab's nonintervention policy
 No centralized “zoning”
 Minimal regulation of content (“broadly offensive”
standard)
 No policing of transactions – caveat emptor
2007: Second Life in the courts and the news
Right of publicity
- Celebrity “look-alike” avatars
Gambling
- Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (probably) applies to
Second Life
- Linden Lab bans gambling ads, then all gambling
Taxation of in-world transactions
- US government investigating taxation
- Tax in S Korea for major virtual businesses
Bank runs, exchange scandal and “ponzi schemes”
- Ginko bank collapse
- SL World Stock Exchange fraud
Contract law
- Enforcing agreements in a semi-anonymous (and international) context
2007: Second Life in the courts and the news
Criminal law
 Financial fraud, identity theft, hacking (DarkLife theft)
 Virtual rape investigation
 Porn, money laundering, terrorism?
Rights and liberties on international stage -- most
restrictive common denominator?
 “Broadly offensive” standard of behavior -- ambiguous,
different standards in different areas and cultures
 Gambling -- prohibition based on U.S. law; Europeans claim
unfair
 Linden Lab response to government demands for info -whose standards will they use?
Land disputes
- Bragg v Linden – settled out of court
- “Landbot” class action – rumored
- Land scam: same land (allegedly) sold to 5 different buyers
Asking personal questions
(Aleks Krotoski)
• Surveys
– Who do you know?
• Who do you communicate with?
• Who do you trust?
– Define your relationship:
•
•
•
•
Who’s trustworthy?
Who’s credible?
Who do you compare yourself with?
Who’s the most prototypical?
N=675
Spreading of infectious diseases
• On Sept 13, 2005, an estimated 4 million players of
the popular online role-playing game World of
Warcraft encountered an unexpected challenge in the
game, introduced in a software update released that
day: a full-blown epidemic.
ET Lofgren and NH Fefferman, The untapped potential of virtual game worlds to shed light
on real world epidemics, Lancet Infect Dis 7 (2007), pp. 625–629.
RD Balicer, Modeling infectious diseases dissemination through online role-playing games,
Epidemiology 18 (2007), pp. 260–261
Identity
The androgynous-looking avatars were perceived as being less
credible. The authors make a leap to trustworthiness and argue that
human-like avatars are important for representing trustworthy avatars.
Nowak, Kristine L. & Rauh, Christian
The Influence of the Avatar on Online Perceptions of Anthropomorphism,
Androgyny, Credibility, Homophily, and Attraction.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11
Problems with social science in virtual
worlds
• Biased sample of participants
• Lack of control
• Technical problems on performance of virtual
environments
• Unnatural behavior: teleporting, “death of
avatar”, flying,