/32/ - Psychopolitics

Interesting stuff.

"The purpose of this research study was to determine whether or not it is possible to predict a person’s real world characteristics from the characteristics and behaviors of his or her avatar in an MMORPG, using variables generated by the quantitative-qualitative approach."

First thing that caught my eye was the fact that these were volunteers. They were likely informed that this was a government-funded project and that the ultimate goal was the development of more advanced means of surveillance and behavior control. This goes in opposition to the assessment that 46% of the subjects did not have a submissive ideology. Also, somewhat surprising that they found a guy over 65 y.o.

One of the problems I found with the method was that they used a first-person evaluation for the individual (NEO-S) and a third-person evaluation for the avatar (NEO-R). They never mentioned taking into account any discrepancies between self-assessment and evaluation by others. By this I mean: they should have the individuals and the avatars both evaluated from a third-person perspective. It also seems that there were more tools and they devoted more time to evaluate the VW actions than the RW individual. This can be problematic because there might have been more RW characteristics that would be easier to predict but that were overlooked, perhaps because they didn't consider predicting the characteristics and behaviors of a person's avatar in an MMORPG from his or her real world characteristics and behavior.

I was a bit surprised about the lack of significance of the chat logs. It did remind me of the CIA and NSA efforts to monitor communications in World of Warcraft in search of terrorists.

General accuracy was at 73%, which would likely be improved with a larger pool sample for calibrating their tools. Understandably, gender was the easier to determine, although the independent variables used (not only for this RW characteristic) were a bit surprising. Especially interesting was the fact that females tend to heal less. Age, on the other hand, was the least accurate prediction. The submissive and aggressive classifications seemed a bit subjective to me, but they don't expand on it on the paper.

The admission of the limitations of the study were valid, but one thing did catch my eye:
"Future research should seek to further validate the predictive models developed, with more participants and by rating the participants over multiple hour-long observation sessions."
That could be achieved using surveillance technology already available to the State in order to profile (both psychologically and physically) individuals and then gather data about their RW characteristics and behavior. I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of project is already being undertaken or planned. The only real restriction at this point would be the old guard of the IC who don't like the idea of using money on video-game related research.

A few more observations:
1-I wonder how they selected their Subject Matter Experts (SME). Are they just guys who know a lot about MMORPGs? Perhaps professional players?
2-IARPA has a pretty diverse board of directors. Good for them I guess.
3-They also have a pretty creative logo. The name helped, of course.
4-Is it just me or do these agencies just keep popping up to fill ever more specific niches? "Let's create an agency to cover the gap between agencies A and B" "Oh no, now there are two gaps! Let's make two more agencies!". I don't think they are that stupid, it's just a matter of making accountability more difficult.
5-The results can be used to create characters that look and act in a way as to make other players assume things about the player. That can be useful.

>>1207
Creator of thread in question: yes, it is more important than you realize.

>>1212
This isn't so much about gamergate than it is about the general data mining industry. Though it's probable that it was useful to distract people away from such things.

>>1207
>>1212
I wager that when it comes to the social impact of technological developments, the popularization of videogames will rank below the invention of the internet, the television and the radio, but still above the telephone.
Gamergate, specifically, is a part of that.

If you or anyone you know have ever been addicted to an MMO, imagine if the structure which makes them so alluring was used in early childhood education to instil values or pattern behaviour. We all like to consider ourselves immune from such control but on a population level, with millions of dollars of research in place, there is the chance for measurable influence. Considering that some people have the power and money to enact such changes, what is to stop them from doing this sort of thing under the guise of progressiveness and positive technological adaptation? Could it be happening right now, anons? Just some food for thought.

>>1215
One of the authors of the book that used the magic circle to describe new media actually runs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Play
and a model school which uses games for learning.

>>1216

But I always think I am a bad person in a MMO and just lying to everybody else...