Personal behavior and virtual fragmentation

ABSTRACT

In the last few years the importance of multiplayer games has seen an immense growth. On par with that, the virtual environments (VEs) increased in their size. Today there exist more than 120 MMOGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Games) ranging from FPS (first person shooter) to classic RPG (role playing game) settings. Such an evolution leads to the fact that players start to "live" in a virtual world. Thus each player at least partially merges with his character (playing figure) and acts in the virtual world. Nevertheless there can be huge gaps between ones real and virtual behavior.

This paper uses a well balanced set of questions based on the psychological big5 model to show the mentioned gaps between real world and virtual world attitude. The underlying online survey models 30 selected questions about online and real world behavior. The results are stored in a database in order to statistically interpret them afterwards.

The analysis includes correlations between deterministic values (such as age, nationality and gender) and traits of the big5 model (like surgery, emotional stability and conscientiousness). Furthermore it contains other surprising conclusions about the difference in behavior.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.10 Design**

General Terms:
Documentation, Human Factors, Verification

Keywords:
and characterization, modeling, usage studies, user surveys and analysis