Kelly Bergstrom, SFU School of Communication honours’ student

Recently I completed an undergraduate honours’ project looking at social interaction among players of the popular Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game World of Warcraft. I am not what you would call a typical “gamer” yet when I was introduced to the virtual worlds of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMOs) two years ago, I was quickly hooked. Previously, I had written about gender swapping in MMOs (where males choose to play as female avatars, and females choose to play as male avatars) but I decided to apply the concept of social capital to the relationships that are formed within MMOs like World of Warcraft.

Rather than relying solely on in-person interviews or anonymous surveys that are frequently used when polling players of MMOs, I created a female Night Elf avatar, Surveylady, and conduced a survey both online and offline with the following research questions in mind:

1) Is it possible to create an avatar that can be used as a virtual pollster to survey players in Azeroth?

2) Will players interact with this avatar in a positive or meaningful way?

3) Will this avatar find the same information as interviews with players that are conducted offline in the real world?

While detailed questions surrounding social capital and its use (or lack thereof) within the game were the ultimate goal of my research, the focus of my honours’ project was merely a proof of concept. By undertaking a small pilot study to discover the ways in which players of the game will interact with a virtual pollster avatar, I created the framework for the research I would like to conduct at the Masters level.

The initial research questions posed may seem small, but by no means are they insignificant. Through the creation and implementation of a virtual pollster avatar, it has been shown that it is possible to use the game’s mechanics to implement a survey in the virtual realm, mimicking the techniques of real world pollsters.

My first few attempts at contact as Surveylady received no responses and as I sat in front of my computer I began to wonder if Surveylady would be a flop. But then it struck me – real life pollsters often go to where they have a captive audience. Thinking back to the times that I had been approached to complete surveys at the skytrain station, I moved Surveylady to the entrance of the Deeprun Tram (the in game equivalent to a subway) and began to approach players as they left the station. This immediately yielded results and the rest of my in-game surveys were conducted at this location.

Surveylady started out the same way as all other characters do in World of Warcraft: I double clicked the World of Warcraft item on my computer’s desktop, entered my account information, chose a server and clicked on the create a new character icon, picked the race, gender, and physical attributes that I wanted my avatar to have, gave her a name, and then entered into the world of Azeroth.

However, after watching the opening cinematics and learning about the plight of the Night Elves, I chose not accepting quests to kill monsters, gather items, and complete tasks for the NPCs around me. I did not participate in the usual order of events that would eventually cause me to have enough experience for Surveylady to reach level 60 (now level 70 with the recent Burning Crusade expansion pack). Instead of playing in the beginning areas of the game until I had enough experience so that I would be strong enough to fight any monsters that would cross my path between Teldrassil and Ironforge, I ran through the protected starting area, through forests, marshlands and mountains being killed many times by higher level monsters all along the way until I reached my final destination.

Once in Ironforge I used the “whisper” feature to send private messages to other players currently playing the game, and approached them to partake in a survey. “Regular” players of the game would use a whisper to merely talk privately with one of their in game friends. Using the in-game mechanics and features to my own advantage, I showed that it is possible (and quite simple) to create an avatar to act as a virtual pollster.

In addition to creating this avatar, I had also set out to discover if World of Warcraft players would interact with Surveylady in a meaningful way. Those who I approached as Surveylady did not seem upset or annoyed that their usual experience in the World of Warcraft had become part of a university study. Instead, they usually responded, always in a pleasant manner, never lodging any complaints against Surveylady (to my knowledge). And finally, the data gathered from online and real world interviews did turn out to be similar in content.

Surveylady approached fifteen players on the US west coast server Blackwing Lair. Out of those fifteen players, six agreed to participate in an interview, but one decided to end the interview before it was completed. Three players didn’t respond at all, the rest replied back saying no. Those who replied to decline being interviewed had answers ranging from “no, my English is not so good” to “not enough time, maybe later”. Others replied with “no” and left it at that. Also, a series of interviews composed of the same questions as the virtual interviews were conducted away from the game, in order to compare and contrast against the survey responses gathered in the virtual realm. I approached six World of Warcraft players in real life to participate in a face-to-face interview and only one declined to participate.

Obviously the sample sizes are hardly statistically significant, but the primary objective of this study was to see if Surveylady was a viable means to collect data from players while they are playing World of Warcraft, and if their responses would match those of players who were surveyed in the real world.

Having satisfied my initial objectives I am now able to move on to a more detailed exploration of social capital in MMOs. However, one major stumbling block (or at least interesting point of debate) is how should I gain ethical approval for Surveylady to use in future studies? Since this research was conducted as part of a Communication honours’ project, ethical approval was not needed, nevertheless if I wish to continue this research at the graduate level, I now face the question of achieving ethics approval and having the informed consent of my respondents. If these are virtual interviews, is only virtual consent needed? At this time I have no firm answers but I will continue to look at the research methods for those conducting similar studies for ideas as to handle the ethics dilemma.

Overall, I feel like Surveylady has been a success and I am looking forward to what the future might hold for her, and my future studies of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games