Social Science in cyberspace

Marco Janssen and Allen LeeCenter 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 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-to-pay 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

2003 U.S. Industry Profit Numbers Gaming Industry $10.0 billion

Online Games (2003) $ 1.9 billion Online Games (2009) $ 9.8 billion

Hollywood box office movies $ 9.5 billion Music industry $14.3 billion Home video rentals $19.0 billion

MMOG Industry

Virtual 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 creationsWhat 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 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 LifeIntellectual property rights reserved to residentsSales of goods and services$L – US$ currency exchangeLand “ownership”

Linden Lab's nonintervention policyNo 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” avatarsGambling- 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 newsCriminal law

Financial fraud, identity theft, hacking (DarkLife theft) Virtual rape investigation Porn, money laundering, terrorism?

Rights and liberties on international stage -- mostrestrictive 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

Nowak, Kristine L. & Rauh, ChristianThe Influence of the Avatar on Online Perceptions of Anthropomorphism, Androgyny, Credibility, Homophily, and Attraction.Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 

The androgynous-looking avatars were perceived as being lesscredible. The authors make a leap to trustworthiness and argue that human-like avatars are important for representing trustworthy avatars.

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,