A study by researchers at the\u00a0North Carolina State University has dispelled the myth that gamers are anti-social.<\/p>\n
“Loners are the outliers in gaming, not the norm,” said Dr. Nick Taylor, an assistant professor of communication at the university.<\/p>\n
Taylor, along with staff from\u00a0York University and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, travelled to 20 public gaming events in Canada and the United Kingdom to observe the behaviour of thousands of players and, took a detailed survey of 378 players.<\/p>\n
The research was focused particularly on\u00a0<\/span>Eve Online\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>World of Warcraft players. The resulting study found that, not only did gaming not eliminate social interaction, it supplemented it. \u201cGamers aren’t the anti-social basement-dwellers we see in pop culture stereotypes, they\u2019re highly social people,\u201d said Taylor.<\/p>\n The researchers tracked the online and offline behaviour of gamers, focusing on how they communicated with each other.\u00a0\u201cWe found that gamers were often exhibiting many social behaviors at once: watching games, talking, drinking, and chatting online,\u201d said Taylor.<\/p>\n The study found that gamers’ social behaviour was consistent, regardless of which games were being played and how the player behaved in the game. “For example, a player could be utterly ruthless in the game and still socialize normally offline,” he said.<\/p>\n The study is called “Public Displays of Play: Studying Online Games in Physical Settings” and is published in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication<\/a>.<\/p>\n March top gaming news round-up<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Deus Ex: Human Revolution live action fan film<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\nSource: Polygon<\/a><\/h6>\n
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