Game Worlds, Meta Version

Yrael

I read a paper a while back by this guy from IU, and while looking him up, found a TEDx talk he gave a year or so back.

Achaea has pretty much been my only game 'home', since I can't maintain interest in others, but I know a lot of you play other games, so I'm interested in hearing your perspectives on the matter. I never rolled into any big roles in game or became known past my own circle, but I can certainly say that I've learned some incredibly useful stuff from and about people in my time playing.

What have you learned/observed/found to be important? How have games impacted your RL life/the way you think about things?

And for anyone wanting to read an extremely interesting paper by this guy, have you felt the effect of what he mentions within? Seen anything of people that would have been difficult to see out in the wild?

And if any of you adminfolk give some attention here, what do you as game developers/stakeholders feel about social research as it applies to games? Castranova mentions a lot of large game companies sitting on all that data. I suppose release would be invasive of privacy, but for the value of the information, would it be worth investigating? And I ask this not in relation to any specific game (Achaea :P) but just with the thoughts and motivations of the creators/owners in mind.