Feldon 
A couple of months ago, I was contacted by Michele Marvel, a doctoral student at Walden University. She and her husband have played MMOs together for some 13 years, including Aion, Conan, Everquest, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, Rift, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. As a Psychology student, she has been very interested in research into why people play MMOs, and the communities that develop between like-minded players. To that end, she has put together an intriguing MMO player survey Characteristics and Motivation to Play in Adults Who Play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.
It took me about 20 minutes to fill it out and hopefully some of you will give it look as well. The survey has ~45 multiple choice questions and then a few demographic questions at the end. It should produce some interesting discussions once the anonymized results are posted. It would be great if SOE posed questions with a little more depth as this survey does.
MMOResearch – Take the Survey!
From Michele Marvel:
Hello Gamers! My name is Michele Marvel and I am a doctoral student at Walden University. I would like to invite you to participate in a research study that is designed to explore player characteristics, motivation, and participation in MMORPGs. The goal of this research is to provide information that will help educators and game creators to design effective virtual worlds that may be useful in higher education. If you are 18 or older and currently play MMORPGs (like World of Warcraft, Everquest II, Second Life, or Rift) please consider participating in this study.
To participate, all you need to do is to complete an online survey about your personality, gaming habits, and motivation to play MMORPGs. There are a few demographic questions as well. The entire survey should take about 15-20 minutes of your time. All survey responses will be kept confidential and you will not be asked to provide any identifying information as a part of this survey.
If you have any questions about this research project, please do not hesitate to contact me, Michele Marvel, at michele.marvel@waldenu.edu. You may also contact my dissertation committee chair, Dr. Hedy Dexter, at hedy.dexter@waldenu.edu.
It’s worth checking out her About Me page as she really is a gamer herself and wants to do something useful with this data.
Well thought out survey. I am very interested in seeing the results. And all MMO development groups should be, too. Pay attention, guys! 😉
Who is this research going to benefit directly? Are you looking to sell it to video game developers? I usually incentivize or offer a chance to win for the studies I run as time is valuable. Regardless, I applaud the effort to find out more info on the power of personas, social currency, and hierarchy as well as the basic Monty Haul. Thanks for sharing!
Needed a few extra questions. Perhaps “How satisfied are you with the game’s mods?” or “How satisfied are you with the way SOE treats it’s player base?” or perhaps “On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being the lowest possible level of happiness), how sanguine are you about the P7S1 move (negative integers cannot be used)?”.
Do I sound bitter? Yes, I think so too.
Kaufman,
My understanding is that Michele tried to arrange some sort of reward or chance to win but it just didn’t happen.
I took it a while back from the link in her signature on the forums. She has some links to interesting studies from her site also.
Nick Yee was a pioneer in this field, and I am glad to see research of this kind is still being carried out.
@Kaufman “Who is this research going to benefit directly?”
Ms Marvel is a doctoral student. The research is to directly benefit her dissertation and oral exams hence the inclusion of contact information to the chair of her dissertation committee.
A number of social-cultural anthropology and other departments have at least one dissertation in the works regarding the involvement of ‘play’ in a given cultural environment. I’ve been fortunate to read a few well-written, incredibly researched tomes on the subject.
Hopefully she gets a book and some invites to talk shows out of it. =)