Nick Yee

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Last Monday, March 17rd, 2008, Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics hosted Dr. Nick Yee, who applies his Communication Ph.D. from Stanford to conduct experimental research on social interaction and self-representation in immersive virtual environments at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

Broadcasting live on SLCN.tv from CMP's 4-sim Amphitheatre as part of Life 2.0 Conference, Dr. Yee discussed his research in detail.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: The way I see it we can organize your work into three different categories. There are the studies of how virtual environments affect the way we perceive ourselves and others; there’s the demographic work on who participates in games and why; and then there’s the work on social interactions in virtual worlds and, particularly, your research on guilds in World of Warcraft.

Interview highlights and analysis are available after the jump.

NICK YEE VISITS METANOMICS MARCH 17, 2008

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Welcome, everyone, to this special edition of Metanomics, on this 4 sim Amphitheatre on CMP Isles one, two, three and four. Metanomics presents an interview or panel dis-cussion on business and policy issues in virtual worlds every Monday at 11:00 A.M. Pacific time, Second Life time.

This Monday, March 17th, 2008, at 11:00AM-12:00PM SLT (2:00-3:00PM EST), Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host Dr. Nick Yee, research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center. Dr. Yee recently received his Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University, where he conducted experimental research on social interaction and self-representation in immersive virtual environments.

In preparation for this week's event, there is a wealth of background reading available on Nick Yee's website:

The Daedalus Project is an ongoing study of MMORPG players. MMORPGs (an acronym for Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) are a video game genre that allow thousands of people to interact, compete, and collaborate in an online virtual environment. Over the past 6 years, more than 40,000 MMORPG players have participated in the project.

At Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, I work with Jeremy Bailenson in using immersive virtual reality (VR) as a platform for conducting experiments in social interaction and self-representation. In particular, we are interested in exploring how to break the rules of physical social interaction to enhance interactions in virtual environments.

The PlayOn Group is a research group at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) that explores the social dynamics of Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). In the group, I parse and analyze large data sets from longitudinal in-game census snapshots.

Monday's event will take place in the 4-Sim CMP Amphitheatre on CMP Island in Second Life. It will also be filmed and streamed live on SLCN.tv.

If you discover it to be full, however, you can still participate in the event live at any of our event partner locations, which are listed after the jump.

On March 17, 2008, at 11:00 SLT (2:00 EST)
Professor Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host

Dr. Nick Yee, Ph.D.

Location TBA