Researchers Snag 60 TB of Everquest 2 Behavioral Data 66
A group of researchers who went from game developer to game developer looking to acquire data for studying online social interaction got more than they bargained for. Sony Online Entertainment keeps extensive server logs of everything that happens within Everquest 2. When the researchers asked if there was anything they could look at, SOE was happy to share the entire EQ2 database — upwards of 60 TB — for their perusal. In addition to basic gender and age queries — who interacted with whom, and when — the scientists are also trying to find ways to track more subjective characteristics, such as performance, trust, and expertise. "To get estimates of them, the team is experimenting with trying to track physical proximity and direct interactions, such as when characters share experience from an in-game victory. To give a concrete example of the data's utility, Srivastava described how he could explore the phenomenon of customer churn, something that's significant for any sort of subscription-based service, like cell phones or cable TV. With the full dataset, the team can now track how individual customers dropping out of the game influenced others who they typically played or interacted with. Using this data, the spreading rate and influence factor could then be calculated, providing hard measures to work with."
Update: 2/18 at 21:04 by SS: Sony contacted us to set the record straight about the shared information. All information that could identify players was removed from the data given to the researchers. Chat logs were not shared at all. Read on for SOE's full statement.
"The information Sony Online Entertainment provided for the research project was scrubbed of all PII (Personally Identifiable Information) prior to being provided to the researchers. For example, no content of any player chat logs were shared with the researchers. The information shared consisted of data such as which in-game characters chatted with each other and the volume and frequency of the contacts. None of this information was connected to, or linked with, the real names or other PII, of any players. Basically, the researchers looked at the connections between players and how their online networks were built and used, not the content of any actual conversations that these players may have had with one another (that content was not made available to the researchers). Additionally, some EQ2 players voluntarily participated in a blind survey concerning their playing habits and demographic backgrounds. This information was anonymously gathered and shared between SOE and the researchers. Finally, corporations such as SOE and the researchers' universities have controls and safeguards in place to help to protect the privacy of individuals who voluntarily participate in surveys for research projects such as this one."
Update: 2/18 at 21:04 by SS: Sony contacted us to set the record straight about the shared information. All information that could identify players was removed from the data given to the researchers. Chat logs were not shared at all. Read on for SOE's full statement.
Back in my day... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, get off my porch.
Second research finding! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Female elves aren't what they appear to be. LOL
Don't meet offline, trust me on this!
Body Mass Index?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
FTFA: Mostly, the gamers seemed healthy; their body mass index was better than the US average and, although they were slightly more depressed than average, they were also less anxious.
How on earth is Sony measuring their customer's body mass index? I know 60 TB is a lot of data, but I don't believe that even the most magical of algorithms can derive player body mass indexes or whether they're "slightly more depressed than average" from it. I call bullshit.
Re:what a waste of space (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really, if running an MMO is what your company does. Keeping such logs is key to analysing game balance, tweaking the environment to optimise fun and game challenge, banning exploiters, and in general understanding the weak and strong points of your game, and fixing the weak ones. If you think those decisions are made solely on the basis of whiny posts on the forum, you have another think coming.
The interesting part is that this data is now being analysed in a different way, to study social interaction and behaviour... an area still somewhat poorly understood by MMO operators but in the end rather important to the success of their game. I can see why Sony was happy to allow their data to be used for this.
Knowledge is power... Power is money... (Score:1, Insightful)
You both make good points about the privacy issues. Games like this are wide open to be data mined. But then the whole Internet is effectively an extension of this datamining. The whole Internet is becoming like a giant storage system to the data miners.
Its like the old say, knowledge is power. Unfortunately some people fail to realize everything they do online giving someone else small fragments of power over them (and the small fragments add up) because that is the way the companies want it. They want to data mine everyone. No company or government is looking out for people's privacy. They don't want to protect privacy because they are the people who want to abuse everyones privacy. They all want as much information on everyone as possible. Knowledge is power. The only time they ever want to consider controls on privacy, is when its their own privacy at stake.
Its also the boiling frog principle as each small loss of privacy on its own doesn't seem important. It'll only be years later, when we all look back and they have our every thought and movement stored in their databases that we can see just how much total power it gives companies and governments. But by then it'll be too late.
The more information people give away, the more easy they are to control and manipulate. Which is exactly what companies and governments want. The irony is, psychologists have shown the people who think they're not easily manipulated have been shown they are the most susceptible to manipulation. (It makes sense because the most susceptible to manipulation have not learned to look out for manipulation).
Here's a paper on the subject...
"Creating critical consumers: Motivating receptivity by teaching resistance."
http://www.niu.edu/user/tj0bjs1/papers/sc04.pdf [niu.edu]
Datamining is becoming a huge growth industry because knowledge is power and the minority of people in power want to keep (and grow) their money and power over people. Its been the same thoughout history but now they have access to more information than their predecessor's could have every dreamed possible.
Plus its going to get worse. Much worse. Even the UK Lords constitution committee has warned at how far surveillance of people is going. Where the UK is now, the US and other countries are going to rapidly follow...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7872425.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Actually, that would worry me more (Score:4, Insightful)
Sony already did their part in not giving a flying fuck about protecting their customers' privacy
Why did you think you have any reasonable claim to privacy in an MMO? If you "sent some tells about sometimes wanting to kill your classmates or co-workers" not only would I not expect you to retain your privacy and anonymity, but I would expect Sony -- and anyone who read your tells -- to feel an obligation to notify the law. Talk "about sex to someone who, as it turns out, is 8 years old"? You should spend a night in jail just to cure you of your stupidity. Don't they teach you in school specifically *not* to make any assumptions about the age and gender of someone you "meet" online? You're worried that because you "Talked about drugs or homosexuality" potential employers might not hire you; if I were you I'd be concerned they wouldn't hire me because I lack any discretion and the common sense God gave a dog.
Do not write anything in any online forum anyplace, even under a pseudonym, that you would not be comfortable having viewed by your teacher/boss/wife/husband/neighbor. Period. You do not have any right to privacy online (somehow this slipped past the Founding Fathers) and you are a fool if you expect any.
Yes, be afraid! Be afraid! (Score:2, Insightful)
> Why did you think you have any reasonable claim to privacy in an MMO?
While I admit that not all speech is protected and some of your examples might have a bit of validity, your sense of proportions is way out of line.
> If you "sent some tells about sometimes wanting to kill your classmates or
> co-workers" not only would I not expect you to retain your privacy and anonymity,
> but I would expect Sony -- and anyone who read your tells -- to feel an obligation
> to notify the law.
Sony, maybe. From Sony's point of view, the tradeoff is relatively simple: what is the risk that this user will actually murder someone, and what kind of monetary damage could it cause Sony if that happened and Sony didn't report anything to the police beforehand, versus the cost of constantly policing the chats of that online game. But if you think your average police station is interested in investigating what might be tens of thousands of such reports (remember, you wanted every single user who heard this to report it), versus patrolling the streets and other more usual police duties, you're just being stupid. (I could understand your supporting users snitching to Sony, however, especially if the ToS encouraged or required it.)
> Talk "about sex to someone who, as it turns out, is 8 years old"? You should spend
> a night in jail just to cure you of your stupidity. Don't they teach you in school
> specifically *not* to make any assumptions about the age and gender of someone you
> "meet" online?
If this was in one of Disney's MMOs, well, OK, then jail is reasonable. If this was in a setting where the ToS explicitly forbids minors, then again, you're just over-the-top. It is unlikely in the extreme that any court would find you guilty of anything, unless you really have good cause to suspect that the person in question was a minor.
> Do not write anything in any online forum anyplace, even under a pseudonym, that
> you would not be comfortable having viewed by your teacher/boss/wife/husband/neighbor.
Again, fearmongering. You are correct that there is a risk of everything you post being connected with you, even if you use Tor or whatever, but, depending on circumstances, this risk could be very, very small. Like with everything else, you have to balance the risk of the post being connected with you versus the benefit of posting what you want to say. Just like when you decide to get in your car and drive to work.
> You do not have any right to privacy online (somehow this slipped past
> the Founding Fathers) and you are a fool if you expect any.
The legal system has a lot of inertia, and only just now starts to address this issue. So even if there is no recognized legal right to anonymity online right now, there very well could be one in another 20-50 years.
Chilling effect? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. I hope you realize that exactly that was what allowed the Soviet Union to keep its citizens in check.
Yes, everyone knows about Stalin's brutal repression, but that was toned down a lot after Stalin. They discovered that you can control people easier by making them think you have a dossier on them, and they can eventually get bitten in the arse by something they said in the past. And that even something which doesn't outright warrant a one-way trip to Siberia can bite them in the arse in some other way. Like maybe they won't ever be allowed to travel abroad again, or they'll never get a promotion now, or whatever.
It actually worked better than Stalin's executions and mass deportations, surprisingly.
People learned to do exactly what you seem to advocate: don't say anything you wouldn't be comfortable explaining to the nice commissar. Don't assume anything about someone else, other than that they might get you in trouble. (E.g., by being an agent provocateur and trying to get you to say something that'll remain on your record for ever.) Distance yourself from anyone discussing those forbidden things, you wouldn't want to go on record as associating with that kind of people.
It just made them unable to organize in any form or shape. That guy talking against the Party became not a guy to rally around, but someone who'll probably get you in trouble if you join him. You don't want that attached permanently to your record.
As an example of how well it worked, think Sakharov. He was a very loud in speaking against the regime... but nobody joined him anyway. The party was feeling secure enough about it to only slap him with an "exile"... to a relatively decent job in the fourth biggest city in Russia. Not in Siberia either. And while he did get a bunch of visits from the police, none seemed to be brutal or anything. Probably more to show everyone else that Sakharov _is_ being watched, and the party will know if you associate with him. It worked like a charm. Millions of people who secretly aggreed with him, didn't want to actually have it added permanently to their dossier.
And you have to bear in mind that we're talking about the dead-tree kind of dossier in the USSR's case. They had neither the manpower to actually supervise everyone and record everything, nor the search engine to actually find anything unless you actually gave someone a good reason to read yours. It worked anyway.
The recent trend of everything being recorded and indexed on the internet, could create a chilling effect of much more epic proportions.
2. Even if you take the approach of "if you were stupid enough to say X online, then you deserve whatever's coming to you", in reality it's trivially easy for someone to say stuff about you without your having consented. There'll be tells, blog posts, etc, discussing various things you've said or done or were mis-heard of saying.
So in effect if you want to have any kind of protection, you have to not say anything debatable to anyone, never assume about any person you meet IRL that they're not going to send an online tell about it, etc. Welcome to the wonderful world of talking only about the weather, and never trusting anyone. As I was saying, that's what turned the USSR into a mass of isolated and easily bullied individuals too.
Re:Chilling effect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Stalin... Sakharov...
Y'know, the real crime at the root of the online privacy debate has nothing to do with privacy, and everything to do with pretentiousness.
We're not talking about Sakharovs, people with dangerous ideas who genuinely have something to say, we're talking about people disguised as Dark Elves "cheating" on their wives through chat channels in a video game, or -- dorkier still -- IT admins who believe anyone outside their small circle of friends around the cafeteria lunch table give two shits why they prefer one operating system or another.
Cyberspace is filled with over-educated self-absorbed drama queens who have too much time on their hands, people who contribute nothing to society making their "private tells" worth reading. Stalin wouldn't lock these people up, he would just order his driver to bitch slap them.