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As the world ends, will you lock arms and sing "Kumbayah" or embark on a path of law-breaking, anti-social behavior?
A new study, based upon the virtual actions of more than 80,000 players of the role-playing video game ArcheAge, suggests you'll be singing.
The study, conducted by a University at Buffalo-led team of computer scientists, will be presented next month at the International World Wide Web Conference in Australia. It found that despite some violent acts, most players tended toward behavior that was helpful to others as their virtual world came to an end.
Researchers acknowledge that the results have limitations -- namely that they are based upon a video game, not real life. Nevertheless, researchers argue that the study offers a realistic view into the behavior of people in an end-times scenario that is useful to both the game industry and other research communities.
"We realize that, because this is a video game, the true consequences of the world ending are purely virtual. That being said, our dataset represents about as close as we can get to an actual end-of-the-world scenario," says Ahreum Kang, postdoctoral researcher at UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the study's lead author.
What would happen if the world was ending? As with most questions in life, Nicolas Cage has already supplied us with the answer.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Thursday March 23 2017, @01:23AM (2 children)
I don't really "get" that one.
If the world is truly ending and no one is going to live through it, even if I wanted vengeance on someone, just how much worse could I make it for them compared to what's about to happen to them anyway? Besides, I won't even be around to feel smug about it afterwards. I might get violent to protect others from any who do want to make mayhem, if it was needed.
I'd rather find some pleasant people to spend the little time left with or do something fun, because in a very short time it's not going to matter much anyhow. And during that time, I'd feel a lot better knowing I did what I could to make the ending world a little better in some way rather than making it worse.
That's after it's become obviously hopeless. Before it gets to that point I'd be trying like hell to figure out how to fix or stop the problem that was ending the world.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Thursday March 23 2017, @09:29AM
We should just go down to the Winchester and wait for all this to blow over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @11:09AM
I guess the ones who would go rampage would not be those who want vengeance, but sociopaths that normally would be held back by knowing the consequences of their actions. If you don't have to fear the consequences, this societal level of control falls away.
Or in short: If you think it's fun to do bad things to people, but not enough fun to compensate the inevitable punishment, then just before the end of the world you've got your chance to have the fun you want without fearing the consequences.
So this study effectively says that most people are not sociopaths. Actually it doesn't say exactly that, as most people can distinguish between killing a game character and killing a human, so even many of those who go rampage on the game might not go rampage would the world really end. And in reverse, a true sociopath might not act antisocially on the game; either because it's no fun for them to do bad things to virtual characters as opposed to real people, or because they know not only that this is not the real end of the world, but also that their actions in the game are monitored.