SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Thursday March 23 2017, @02:47AM (2 children)
So the solutions are to:
- Panic and die.
- Be stoic and die.
- Have enough supplies to not die out until after the rest of humanity unless you get murdered by another subgroup of humanity for said supplies.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @10:53AM (1 child)
If it is truly the end of the world, then your supplies won't help you, by definition.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday March 23 2017, @04:58PM
I mean, ultimately, given enough time, no one survives, even without some extinction event. Everything dies.
My mind just boggles to contemplate the hillbilly living in his 150 year old farm house thinking that, because he dumps money into canned food (and sodium rich "survival" meals) and bottled water, that he's going to somehow magically survive some sort of calamity that's enough to wipe out civilization enough to disrupt his food supply chain but not kill him outright. No dude. I mean, it's possible something like that COULD happen. Given that every fucking prepper can't help but keep talking about exactly what the fuck they've been buying though to absolutely anyone who doesn't run from them as fast as they can, human nature will see someone taking it from you very soon, and there's not much your blustering about your shotgun is going to do to really stop them, once people start getting desperate enough.
No, that plan is entirely predicated upon the assumption that whatever disaster is generous enough to leave you alive, go away after a little while, and kill enough other people in your immediate surroundings (who aren't you specifically) that they can't get together and overpower you. I'm struggling to think of a realistic situation where that could have a better return than just buying instant lottery tickets. Political collapse is probably the only thing I can think of, but that also depends on things coming back together, and your neighbors not eating you and your stash, so it still loses once people get desperate.
Nope, it's just a hobby. You're taking an extreme amount of arrogance and hubris and turning it into a self-congratulatory pog collection. Con-fucking-gratulations.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!