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Psychologists Find Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, Good Academic Research

Ever since Pong the first video game people have been attracted to video games. Today video games are a billion dollar business and growing to over 11.5 million subscribers as of December, 2008. There are new games being developed every day and the level of sophistication and realism is staggering.

The first games where not much more than a bouncing dot with a paddle to redirect or block the dots, like Pong or Aliens. Later the theme changed to a bigger dot eating the little dots like PackMan. As the graphics and the processing power improved the games got better like Kings Quest, When Novell first started developing network software, they had a multiplayer interactive game called Snips and so started network interactive games.

Today with the advent of the internet and virtual reality, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) is the latest rage. The MMORPG is a role-playing game in which a many players interact with one another within a virtual game world through the internet.

As in any Role Playing Game, the players assume the role of a fictional character called an avatar and take control of that character’s actions in the virtual game world. Unlike the older single player games like Duke Nukem these games keep changing as new player enter the game all the time.

The themes of popular MMORPGs are based on traditional fantasy like Dungeons & Dragons, involving sword and sorcery. Interactions between the players may include fighting, flirting as well as teaming up with other players to obtain a particular goal or to overcome a more powerful player.

As you can see these games are fun, challenging and the number of subscribers to these games are growing every day. But did you know psychologists and sociologists are using MMORPGs as tools for academic research, to study subjects like emotional range and social interaction.

Oddly enough the Center for Disease Control used a temporary design glitch in the game World of Warcraft, where the Corrupted Blood disease of a monster began to spread uncontrollably throughout the game as a research model to chart both the progression of a disease, and the potential human response to large-scale epidemic.

Well I don’t know about you but I am not going to allow a bunch of psychologists spoil my fun so I will see you in the virtual world.

The following is a list of the top 10 Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

1. World of Warcraft, released 2004 – 8.5 million subscribers.
2. Habbo Hotel, released 2000 – 7.5 million active users.
3. RuneScape, released 2001 – 5 million active users.
4. Club Penguin, released 2006 – 4 million active users.
5. Webkinz, released 2005 – 3.8 million active users.
6. Gaia Online, released 2003 – 2 million active users.
7. Guild Wars, released 2005 – 2 million active users.
8. Puzzle Pirates, released 2003 – 1.5 million active users.
9. Lineage I/II, released 1998 – 1 million subscribers.
10. Second Life, released 2003 – 500,000 active users.

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