for science
US Department of Homeland Security issues a nearly $700K grant to research extremism in gaming
There are toxic people in games chat, and then there are people who use video gaming platforms as a ways to encourage extremism and...
Bloomberg’s Twitch report exposes a platform rife with children and predators
Bloomberg has a deeply disturbing exposé this week on Twitch that demonstrates how the streaming platform intended for video games is being used by...
Star Stable launches new charity initiative to counter negative ‘horse girl’ stereotypes
A few weeks back I joked on the MOP podcast that I'm a secret horse girl, and it's true in real life and in...
EVE Echoes launches a Project Discovery science initiative, EVE Online preps for next Alliance Tournament
Regular players of EVE Online are likely very familiar with the game's Project Discovery "citizen science" initiatives that let players help out scientific research,...
Axie Infinity CEO caught shuffling $3M in the game’s crypto tokens before announcing its $620M hack
No matter how decentralized cryptocurrencies claim to be, there's always going to be a paper trail to follow, and one such trail was left...
EVE Online’s Fanfest data dump shows a surprisingly wide range of player types
EVE Online is going full science fair mode with the release of a whole suite of fancy graphs and data collected and presented during...
For Science: New research affirms online friends provide emotional and informational support
You've probably seen the declaration that "online friends are real friends" somewhere on the internet a few times, and while that can seem pretty...
The Daily Grind: Should MMO PvP matchmaking focus on challenge or engagement?
MOP's Sam recently stumbled across an MSM article that quotes multiple streamers and esports players essentially complaining about matchmaking systems in competitive games. The...
The Daily Grind: Are you playing a ‘morally disengaged murder hobo’ in MMOs?
The Psychology of Video Games podcast recently did a bit on "murder hobos," and yes, Dr Jamie Madigan does point out that the term...
Activision-Blizzard creeps out the internet with its ‘Diversity Space Tool’ as union-busting continues
Friday afternoon, Activision-Blizzard proudly trotted out a dev blog talking up the creation of a "Diversity Space Tool" that the company has apparently been...
Trove’s new player survey nods to Quantic Foundry’s Gamer Motivation Model
Gamigo did more than just update Glyph this week; it also posted a survey for Trove players to "share thoughts and help shape...
An esports pro is developing an AI system to help game devs track and address in-game toxicity
You'd be forgiven for believing that reporting someone's behavior through in-game tools simply sends that report directly into some unseen void that devs don't...
GDC 2022: Control, revenue, scarcity, ethics, and the human challenges of the gaming ‘metaverse’
While some panels at GDC 2022 have been deeply disappointing, the panel titled "A Brave New (Virtual) World: Ethics and Governance of XR and...
GDC 2022: How ‘game stressors’ mix and match for repeatable content development in MMOs
Continuing our GDC 2022 coverage of Bungie Principal Technical Game Designer Alan Blaine's talk on building challenges and reusable content in Destiny 2, we're going...
GDC 2022: Learning from the seven game stressors in Destiny 2
GDC 2022 coverage has a bit slow this year thanks to virtual tickets being kind of a misnomer (if the panel isn't live and...
Massively on the Go: How pokedex building could be used for server-wide ‘science’ questing
Well, I'm sorry to report to multiplayer gamers that despite having online features like New Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Legends: Arceus is very much a solo game,...
How video game player data collection processes have expanded outside of gaming
The EULA - aka the wall o' text that we all blitz past in order to get to play the MMORPG or multiplayer title...
GDC’s State of the Game Industry: NFTs, the metaverse, and more than half of game devs want to unionize
Ahead of the annual Game Developers Conference, GDC organizers poll industry workers and release it all in a state-of-the-industry wrapper, which has landed in...
A look back at the MMO and gaming science topics of 2021
It's now become a long-running tradition on Massively OP to track science stories that track with online gaming and MMOs - this is our...
Richard Bartle’s new book seeks to intersect theological thought and MMORPG design
If you're new to our genre, first of all welcome, and second of all you should be familiar with Dr. Richard A. Bartle, a...
