The Daedalus Project explores roleplaying in MMOs

[Gimfalisette]

For those who don't play MMOs, the Daedalus Project is an ongoing research project by scholar Nick Yee into MMO demographics. Yee surveys MMO players and does qualitative interviews as well. He's done a lot of interesting topics, but recently he decided to tackle roleplay!

You can find the survey results here:

Introduction to the Role-Playing Series
Demographics of Role-Playing
Faces of Role-Playing
The Protocols of Role-Playing

I think this stuff is interesting to read from an ARM perspective because of market potential. Being a current player of MMOs myself, I know from experience that the RP there can't approach what's done here--primarily because there's no "support from above" and enforcement for real roleplay. Think of all those hungry roleplayers languishing in MMOs!

Plus I think the survey is cool because Yee quoted me three times

* edited for typos

[Zhaky]

they said that Flyff and MapleStory were MMORPGs but most players didn't get the RP, they ran and still runs around killing to get better... sigh. I seriously tried to play some RP in those but people just ignored it, cause there was nothing to encourage them to RP for real  :?

such a tradegy...... I LOVE ARM and the REAL RPers that play it, thanks to all of you