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Dmitri Williams: Who Plays?

USC Professor Dmitri Williams talks about his terabyte-sized data set from Sony Online Entertainment. We delve into Dmitri’s survey results on who plays massively multiplayer online games, and take a look at the future directions of the research project, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Read more about it at Terra Nova. We kick off the show with a review of Spore, filmed inside the game by our Metanomics gaming correspondent Hydra Shaftoe.

Gaming is a highly social activity, and we know from media research dating back to at least the 1930’s that social context can change media effects drastically. Some games have vibrant social communities, and some have none. A massively multi-player game like ‘‘World of Warcraft’’ is as unlike a game like ‘‘Doom’’ as ‘‘Sesame Street’’ is from ‘‘The Sopranos.’’

Testimony by Dmitri Williams to the U.S. Senate

Guest Biographies

Dmitri Williams

Dmitri Williams is an assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, where he is a part of the Annenberg Program on Virtual Communities (APOC). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2004. His research focuses on the social and economic impacts of new media, with a focus on online games. Williams was the first researcher to use online games for experiments, and to undertake longitudinal research on video games. He continues to study the psychology of online populations, with projects involving community, identity, sexuality, economics and neuroscience.

He has published in the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Communication Monographs and others. His work has also been featured in several press accounts, most recently on NPR, and in publications including the Economist, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times and others. Williams testified before the U.S. Senate on video games and served as an expert witness and consultant in two federal court cases.