undead astronauts

so a just published study looked pretty deeply into the demographics of everquest ii, and it comes up with some numbers which surprised me. parts of it are so surprising that i’m tempted to say that these numbers shouldn’t be generalized to other games or even other mmos. there are some definite stereotype busters here.

so some of the surprising results include the avg age (31). this isn’t as surprising to me as some of the other results, as i would have guessed somewhere in the mid to late 20s. but it’s definitely a far cry from teenage or even college age players that most ppl perceive as the biggest demographic.

the # of hrs played also mostly goes up by age. that’s another surprise. i would’ve thought that college age ppl had the most time to play games. that’s most certainly not the case.

gender also held surprises. 80% of players are men. okay, that wasn’t surprising. but of the 20% of women who do play, they play more than men. 29hrs to 25hrs. wtf… rly? that means the avg female gamer is harder-core than the avg male gamer. i would’ve bet money that this wasn’t the case and i would’ve lost. i’ve played w/ female gamers in various games and now that i think about it, i realize they ran more clans/guilds (or at least were in leadership positions) and played pvp more than i previously gave them credit for. this winter i pvped w/ one girl who said she had to play w/ one hand b/c she was carrying her baby in the other arm. that struck me as very hardcore at the time, but i had rationalized it as a fluke. but perhaps it is much more common than i realized.

for race, the surprising thing was that asians underrepresented their numbers in the general population (2.7% of players vs 3.6% of pop). that result completely contradicts my life’s gaming experience. but i don’t want to overinterpret this result before seeing the demographics of other games. i would be surprised if this holds up generally. but if other games mirror this result, it’s possible my entire perception of gaming has been skewed as a result of playing competively. asians have won a number of gaming tournaments historically including fps, rts, fighting, and mmo genres. they number 7 of 17 of the hall of famers in the wcg. the guild i played competitively w/ in gw were almost all chinese, and i regularly meet ppl who recognize my characters’ in-game names are chinese profanity.

the mean household income for players was $84.7k vs $58.5k for the general population. they also typically have higher educational achievement, are less likely to be christian or even religiously inclined, and are healthier than the general population. this might break stereotypes elsewhere, but i wasn’t too surprised by results here. most of the ppl i played w/ have been sharp and these results correlate w/ iq.

i hope future studies like these are conducted in all major gaming genres so we can see if there are differences between genres of games. my instinct is to say yes there must be differences b/c different genres of movies surely have different viewers, but maybe the data would surprise me again.

edit:

PS – i thought this was good insight.

this is one of the few pieces of public art that have ever gotten me to say “wow.” for a bigger pic, see here. apparently some of the residents don’t like it so much. but dude. come on… that’s like the most freaking awesome statue i’ve seen in my life.

ben g takes on steven rose here.

some choice quotes:

Modern psychometrics isn’t claiming that all of a person’s intelligence is measured by IQ or g. IQ is used because of its strong and reliable correlations with educational and economic performance, independent of class and race.

this is an important point and one i don’t think gets much emphasis. iq is short for intelligence quotient, but using the word “intelligence” makes the entire measurement controversial. the important thing about the measurement isn’t necessarily that high scorers are “smart” but that preferred life outcomes are correlated with them. i’m not talking about every high iq person earning money like bill gates. i’m talking about not getting busted for violent crimes, not having babies before u turn 18, and not living in poverty. whether u want to call it iq, g, or BS, the measurement correlates positively w/ many such outcomes.

rose disparaged the idea of culture fair iq tests, and ben responds thus:

Rose doesn’t understand what is meant by “culture fair.” It doesn’t mean that the test prevents someone’s culture from having an effect on their IQ score. Rather, it means that culture does not effect[sic] the test’s predictive validity. And that is indeed the case. Worldwide the correlations between IQ and economic/educational success are high.

in the US, non-asian minorities who score high tend to have life outcomes similar to the white majority in the same iq range regardless of home socioeconomic environment. (i say similar on purpose b/c it is not exact. there does appear to be price paid for having non-white skin, but the difference is not large.)

so a few days after darwin’s birthday we’re seeing a discussion in one of science’s biggest journal about whether we should actually investigate to what extent genes may affect different groups’ behaviors.

dan macarthur linked to articles in the journal nature that argue the point from both sides. i’ve discussed the same issue with friends. the argument basically comes down to whether there is any “good” to be gained from such research, or whether it would inflame racial relations.

i hold the view that biological information is instrinsically neutral and should be gained regardless of politics. whatever ppl chose to do w/ that information afterwards is what makes its effects a “good” or a “bad.” all science is the same way including physics, which many ppl consider the closest area of study of pure truth next to mathematics. physics gave us both the bomb and nuclear energy.

the fact is that we don’t know where the research will lead. ppl like jensen, hernstein and murry, lynn, and clark have argued that biological differences exist while others like gould, flynn, and ceci and williams have argued that they don’t. the ppl calling for a halt to such research implicitly accept that group differences will be found, and that they will find that stereotypes will be proven true. if they truly believed otherwise, why would they argue against such research? but research into these areas isn’t fated to bring bad news. even if it does bring bad news, it may come w/ a silver lining in the form of a solution to said bad news.

if such research is stopped there’s no chance of finding a solution, and it’s possible that society will continue to segregate. and by segregate i don’t mean primarily by race, although that may be a corollary. i mean by ability. to you who read this blog, who do u associate with? how many of these associations include the college educated? the avg american gets only 12 years of schooling. how many adults do u know who only have 12 years of schooling? if u graduated college, chances are high that u will associate will primarily other college educated ppl. if u associate with anyone from an ivy school, chances are high that many of ur friends will have advanced degrees and/or have attended highly ranked colleges. in a meritocratic nation, separation by class is inevitable and the internet can only make it worse. i don’t have the data on US class segregation, but i did manage to find a UK study that looked into this issue. when ppl aren’t bound to the major news networks for information b/c of the internet, ppl are more likely to read only sources they agree with and even then pay selective attention to the facts that agree w/ their political outlook.

the research in question might not reduce political segregation (although political views are heritable and hence may be selected for in the future), but at least it would reduce meritocratic segregation. it would also mean that incidents like this won’t piss quite so many ppl off b/c the kids likely wouldn’t be such leeches on society.

holy crap.

cali universities have had a no racial preference admission policy for years. that apparently isn’t the case anymore. in a nominal bid to increase black and hispanic admission, they’re changing the rules. they’re dropping the rule that states applicants must take 2 SAT subject tests. but here’s what’s really gonna happen:

Remarkably, though, the university’s own projections indicate that the plan will do almost nothing to expand black enrollment and will be of very modest benefit to Hispanics. Even more remarkably, the prime beneficiaries of the changes will be non-Hispanic whites, whose share of total enrollments is predicted to rise by 20–30 percent. And the big losers will be Asian Americans, whose numbers will be reduced by 10–20 percent. The net effect will thus be to make the University of California substantially “whiter” than it has been.

nice. gotta love those whiter ppl. they get to pat themselves on the back for being progressive on minority rights, and they get to stick it to those pesky asians who just don’t understand that they’re supposed to be nice and give up their spots to unqualified whites, oops i mean blacks and hispanics, who won’t graduate b/c they can’t understand the material.

EDIT: commenter AL47 posits that test taking ability may not properly gauge what makes a good college student. that’s certainly possible. but according to this (credit to half sigma for the link), the UC system already knows what better predicts college performance b/c of a study they themselves conducted back in 2001.

so w/ ABDC in it’s 3rd season, i thought i’d do a bit of research on one of the prime factors that interest me about the show besides the dancing. there’s consistently so many asians! but how many are there really?

i went to the abdc site and counted the racial makeup of all the groups. for some i had to resort to looking up surname origins, and even then, there were a few that were completely indecipherable to me that i left out. dancers like taeko from fyshnchicks, i also left out b/c i knew they weren’t monoracial. i kept track of the total however. so lets take a look at the numbers:

so for a pop culture heavy channel like mtv, on a show demonstrating the most competitive dance crews in the US, asians have made up over 1/4 of the total contestants. blacks make up the largest group (not surprisingly), and hispanics make up the smallest group.

i then looked at the representation ratio by dividing the contestant % by their respective racial pop w/i the US as stated by wiki. and wow, what a result. asians are representing at almost 6X their number in the general population. blacks are overrepresented at almost 2.5X their population. hispanics are closest to 1, and whites are very underrepresented.

by now, i’d guess a lot of ppl know how at least part of this situation is explained. while hiphop was started by blacks and hispanics in nyc ghettos during the 70s, since that time the cultural movement has spread worldwide. asians, and in particular filipinos, have become a major force in hiphop dance styles (various moderns, battle of the year winners, hiphop international winners) as well as other aspects of hiphop such as djing (qbert) and to a small extent in rapping (jin, far east movement) and fashion (bathing apes).

i don’t have data on this, but in my experience, asian american involvement in the clubbing scene appears disproportional to their population size w/ many clubs around the nation’s urban areas geared towards serving a primarily asian clientele. they may have also pushed certain dance styles such as liquid, freehand glowsticking (a form of contact juggling), and glowstringing in directions they wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

anyways. as pertains to abdc, california and texas asians make up a significant number of the really competitive dance groups. much of this is due to hiphop having strong cultural roots w/ filipinos, but other asian groups are certainly present. e.g., kaba modern was started by filipinos but the group of dancers that made it to the show had no filipinos. these dance groups routinely hold intercollegiate dance competitions such as vibe, fusion, and body rock, amongst others. 4 such groups (kaba, millenia, jabba and soreal) made it to abdc.

some may see this as stereotype breaking, but maybe it’s not so astereotypical after all. studies show that ppl w/ rhythm have higher intelligence, and of course asians are commonly stereotyped as being good academically and shit.

interestingly, there’s another study that says dancing may indicate reproductive fitness. in a jamaican group, members of the opposite sex rated symmetrical ppl’s dancing as more attractive than asymmetrical ppl.

now note that i’m not saying this proves anything racially beyond the issue that dancing prolly shouldn’t be considered stereotype breaking for asians. it should be considered par for the course.

i used to play guild wars competitively, and i still play during themed events like the recent canthan new year for the minigames such as dodgeball. anyways, during the january monthly guild vs guild tournament, something interesting occurred. I had read about something like this happening before in professional soccer matches in the book freakomonics. the tournament is swiss style, and how it works is that there’s a prelim elimination where the initial round of opponents are paired based on their ladder rank and are matched w/ opponents in future rounds based on the amount of points they receive after each round. a win counts for a certain amount of points, a draw fewer points, and a loss rewards no points. this tournament type is useful b/c a round number of opponents isn’t required. if there’s a participant that isn’t matched with anyone, they get a bye for that round and cannot receive another bye. after the initial 5-7 rounds where up to 32 teams compete, the top 8 teams advance to the finals and start with a clean win/loss record to play 3 more rounds. guild wars has an observation mode for high level pvp so that anyone can watch these tournaments after they’re complete.

so what happened was that rebel rising [rawr] was facing survival rate [zero] in their last round of the prelims. initially, everyone saw these teams doing the absolute best they could to gain advantage over each other and win. but after about 11 minutes, observers saw the 2 teams stop fighting, form a conga line and wait out the timer to draw the match.

the incentives of the game had suddenly changed. but what could possibly happen to make rawr, which is known as one of the most cutthroat guilds around and care for nothing but winning, suddenly stop and dick around?

apparently the players on both teams did some quick math and know a bit about game theory. the team virtual escape [vE] won their match at about 10 mins in, and now had more points than either rawr or zero. so rawr and zero were faced with something akin to a prisoner’s dilemma. they could continue to fight until one team won, in which case the losing team would fail to advance to the next round, or they could force a draw, in which case both teams would get fewer points than had one of them won, but enough for both to pass vE and enter the final rounds.

so they did what the professional soccer teams did in the exact same situation. they quit trying to win when it became clear both their teams would risk more by fighting than by cooperating. if one team decided to defect and go for the win, they would be sure to engender enmity in the other team and risk losing themselves in reprisal. so they rationally decided to cooperate and dance it away.

Arenanet, the developers of gw, didn’t quite see the situation as economists and have decided to mete out punishment to the two guilds. i believe that would be a mistake as it was anet’s own game mechanics which allowed such an outcome. if conga lines are an unwanted outcome, then they should properly incentivise the rounds by forcing some tie-breaking mechanism.

ps. games like gw use voice chat for calling team strats. i once played w/ three pounds from the team rawr and she had the most sexy fucking voice i’ve heard from any female who plays computer games. she just had this low sultry tone that made everything she said sound like it was coming from a phone sex operator. she was also the best infuse monk in the game.

pps. i actually won one such tournament during the winterbreak playing a snowball fight minigame. it was pretty thrilling to know we could destroy high ranked guilds as a much lower ranked guild playing a much simplified game. i may write more on this later.

*UPDATE: so the punishment came out and it was a slap on the wrist. rawr will have it’s permanent gold trimmed cape removed for a month and zero won’t get it’s silver cape. seems like anet realized it was their own game mechanics which allowed such an outcome and they’ll be updating it to discourage future such behavior. sounds like a good resolution to me.