Studying Virtual Worlds

In the program of the International Students Forum, much attention was paid to one of the most rapidly developing research areas: studies of computer games, the Internet and virtual worlds.On the 4th and 5th February the HSE hosted the International Student Research Forum at the campus on Kantemirovskaya Str.

The forum programme was impressive even at a first glance, as it encompassed all research areas and united researchers with very different interests. In our article, we shall focus on one of the new sections of the forum, which will be of interest to everyone who looks for inspiration in science. This section was devoted to one of the most rapidly developing areas in the scientific world, "Social studies of computer games, the Internet and virtual worlds."Over two days, the participants presented, in 10 talks, on player role models, on opportunities for social interactions in games, on economic conditionality, and on scientific problems that can be solved by studying the gaming reality. Students and researchers from the St. Petersburg HSE, the University of Tampere (Finland), and Gothenburg (Sweden), business representatives from Amini Lab and Playvision were discussing the prospects of studies in the area of virtual reality and the prospects of development of a new generation of educational games.

Professor Daniel Alexandrov, the Head of the St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Humanities, gave a talk on the role of games as experimental platforms for studying social behavior. For example, the dynamics of server transfers and migrations from one game to another can be regarded as a model for mobility at any scale, from labor migration between countries to career mobility during changing jobs. Criminal behavior of terrorists or drug traffickers also can be studied in computer games by watching players who break the strict rules of the virtual environment while staying within the real-world laws. The problem of formation of successful teams, which is a very important management issue in business and in sports, can be studied comfortably in the environment of online games, where all group activities of players get recorded on the game servers. Therefore, online games offer perfect study grounds for research in dynamics of social behavior.

Professor Frans Mayra, the Head of the Game Research Lab at the University of Tampere, Finland, was present at the section as a guest speaker. In his lecture he was talking about the history of the game research as a study area on its own, as well as about the latest trends and directions in game studies, specifics of interdisciplinary co-operation between researchers, and problems of education in this area. After the lecture, Professor Mayra answered many questions from the students and later, at a separate meeting with the students in the area of social informatics, he discussed their ideas with them. Elena Bogdanova (the University of Gothenburg, Sweden) gave a lecture on the important issue of pricing and formation of values in virtual worlds, and what exactly determines the value of specific items for their buyers and owners. In her study, Elena applied the methods used in economic sociology, and described different approaches to the formation of values and item valuation, as well as the similarity between the virtual markets and markets for arts and fashion. In addition to strictly scientific importance of this topic for economics and sociology, it is also important for the modern gaming industry. Among other presentations, Anna Shirokanova (Associate Professor in Sociology) and Daria Kharkina (a student of SELS) talked about their research and methods applied to game studies. 

At the round table the students of the first and second year had an opportunity to discuss their ideas for further studies in the area of computer games. Their senior colleagues Prof. Aleksandrov, E. Bogdanova, V. Ivanyushina, O. Koltsova and A. Shirokanova were helping them to shape these ideas into designs for possible future research projects. The discussions were lively and interesting.Why were students interested so much in this area? Why did they feel that it should be worthwhile to study virtual worlds? In the modern culture, computer games have become an integral part of everyday life, and their audience includes not only the young people but also older generations. The global turnover of the game industry is much higher than the turnover of all other forms of entertainment.  This is why the curiosity and scientific interests of researchers follow the social trends and, keeping in step with the modern times, discover new phenomena in our reality. They include social economics, consumer strategies, prospects in the development of gaming industry and of real world business that is built on game creation and game development. Summing up the results of the section, we can safely say that development of virtual gaming reality will be one of the leading business activities in the nearest future, and the Higher School of Economics will become a centre of scientific research in this area.