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Researchers at Simon Fraser University will study the behaviour of computer gamers as part of a new international research program investigating relationships between the gamers’ real-world and virtual-world activities.

The Virtual Environment Real User Study (VERUS) research team is being led by John Murray at SRI International, a non-profit research and development organization, and headed up at SFU by education professor Suzanne de Castell.

They will recruit a group of volunteer gamers globally for a series of on-line and face-to-face studies in computer labs, internet cafes and other public gaming sites.

The researchers will also recruit local and SFU-based gamers—and non-gamers interested in participating—to play in virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft and others designed for the project, in SFU education department labs.

The team will invite participants to contribute their own perspectives on their avatars (virtual identities) and themselves, and explain how they see and experience the virtual environments in which they play.

Says de Castell: “A small sample will be, initially at least, studied more in depth to see whether using technologies like eye tracking and skin temperature may reveal significant objective physiological correlations between players’ real-world states and virtual-world situations and activities.”

Investigators participating in the VERUS project will have access to advanced research resources at SRI, including its artificial intelligence centre, speech technology lab and centre for technology in learning.

York University in Toronto and Nottingham University Business School in the U.K. will also carry out controlled gaming experiments.

With the global growth of online gaming, researchers like de Castell, a co-author of Worlds in Play: International Perspectives on Digital Game Research (2007), have been studying virtual-world environments more closely for another use: online teaching.

De Castell is part of a team that developed a game called Contagion that teaches young people about staying healthy in the face of contagious diseases (http://contagion.edu.yorku.ca/).

Also recently completed are two new games: Epidemic: Self-care for Crisis (http://contagion.edu.yorku.ca/epidemic-dev) and a baroque music game (http://contagion.edu.yorku.ca/tafelmusik/login/login.html).

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Correction: Dec. 9, 2009
SRI International is leading the Virtual Environment Real User Study, not Simon Fraser University as previously indicated.

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