A Video Game Study Reveals What People Do When The World Comes To An End

If you try while the world isn't ending, you'll probably receive a false impression, because the world isn't actually ending. People won't be interested in the results if you attempt when the world is truly ending, given their "other concerns" at the moment. When an asteroid is about to wipe off humanity, it will be tough to convince people to read your preprint.

One team sought to work past these issues by employing an analogous computer game in an effort to develop a different approach to research people in the end times. MMORPG ArcheAge was utilized by the researchers for their experiment because of its open world setting. Players were allowed to play normally in the study, completing quests, exploring, leveling up, and gathering equipment as they pleased. The study took place during a beta test. The players were aware that the server would be terminated and that all of their characters and progress would be lost at the conclusion of the 11-week period.

The consequence (or punishment) of players' recent in-game actions loses relevance, the team said in its non-peer reviewed preprint document.

Since there were no repercussions for the players' activities, the team reasoned that the world's elimination served as a good stand-in for the end of the actual world. They thought it would assist them in resolving the age-old issue of whether or not people would renounce moral principles as the end of the world approached.

To determine whether player behavior altered when they were aware that the "world" was ending, the team examined over 270 million records of player actions in the game, including leveling-up data and mission logs. With the exception of a few outliers who decided to go on killing sprees, the game was fairly quiet.

"Our findings show that there are no obvious pandemic behavior changes," the researchers said. "However, some outliers were more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior (e.g., player killing)." "We also discovered that, contrary to the reassuring adage that 'even if I knew the world would fall apart tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree,' players abandoned character progression at the end of the beta test, demonstrating a drastic decrease in quest completion, leveling, and ability changes."

In essence, you probably won't spend much time on self-improvement (like running) while the world is ending. According to the staff, those that stuck around until the finish of the game tended to be the most tranquil and probably showed the most commitment to it. The crew termed these players "churners," because they tended to act in the most antisocial ways, such as killing other players, since they lost "their sense of responsibility and attachment to the game."

Overall, the end of this planet was quite calm, and at times even pleasant, with the appearance of pro-social conduct towards the end, however the team emphasizes the study is of course constrained by the fact that it took place in a video game.

"Our findings that the sentiment of social grouping specific chat channels trend towards 'happier' as the end times approach is a first indication of this pro-social behavior: existing social relationships are likely being strengthened," the researchers said in its conclusion. Furthermore, we observed that players who persisted until the end of the world showed maxima in the frequency of tiny transient groups, indicating the emergence of new social bonds. The paper is available as a preprint through arXiv, which has not been peer-reviewed, and is published in the Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion.