science
Examining the potential for exercise and exploration in Pokemon GO
Just in time for your New Year's resolution, we reported on how Pokemon Go was featured in a peer-reviewed study on getting people to move more. But...
Quantic Foundry’s findings on WoW, SWTOR, and gender
Quantic Foundry, the gaming analytics consulting firm we've been following since late 2015 thanks to its Gamer Motivation Model, has a new blog post...
Star Trek Online details the rewards for the Lukari Restoration Initiative
Why is the Federation fighting the Tzenkethi in Star Trek Online? To defend a sentient race, obviously. (You don't need as much justification for...
MMO lockboxes, keys, and booster packs: Gambling or gaming?
Lockboxes have become a hot topic over the last couple of years. Last month, both our writers and readers crowned SWTOR worst business model of...
Star Trek Online launches Season 12 on January 26
It's hard to believe that Star Trek Online is coming up on its seventh anniversary. But you should believe it; the game has been...
Pokemon Go: Increasing physical activity in the US, blockaded in China
Is Pokemon Go making you healthier? Maybe not yet, but researchers from a Stanford/Microsoft team have determined that Pokemon Go play correlates with increased physical...
Recapping MMORPG science in 2016
You guys may not have consciously noticed it, but we've been working harder and harder on our science-related articles in the past couple of...
The Game Archaeologist: Wing Commander Online and Privateer Online
In late 2012, former Wing Commander developer-slash-movie director Chris Roberts emerged from a decade of obscurity to ask for help to fund his vision...
Massively Overthinking: Our favorite MMORPG stories of the year
Earlier this week, we posted our award for the biggest MMORPG story of the year -- the one we thought had the biggest impact...
New research suggests head-mounted VR sets are unintentionally sexist
A new research study conducted by University of Minnesota researchers Justin Munafo, Meg Diedrick, and Thomas A. Stoffregen says that head-mounted virtual reality is unintentionally...
Epic MMO Battles of History: Star Trek Online vs. Star Wars: The Old Republic
Asking whether Star Trek or Star Wars is the better science fiction series is like asking whether Game of Thrones or The Tudors is...
A Parent’s Guide to Video Games: Condensing ‘The Video Game Debate’
Remember The Video Game Debate? The game research book edited by Thorsten Quandt and Rachel Kowert, the latter of whom we've been covering here since Massively-that-was? Good....
Former BioWare and Blizzard devs announce new online co-op RPG Dauntless
At the 2016 Game Awards last night, gamers laid eyes on Dauntless, a new online multiplayer (but not massively so, alas) RPG from indie...
The Daily Grind: Will players always trump NPCs as MMO PvP adversaries?
Prolific MOP commenter Sally Bowls posted a note last week that stood out to me as something we should all be seriously considering. Most...
The Daily Grind: Is Twitch chat just MMO general chat writ large?
Last week, an Indiana University Bloomington team released its analysis of over a billion comments made on Twitch over a two-month period in 2014...
Academics assess Pokemon Go’s value to conservation and education
Let's cap off the evening with some feel-good, sciency stories about Pokemon Go, shall we?
Zoologists at Oxford University are studying Pokemon Go to determine...
The Game Archaeologist: EA’s Majestic
"This is not a game. Or is it?"
Conspiracy theories and paranoia were hot with pop culture in the 1990s, largely thanks to movies like...
For Science: A third of our polled social media users quit Pokemon Go over trackers
Pokemon Go has received some large updates recently: the buddy system, medals, some big gym changes (twice), and now we've got dailies. We've been dazzled...
Guild Wars 2’s Shadow of the Mad King is live
Candy corn litters the streets of Lion's Arch today and the super creepy grinning moon has returned: Yes, the Shadow of the Mad King...
Flameseeker Chronicles: Gaming playstyles, science, and Guild Wars 2
I was curious recently about what specific personality traits or personal qualities lead to my enjoyment of MMOs in general and Guild Wars 2 in particular,...
