Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Reader Huon Longman got in touch with us, asking if we could help out with his thesis study examining the levels of social support derived by players of MMOs based on the resulting social networking, as well as what effects this has on symptoms of anxiety and depression, stress levels, and overall life satisfaction.

Which seems like an interesting study to us, so why not. If you think you’re a WoW player, and interested, there’s an FAQ all about the project below, along with details of where to get involved.

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Valve have released the latest user survey data, which records the specs of the machines, and software on those machines, belonging to the people playing their games.

If you’ve used Steam, you’ll know that every now and then you’re asked to participate in the survey (and if you’re me, which I am, you’ll know that for some reason it always fails to send). All that data is collated into their constantly updating results page, where you can go, “Coo, are people really still trying to use machines with 128MB RAM?” And then laugh about how superior your machine is, until noticing that 3.95% of people have quadcore, and feeling rubbish again.

You can view the latest figures here, and compare them to the May to August figures here. Below are some of the more interesting changes.

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