About this item
Proteus, the mythical sea god who could alter his appearance at will, embodies one of the promises of online games: the ability to reinvent oneself. Yet inhabitants of virtual worlds rarely achieve this liberty, game researcher Nick Yee contends. Though online games evoke freedom and escapism, Yee shows that virtual spaces perpetuate social norms and stereotypes from the offline world, transform play into labor, and inspire racial scapegoating and superstitious thinking. And the change that does occur is often out of our control and effected by unparalleled - but rarely recognized - tools for controlling what players think and how they behave.
About the Author
Nick Yee has explored online games and virtual worlds with a variety of research methods and tools for over a decade. He is widely known for the Daedalus Project, an extensive survey study of online gamers, and for his original research at Stanford University on the Proteus Effect, which describes how our avatars change the way we behave online and off. Formerly a researcher at the Palo Alto Research Center, he is currently a senior research scientist at Ubisoft, where he studies gamer behavior. In his free time, he enjoys painting miniatures, polishing amber, video games, and photography. He lives in Mountain View, California.
