Discourse.net points out a Guardian article that reports:
Internet giant Google has drawn up plans to compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games.
The company thinks it can glean information about an individual’s preferences and personality type by tracking their online behaviour, which could then be sold to advertisers. Details such as whether a person is more likely to be aggressive, hostile or dishonest could be obtained and stored for future use, it says. …
… The plans are detailed in a patent filed by Google in Europe and the US last month. It says people playing online role playing games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft would be particularly good to target, because they interact with other players and make decisions that probably reflect their behaviour in real life.
The patent says: “User dialogue (eg from role playing games, simulation games, etc) may be used to characterise the user (eg literate, profane, blunt or polite, quiet etc). Also, user play may be used to characterise the user (eg cautious, risk-taker, aggressive, non-confrontational, stealthy, honest, cooperative, uncooperative, etc).”
The information could be used to make adverts that appear inside the game more “relevant to the user”, Google says.
Players who spend a lot of time exploring “may be interested in vacations, so the system may show ads for vacations”. And those who spend more time talking to other characters will see adverts for mobile phones.
The patent says Google could also monitor people playing on any game console that hooks up to the internet, including the Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox. It says information could be retrieved from previous game details saved on memory cards: “Such saved information may be thought of state information, and offers a valuable source of information to the advertisers.” …
The article ends with mentions of “massive multiplayer” online games World of Warcraft and Second Life. I’ve played both and I have to wonder if Google will also document, or cater to any advertisers who care about, the horrific amount of sexism in those games. Over at Screaming Into The Void, Amananta, (who has been highlighting “Sexist Gamer Comment Winners of the Day”), writes:
… I don’t think male gamers are actually more sexist than the males in the general population – in fact, there seems to be a liberal bias among many – I just have come to theorize that since they know they are a large majority of gamers (about 84% male) they figure either no women or not many women are going to hear how badly they think of them, so it doesn’t matter because it won’t hurt their chances of getting laid, since the women who might hear them are probably hundreds of miles away anyhow. They presume their audience is always male. There are programs where you can talk to gamers in order to do some gaming activities better, and whenever I or any other woman gets on they always are vocally stunned to realize there is an actual female playing. Therefore I can only conclude this is how men really think, is how they speak to each other when no women are around, and the more polite conversation they use in front of women publicly is just so they get a better chance of getting sex…
So I wonder: While it is violating gamer privacy on behalf of advertisers, will Google collect and disclose data about gamer sexism? And would this convince the folks at Linden Labs to integrate into their product dependable, remunerative employment opportunities for Second Life players who don’t want to do sex work?
–Ann Bartow
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