Study of Video Games Shows What People Do If The World Ends

Few things are as challenging as studying the end of the world and how people will behave in its aftermath. You probably won't get a true impression if you attempt when the world isn't actually ending because the world isn't really ending.

People won't be very interested in the outcomes if you try while the world is actually ending because they will be preoccupied with "other concerns" at the time. It will undoubtedly be challenging to get people to read your preprint when an asteroid is poised to obliterate humanity.

One team looked for a workaround for these issues by simulating a computer game in an effort to study people in the end times. In order to conduct their experiment, the team used the open-world MMORPG ArcheAge.

Players in the study, which was conducted during a beta test, were allowed to conduct their regular gameplay, including completing quests, exploring, levelling up, and gathering items as they pleased. At the conclusion of the 11-week period, participants were aware that the server would be terminated and all of their character development would be gone.

The outcome (or penalty) of players' in-game behaviours over the previous several days loses meaning, the team noted in their non-peer-reviewed preprint report.

Since there were no repercussions for the players' activities, the team reasoned that the world's deletion served as a good stand-in for the end of the real 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 behaviour altered when they were aware that the "world" was ending, the researchers looked at over 270 million records of player behaviours in the game, including levelling-up data and mission logs. With the exception of a few outliers who decided to go on killing sprees, the game was fairly quiet.

However, some outliers were more prone to engage in anti-social behaviour (such as player murdering), the scientists found. "Our findings show that there are no apparent pandemic behaviour changes," they said. "We also discovered that players abandoned character advancement, demonstrating a substantial decline in quest completion, levelling, and ability modifications at the end of the beta test," the study continued. "This is in contrast to the comforting adage that "even if I knew the world would go to pieces tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree."

In essence, you probably won't spend much time on self-improvement (like running) when the world is ending. According to the crew, those that stuck around until the end of the game tended to be the calmest and probably showed the greatest loyalty to it.

The crew termed these players "churners," because they tended to act in the most antisocial ways, such as killing other players because 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 behaviour towards the end, though the team emphasises 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 behaviour: existing social relationships are likely being strengthened," the team wrote in its conclusion.

Furthermore, we observed that players who persisted until the end of the world showed maxima in the frequency of small transient groupings, 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.

This item has previously been published in May 2023.