What your gaming handle reveals about you

[nicehat]

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Analysis of anonymised data from one of the world’s most popular computer games by scientists in the Department of Psychology at York also revealed information about their ages.

Professor Alex Wade and PhD student Athanasios Kokkinakis, a PhD student on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-funded Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence(IGGI) project, analysed data from League of Legends, a game played by around 70 million people worldwide..

 

Quote

The developer of League of Legends, Riot Games provided 500,000 data points for the analysis. These anonymised data contained user names, information on the in-game behaviour of players and the reaction of other gamers – the latter from the post-match ‘Honour’ and ‘Report’ feedback each player can file.  The study is the first to use this methodology to examine player interaction in a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game.

The researchers found that where a player incorporated a profanity or other anti-social expression in their user name, they tended to adopt similar anti-social behaviour in the game environment. Conversely, they found that positive in-game behaviour such as rapid learning, team building or leadership might correlate both with positive usernames and with positive personality traits in the real world.

The psychologists also discovered that where numbers featured in user names, it often provided an indication of the age of players

 

Probably obvious by now, but I wonder if this also translates to forums members. Anonymity ftw. 

 

Also interesting:

 

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The researchers say that mining of video game data could become an important area of research into the personalities of players, as well as potentially providing evidence of clinical disorders such as autism, sociopathy or addictive personality. The research is published in Computers in Human Behavior.

 

https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2015/research/usernames-video-gamers/

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215301655

 

[IMPERIUS]

Pretty Obvious imo

[PlayStation 2]

What exactly would a username like Dan Castellaneta imply?

[Vivilacqua1]

So my last name and a #1?

[KingKeith55]

As for the number things I think they mean those kids who have names like: superawesomeman2877571662051 or any name with a long string of random numbers at the end.

[Yummychickenblue]

That I'm actually a quite delectable blue chicken

[Zodiark1593]

That mine is a trophy from the biggest pain-in-the-rear boss fight ever and a diagonal set of numbers on the number pad.

[KuJoe]

That I lack in creativity because I use the same handle everywhere in life.

Edited March 13, 2016 by KuJoe
Wrong word.

[KemoKa]

KemoKa implies absolutely nothing unless you both speak Japanese and understand the context of my username. Nothing about it implies Fox Lolis to the uninitiated.

And it's even more baffling if you don't pronounce it correctly. The accent is on the 'Ke', not the 'mo'.

[Shakaza]

My username doesn't mean anything at all. It's just a name I came up with years ago that I thought sounded good.

[Orangeator]

Well A. This is pretty obvious and if I talked to anyone over chat for a minute or so without knowing I was analyzing them I could probably get there age down. 

[nekomata]

What does h37 imply then?

[branden_lucero]

i forgot

[nicehat]

Well, I guess we could turn this thread into a "what does your tag mean"....continue to discuss i guess