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A conversation with Cory Doctorow plunges into the matter at hand so quickly that it's almost impossible not to imagine yourself falling through an internet-era rabbit hole of pop culture and technology. Doctorow is all about synthesizing ideas and spitting them out in as accessible a fashion as possible, and the ground he manages to cover in a single stride can be mind-boggling; he's a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger, father, gamer ... A former WoW player and husband of gaming standout Alice Taylor (also previously profiled here in 15 Minutes of Fame), he's widely known as the co-editor of Boing Boing and author of the bestselling young adult novel Little Brother.

"In their continued quest to plumb the mysterious depths of human interactions, some sociologists have stopped watching people-and started watching their avatars. And the US government is paying them to do it. While playing World of Warcraft and traipsing through Second Life might not sound like traditional academic disciplines, they are increasingly important for research into virtual communities. This burgeoning subdiscipline even has its own publication, the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. What gets studied? Gold farming, "goon culture," griefing, entrepreneurial activity, intimacy, even "The Visual Language of Virtual BDSM Photographs in Second Life," which appeared in the most recent issue of the journal. "

"Instead of logging onto Blackboard to complete homework this spring, students in one class will enter the "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life" to study the culture of online virtual environments. "Discourses, Community, and Power in Virtual Worlds," or ENG 654, is open to students of all majors and interests. The course intends to adapt to an increasingly technological environment. "We want them to get the experience of playing together with different characters that have to take on different roles to really get an experiential sense of how complex game play is in that environment," said English professor Elisabeth Hayes, who will teach the class with law professor John McKnight. The class will meet in a physical classroom for half of its sessions and the rest will be held virtually in "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life.""

"After the Lead Content Designer of World of Warcraft (WoW), Tigole, deemed a new set of rewards ''welfare'' epics, the WoW player community responded in a multitude of fascinating ways. Using rhetorical analysis, gaming studies literature, and a critical analysis of welfare discourse, four rhetorical strategies can be seen in the discourse produced by the playing community. From directly confronting Tigole's statements to lamenting a loss of avatar capital and analyzing the role the changes have on the multiplayer aspects of the game, the rhetoric of ''welfare'' epics offers unique insights into the importance of balance and scarcity in the normative structures of WoW, how players accept and perpetuate the belief that rewards in online games should be ''earned,'' and how WoW's system of rewards has been fundamentally altered since the game's launch."

"The Daedalus Project was a long-running survey study of MMO players"