The United States' economy isn't doing so well, so you would think that money from the government is definitely hard to get, right? Well I also believed that until I heard that professor Bonnie Nardi of the University of California, Irvine had received a grant of 100,000 $ to study how Americans play World of Warcraft. The motivation that made the National Science Foundation help this project is why American players go to greater lengths to mod the popular MMO than the Chinese WoW players.

Professor Nardi even has some very solid arguments in her defense saying that “We are examining the many reasons for this disparity, including cultural and institutional factors. The vast majority of Chinese players are not ‘gold farmers’. They’re ordinary players like anyone. The media has blown that story out of all proportion. Many people think Chinese play for a job. They play for fun and have invented some interesting ways to play with the in-game economy. Ways that I have not observed here in two years of studying ‘World of Warcraft.’ Chinese players are more attuned to the aesthetics of the game. They talked more about color schemes, animations, architecture, and so on more than American players. Here and in Europe and Australia/New Zealand people play with parents and even grandparents. Not in China. The older generation dislikes video games. People here play with brothers and sisters. But in China people don’t have brothers and sisters for the most part, so friend relationships are very important”.

She does make a solid claim to the validity of her research but, in my opinion, $100,000 is going a bit overboard. If I wanted to study the mentality of American versus European Halo 3 players, would I be eligible for a big grant from the US government? This just goes to show that, in terms of research, no price is too high for the Americans.