Cosmopolis: A Massively Multiplayer Online Game for Social and Behavioral Research.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), in their aspect as online communities, represent an exciting opportunity for studying social and behavioral models. For that purpose we have developed Cosmopolis, an MMOG designed to appeal to a wide variety of player types, and containing several key research-oriented features. The course of development has revealed several challenges in integrating behavioral models with an MMOG test bed. However, the Human Social, Cultural, and Behavioral (HSCB) research value of Cosmopolis has been demonstrated with a number of prototype studies, and based on these studies and challenges we propose an ongoing experimental plan largely driven by collaboration with HSCB researchers.