Results of some of the first long-term research into online video game playing, conducted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign alongside Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has reached results claiming that there is no evidence of a strong link between video game violence and aggression behavior in players.

Studies were made of players of Turbine’s massively multilplayer online role-playing game Asheron’s Call 2, where, after an average of 56 hours play a month there was found to be “no strong effects associated with aggressionâ€? caused by the game. Players were found not to be statistically different from the non-playing control group in their beliefs on aggression after playing the game than they were before playing – according to Dmitri Williams, the lead author of the study.

Of course, if they studied the effects of MMORPGs on housework, they might have had a very different result.

How is it the yoyos thought they’d get away with this?

One Everquest II server suffered 20 percent inflation in the space of 24 hours after hackers exploited a bug in Sony’s code, before being rapidly rolled back.

Sony claims that a group of hackers illegally created a huge amount of Everquest II (EQ2) currency over the weekend, and says the players caused the game’s economy to suffer 20 percent inflation in just 24 hours before being caught.

According to Chris Kramer, director of public relations for EQ2 publisher Sony Online Entertainment, the players had on Saturday begun using their so-called “duping bug” to make large quantities of platinum, the game’s currency. (A duping bug is a hack that exploits a weakness in online games’ code to dublicate existing items to effectively create counterfeit currency or other goods.)

The players then began trying to sell the ill-gotten platinum on Station Exchange, the official auction exchange for EQ2 weapons, armour, currency and other virtual goods. “The amount of money in the game increased by a fifth in about 24 hours,” Kramer said. “We have a lot of alarms for this kind of thing, and they all went off on Saturday.”

The economy of the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) was quickly brought back to its pre-attack state, Kramer added.

SOE launched Station Exchange last month. The auction system allows EQ2 players who wish to buy or sell the game’s virtual goods for US dollars to do so in a system overseen by the company.

I’m sure it’ll be spun that having an Exchange-enabled server was a good thing in this case, instead of, say, providing a legitimate and popular way for people to buy large quantities of platinum to begin with.

You just can’t make some of this stuff up.

The Sims Online is a for-profit subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) operated by Electronic Arts (“EA”).[4] Peter Ludlow is a University of Michigan philosophy professor[5] and author of the Alphaville Herald virtual newspaper,[6] which chronicles in-game developments.

The incident started when Ludlow alleged that The Sims Online participants, including some teenagers, engaged in “cyber-prostitution” in the game.[7] The term “cyber-prostitution” implied that avatars were engaging in simulated sex, but the game’s architecture limited the participants’ ability to do so.[8] Instead, participants (including some teenagers) allegedly traded cybersex chat for in-game currency,[9] although Ludlow picked a fairly inflammatory term to make the point.

Ludlow’s claim received some media attention, and Ludlow claims EA targeted him because this publicity was damaging to EA.[10] EA responded that Ludlow violated EA’s rules by linking from his in-game profile to his newspaper site. It’s a little unclear exactly why this link violated EA’s rules. Some reports say that the link broke the rules because the Herald site linked to information about how to cheat the game;[11] other reports say that a rule violation occurred because the Herald site was a commercial web site.[12] Based on its user agreement, EA probably could have terminated Ludlow’s account without any justification at all,[13] but EA appears not to have taken that route.

Whatever its reason, EA terminated Ludlow’s account in The Sims Online—giving him the online equivalent of the death penalty. Ludlow claims that this termination was unjustified and discriminatory because EA selectively enforced its rule against him and not others.[14]

Since the termination, Ludlow has railed against EA for its censorship. That is not unusual; many disgruntled customers have found a soapbox in cyberspace. What is unusual, however, is that Peter Ludlow’s story became a cause célèbre. His termination was covered by the New York Times,[15] the Boston Globe,[16] CNN,[17] the BBC,[18] and Salon,[19] and high-profile commentators such as Professor Balkin have supported his cause.[20]

I think the author must be relatively unfamiliar with online gaming to not consider trading simoleons for cyber to be prostitution, just because the little pixels don’t show getting it on. Amusing that EA’s response was to try to eliminate mentions of the practice, rather than to do something about the practice itself.