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Sturmer's avatar

Several years ago, I conducted a small study to explore the impact of trust in video games, focusing on a concept similar to the "friendship machine" in Eve Online. Although I won't detail the entire paper here, the TL;DR version is:

"You fight together and, most importantly, you die together, creating a strong social bond through shared cooperative, traumatic & joy experiences."

An interesting observation, which I also personally experienced, is that if someone resists the temptation to steal in a game where such actions are easy and without consequence, it's highly unlikely they would steal in real life. For instance, while playing Lineage 2 with some friends for several months, we frequently entrusted each other with our virtual belongings. This trust transitioned seamlessly into the real world when one of these friends visited me for the holidays; I handed him my house keys without a second thought.

Boomer's avatar

I would really love to read that! Also, could you say more about the friendship machine?
EVE Online has been around for ages and is such a tight-knit community, so they're clearly doing something right! 😊

Sturmer's avatar

There has been much more content since 2019, CCP Ghost continues his work and in 2021 there was even a university course.

Here are the core ideas

https://www.youtube.com/embed/6rEfQ3GT73A?feature=oembed

Dave's avatar

I am very cynical and untrusting as I age and from experience. so I say "trust no-one" is the best approach, as the Xfiles taught us.

Boomer's avatar

That's the approach that's kept humanity going for 300,000 years, but then again, we've never had such powerful means of connecting as we have now 🤔

I appreciate trust is something built over time, but are there things you believe show someone as trustworthy?

Dave's avatar

Ha ha yeah.

It's an interesting question. To be honest I can't really think of anything. There obviously are things that feed in overall to a gut feeling/instinct about someone from their behaviour but I can't really think what they are to write them down. Is it just a sixth sense? I guess not but I don't know!

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