Nick Yee's Daedalus Project has been growing steadily over the many years it's been up. In that time, The Daedalus Project has managed to tackle everything from the reasons behind why people play online games to who exactly plays the games we all love. In the latest installment of Daedalus' findings, it seems there's now some sort scientific evidence to suggest that some players get their girlfriends to play to get themselves free healing.

According to the results of their latest study, women are more attuned to playing healing classes rather than men. At least 10 percent more likely, in fact. One thing they noted in the study was that this was an iffy topic for making complete generalizations mostly because of the different variables involved, such as playing with significant others. True, women may heal and men may fight, but the reasons behind it may be far from what we would expect of this sort of reasoning.

That being said, what would be your source of reasoning for playing the game? Why do you heal or fight, and do you do it because of someone else?

Regardless of what game you play online, you're certain to have an avatar. Whether that avatar is an extension of yourself or not, it does stand to reason that your avatar can grow to outlive you. The question ABC News tackles, however, is something you might want to think about if you intend to invest so heavily in your games: Do you want to live forever?

In the discussion of the topic, some aspects of the discussion point to "Yes," especially when you look at the avatar as the extension of yourself or of someone you know. According to Nick Yee of The Daedalus Project, an online journal of virtual world demography and psychology, some gamers see their avatar less as the character in that one game than as a set of concepts and ideals they carry from one game to the next.

Read the rest of the article after the jump.

Remember the unwritten rules we usually have in the real world (no groping of people we don't know, no invading of personal space, no running around naked like a fool)? Researchers have discovered that some of those unwritten rules have followed people online.

Nick Yee and fellow researchers at the University of Stanford looked at the inhabitants of Linden Lab's Second Life to see if the online game's users behaved like people in the real world. Using a program to monitor 1,600 avatars and their social interactions, they concluded that certain social rules have entered into online interactions. For example, male avatars tend to stand further away from one another, and people who interacted in their study had the tendency to reduce their eye contact with people by shifting to one side.

What does this do for scientists? For starters, if it can be determined that people's interactions in a game like Second Life are much like the interactions of people offline, certain online games would be an alternative yet reliable place to acquire social data. Yee and company also mention that the game could very well have a far more diverse pool of individuals to work with.

The only difficulty is in finding out which kind of social concepts travel from the real world into the game world. Risk, for example isn't as big a deal online, and thoughts of death in-game are more of minor inconveniences than the "end" that we know of in real life. This study, at the very least is the first step towards knowing more.

As for gamers, it helps if you're observant. You may just find out that the way you act online can be more or less like the way you act in the real world... so we better learn to behave!

For Stanford PhD candidate Nick Yee, MMORPG's aren't just about fun and diversion; they're a socio-psychological phenomenon with potentially huge implications for society.

Who are MMO gamers? What are the "rules" of the MMO culture? Has this become a new hunting ground in the search for a mate, another battleground in the war between the sexes - or both? What type of social activities and societal diseases are showing up in the virtual world of online gaming?

The answers may surprise you. Nick Yee has been studying MMO gaming for going on seven years, and among some of his more surprising discoveries:

• Only about 25% of MMO gamers are teenagers. In fact, the "typical" MMO gamer is aged 26.
• Half of all MMO gamers have full-time employment. 36% of these are married, and 22% have children. Despite this, they manage to find 22 hours per week to devote to gaming, and a full 60% say they have played for as long as 10 hours in one sitting.
• Contrary to the stereotype of the lonely, dysfunctional nerd who has no life, 80% of all MMO gamers play with people they know and with whom they are in some kind of relationship (family member, friend, lover, or other).
  

As to the "why," Yee has been unable to come up with a single answer. In fact, one major appeal of MMO gaming is that it has something to offer to nearly everyone. Some play for power, others for the opportunities to socialize, still others are attracted to the creative dramatics. There are as many reasons for playing as there are games.

Yee's research is ongoing. If you would like to participate in his study, click the Read link below.