Nick Yee

Nick Yee has an extensive research background in the psychology of virtual environments and online interaction. At Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, he conducted experiments in immersive virtual reality to explore digital self representation and social interaction. He has also worked with PARC's PlayOn group and Sony Online Entertainment to examine large data sets of behavioral data from online games. At PARC he has also studied how people use and react to context-aware mobile applications. Nick is also well-known for the Daedalus Project, a long-running survey study of over 50,000 online gamers exploring demographic patterns, play motivations, and emergent social phenomena. His interest in online interaction began when a personality psychology professor in college asked students to create their own webpage (this was back in 1998) as a tool to understand identity projection online.

Nick's work has been cited by the New York Times, CNN, the Discovery Channel, and Science, among other news outlets. He received his Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University. In his free time, he polishes rough amber on a lapidary machine.