introduction
Since the last blog post, we have been hard at work generating communication in World of Warcraft, Planetside2, and Guild Wars 2. With the data generation phase of the project nearly complete, we are beginning our analysis in the near future.
analysis of chat forensics
After we accumulate an hour’s worth of communication data for each game, the hard drives will be imaged so we can look at all the chat related logs left behind by the game. We’ve been keeping a written record of all the game dialogue and whether it was public or private, so it can be compared to any logs. As a backup, we have recorded our data generation sessions using screen capture software. Once we have imaged the hard drives we will wipe them and reinstall the games. The purpose of this is to ensure that we have a fresh desktop environment for each test and we can change setting in the game without worrying about the machine itself changing our results.
conclusion
While we don’t have any analysis findings thus far, we are looking forward to further work with Planetside2, as we’ve discovered that within the game settings you can log commands and create a “chat log;” however, we are currently using default game settings for our first test and then changing game settings to see if that alters “chat log” files or even creates “chat log” files. Once we analyze the images and reinstall the games we will begin data generation using settings we believe will facilitate the creation of chat logging. Want more information? Be sure to email us at lcdi@champlain.edu.