An old buddy of mine, Leng, passed this article to me about Prof Gets $100,000 Grant to Study World of Warcraft.

There are stark contrasts to how people play World of Warcraft, some of the more interesting are ones are based on culture. Chinese players approach the game from a different perspective than do plays in the US who also approach it differently from players in Europe.

I wrote about this before, but I can't seem to find it now. Shelley had passed me an article about a study that contrasted how eastern and western people perceive images. That study found that, regardless of genetic lineage, if you grew up in the West you tended to pick a certain thing out of an image and focus on it. However, people who grew up in the East tended to take in the whole picture and view it as a comprehensive whole. Focusing more on general color schemes or structures rather than a particular element within the image.

The brief comments on the Grant article linked above touches on that same idea. I'm interested to read this study when it is published!