Guild Play in MMOGs: Rethinking Common Group Dynamics Models

Humans form groups and congregate into groups for a variety of reasons and in a variety of contexts e.g., corporations in offline space and guilds in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). In recent years a number of models of group formation have been proposed. One such model is Johnson et al's [10] model of group evolution. The model is motivated by commonalities observed in evolution of street gangs in Los Angeles and guilds in an MMOG (World of Warcraft). In this paper we first apply their model to guilds in another MMOG (EQ2)1 and found results inconsistent from the model's predictions, additionally we found support for the role of homophily in guild formation, which was ruled out in previous results, Alternatively, we explore alternative models for guild formation and evolution in MMOGs by modifying earlier models to account for the existence of previous relationships between people.

[1]  P. Schrader,et al.  The acquisition of skill and expertise in massively multiplayer online games , 2008 .

[2]  Nick Yee,et al.  The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments , 2006, PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

[3]  Dmitri Williams,et al.  The Mapping Principle, and a Research Framework for Virtual Worlds , 2010 .

[4]  Raph Koster,et al.  Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide , 2003 .

[5]  Jaideep Srivastava,et al.  Link Prediction Across Multiple Social Networks , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops.

[6]  Roger Guimerà,et al.  Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance , 2005, Science.

[7]  Christian Bauckhage,et al.  Analyzing the Evolution of Social Groups in World of Warcraft® , 2010, Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games.

[8]  Mengxiao Zhu,et al.  The Formation of Task-Oriented Groups: Exploring Combat Activities in Online Games , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering.

[9]  Joshua M. Epstein,et al.  Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up , 1996 .

[10]  William Sims Bainbridge,et al.  The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World , 2010 .

[11]  George E. Tita,et al.  Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic. , 2008, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[12]  M. McPherson,et al.  Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks , 2001 .

[13]  A. Barabasi,et al.  Quantifying social group evolution , 2007, Nature.

[14]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[15]  Jaideep Srivastava,et al.  Dark Gold: Statistical Properties of Clandestine Networks in Massively Multiplayer Online Games , 2010, 2010 IEEE Second International Conference on Social Computing.

[16]  Michael Ruse,et al.  Wilson, Edward O. , 2011 .

[17]  Joshua M. Epstein,et al.  Growing artificial societies , 1996 .

[18]  Jing Wang,et al.  GTPA: A Generative Model For Online Mentor-Apprentice Networks , 2010, AAAI.

[19]  Noshir S. Contractor,et al.  The Social Behaviors of Experts in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering.