Unveiling group characteristics in online social games: a socio-economic analysis

  • Authors:

  • Taejoong Chung;Jinyoung Han;Daejin Choi;Taekyoung Ted Kwon;Huy Kang Kim;Yanghee Choi

  • Affiliations:

  • Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea;Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea;Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea;Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea;Korea University, Seoul, South Korea;Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on World wide web
  • Year:
  • 2014

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Abstract

Understanding the group characteristics in MMORPGs is important in user behavior studies since people tend to gather together and form groups due to their inherent nature. In this paper, we analyze the group activities of users in Aion, one of the largest MMORPGs, based on the records of the activities of 94,497 users. In particular, we focus on (i) how social interactions within a group differ from the ones across groups, (ii) what makes a group rise, sustain, or fall, (iii) how group members join and leave a group, and (iv) what makes a group end. We first find that structural patterns of social interactions within a group are more likely to be close-knit and reciprocative than the ones across groups. We also observe that members in a rising group (i.e., the number of members increases) are more cohesive, and communicate with more evenly within the group than the ones in other groups. Our analysis further reveals that if a group is not cohesive, not actively communicating, or not evenly communicating among members, members of the group tend to leave.