Analyzing Implicit Social Networks in Multiplayer Online Games

Abstract

Understanding the social structures that people implicitly form when playing networked games helps developers create innovative gaming services to benefit both players and operators. But how can we extract and analyze this implicit social structure? The authors' proposed formalism suggests various ways to map interactions to social structure. Applying this formalism to real-world data collected from three game genres reveals the implications of the mappings on in-game and gaming-related services, ranging from network and socially aware player matchmaking to an investigation of social network robustness against player departure.