The Formation of Task-Oriented Groups: Exploring Combat Activities in Online Games

Abstract

Advanced communication technologies enable strangers to work together on the same tasks or projects in virtual environments. Understanding the formation of task-oriented groups is an important first step to study the dynamics of team collaboration. In this paper, we investigated group combat activities in Sonypsilas EverQuest II game to identify the role of player and group attributes on group formation. We found that group formation is highly influenced by playerspsila common interests on challenging tasks. Players with less combat experience are more likely to participate in group events for difficult tasks and team performance is positively correlated to group size.