Cuihua Shen

Unpacking Time Online: Connecting Internet and Massively Multiplayer Online Game Use With Psychosocial Well-Being

By unpacking different forms of Internet and massively multiplayer online game (MMO) use, the present study adopts a nuanced approach to examine the connections between online activities and psychosocial well-being. It combined self-reported survey data with unobtrusive behavioral data from server logs of a large virtual world, EverQuest II. Over 5,000 players were surveyed about how they use the Internet, their specific activities in the virtual world, and their psychosocial well-being. In-game communication networks were also constructed and analyzed.The results showed support for both time displacement and social augmentation effects for various activities. Whether Internet and MMO use were associated with negative or positive outcomes was largely dependent on the purposes, contexts, and individual characteristics of users. The results suggest that Internet use and game play have significant nuances and should not be considered as monolithic sources of effects.

Schmoozing and Smiting: Trust, Social Institutions, and Communication Patterns in an MMOG

This study examines how trust is related to online social institutions, self-disclosure, mode of communication, and message privacy in a popular MMOG, Everquest II. The findings, based on survey and behavioral data from over 3,500 players, illustrate how MMOGs may support trust development. Trust was higher within closer social circles: trust was highest in teammates, followed by other players across the game, followed by others online. Self-disclosure was positively related to trust of teammates and others in the game, while voice chat was only related to teammate trust. These findings indicate that social structures and communication processes contribute to trust development in MMOGs, supporting the claim that these online spaces provide social support that is unavailable in other societal realms.

Virtual Brokerage and Closure Network Structure and Social Capital in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game

This study proposes a structural approach to examining online bridging and bonding social capital in a large virtual world. It tests the effects of individual players’ network brokerage and closure on their task performance and trust of other players. Bridging social capital is operationalized as brokerage, the extent to which one is tied to disconnected others, and bonding social capital as closure, the extent to which one is embedded in a densely connected group. Social networks were constructed from behavioral server logs of EverQuest II, a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Results provided strong support for the structural model, demonstrating that players’ network brokerage positively predicted their task performance in the game and players embedded in closed networks were more likely to trust each other.

Advancing Research in Organizational Communication Through Quantitative Methodology

This article showcases current best practices in quantitative organizational communication research. We emphasize their value in exploring issues of the day and their relation to other research approaches. Materials are presented around four themes: systematic development and validation of measures, including the use of mixed methods; multiple levels of analysis; the study of change and development over time; and relationships among people, units, organizations, and meanings.

Virtually There: Exploring Proximity and Homophily in a Virtual World

Virtual space eliminates the constraints of physical distances on communication and interaction. In this study, we examine the impact of offline proximity and homophily of players on their online interactions in EverQuest II. The results show that spatial proximity as well as homophily still influence players’ online behavior.

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

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 Sony’s EverQuest II game to identify the role of player and group attributes on group formation. We found that group formation is highly influenced by players’ 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.

Friending your way up the ladder: Connecting massive multiplayer online game behaviors with offline leadership

Abstract In what ways do the online behaviors of wizards and ogres map to players’ actual leadership status in the offline world? What can we learn from players’ experience in Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOGs) to advance our understanding of leadership, especially leadership in online settings (E-leadership)? As part of a larger agenda in the emerging field of empirically testing the “mapping” between the online and offline worlds, this study aims to tackle a central issue in the E-leadership literature: how have technology and technology mediated communications transformed leadership-diagnostic traits and behaviors? To answer this question, we surveyed over 18,000 players of a popular MMOG and also collected behavioral data of a subset of survey respondents over a four-month period. Motivated by leadership theories, we examined the connection between respondents’ offline leadership status and their in-game relationship-oriented and task-related-behaviors. Our results indicate that individuals’ relationship-oriented behaviors in the virtual world are particularly relevant to players’ leadership status in voluntary organizations, while their task-oriented behaviors are marginally linked to offline leadership status in voluntary organizations, but not in companies.

The evolution of social ties online: A longitudinal study in a massively multiplayer online game

How do social ties in online worlds evolve over time? This research examined the dynamic processes of relationship formation, maintenance, and demise in a massively multiplayer online game. Drawing from evolutionary and ecological theories of social networks, this study focuses on the impact of three sets of evolutionary factors in the context of social relationships in the online game EverQuest II (EQII): the aging and maturation processes, social architecture of the game, and homophily and proximity. A longitudinal analysis of tie persistence and decay demonstrated the transient nature of social relationships in EQII, but ties became considerably more durable over time. Also, character level similarity, shared guild membership, and geographic proximity were powerful mechanisms in preserving social relationships.

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 als [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 models 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.

On the Problem of Predicting Real World Characteristics from Virtual Worlds

Availability of massive amounts of data about the social and behavioral characteristics of a large subset of the population opens up new possibilities that allow researchers to not only observe people’s behaviors in a natural, rather than artificial, environment but also conduct predictive modeling of those behaviors and characteristics. Thus an emerging area of study is the prediction of real world characteristics and behaviors of people in the offline or “real” world based on their behaviors in the online virtual worlds. We explore the challenges and opportunities in the emerging field of prediction of real world characteristics based on people’s virtual world characteristics, i.e., what are the major paradigms in this field, what are the limitations in current predictive models, limitations in terms of generalizability, etc. Lastly, we also address the future challenges and avenues of research in this area.