Johanna Pirker

Simone Petrosino, Enrica Loria, Johanna Pirker

Humans are social beings. It is therefore not surprising that the social distancing and movement restrictions associated with the Covid-19 pandemic had severe consequences for the well-being of large sections of the population, leading to increased loneliness and related mental diseases. Many people found emotional shelter in online multiplayer games, which have already proven to be great social incubators. While the positive effect games had on individuals has become evident, we are still unaware of how and if games fostered the fundamental need for connectedness that people sought. In other words: how have the social bonds and interaction patterns of players changed with the advent of the pandemic? For this purpose, we analyzed one year of data from an online multiplayer game (League of Legends) to observe the impact of Covid-19 on player assiduity and sociality in three different geographical regions (i.e., Europe, North America, and South Korea). Our results show a strong relationship between the development of Covid-19 restrictions and player activity, together with more robust and recurrent social bonds, especially for players committed to the game. Additionally, players with reinforced social bonds-i.e., people played with similar teammates-were more likely to stay in the game even once the restrictions were lifted.

Enrica Loria, Alessia Antelmi, Johanna Pirker

In most games, social connections are an essential part of the gaming experience. Players connect in communities inside or around games and form friendships, which can be translated into other games or even in the real world. Recent research has investigated social phenomena within the player social network of several multiplayer games, yet we still know very little about how these networks are shaped and formed. Specifically, we are unaware of how the game type and its mechanics are related to its community structure and how those structures vary in different games. This paper presents an initial analysis of Steam users and how friendships on Steam are formed around 200 games. We examine the friendship graphs of these 200 games by dividing them into clusters to compare their network properties and their specific characteristics (e.g., genre, game elements, and mechanics). We found how the Steam user-defined tags better characterized the clusters than the game genre, suggesting that how players perceive and use the game also reflects how they connect in the community. Moreover, team-based games are associated with more cohesive and clustered networks than games with a stronger single-player focus, supporting the idea that playing together in teams more likely produces social capital (i.e., Steam friendships).

Enrica Loria, Johanna Pirker, Anders Drachen et al.

In social and online media, influencers have traditionally been understood as highly visible individuals. Recent outcomes suggest that people are likely to mimic influencers' behavior, which can be exploited, for instance, in marketing strategies. Also in the Games User Research field, the interest in studying player social networks has emerged due to the heavy reliance on online influencers in marketing campaigns for games, as well as in keeping players engaged. Despite the inherent value of those individuals, it is still difficult to identify influencers, as the definition of influencers is a debated topic. Thus, how can we identify influencers, and are they indeed the individuals impacting others' behavior? In this work, we focus on influence in retention to verify whether central players impacted others' permanence in the game. We identified the central players in the social network built from the competitive player-vs-player (PvP) multiplayer (Crucible) matches in the online shooter Destiny. Then, we computed influence scores for each player evaluating the increase in similarity over time between two connected individuals. In this paper, we were able to show the first indications that the traditional metrics for influencers do not necessarily apply for games. On the contrary, we found that the group of central players was distinct from the group of influential players, defined as the individuals with the highest influence scores. Then, we provide an analysis of the two groups.