The Influence of Social Ties on Performance in Team-based Online Games
This addresses the problem of understanding social dynamics in virtual teams for game designers and managers, though it is incremental as it builds on existing social tie research.
The study investigated how social ties affect individual and team performance in the online game Dota 2, finding that playing with friends increases activity but has mixed effects: it benefits low-skill players while harming high-skill players.
Social ties are the invisible glue that keeps together human ecosystems. Despite the massive amount of research studying the role of social ties in communities (groups, teams, etc.) and society at large, little attention has been devoted to study their interplay with other human behavioral dynamics. Of particular interest is the influence that social ties have on human performance in collaborative team-based settings. Our research aims to elucidate the influence of social ties on individual and team performance dynamics. We will focus on a popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) collaborative team-based game, Defense of the Ancients 2 (Dota 2), a rich dataset with millions of players and matches. Our research reveals that, when playing with their friends, individuals are systematically more active in the game as opposed to taking part in a team of strangers. However, we find that increased activity does not homogeneously lead to an improvement in players' performance. Despite being beneficial to low skill players, playing with friends negatively affects performance of high skill players. Our findings shed light on the mixed influence of social ties on performance, and can inform new perspectives on virtual team management and on behavioral incentives.