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SocialMapExplorer: visualizing social networks of massively multiplayer online games in temporal-geographic space

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Marshall Scott PooleAuthors Info & Claims

XSEDE '13: Proceedings of the Conference on Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment: Gateway to Discovery

Article No.: 18, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/2484762.2484805

Published: 22 July 2013 Publication History

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Abstract

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) provide unique opportunities to investigate large social networks, such as player (working-group), trading, and communication (chat) networks. This paper presents a visualization tool -- SocialMapExplorer - that allows users to explore these networks over temporal-geographic space. Implemented on the GoogleMap framework, this web-based interactive tool applies visual features, including color, size, shape, weight and font, to represent various network features. Unlike other similar tools, SocialMapExplorer visualizes data on a real map and couples time and spatial information with other attributes. To meet the challenge of intensive computation, this tool runs on high performance computers. Three modules have been implemented: (1) NetViewer that analyzes network dynamics by visualizing social networks in time series; (2) GroupDetector that investigates group assembly and evolution by tracing groups in visualized data flow; and (3) CorrelationFinder that studies the correlation between selected census variables (such as age, gender, race, population, income, education, occupation, and marital status) and game-play variables (such as play time, play frequency, achievement, and loss) by overlapping the measurements of census data and game log data. We performed this study on EverQuestII (EQII) game logs. This demonstration of the tool shows how it can help us discover events that trigger a group to emerge, shrink, and expand, and explore the relationship between census data and game data. This paper presents the design of this visualization tool, demonstrates its functions on real game data, and discusses its applications to virtual social network analysis associated with temporal-geographic space.

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Cited By

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Zhan MCai YGuo DPeterson G(2015)Discovering the influence of socioeconomic factors on online game behaviorsProceedings of the 2015 XSEDE Conference: Scientific Advancements Enabled by Enhanced Cyberinfrastructure10.1145/2792745.2792752(1-7)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2792745.2792752
Cai YRiedl BRatan RShen CPicot ALathrop SAlameda J(2014)FeatureSelectorProceedings of the 2014 Annual Conference on Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment10.1145/2616498.2616511(1-7)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2616498.2616511

Index Terms

SocialMapExplorer: visualizing social networks of massively multiplayer online games in temporal-geographic space
1. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
    1. Evaluation of retrieval results

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Published In

XSEDE '13: Proceedings of the Conference on Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment: Gateway to Discovery

July 2013

433 pages

ISBN:9781450321709

DOI:10.1145/2484762

General Chair:
Nancy Wilkins-Diehr
San Diego Supercomputer Center

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 22 July 2013

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Division of Information and Intelligent Systems
Army Research Institute
U.S. Army Research Laboratory
Air Force Research Laboratory
Office of Cyberinfrastructure

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XSEDE '13

XSEDE '13: Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment: Gateway to Discovery

July 22 - 25, 2013

California, San Diego, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 129 of 190 submissions, 68%

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Zhan MCai YGuo DPeterson G(2015)Discovering the influence of socioeconomic factors on online game behaviorsProceedings of the 2015 XSEDE Conference: Scientific Advancements Enabled by Enhanced Cyberinfrastructure10.1145/2792745.2792752(1-7)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2792745.2792752
Cai YRiedl BRatan RShen CPicot ALathrop SAlameda J(2014)FeatureSelectorProceedings of the 2014 Annual Conference on Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment10.1145/2616498.2616511(1-7)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2616498.2616511

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All in a day's work: a study of World of Warcraft NPCs comparing gender to professions

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