Social Complexity in the Virtual World Distributional Analysis of Guild Size in Massive Multiplayer Online Games

摘要

Guild sizes for five massive multiplayer online game guilds, and their aggregate data set, were analyzed and tested for fit against four candidate distributional models: power law, linear, exponential, and lognormal. Results provide very strong support of a power law distribution, especially in the aggregated data set, for which all other distributions were rejected. This indicates that a non-equilibrium, scale-free process underlies the dynamics of guild formation. One can conclude that social processes that generate similar distributions in "real world" organizations are extendable to social life in virtual worlds.