Network Structure And Individual Behavior In Virtual Community

For more than half a century," Use and Gratification " approach has inspired communication scholars to devote their attention to media usage behavior,motivations behind the behavior,and the relationship between motivations and gratifications.After 2000,Ruggiero(2000),Katz&Rice(2002)and other scholars extended this approach of "Use and Gratification" to Internet research.In those game communities attributed with sociability,players' behavior is always accompanied with interpersonal communication.In that case,players' behavior in the game could be fully understood only if interpersonal interactions are taken into account.However," Use and Gratification " in game studies has not yet put individual behaviors into the relational structure context in virtual communities,and the empirical studies of players' behavior still lacks theoretical explanation.This article uses Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games(MOBA)as an empirical case.By collecting the cooperation data of a typical MOBA games--the DOTA2,the present study draws a perspective of social network,aiming to explore the relationship between network structure of game virtual community and players' behavior,especially continuing game behavior.Making use of the game's official application program interface(API),the research has collected the basic information of 54,301 players as well as the detailed game records in two weeks of 225 players by snowball sampling.With different data,i.e.the established network of cooperative relationships between national and foreign players according to relational mappings rules,the research analyzes the changes of network density,diameter,and average clustering coefficient under different thresholds,calculates different network structure indicators,such as degree,centrality,and prestige of nodes,and studies the relevance between player's game features/network structure features and the continuity of game behavior.The research shows that strong connections and weak connections jointly maintain the DOTA2 community;in which weak ties connect the entire huge community and strong ties become the basic structure of player s' network.Besides,no agglomeration effect has been found in players of the same gaming style,but players with the same gaming preference do show a certain degree of aggregation in cyberspace.Furthermore,among three game features,which are player's game achievements,investment level and game experience,game experience appears to be the only indicator that relates to continuous game behavior.Players with enjoyable experiences would be prompted to playing the game in a continuous manner,while those with frustrating experiences tend to leave the game.Finally,there is a positive correlation between the strength of players' relationships and the stability of players.The stronger the relationships existing in players,the smaller the differences shown in their stability.Therefore,it would be helpful to improve the stability of the online community,if users' gaming experiences are elevated and the relationship between them can be strengthened.