An Empirical Study on Team Formation in Online Games

An Empirical Study on Team Formation in Online Games Essa Alhazmi⇤, Sameera Horawalavithana⇤, Adriana Iamnitchi⇤, John Skvoretz†, Jeremy Blackburn‡ ⇤Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida {ealhazmi,sameera1,aii}@mail.usf.edu †Department of Sociology, University of South Florida skvoretz@usf.edu ‡Computer Science, University of Alabama at Birmingham jblkburn@uab.edu Abstract—Online games provide a rich recording of inter- actions that can contribute to our understanding of human behavior. One potential lesson is to understand what motivates people to choose their teammates and how their choices lead to performance. We examine several hypotheses about team formation using a large, longitudinal dataset from a team-based online gaming environment. Specifically, we test how positive fa- miliarity, homophily, and competence determine team formation in Battlefield 4, a popular team-based game in which players choose one of two competing teams to play on. Our dataset covers over two months of in-game interactions between over 380,000 players. We show that familiarity is an important factor in team formation, while homophily is not. Competence affects team formation in more nuanced ways: players with similarly high competence team-up repeatedly, but large variations in competence discourage repeated interactions. I. INTRODUCTION Teams are ubiquitous in modern societies and especially in commerce, business, and industry. The factors that impact team formation are of practical research interest. Online en- vironments offer great potential for systematically exploring factors that impact team formation. Existing studies focus on team and play dynamics in online games [6], [1], [5]. Research in these on-line environments has its own challenges, not the least of which is the tracking of factors over time that could impact a player’s choice of teammates. The objective of this paper is to understand the interplay among three factors that impact team formation in online team-based games: 1) positive familiarity, 2) similarity, and 3) competence. We focus on how these factors shape an individual’s choice of team in two-team competitive first- person shooter games. Positive familiarity is the positive past performance with a teammate, which may translate into incentives to team up again in future encounters. Negative familiarity could also occur, and in this case negative past performance with a teammate translates in to a disincentive to team up again. Similarity is the sociological principle of homophily. The principle of homophily suggests that people seek out others of similar socio-demographic background for interaction. Finally, competence is the skill known to contribute to success in a team. We investigate what factors affect team formation via obser- vations of 60,410 “Battlefield 4” matches, played by 384,066 distinct players, on 63 servers, located in 7 different countries. The Battlefield series is one of the most popular first person shooter (FPS) multiplayer franchises in the world. Battlefield 4 is designed to support up to 64 players (32 on each team) by default, more than twice the number of players as other popular games like Call of Duty and Counter-Strike. By choosing to focus on this game environment, we are able to examine team formation not just at the team level, but also at “squad” level, which are small teams of up to 5 players who can coordinate more tightly. Overall, we find that familiarity is an important factor in team formation, while similarity is not. Further, we discover that competence affects team formation in more nuanced ways: highly skilled players tend to team-up repeatedly, while large variations in competence discourages repeated interactions. II. RELATED WORK The factors that make individuals choose particular team- mates were studied in contexts as diverse as online gaming, software development, and education, based on surveys, obser- vations, or digital records of interactions. Three factors com- monly studied are positive familiarity, defined as the existence of previous positive experiences, competence (represented as expertise or reputation), and homophily. Familiarity was shown to have an impact both on team formation and on team performance. In online gaming com- munities, Hudson et al. [12] showed that familiarity and team trust are positively correlated and they improve team performance. Waddell and Peng [20] showed that positive familiarity leads to repeated play, which leads to friendship. Mason and Clauset [15] found that players perform better when they play with friends, and individual performance is independent of team performance. In addition, it has been observed that players tend to be more ambitious in games when they have good cooperation with friends [19]. Good cooperation within the team leads to better performance [16] and is a stronger motivator than competition [17]. In geographically-distributed software teams [7], where the challenge is coord

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