Triadic motifs in the dependence networks of virtual societies

Abstract

In friendship networks, individuals have different numbers of friends, and the closeness or intimacy between an individual and her friends is heterogeneous. Using a statistical filtering method to identify relationships about who depends on whom, we construct dependence networks (which are directed) from weighted friendship networks of avatars in more than two hundred virtual societies of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). We investigate the evolution of triadic motifs in dependence networks. Several metrics show that the virtual societies evolved through a transient stage in the first two to three weeks and reached a relatively stable stage. We find that the unidirectional loop motif (${\mathrm{M}}_9$) is underrepresented and does not appear, open motifs are also underrepresented, while other close motifs are overrepresented. We also find that, for most motifs, the overall level difference of the three avatars in the same motif is significantly lower than average, whereas the sum of ranks is only slightly larger than average. Our findings show that avatars' social status plays an important role in the formation of triadic motifs.

arXiv comment8 Latex pages + 5 figures

References in corpus (25)

• Coevolutionary games - a mini review
• Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication networks
• Quantifying social group evolution
• Evolutionary dynamics of group interactions on structured populations: A review
• Multirelational Organization of Large-scale Social Networks in an Online World
• Extracting the multiscale backbone of complex weighted networks
• Temporal motifs in time-dependent networks
• Statistically validated networks in bipartite complex systems
• Emergence of communities in weighted networks
• Measuring social dynamics in a massive multiplayer online game
• Correlation of positive and negative reciprocity fails to confer an evolutionary advantage: Phase transitions to elementary strategies
• Calling patterns in human communication dynamics
• Temporal motifs reveal homophily, gender-specific patterns and group talk in mobile communication networks
• Friendship networks and social status
• How women organize social networks different from men
• Understanding mobility in a social petri dish
• Triadic closure dynamics drives scaling-laws in social multiplex networks
• Identification of clusters of investors from their real trading activity in a financial market
• Emergence of Bursts and Communities in Evolving Weighted Networks
• Community characterization of heterogeneous complex systems
• Emergence of good conduct, scaling and Zipf laws in human behavioral sequences in an online world
• A comparative analysis of the statistical properties of large mobile phone calling networks
• Trading networks, abnormal motifs and stock manipulation
• Online-offline activities and game-playing behaviors of avatars in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game
• Statistical properties of online avatar numbers in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Division of labor, skill complementarity, and heterophily in socioeconomic networks
• Influence network in Chinese stock market
• The Temporal Event Graph
• Communication cliques in mobile phone calling networks
• Non-Poisson donation behaviors in virtual worlds
• Event-Based Dynamic Banking Network Exploration for Economic Anomaly Detection
• Individual position diversity in dependence socioeconomic networks increases economic output