[MUD-Dev] Social Networks

[Dave Rickey]

From: "Koster, Raph" <rkoster at soe.sony.com>

> Will Wright turned me on to it. Recommended reading, in order from
> layman's treatment through to hardcore math:

>   The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
>   Linked, Lazslo-Barabasi
>   Small Worlds, Duncan J. Watts

Nexus by Mark Buchanan covers a lot of the same ground as Linked,
with a little more attention to social networks.  Linked is the one
that made it come together for me, until then I had a bunch of
pieces that "felt" like they should fit together, but no pattern.

> I've proposed a GDC paper on this for next year, but have not
> heard if it has been accepted yet.

> And yes, there is a ton of applicability to mud design, though
> IMHO most of the research on scale-free networks tends to skip the
> "why" (which is what you focused on in your post). Generally
> speaking, it's a mathematical field, or a tool for mathematical
> analysis. The *creation* of links between nodes is not as studied
> an area. That's where it helps to dig into other things, like
> Alexander's "A Pattern Language" or other books on architectural
> theory, and where "Tipping Point" proves to be more illuminating
> in some ways despite its more casual treatment of the subject. I
> also find it useful to supplement it with reading in general
> anthropology (stuff like Jared Diamond, or Roger McElvaine's
> "Eve's Seed."

Reading up on complexity theory helped for me, as well, but that may
be because I backed into Network theory that way (after reading
about it in Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", which is
basicly a comprehensive anatomy of complexity).  Approached from
that side, scale-free networks are an obvious example of a structure
riding the line between ordered and chaotic systems.  Its advantages
over other such structures, at least for me, is that you can look at
a network and simplify it for easier thought experiments without
having the performance characteristics change radically.  It's a
more intuitive approach.

> Network analysis is not only useful for community formation,
> btw. It also provides insights into community management and
> community destruction.

More importantly for me, it's given me a better way to explain
certain things that I've been sure of, but couldn't get across to
others in the company.  The real fun is going to be in figuring out
the behaviour of link types.

--Dave



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