[MUD-Dev] Social Networks

[Koster]

From: Dave Rickey
> From: "Koster, Raph" <rkoster at soe.sony.com>
>> From: Dave Rickey
 
>> Humans are indeed naturally social creatures, in up to
>> tribe-sized groups.
 
> Not all of them, and not equally.

Of course not. You said "humans" not "individuals." :)

>> Pure chat spaces create scale-free networks, not random
>> ones. What determines the growth of a scale-free network is
>> whether there are differences between nodes that make some nodes
>> more "fit" than others. In the case of social networking, it's
>> those people who are connectors, who have big Rolodexes. Not only
>> do they tend to know more people, they also tend to acquire more
>> friends.
 
> Then why didn't Active Worlds do better?  It was a pure chat space
> with an unlimited capacity to shape the world.  People could do
> anything, talk to anyone, make anything, why wasn't that enough?
> Maybe it was too much.

That's why I said that network theory helps a lot with the "what"
but not the "why." That's where the anthropology reading comes in
handy. Jared Diamond postulates caloric extraction from the soil
requiring cooperation.  McElvaine attributes it in small groups to
self-defense and tribal identity, and in larger groups to the
transition to something similar to Diamond's caloric hypothesis, the
invention of agriculture. In a generalized sense though, it seems to
be "shared objectives or struggle."

I think Jessica is spot on with her analysis of the gift economy
stuff in her latest Biting the Hand. Collaborative work to
accomplish something is a huge bondbuilder.

>> Scale-free networks do have one notable weakness: if you take out
>> the hub nodes, the entire network can collapse. This is clearly
>> evidenced by all the anecdotes of guild leaders leaving and the
>> entire guild collapsing.
 
> True scale-free networks should never collapse from the removal of
> a *single* hub, and even then they shouldn't shatter into their
> component parts.  We're missing something.

My surmises: one, that the guilds rarely reach a size where they are
truly scale-free; usually they are star networks or weakly formed
scale-free networks. Two, that usually something traumatic enough to
cause the one leader to depart is often enough to cause multiple
leaders to depart, ths meeting the criteria for scale-free network
collapse (multiple hubs going away in a short span of time).

Of course, guild migration between games also speaks to this.

-Raph

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