Large-scale study of social network structure and team performance in a multiplayer online game

TL;DR

This large-scale study investigates how social network structure within teams in a multiplayer online game correlates with team success, revealing that balanced individual connectivity and overall network density are key factors, especially in lower-skilled teams.

Contribution

The paper provides novel large-scale empirical evidence linking social network metrics to team performance in a gaming context, highlighting the importance of individual connectivity.

Findings

Minimum degree correlates strongly with success in lower-skilled teams.

Moderate network density is associated with better team performance.

Balanced individual connections are crucial for team success.

Abstract

A question of interest in both theory and practice is if and how familiarity between members of a team, expressed in terms of social network structure, relates to the success of the team in a given task. In this paper we revisit this important question in a novel manner by employing game outcome statistics from Dota 2, a popular team-based multiplayer online game, combined with network data from Steam Community, a social networking service for gamers. We conduct a large-scale analysis of 4168 teams to study how network density, and the minimum and maximum degree of the within-team social network are associated with team performance, and determine how this association is moderated by team skill. We observe that minimum degree is strongly associated with good performance, especially in teams with lower skill. Together with previous results on network density that we corroborate in this paper, our findings suggest that a successful team is not only moderately connected overall, but its members should also individually have not too few nor too many within team connections.