Social Network Analysis Applied to Game Communities to Identify Key Social Players

The game industry is experiencing a paradigm shift that sees games as ongoing services. Tom Clancy’s The Division (TCTD) is an online-only open world action role-playing video game set in a near New York City in the aftermath of a smallpox pandemic. The player, an agent of the Strategic Homeland Division, must help the group rebuild its operations in Manhattan, investigate the nature of the outbreak, and combat criminal activity in its wake. TCTD is structured with elements of role-playing games combined with collaborative Player versus Environment (PvE) and Player versus Player (PvP) online multiplayer activities. It is possible to play and replay all the story missions with up to four real players in cooperative mode (PvE) or play with a group of players and challenge other players (PvP). Employees at Ubisoft had access to data collected by both the Uplay platform and the TCTD game.