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October 24, 2005
Guilds: Max Subgraph Size
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: 8/01/2005 12:00 am - 8/30/2005 12:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique guild. See also entry on how we derived these social network measures.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 5569 guilds
A subgraph in a social network is a self-contained group of individuals who are interconnected. For example, in the example social network below (using the co-location metric), there are 5 subgraphs - 4 of which are dyads and 1 subgraph containing 6 members. The max subgraph in a social network is the subgraph with the most members. Thus, the max subgraph size in the example is 6.
The max subgraph size of each guild gives a rough sense of cohesiveness. If most members of a guild often do group and work together, they would have a large max subgraph size. In the example shown above, the low max subgraph size relative to the guild size (6 vs. 37) implies that the guild is fairly fragmented and not cohesive.
Unsurprisingly, larger guilds have larger max subgraph sizes. The correlation is r = .63.
But as a function of the guild size, the ratio itself is only weakly correlated with guild size, r = -.08. To a certain extent, this is partly due to the presence of alts who by definition cannot be co-located with the mains.
Plotting this out allows us to see more clearly that there is a steady rise in max subgraph size that essentially starts fluctuating past a guild size of 50. We could almost argue that maximum guild cohesiveness occurs at a guild size of around 50. After that point, it starts getting hard for a guild to remain cohesive.
Plotting this out by subgraph ratio (max subgraph size / guild size) shows a more dramatic trend. The subgraph ratio peaks at around 10 at .50 and drops steadily to below .10. The plot also shows that the correlation between guild size and subgraph ratio is strong only after a guild size of 10. Re-running the correlation after excluding guilds with less than 10 members, we find a correlation of -.36. Again, the larger the guild, the harder it is to remain cohesive.
Posted at October 24, 2005 01:29 PM
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» Guild sizes redux from Raph's Website
As usual, the PlayOn blog has got some interesting data.
Long ago, in my Small Worlds presentation, I wondered whether optimal guild size (as evidenced in UO veteran member stats) was around 60, since that was the bucket in the histogram that showed ... [Read More]
Tracked on October 31, 2005 12:24 PM
Comments
Wow, excellent work!
There were many excellent comments in my post in my blog entry Dunbar & World of Warcraft where I mentioned your previous post Guild Size, where people talked about various design issues in WoW that might affected guild sizes.
But this this deeper analysis of "real" social network cohesiveness mapped to guild sizes even more substantiates the thesis that I had in my original Dunbar Number post, where I...
hypothesize that the optimal size for active group members for creative and technical groups -- as opposed to exclusively survival-oriented groups, such as villages -- hovers somewhere between 25-80, but is best around 45-50. Anything more than this and the group has to spend too much time "grooming" to keep group cohesion, rather then focusing on why the people want to spend the effort on that group in the first place -- say to deliver a software product, learn a technology, promote a meme, or have fun playing a game. Anything less than this and you risk losing critical mass because you don't have requisite variety.
Your research even backs my second hypothesis where I talk about satisfaction of smaller groups:
In my opinion it is at 5 that the feeling of "team" really starts. At 5 to 8 people, you can have a meeting where everyone can speak out about what the entire group is doing, and everyone feels highly empowered. However, at 9 to 12 people this begins to break down -- not enough "attention" is given to everyone and meetings risk becoming either too noisy, too boring, too long, or some combination thereof.
Thank you very much for making this research available!
Posted by: Christopher Allen at October 28, 2005 11:50 AM
Raph, a minor caveat with designing for a guild size of around 50, is to remember that we can't look at the guild internals, so we are looking at *observed* guild size and relations within the guild. We miss inactive players, and we miss knowledge of which characters are alts of each other.
Posted by: Eric Nickell at November 1, 2005 08:45 AM
Yep; plus, I think it's unclear what "designing for a size of 50" would mean anyway!
Posted by: Raph Koster at November 1, 2005 11:50 AM