Visual Analytics of Dynamic Interplay Between Behaviors in MMORPGs

Abstract

The rapid development of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) has led operators to record huge amounts of fine-grained data from the in-game activities of players. These data provide considerable opportunities with which to study the dynamic interplay among player behaviors and investigate the roles of various social structures that underlie such interplay. However, modeling and visualizing these behavioral data remain a challenge. In this study, we propose a novel influence-susceptible model to measure the dynamic interplay among multiple behaviors. Based on this model, we introduce a new visual analytics system called BeXplorer. BeXplorer enables analysts to interactively explore the dynamic interplay between player purchase and communication behaviors and to examine the manner in which this interplay is bound by social structures where players are embedded.