Gaming groups, like any community of interest, experience a
consistent background level of
churn in membership. This can be due to life changes, shifting
priorities, or evolving preferences for different game genres - players
grow up, grow apart or move on.
Here we're looking at the changes in one such group,
measured using the amount of time the members spend in activities
with each other. The data is pulled from the Destiny 2 API covered in
this article, taking a target set of player IDs
and collecting instances where those individuals have been in an activity that included
at least one other player in the same target set.
It's possible to see the stronger links between some individuals, shown
by the thicker lines connecting the nodes in question. This tells us that
these players have joined activities together several times over the
given period. The weaker connections, the very thin lines between some
nodes, suggest the two players may seldom cross paths even though they
belong to the same clan.
This is expected. As in all friendship groups, sub-groups form - players
drift towards those who have similar perspectives, interests or schedules
and more often can be found in activites with this new subset. And while
fractures within the group may seem at the time to be a complete surprise,
with hindsight they're easy to see developing.
The buttons here let you filter for different periods in the life of the
group, seeing how it evolves.
This is a common and recurring cycle, and particularly as gaming groups
increase in size - like any community, it requires nurturing and management.
Could the group have seen this coming? Only by monitoring in-game interactions,
as shown in the graph here. Should a group leader be monitoring in this way?
I would say, 'no' ... it's an interesting study after the fact, but uncomfortably
invasive at any other time. All of this data has been anonymised for that reason -
while members of the two clusters might recognise the patterns here,
it's not my intention to to call people out.
It's only a game, after all!