ICWSM Presentation

Brian Keegan presented on behalf of the Virtual World Observatory’s gold farming team at the 2011 AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM). A copy of the paper titled “Trust Amongst Rogues? A Hypergraph Approach for Comparing Clandestine Trust Networks in MMOGs” can be found here and the accompanying slides can be found here. The abstract:

Gold farming and real money trade refer to a set of illicit practices in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) whereby players accumulate virtual resources to sell for ―real world‖ money. Prior work has examined trade relationships formed by gold farmers but not the trust relationships which exist between members of these organizations. We adopt a hypergraph approach to model the multi-modal relationships of gold farmers granting other players permission to use and modify objects they own. We argue these permissions reflect underlying trust relationships which can be analyzed using network analysis methods. We compare farmers’ trust networks to the trust networks of both unidentified farmers and typical players. Our results demonstrate that gold farmers’ networks are different from trust networks of normal players whereby farmers trust highly-central non-farmer players but not each other. These findings have implications for augmenting detection methods and re-evaluating theories of clandestine behavior.

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ICWSM Paper Acceptance

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, Brian Keegan, Dmitri Williams, Jaideep Srivastava, and Noshir Contractor had their paper “Trust Amongst Rogues? A Hypergraph Approach for Comparing Clandestine Trust Networks in MMOGs” accepted to the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM). Notably, it is the authors’ first attempt and acceptance for a paper invoking a quote from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I: “A plague upon’t when thieves cannot be true one to another!” – Falstaff, II.ii

Abstract:

Gold farming and real money trade refer to a set of illicit practices in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) whereby players accumulate virtual resources to sell for ―real world money. Prior work has examined trade relationships formed by gold farmers but not the trust relationships which exist between members of these organizations. We adopt a hypergraph approach to model the multi-modal relationships of gold farmers granting other players permission to use and modify objects they own. We argue these permissions reflect underlying trust relationships which can be analyzed using network analysis methods. We compare farmers’ trust networks to the trust networks of both unidentified farmers and typical players. Our results demonstrate that gold farmers’ networks are different from trust networks of normal players whereby farmers trust highly-central non-farmer players but not each other. These findings have implications for augmenting detection methods and re-evaluating theories of clandestine behavior.

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Filip Agneessens SONIC Speaker Series

Filip AgneessFilip Agneessensens, VU University, Amsterdam “The importance of advice and trust on individual performance in teams: the effect of individual position in a network or group structure?” Friday, April 16th, 2010.

Both the way in which trust and advice relations influence the performance of employees in organizations, and the level at which these networks might have an impact on individual performance have been a major topic of discussion. This paper simultaneously investigates the impact of (1) trust as an independent effect next to advice, (2) trust as an underlying source for the emergence of advice, as well as (3) the importance of multiplex advice-trust ties for performance.  Moreover a multilevel analysis is used to simultaneously study the position of members in a team, and the impact of the structural characteristics of the team as a whole for individual performance. The results at the individual level show that the impact of frequent advice giving on performance is only partially mediated by the level to which the person is considered more trustworthy, while the effect of advice relations embedded in a trust-relation (i.e. advice-trust multiplexity) is not important. However, at the team level results show not only that a centralized advice structure (one, or a few persons being asked a lot for advice) and a decentralized trust network (members being more similar in the level they trust others) both have a positive effect on performance, but also that having more advice relations which are combined with trust in the team as a whole, have an impact on the performance of all its members.

Filip Agneessens’ research centers on network formation within organizations and their impact on attitudes and behavior of individual employees, with a particular focus on how networks might impact job satisfaction and performance. He has also been working on the development of random and biased networks, the building of social support typologies and how they might impact an individual’s wellbeing. In recent work he has also adapted exponential random graph models (p*models) to study cultural participation and (co) sponsorship among senators as two-mode networks. He teaches courses on network theory, social network methods and social network analysis applied to organizations.

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