Using Communication Networks to Predict Team Performance in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Virtual teams are becoming increasingly important. Since they are digital in nature, their "trace data" enable a broad set of new research opportunities. Online Games are especially useful for studying social behavior patterns of collaborative teams. In our study we used longitudinal data from the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) Travian collected over a 12-month period that included 4,753 teams with 18,056 individuals and their communication networks. For predicting team performance, we selected 13 SNA-based attributes frequently used in team and leadership research. Using machine learning algorithms, the added explanatory power derived from the patterns of the communication networks enabled us to achieve an adjusted R-2 = 0.67 in the best fitting performance prediction model and a prediction accuracy of up to 95.3% in the classification of top performing teams.