Alessandro Canossa, Ubisoft

Another Kind of Influencer: the Hidden Backbone of a Game’s Community

(White Nights Conference Moscow 2017)
The official conference website — http://wnconf.com

1. game industry | 2016 massive entertainment | a ubisoft studio Alessandro Canossa Senior User Researcher and Analyst
2. Another Kind of Influencer The Invisible Backbone of the community for Tom Clancy’s The Division
3. Games as a Service – a Paradigm Shift • 1970’s - digital games marketed as products (pay once and you are in) • 2010’s - player engagement over long term (pay often and you stay in)
4. Live Games “...games as a service, or live games, refer to games that offer an evolving long-term, entertaining experience for our players. They often have a focus on online competitive multiplayer experiences such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege or The Division but they can also include other types of game experiences like The Crew. 'Live' refers to all the activities and interactions created for the game community including pre- and post-launch as well as regular updates, new content, and events both in-game and out-of-game, etc. throughout the game's lifespan” Anne Blondel-Jouin, Vice President of Live Ops at Ubisoft
5. New Parameters for Success • Social dimension of play • Social dynamics of the communities • Key members that keep the game alive => Influencers <=
6. Traditional Influencers •Greatest reach = Large numbers (number of people they are connected to) •Unidirectional relations = Perceived authority (the direction of the connection from “fan” to “influencer”)
7. Traditional Influencers Social influence scoring tools: • Klout • Peerindex • Kred ratio of reactions generated vs amount of content created
8. Traditional Influencers BUT… Reading a blog, retweeting, or liking a post shows lower level of engagement than a conversation while playing together for a few hours.
9. New Influencers Less glamorous and visible: • passionate about a game • wide-reaching network of friends • vocal in the community • actively engaged with the multiplayer aspects of a game
10. New Influencers Metrics of Interest: • who plays with whom • how often • or how long • who invites whom • which games they play
11. Tom Clancy’s The Division - Intro Online-only open world RPG shooter, set in a near future New York City in the aftermath of a smallpox pandemic. The player, an agent of Strategic Homeland Division, must help the Division rebuild its operations in Manhattan, investigate the nature of the outbreak, and combat criminal activity in its wake. • Released in March 2016, • More than 15 million total players • Almost 2 million active monthly players (September 2017)
12. Tom Clancy’s The Division - Multiplayer • Collaborative PvE and Competitive PvP • Solo or Group play • Groups = 4 players • Groups = friends or random quickmatch
13. TCTD - Dataset Initial Sample: 246.041 players with all their friends Filtering for players that: - 50 hours in TCTD, - 10 friends - Played in groups at least twice in the previous week Baseline Sample: 2.102 players
14. TCTD - Analysis Three stages: (1) Network Identification: find influential players from each community (2) Triangulation: validate influential players by looking at other behaviors (3) Influencer Identification: better understanding of the influencers
15. TCTD – Analysis – Network Identification (a) Modularity measures: • used to detect communities by dividing the network into clusters • based on whether the number of edges within clusters exceeds the number expected on the basis of chance • Starting from the baseline sample of 2,102 players, 94 communities were found.
17. TCTD – Analysis – Network Identification (a) There are 3 types of communities: • Floating (not connected to any other community) • Peripheral (several connections to other communities) • Entangled (very connected to other communities)
19. TCTD – Analysis – Network Identification (b) • Selecting only entangled communities • Less likely that players in floating or peripheral communities have influence on the community at large • 49 communities identified • 1 main gateway influencer for each community
21. 49 influencers reach (play with) 16.742 players That’s 341.5 players for each influencer The average for the whole player population is 18.5 This is huge…
22. TCTD – Analysis – Triangulation All Players Influencers Total Population 14,716,507 (100%) 49 (100%) Posting on forums 26,632 (0.18%) 11 (22%) More than 10 posts 3,877 (0.026%) 4 (8%) We analyzed the number of posts players have made on the official TCTD forums to show influencers are very active on the forums compared to the general population, further confirming that they are influential in the community.
23. TCTD – Analysis – Influencer Identification (a) Influencers Baseline Total Total # of players 49 2.102 14.716.507 Sessions, M (SD) 608 (313) 113 (158) 18.2 (42.5) Friends, M (SD) 178 (104) 26.5 (32.4) 8.60 (36.5) We also analyzed the number of play sessions and number of friends, comparing the influencers with the baseline sample (after filtering) and the general population, further confirming that the influencers are very different from all other players in the community.
24. TCTD – Analysis – Influencer Identification (b) 5 clusters of influencers based on other Ubisoft games owned and play time. Size of game labels: how many influencers own that game; Nodes: influencer; Nodes color: different clusters; Nodes size: how many games an influencer owns; Edges direction: games owned by each influencer Edges size and color: number of sessions influencer spent with a game. Communities were identified for similarity of games owned, played and in terms of number of sessions in each game.
25. TCTD – Analysis – Influencer Identification (c) The five groups of influencers are divided based on the other games they play and how often. Using Calleja’s theory of immersion we can qualify each group based on the type of immersion generated: • Tactical - Rainbow Six Siege • Narrative - For Honor / Assassins’s Creed • Performative - The Crew • Spatial - Far Cry • Shared – TCTD Different influencers may appeal to different players and their motivations to play games.
26. Implications (a) Influencers can be leveraged for feedback to get the pulse of the community They allow reaching the rest of their communities with dedicated messages based on their motivations and preferences.
27. Implications (b) Measuring virality and spread of premium in- game vanity items: • establish a baseline and check how popular a certain item is in a given community • inject said item to the community by providing influencers with the item • measure every two weeks how many of the players in that community have acquired the same item.
28. Implications (c) Shifting focus to from traditional influencers to new influencers Traditional influencers: require effort in terms of maintenance and coaching, represent a liability for negative press, are more interested in establishing their own brand New influencers: requires no effort in terms of maintenance, are less glamorous and less of a liability for developers. May have bigger impact
29. Conclusions • There are a number of influential players in the TCTD community that can be identified with existing social network methods • Such influential players can be verified based on their activities on forums and other metrics such as play sessions and playtime • Influences may fulfill different roles in the community based on other games owned
30. Questions?