The DOI matches its Crossref record; 19 of the 19 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
"Alone together?": exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games
Abstract
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) routinely attract millions of players but little empirical data is available to assess their players' social experiences. In this paper, we use longitudinal data collected directly from the game to examine play and grouping patterns in one of the largest MMOGs: World of Warcraft. Our observations show that the prevalence and extent of social activities in MMOGs might have been previously over-estimated, and that gaming communities face important challenges affecting their cohesion and eventual longevity. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of future games and other online social spaces.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Granovetter, M. S. (1973) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/225469 · Cited by 40,491
Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community
(2000) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.38-2454 · Cited by 28,789
Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications
Wasserman, S. S., & Faust, K. (1994) · Cited by 17,961
Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications
Wasserman, S., & Faust, K. (1994) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511815478 · Cited by 17,557
Kilzer, E., & Skinner, B. F. (1953) · The American Catholic Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/3707860 · Cited by 8,943
Symonds, P. M. (1954) · Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0051901 · Cited by 4,875
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Shapiro, R. Y. (2000) · Political Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/2657613 · Cited by 2,705
Designing Virtual Worlds: Volume I
Bartle, R. A. (2025) · CRC Press eBooks · doi:10.1201/9781003285236 · Cited by 1,173
A Theory of Fun for Game Design
Koster, R., & Wright, W. (2004) · Cited by 1,110
OLDENBURG, R. (2023) · Berkshire Publishing Group eBooks · doi:10.2307/jj.9561417 · Cited by 757
Cited by
Hamilton (2014) · doi:10.1145/2556288.2557048 · Cited by 674
From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft
Williams, D., Ducheneaut, N., Xiong, L., Zhang, Y., Yee, N., & Nickell, E. (2006) · Games and Culture · doi:10.1177/1555412006292616 · Cited by 659
Self-citationBody and mind: a study of avatar personalization in three virtual worlds
Ducheneaut, N., Wen, M.-H., Yee, N., & Wadley, G. (2009) · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/1518701.1518877 · Cited by 461
Self-citationStrangers and friends: collaborative play in world of warcraft
Nardi, B., & Harris, J. (2006) · Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work · doi:10.1145/1180875.1180898 · Cited by 416
Video Game Structural Characteristics: A New Psychological Taxonomy
King, D., Delfabbro, P., & Griffiths, M. (2010) · International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction · doi:10.1007/s11469-009-9206-4 · Cited by 398
Metadata
- Authors
- Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Nickell, E., & Moore, R. J.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2006-04-22
- Pages
- 407-416
- OpenAlex
- W2119243634
- Cited by
- 758
- References
- 19
- FWCI
- 107.53
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: "Alone together?": exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1145/1124772.1124834
- The paper
- Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Nickell, E., & Moore, R. J. (2006). "Alone together?": exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/1124772.1124834
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.