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Online "Guilds" Mirror Real Life Gangs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the you-can't-quit-the-bloods dept.

j-beda writes "In June 2009, Dr. Neil Johnson published a paper titled 'Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic' in Physical Review E that found the way in which WoW 'guilds' form can be described by a mathematical model that can also be applied to an unrelated group of people: street gangs in Los Angeles. Since 'Any group that satisfies these fairly autonomous, competitive criteria would also (fit the model),' said Dr. Johnson, the findings are of interest to those combating international as well as local terrorist cells."

30 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. LFG... by MrRTFM · · Score: 5, Funny

    Need crazy bomber - PST stats & achievement (no noobs)

    --
    You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
    1. Re:LFG... by TheCarp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't waste your time man. Recruit lvl 80 Bomb makers and strategists, and lvl 1 suicide bombers.

      Suicide bombers never really make it to the high levels. Their characters are on a gimped build.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    2. Re:LFG... by VGPowerlord · · Score: 2, Funny

      <Axis of Anarchy> is now recruiting Level 85 Goblin Sappers!

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    3. Re:LFG... by Conchobair · · Score: 2, Funny

      You are no match for !

      After a thorough analyzation of your playing styles and personalities adjoined with data from my own personal unsystematic numeral initiator your odds of winning are 33.33% with the three repeating of course. In addition I just watched Season 3 of The Guild.

    4. Re:LFG... by sorak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Too bad terrorist organizations aren't modelled after businesses:

      Suicide Bomber (Entry Level)
      Are you a people-oriented go-getter with a strong desire to work the competitive field of non-recurring thermal politics? Do you look at fireworks and think "That'll change people's minds"? If so, Al-Qaeda may be the place for you.

      Benefits include:
          72 virgins
          401k
          Competitive pay

      Qualifications:
          Master's Degree in hyperballistics
          three years experience working in suicide bombing or related field.
          Five years experience in use of public transportation.
          Ten years experience in cartography, GPS, or similar field.
          Fifteen years, oh screw it. If you don't know somebody, don't bother applying.

  2. Wow... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did somebody just rediscover the fact that humans have been forming little social groups, sometimes partially or wholly kin-based, other times simply social, for most of their evolutionary history?

    This isn't a "Oh, look at those gamers and gangsters and terrorists, how exotic" thing. This is how humans have operated(and to a large extent continue to operate) until the very recent rise in formalized mechanisms of social organization(and even these tend to be infested by little social cliques of various sorts, if you scratch the surface).

    1. Re:Wow... by thesandtiger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Did you miss the part about how there's a model for the interaction, and that model is valid for both groups (gangs and WoW guilds)?

      While this is nowhere near the same in impact as Newton's work, your comment would be akin to someone saying, "Duh, dumbass, we already KNEW things would fall if you drop them!"

      In other words, you seem to have missed the whole point - this is about a possible verification of a model for human group dynamics, not about the existence of group dynamics. There is a difference, rather a large one.

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
    2. Re:Wow... by thesandtiger · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Are church congregations usually engaging in clandestine competitive activities?

      I think you're trying to push this model past the intent and scope. I didn't get the idea that this is supposed to be some grand unifying theory of group dynamics that can apply to ANY kind of grouping of human beings, but rather that it was being used to explore groups of a fairly specific type.

      Don't get me wrong - I absolutely don't think this is epochal in impact on the field or, likely, all that important actually; people put forth models of group dynamics *all* *the* *time* so this isn't anything terribly exciting. My initial response was to point out that this isn't about "Oh, gee, there are dynamics to groups of humans!" but that it was about trying to apply a model that works on one group of a given type to another, unrelated, group with some similar characteristics.

      I don't think anyone needs to "legitimize" WoW (or any of those other things) - our recreational habits, as a species, have long been acceptable subjects for academics. I'd say that if "sports medicine" can be a legitimate field of study, then certainly looking at various types of entertainment that consume a LOT of time from millions of people from very different cultures from across the globe is probably pretty legit to look at.

      Actually, going totally tangential - why would anyone think WoW isn't worth looking at? It's a business that has over 10 million repeat customers spending god only knows how many hours a month using the product. The customers come from virtually every single country, every single demographic group, every single line of work/school. You have large groups of people gathering to work co-operatively (or not) to achieve somewhat complicated goals, often times without even speaking much of the same language except for a form of pidgin. You also have entire side industries that have sprung up around the game (gold selling/farming, power leveling services, etc.). You have thousands of people developing (usually free!) software add-ons to make the gameplay more efficient. You have tens of thousands of websites dedicated to the game.

      I'd say anyone who thinks that examining various angles the phenomenon of WoW is not legitimate is actually not terribly bright. It may seem silly at first, but giving it even a moment's thought reveals some pretty amazing things that are worth trying to understand.

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
  3. Who cares about Iraq by T+Murphy · · Score: 4, Funny

    the findings are of interest to [those] combating international as well as local terrorist cells

    Who cares about Iraq when I can help fight the terrorists by playing WoW all day.

    --
    My webcomic
  4. I knew it wasn't me! by JoeSixpack00 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've always maintained that my fascination with the Bloods and my hatred for the color BLU was driven by the combat training I received playing Team Fortress 2. Although I'm too chicken shit to join a real gang, I wonder if I can sue for punitive character damages...

  5. Not just gangs by jaggeh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Different games can generate different models

    Eve Online uses a company stucture for its guilds/clans etc

    However i dont think all guilds/clans/corps will evolve the same way, thats more down to the players involved and who has their hand on the collective rudder.

    --
    I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
  6. Using WoW to fight terrorism? by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh well, its still better than attacking Iraq when bin Laden is in Pakistan.

  7. When you're a Goonswarm... by Nautical+Insanity · · Score: 2, Funny

    you're a goonswarm all the way, from your first corp-owned corvette to your last dying day!

    1. Re:When you're a Goonswarm... by Bicx · · Score: 2, Insightful

      because once you've got goonswarm in your employment history, no one else will take you! :D

  8. Read the abstract more carefully by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    First of all, the abstract acknowledges that guilds are quite UNLIKE gangs in many important respects. They are much more varied in "backgrounds, age groups, and genders" than real gangs and they are rarely based on "like-seeking" (kinship).

    Secondly, there are *many* more offline groups that are more closely related to street gangs in structure and practices than guilds, and no one seems too alarmist about that. Odds are your local church, your business, your college fraternity, even many of your local civic organizations have initiations/hazing/etc. that more closely resemble that of gangs than any guild I've ever been part of. And those are *certainly* more homogeneous in "backgrounds, age groups, and genders" (like most street gangs) than any WoW guild.

    In other words, guilds bear a pretty piss-poor correlation to street gangs, compared to just about any small real-world organization. I suspect the authors were either reaching here or were so hopped up on the idea of studying online guilds that they lost their way (the famous line from PCU comes to mind "You can write your thesis on Gameboy if you can bullshit well enough."). And does anyone else find it academically strange that this came from a bunch of grad students in Physics?!?!?

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Read the abstract more carefully by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      About the students in Physics bit: The results are often somewhat unfortunate; but there is an entire genre of papers, across a variety of subjects, generated by physicists' belief that, as long as they can develop a mathematical model, they can write on just about anything. There is a similar behavior in economists, who figure that, if they can assign dollar values to the major variables, they are on safe ground.

      Sometimes the results are genuinely interesting, or even downright superior, if the area has been bogged down in excessive qualitative handwaving. Other times, you get breathtaking exercises in over-reduction, ignorant of a variety of messy details that have been common knowledge, among people who actually study the subject, for decades.

    2. Re:Read the abstract more carefully by Xacid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One use I could perhaps see what they'd could use this research for is to justify offering something of either deterrence or rehabilitation through the use of guilds. Give guys who feel a need to belong and a need to whack shit with a weapon and you could *maybe* have something of a replacement with something like WoW. Hey, it's a stretch, but it's all I got. Worth noting: I have a little brother who seems to not mind the juvenile justice system all that much and is a relatively frequent visitor - however, once I got him into gaming and into things like Tribes, Priston Tale, and whatnot where clans/guilds existed his desire to go outside and henceforth get into trouble dropped significantly. Granted, it's just a patch for other socio/economic issues, but it could still have a somewhat positive effect. I'd much rather lazy gamers than violent gang members.

    3. Re:Read the abstract more carefully by RockoTDF · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In that case, could you explain to me why this happens? (at least in physics). Is it a lack of funding for "real" experiments, getting bored with particles and phase transitions, pursuing their own interests, or what? Also, do you know how articles like this fit into the tenure game? It doesn't bother me so much when physicists get into life science problems (lets be honest, biology is getting more quantitative). However, as a cognitive/neural scientist grad student, it drives me nuts when I read papers where physicists try and tackle cognition or philosophy because it is pretty clear they have no idea what they are talking about. Don't mind them doing the neural stuff because they tend to have a good grasp on signal processing/information theory stuff, as well as dynamical systems theory.

      As for economists, I'm pretty sure they just fall into the "when you only have a hammer all problems look like nails" thing.

      --
      There is more to science than physics!

      www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
  9. gangstas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Anyone who plays WoW is a gansta anyway.

    1. Re:gangstas by tha_toadman · · Score: 2, Funny

      Leeeeeeeroooooooy Jjjjenkins!

      So do think that real life 'ganstas' have nerds that compute the "percentage of survival" if they do a drive by shooting?

      "Uhhhhh yeah, gimme a sec...I'm coming up with 32.33 uh repeating of course"

  10. Teams as well by T.E.D. · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The relation I've noticed (being a soccer player) is with soccer teams. I've seen the exact same cycles of drama and team splits. Its just like an online guild, but in slow motion (as they don't spend as much time together in a week).

  11. Re:lulz by Grygus · · Score: 2, Funny

    Short fight; the Crips are fantastic DPS but have terrible healers.

  12. Without SEEING the formula, it's rather difficult. by khasim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's very easy to build a "model" for something. You just abstract everything until it is meaningless.

    Since this article is locked behind a pay site, it's going to be difficult to evaluate it at the moment.

    From TFA:

    Despite the difference in demographics in both cases, social groups still tend to form around individuals who are able to add complementary skills to the collective.

    The researchers devised a mathematical model to describe the formation of these social groups.

    This model can also be used to analyse how the groups react to or are affected by external forces.

    So if GroupA lacks characteristic B and person C has characteristic B but not characteristic D which would negatively affect GroupA then GroupA may admit person C.

    Writing it is simple. Defining characteristics in quantitative methodology is the difficult part. How much of B offsets how much of D?

  13. other studies on group dynamics by Onymous+Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    You might be interested: Robber's Cave Experiment

    Another (not a scientific) study: The Third Wave

  14. Re:Without SEEING the formula, it's rather difficu by Random+Walk · · Score: 2, Informative

    They measure cumulative size distribution (how many groups of size >= N) and churn (how many people leave the group for another one in a given period).

    They are able to come up with a simple mathematical model for the behaviour of players (essentially: recruit people with diverse attributes/skills) that reproduces the observed data extremely well. And they also show that the alternative 'kinship' model (recruit people with similar attributes/skills) fails to reproduce the observed data.

    I would say that their model does quite a good job at modeling some rather nontrivial data.

  15. Re:Without SEEING the formula, it's rather difficu by kaplong! · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0812.2299 is a better (free) link to the preprint.

  16. Re:Sarcastic question, answered honestly by H0p313ss · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because it is a science

    I've dated sociologists, sociology is a science in much the same way Jazz is a color.

    --
    XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
  17. Re:Are they sure? by SmurfButcher+Bob · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, you can... but one way or the other, the fights will be over really, really fast :)

    --

    help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am

  18. Re:Sarcastic question, answered honestly by LandDolphin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obligatory. http://xkcd.com/435/

    --
    Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
  19. Groups of people by heidaro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I find that WoW guilds often resemble political parties. They have drama, scandals, split ups and disbands, just like in politics. Then again, it's a group of people, and a group of people is a group of people, regardless of location.