The dynamics of collective social behavior in a crowd controlled game

Alberto Aleta,Yamir Moreno

doi:10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0200-1

Alberto Aleta, Yamir Moreno

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0200-1

Copy DOI

Abstract

Despite many efforts, the behavior of a crowd is not fully understood. The advent of modern communication means has made it an even more challenging problem, as crowd dynamics could be driven by both human-to-human and human-technology interactions. Here, we study the dynamics of a crowd controlled game (Twitch Plays Pokémon), in which nearly a million players participated during more than two weeks. Unlike other online games, in this event all the players controlled exactly the same character and thus it represents an exceptional example of a collective mind working to achieve a certain goal. We dissect the temporal evolution of the system dynamics along the two distinct phases that characterized the game. We find that having a fraction of players who do not follow the crowd’s average behavior is key to succeed in the game. The latter finding can be well explained by an nth order Markov model that reproduces the observed behavior. Secondly, we analyze a phase of the game in which players were able to decide between two different modes of playing, mimicking a voting system. We show that the introduction of this system clearly polarized the community, splitting it in two. Finally, we discuss one of the peculiarities of these groups in the light of the social identity theory, which appears to describe well some of the observed dynamics.

Highlights

Collective phenomena have been the subject of intense research in psychology and sociology since the XIX century
One of the first attempts to address this subject was Le Bon’s theory on the psychology of crowds in which he argued that when people are part of a crowd they lose their individual consciousness and become more primitive and emotional thanks to the anonymity provided by the group [2]
Here we study an event that took place in February 2014 known as Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP)

Summary

Introduction

Collective phenomena have been the subject of intense research in psychology and sociology since the XIX century. These two factors, namely, a clear strategy and the long time they were stuck there, added to the fact that this took place before the introduction of the anarchy/democracy modes, makes this area a great case study of the collective behavior of the crowd at short timescales.

Results

Conclusion