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Statistical properties of online avatar numbers in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game

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  • Jiang, Zhi-Qiang
  • Ren, Fei
  • Gu, Gao-Feng
  • Tan, Qun-Zhao
  • Zhou, Wei-Xing

Abstract

Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have been very popular in the past few years. The profit of an MMORPG company is proportional to how many users registered, and the instant number of online avatars is a key factor to assess how popular an MMORPG is. We use the online–offline logs on an MMORPG server to reconstruct the instant number of online avatars per second and investigate its statistical properties. We find that the online avatar number exhibits one-day periodic behavior and clear intraday pattern, the fluctuation distribution of the online avatar numbers has a leptokurtic non-Gaussian shape with power-law tails, and the increments of online avatar numbers after removing the intraday pattern are uncorrelated and the associated absolute values have long-term correlation. In addition, both time series exhibit multifractal nature.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiang, Zhi-Qiang & Ren, Fei & Gu, Gao-Feng & Tan, Qun-Zhao & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2010. "Statistical properties of online avatar numbers in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(4), pages 807-814.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:4:p:807-814
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2009.10.028
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Yang, Yan-Hong & Xie, Wen-Jie & Li, Ming-Xia & Jiang, Zhi-Qiang & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2017. "Statistical properties of user activity fluctuations in virtual worlds," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 271-278.

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