Crisis and stasis: understanding change in online communities

This dissertation explores the interaction between and among players, developers and rule-breakers in a series of popular online gaming communities. Using a combination of large-scale network data, statistical learning, data modelling and anomaly detection techniques it examines the role of “disruptive players” within in-game social networks over time. Covering a wide array of disruptive behavior, from cheating to in-game protest the results demonstrate that players who choose to challenge regulatory systems within a community often assume distinctive positions within their host social networks. These results are contextualized using an evolutionary framework that posits that changes in a game’s community may influence large scale shifts in the regulatory structures that govern player behavior. The final results were mixed, while disruptive players often do find themselves in distinctive positions within their host networks spikes in disruptive play are not always associated with changes in their associated regulatory structures. These findings have implications for the fields of organization communication and game study as they shed light on the complex dynamics that govern the development and evolution of online rules and regulatory structures.