The XFire Online Meta-Gaming Network: Observation and High-Level Analysis

Online Meta-Gaming Networks are Internet-based communities of (computer) game players that extend in-game functionality by focusing on the relationship between game sessions, on what happens in the meantime between game sessions, and on the relationship between games. Motivated by the popularity of these game-related networks and by the growth of their importance—many major game developers have started to operate their own online meta-gaming network—, in this work we analyze a long-term observation of XFire. Using long-term, large-scale data that we have collected, we present a high-level, marginal distributionand time-based analysis of XFire: its global network, player activity, user-generated content, and social structure. We find that XFire is a slowly growing network whose players spend collectively in-game over 100 years, every hour. We quantify the “hardcore”-ness of XFire players, and find that a significant fraction of them have played over 10,000 in-game hours. We also find that XFire community members are routinely engaged in the creation and consumption of game-related media, such as screenshots and videos.