The Many Faces of Mentoring in an MMORPG

Mentoring refers to the phenomenon where a more skilled or knowledgeable person helps a less skilled or less knowledgeable person gain skill in a particular domain. In this paper we study the phenomenon of mentoring in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). We identify four different types of mentoring, which map to several important motivational features. We then measure the social networks of mentors at multiple levels, and propose a network model to describe the emergence and evolution of mentoring. Keywords; Mentoring, Social Networks, MMORGP, Mentoring Networks

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: SOCIALCOM
• Authors: Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, David Huffaker, Jing Wang, Jeffrey William Treem, Dinesh Kumar, Marshall Scott Poole, Jaideep Srivastava
• Keywords: Knowledgeable Person, Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game, Mentoring, Security Privacy, SOCIALCOM 2010