Distance matters: Exploring proximity and homophily in virtual world networks

Distance has long been a powerful force that influences the ways in which we organize our personal relationships and collaborations. In the past two decades, globalization and the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have brought profound changes to the formation and maintenance of communication networks in contemporary work and social settings by eliminating the constraints of physical distance on human interaction. To study the role of distance in ICT-enabled virtual worlds, we propose three dimensions of proximity - space, time, and homophily - and analyze the impact of distance, time zones, gender, age, and game age on building collaborative relations in online games. The results show that spatial proximity, temporal proximity, and homophily in age and game age still have a strong impact on players' behavior in creating online relations in virtual worlds, however, there is no evidence of gender homophily. This study suggests that offline proximity plays an important role in bringing people together in virtual worlds.