Analysis scripts: The rise and fall of technological development in virtual communities

Natalia Velez, Charley M. Wu, Sam Gershman, Eric Schulz Last updated January 2025

This repository contains analyses of public data from the game One Hour One Life. An up-to-date version of our preprint can be found here.

Directory structure

Files and folders are numbered in the order that they were executed.

Folders 1-4: Downloading & cleaning up data

• 1_download: Download files
• 2_demographics: Reconstruct demographic record from lifelog data
• 3_technology: Reconstruct technology use from maplog data
• 4_commmunities: Reconstruct social interactions from maplog data

Folders 5-8: Main analyses.

• 5_jobspace: Model how individuals adapt to communities where they are placed
• 6_regression: Model repertoire size and stability as a function of community characteristics
• 7_expertise: Predict which technologies are developed based on community expertise
• 8_collapse: Model onset of community collapse

The final folder, _FIGURES, contains the code used to produce key figures in the main text and supplementary materials.

Dependencies

Note: Some scripts assume that you have the OneLifeData7 repository cloned to the same parent directory as this repository. Example:

OneHourOneLife
|__ data
|__ analysis
|     |__ 1_download
|     |__ ...
|__ OneLifeData7