Abstract
Complex real-world challenges are often solved through teamwork. Of special interest are ad hoc teams assembled to complete some task. Many popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video-games adopt this team formation strategy and thus provide a natural environment to study ad hoc teams. Our work examines data from a popular MOBA game, League of Legends, to understand the evolution of individual performance within ad hoc teams. Our analysis of player performance in successive matches of a gaming session demonstrates that a player’s success deteriorates over the course of the session, but this effect is mitigated by the player’s experience. We also find no significant long-term improvement in the individual performance of most players. Modelling the short-term performance dynamics allows us to accurately predict when players choose to continue to play or end the session. Our findings suggest possible directions for individualized incentives aimed at steering the player’s behaviour and improving team performance.
Highlights
IntroductionPeople are often brought together in temporary ad hoc teams to achieve a common goal before moving on to the problem, likely with a different team
Solving today’s complex challenges increasingly calls for collaborating with others
We study the performance of a set of League of Legends (LoL) players who played at least 10 solo-queue matches
Summary
People are often brought together in temporary ad hoc teams to achieve a common goal before moving on to the problem, likely with a different team. An example of such ad hoc teams can be found in multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games. In this popular genre of games, two teams are assembled and face each other, with individuals collaborating with strangers to complete a series of complex, fast-paced tasks (e.g. kill enemies, destroy towers and conquer the enemy base) to win the game.
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