Measuring the effect of game updates on player engagement: A cue from DOTA2

Abstract

In game updates research, there has been little research on what kind of updates elicit what kind of reactions from players. In this paper, we test the efficacy of three game update patterns, namely major but infrequent updates, minor but frequent updates, and irrelevant updates on enhancing player engagement in the context of DOTA2. Surprisingly, we find that not all feature updates will have a positive effect on player engagement. Specifically, in the vast majority of cases, players will significantly be stimulated to engage in the game after major but infrequent updates (range from 11% to 49%). By contrast, minor but frequent updates may work ineffectually and even present a hazard to player engagement (range from −4.7% to 5.9%, 3 times is positive and 3 times is negative). Finally, player engagement has no obvious difference before and after irrelevant updates. Furthermore, we find that although players will have more leisure time after the outbreak of COVID-19 due to the mandatory quarantine policy, their intentions to play games will be reduced, which further void the effect of game updates. Also, updating the game during a big game event might not be a good opportunity as updating at this moment will make the benefits that should be brought less obvious. Our results offer theoretical and managerial implications to scholars and the game industry on how to improve player engagement by properly releasing game update patches.