Competitive Game Research Articles

Heuristics in highly competitive game: evidence from the fantasy National Hockey League

Recent findings in behavioral economics have shown that an individual may not always act optimally and rationally in their decision-making. However, these findings have come mainly from laboratory conditions, and as such, they need to be verified under real circumstances. This paper examines the presence of heuristics in the environment of fantasy sports. The data come from a fantasy league based on the National Hockey League in the season of 2015–16. Its users come mainly from the Czech Republic. The results show a moderately strong presence of representativeness. Nevertheless, there are also manifestations of not always prioritizing point-maximizing strategies, for example in the higher demand for hockey players of the same nationality as that of the users. However, the main factor influencing the demand is still the athletes’ performance. This study’s findings hold implications for fantasy sports, prompting fantasy sports participants to strategically adjust squad selection. For platforms, it suggests user experience enhancements and algorithmic adjustments to guide optimal decision-making, enriching overall engagement. Additionally, the research contributes to decision-making theory by validating behavioral economics in the real world, emphasizing context-specific biases, and advocating for an integrated understanding of heuristics and rational factors in decision environments.

Nonlinear dynamic in a remanufacturing duopoly game: spectral entropy analysis and chaos control

<abstract><p>In this study, our focus is on stabilizing a competitive game involving an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a third-party remanufacturer (TPR). To assess the presence of chaos within the dynamics of this game, we employ various analytical tools, including spectral entropy (SE), bifurcation diagrams, and Lyapunov exponents. The unpredictable nature of chaotic dynamics significantly influences the market and has negative implications for the strategic decisions of both firms. Our approach to counteracting this chaotic behaviour and stabilizing the system revolves around the implementation of the Ott, Grebogi, and Yorke (OGY) method. Crucially, our analysis highlights that the marginal costs ($ c_n $ and $ c_r $) incurred by the OEM and TPR emerge as pivotal factors in achieving stabilization within the game. To provide a tangible demonstration of the effectiveness of our proposed stabilization strategy in the context of this competitive environment, we conducted numerical simulations.</p></abstract>

Simulation-Driven Balancing of Competitive Game Levels with Reinforcement Learning

Simulation-Driven Balancing of Competitive Game Levels with Reinforcement Learning

FACTORS AFFECTING THE EFFECTIVE ACTIVITY OF A COACH IN CYBER SPORTS

Introduction. A coach in professional gaming plays a major role in the preparation of his team. His professional activity makes quite serious demands, including the availability of a wide range of skills and knowledge. There is a need to study the professional activity of an esports coach, which will improve the quality and effectiveness of the educational and training process. The aim of the study is to improve the quality and efficiency of the professional activity of eSports coaches by determining the factors affecting its effectiveness. Materials and methods: analysis of scientific and methodical literature and Internet data; poll; method of expert evaluations; methods of mathematical statistics. Results. The conducted scientific research made it possible to establish the factors that hinder the formation of professional competence of future eSports coaches. Lack of standards and certification (20 points), uncertainty about employment in the field of eSports (29 points) and low recognition (44 points) were among the biggest difficulties for coaches. Ethical factors (89 points), psychological burnout (98 points), and difficulties with mastering new technologies in the specified field (107 points) were identified by the eSports coaches as the least influential. The factors that allow ensuring a high-quality educational and training process in e-sports were determined. They include: the presence of an innovative technical base and sufficient space for the training process; providing psychological support for coaches; access to a rational and stable budget; availability of motivation and the opportunity to improve the qualifications of eSports coaches; regular technical support to solve possible problems with hardware or software; constant cooperation with other specialists; ensuring effective team management, including quality communication, conflict resolution, etc. Conclusions. It was found that the set of professional and pedagogical qualities of eSports coaches contains a considerable list of specific knowledge and skills. The experts identified the factors that allow ensuring a high-quality educational and training process in eSports.

Collaborative AI in the Geometry Friends Game Competition

Collaborative AI in the Geometry Friends Game Competition

Legal regulation of cyber sports: International best practices

Legal regulation of cyber sports: International best practices

Research on the Configuration Effect of Electronic Sports Industry in Urban Development

Research on the Configuration Effect of Electronic Sports Industry in Urban Development

Dog talk

Abstract Canid and human barks and growls were examined in videotapes of 24 humans (Homo sapiens) and 24 dogs (Canis familiaris) playing with familiar and unfamiliar cross-species play partners. Barks and growls were exhibited by 9 humans and 9 dogs. Dogs barked and (less often) growled most frequently when being frustrated by humans and/or engaged in competitive games, and less often when being chased or inviting chase, and being instigated or captured. Dogs never growled when playing with an unfamiliar human, and humans did so rarely when playing with an unfamiliar dog. Humans growled and (less often) barked most frequently when chasing and capturing the dog, less often when engaging in competitive games, being frustrated by the dog, and/or instigating the dog, and rarely when showing or throwing an object. Dog barks were most often requests for the human to make an object available to the dog. Dog growls were often pretend threats when competing for an object or being frustrated by the human’s actions. Human barks and growls were typically pretend threats, and were sometimes used to emphasize simultaneous behaviors. Human barks and growls allow humans to connect with their canid partner.

Effect of short-term heat application on fine motor skills in an online competitive video gamer: a case report

Competitive video gaming -or in a more professional and commercial definition; e-sports- is a well-funded and rapidly growing field. However, there is no detailed information about the performance of these gamers related to heating even though heat application is commonly used among players. A 21-year-old male gamer was included in this report to assess the effects of heat application on fine motor skills. Fine motor skills (reaction time, overall mouse control, repeated keypress) were assessed before and after heat application by using open-source software that is being currently used in other fields of health sciences. It was noted that the short-term heat application may have positive effects, especially in the mouse hand however the results of the keyboard hand were controversial.

Methodology of the Professional-Business Game for the Development of a Cadet Leader in Professional Training Courses (L-1B) of the Tactical Level of Military Education

The aim of the study is to develop a methodology for a professional-business game for the development of a cadet leader in professional training courses (L-1B) of the tactical level of military education on the example of teaching the discipline “Combat use of military communication systems and complexes”. After all, the most important prerequisite for the combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is a comprehensively trained officer-leader, his consciousness, knowledge, skills, military-technical qualifications, creative and innovative activity, developed emotional and volitional sphere of the psyche, beliefs, motivation, and ideals. The article summarizes the research on the state of development of a cadet leader in Ukraine. In the context of a full-scale war, there is a need to strengthen the development of the personality of a cadet leader (a future officer of the tactical level of military education). Today’s cadet-leader is tomorrow’s officer-leader, capable of integrating knowledge and solving complex problems in new or unfamiliar environments with incomplete or limited information, being a leader and authority for the personnel. Therefore, the scientific and practical task arises to consider aspects of the development of the personality of a cadet leader and to modernize the process of his development, for example, in the courses of professional military education L-1B (tactical level of military education) in terms of the disciplines of the Department of Combat Use of Communication Units. The periodization of cadets’ adaptation to the new educational space and service activities is considered, the optimal period of leader growth is determined, and the mechanism itself is proposed. The article separately identifies the key tasks for the selection of academic staff and admission to the educational process. The methodology of the professional and business game for the development of a cadet leader in professional training courses (L-1B) of the tactical level of military education is developed on the example of teaching the discipline “Combat use of military communication systems and complexes”. The scientific novelty of the work is the improved educational process of training and development of a cadet leader in professional training courses (L-1B) of the tactical level of military education by reformatting group classes in the traditional format into a professional business game for the positions of officers with the introduction of typical and atypical (force majeure) training tasks for cadets in everyday activities in new or unfamiliar environments in the presence of incomplete or limited information.

What explains the next level of gaming? An experience-anticipation model for amateur esports participation

Esports is a professionalized form of organized video game competition. Despite professional esports as the current dominant mode, amateur esports is emerging as the next level of gaming for mass gamers. The prosperity of amateur esports is critical for the whole esports market's sustainable success. Active participation among mass gamers is the key to achieving a high popularity of amateur esports. However, little is known about what factors explain mass gamers' participation in amateur esports. To bridge this gap, an experience-anticipation model was built to investigate the roles of (1) in-game experience and (2) future-oriented factor in mass gamers' amateur esports participation. Results indicate that not all in-game experiences impact amateur esports participation. Immersion significantly influences participation, but enjoyment does not. Notably, mass gamers' anticipation concerning the future of esports (a specific future-oriented factor) plays a crucial role in participation. The experience-anticipation model has implications for both research and practice.

Sequential auction for cloud manufacturing resource trading: A deep reinforcement learning approach to the lot-sizing problem

Cloud manufacturing is a rapidly growing trend in modern manufacturing, which has transformed the traditional operations and value chain structure of enterprises. It is crucial to develop a rational and effective trading mechanism of cloud manufacturing resources to meet the ever-increasing demands in this new environment. This paper proposes a sequential auction-based paradigm for the trading of manufacturing resources. The main challenge of the design of the paradigm is to determine the dynamic lot size of resources allocated to each auction considering the uncertainty of arriving demands. To achieve this, we first develop a competitive game model to identify optimal bidding strategies of arrived customers and estimate the expected revenue for each round with the given lot size. Secondly, we construct a Markov decision process (MDP) model to characterize the dynamics of the arrival of stochastic demand and the inventory transition of the manufacturing resources in sequential auctions. Lastly, we leverage a data-driven approach by integrating machine learning with an offline deep reinforcement learning (RL) approach. Specifically, we employ a long short-term memory (LSTM) model to predict forthcoming demands in the environment and develop the deep Q-network (DQN) learning algorithm to optimize lot-sizing policy by interacting with the well-learned LSTM environment model. Our simulation experiments validate the effectiveness of our approach and some management insights are given.

Ecotaurism through the Cultural Heritage of the Mekongga Kingdom in the Wundulako District

The advent of globalization has resulted in changes in people's lifestyles that are more modern, resulting in people being more inclined to choose new cultures that are considered more practical than local cultures. One of the factors causing local culture to be forgotten nowadays is the lack of future generations who have an interest in learning and inheriting their culture. Therefore, the aim of writing this article is to explain the community's efforts to strengthen social status through the cultural heritage of the Mekongga kingdom. The data collection technique used in this research is Snowball Sampling through observation participation and in-depth interviews. This type of qualitative research uses ethnographic research methods. The results of this research show that the people in Wundulako District, known as the Mekongga people, strengthen their social status through the cultural heritage of the Mekongga Kingdom, namely by carrying out death ceremonies, Wonua mosehe cultural rituals, mesosambakai cultural rituals, mosehe cultural rituals within the royal family, and through Mekongga cultural games, namely Mepae-pae Festival with traditional game competitions such as Metinggo (engrang), Mehule (Gasing), Mebaguli (candlenut kernel marbles), and Mesuke (picking and hitting the stem).

The influence of psychological needs and motivation on game cheating: insights from self-determination theory.

Game cheating (i.e., behavior of violating rules in games by using unregulated Software or assistive devices to gain advantage) poses a fatal problem as it destroys fair competition systems and negatively impacts the game ecosystem. Game cheating is reported to be common in competitive online games because they stimulate strongly a user's motivation and psychological needs. However, there is still in lack of academic research which focused on the issue from the psycho-social perspective. This study investigated the relationships between basic psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) and motivation (i.e., intrinsic and extrinsic) based on self-determination theory, and examined their effects on the degree of game cheating with survey data of 322 gamers in a competitive online gaming community. The results showed the opposite associations between the two forms of motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) and game cheating. On one hand, extrinsic motivation decreased by autonomy enhanced the degree of game cheating. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation increased by both autonomy and relatedness finally abated game cheating. Competence did not influence any form of motivation. The results indicated that people motivated by interest or enjoyment (i.e., intrinsic motivation) of the game tend to view game cheating negatively while those motivated by game victory and rewards are likely to have positive attitudes toward game cheating. Increasing the degree of user autonomy and social relations in the game could decrease game cheating through the enhancement of intrinsic motivation. Digital game cheating is a crucial problem threatening the spread of game culture and the growth of the eSports industry. The findings of this study reveal the influence of psychological needs and intrinsic motivation related to 'game cheating,' providing valuable guidelines in educational and policy aspects.

Business Perspectives of Distributed System Operators for Solar Rooftop-as-a-Service

Rising fossil energy prices and the significantly decreasing prices of energy technology have resulted in electricity consumers having the option to install solar PV rooftops to rely on the self-consumption of clean energy. However, the increase in this amount is affecting the revenue of electricity as a utility, which must adapt and develop its business model to accommodate the situation. If the utility cannot be adapted in time, it may lead to a loss of income from services and the sale of electricity from fossil energy. The utility in Thailand’s electricity market that acts as the distribution system operator (DSO) is known as the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA), and the Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) is responsible for managing distribution networks and customers. There are four types of solar rooftop-as-a-service (RaaS) business perspectives they could consider as opportunities through which to minimize revenue impact. The business services were designed for the DSO customer as follows: Consulting, Design, and Installation (CDI); Operation and Maintenance (O&M); Energy Service Company (ESCO); and Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). The model comprises four customer segments: residential buildings and small-, medium-, and large-scale commercial buildings. This paper applies SWOT, Five Forces, 4P marketing, and economic impact analyses to identify the possibilities when using the DSO business model. The SWOT analysis demonstrates that ESCO and PPA are strengths in the DSO’s performance characteristics and existing customer data. In the electricity industry, both models offer enormous customer bargaining power in terms of a Five Forces analysis. The main reason is that there is currently high competition in the installation service. In the 4P analysis result, the price per unit is found to be significantly lower than in residential scenarios. Therefore, there is a format for presenting promotions with an advantage over competitors. Deploying an after-sales service that brings convenience to all customer segments is needed. The economic analysis conducted using Cournot competition game theory shows a significant differential in the Medium (M) and Large (L) customer sectors’ competition due to lower technology prices. In conclusion, with the current regulatory framework and criteria, the ESCO and PPA show the best practical model from a utility business perspective. The recommendation for DSO is to create a strategic ecosystem and to link it with private companies as their partnership business.

Exploring the Sustainable Development of E-commerce Ecosystems in the Perspective of Green Health

Abstract The development of e-commerce breaks through the restrictions of traditional commerce in time and geography and enables people to carry out e-commerce activities conveniently, quickly and securely anytime and anywhere. This paper takes the Internet as a competition and communication platform, forms an e-commerce ecosystem through collaboration and resource sharing, and provides the evolution path of the e-commerce ecosystem. In the paper, the evolutionary game theory is cited, the game strategy is expressed through Nash equilibrium, and the three-way competitive evolutionary game model of the e-commerce ecosystem population is established with the revenue function as the optimization objective, presenting the evolution process from individual behavior to group behavior to adopt the strategy. To verify the application of the three-way evolutionary game model presented in this paper in the sustainable development of e-commerce ecosystems, an evolutionary game analysis was performed. The results show that: under the same degree of random disturbance, the fluctuation amplitude of the leader population is between 0.01 and 0.02, and the key population is most affected by random disturbance, and its fluctuation range is able to reach 0.05 to 0.95. In 2013, after the invasion of Tmall, its market share rapidly reached 49.35% from 1.49%, and Jingdong dropped to 19.11% after it, and the B2C e-commerce ecosystem changed significantly. Participating parties in the e-commerce ecosystem under the perspective of green health need to choose the right time to cooperate so as to promote the stable and sustainable development of the e-commerce ecosystem.

The Impact of Physical Exercises on the Psychomotor Capacities of Middle School Pupils

The research aims to identify the adolescents’ avoidance causes from physical education lessons and to determine the means of improving students' satisfaction with physical education. The present research is of ascertaining – ameliorative type, carried out on a sample of 15 teachers and 180 pupils from secondary classes in the Secondary School "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" and the Secondary School no 10 Bacau, Romania, between March 1, 2022 and June 10, 2022. The methods used in the research included: the analysis of the specialized literature, the diagnosis questionnaire, and the mathematical-statistical method. The main conclusions refer to the identification of the passionate fields and the preferences for the sport of the pupils, the argumentation of the need to introduce in the physical education and sports classes competitive sports games, which, besides the training of some motor qualities, ensure an extremely complex set of psychic sentimental, emotional, volitional and cognitive nature acquisitions.

THE IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP ON ESPORT TEAM PERFORMANCE

This study explores the impact of leadership on team performance in competitive game situations. The purpose of the study is to understand the importance of effective leadership strategies to maximise team performance and team success. The study uses a combination of literature review and use SMARTPLS as measuring tools. Research results show that effective leadership has a positive impact on team performance in esports. The study concludes that leadership has a significant impact on esports team performance. An effective leadership style that focuses on psychological factors and the role of the coach contributes to better team cohesion, better communication, and better execution of strategy. This paper highlights the importance of customised leadership strategies that consider the unique challenges and characteristics of the esports industry.

Peningkatan Kemampuan Bahasa Siswa Melalui Kegiatan Membaca Permulaan Dengan Menggunakan Kartu Bergambar di Kelompok B TK Santa Thersesia I Pangkalpinang

The low level of early reading skills is the background of why this research was conducted, so this study aims to improve early reading skills through the letter card game method in group B of Theresia I Pangkalpinang Kindergarten. This study used the subject of group B students of Theresia I Kindergarten totaling 18 people. The object of research focuses on improving the ability to read beginning through the method of playing letter cards. The data collection method used checklist observation, interviews and documentation. The results showed that there was an increase in early reading skills by 22.2% at the end of cycle I and at the end of cycle II an increase of 49.9%. This improvement in early reading skills can be seen from students being able to read pictures, being able to point and point to the letter symbols requested, being able to read simple words and sound the letters in the word, being able to connect pictures with words, being able to arrange letters into meaningful words and, being able to group vowels and consonants. The implementation steps used to improve students' beginning reading skills are by using group competition games, the teacher provides an explanation of the alphabet, and giving verbal awards and applause to the winning group. Keywords: Language skills, beginning reading, letter card game method

Autonomous behaviour and the limits of human volition

Humans and some other animals can autonomously generate action choices that contribute to solving complex problems. However, experimental investigations of the cognitive bases of human autonomy are challenging, because experimental paradigms typically constrain behaviour using controlled contexts, and elicit behaviour by external triggers. In contrast, autonomy and freedom imply unconstrained behaviour initiated by endogenous triggers. Here we propose a new theoretical construct of adaptive autonomy, meaning the capacity to make behavioural choices that are free from constraints of both immediate external triggers and of routine response patterns, but nevertheless show appropriate coordination with the environment. Participants (N = 152) played a competitive game in which they had to choose the right time to act, in the face of an opponent who punished (in separate blocks) either choice biases (such as always responding early), sequential patterns of action timing across trials (such as early, late, early, late…), or predictable action-outcome dependence (such as win-stay, lose-shift). Adaptive autonomy was quantified as the ability to maintain performance when each of these influences on action selection was punished. We found that participants could become free from habitual choices regarding when to act and could also become free from sequential action patterns. However, they were not able to free themselves from influences of action-outcome dependence, even when these resulted in poor performance. These results point to a new concept of autonomous behaviour as flexible adaptation of voluntary action choices in a way that avoids stereotypy. In a sequential analysis, we also demonstrated that participants increased their reliance on belief learning in which they attempt to understand the competitor's beliefs and intentions, when transition bias and reinforcement bias were punished. Taken together, our study points to a cognitive mechanism of adaptive autonomy in which competitive interactions with other agents could promote both social cognition and volition in the form of non-stereotyped action choices.